Parliamentarians and Mental Health: A Candid Conversation.

AuthorBlady, Sharon
PositionRoundtable - Discussion

One in five Canadians will experience symptoms relating to mental illness in their lifetime. Yet, despite strides to destigmatise mental health conditions, people experiencing acute symptoms or episodes often feel as though they must struggle through alone and in silence. High-stress occupations, including those in parliamentary politics, are often places where these conditions first manifest or reappear due to certain triggers. The very public nature of the job and the continuing need to seek re-election tend to make politicians reluctant to disclose their mental health issues. In recent years, however, more parliamentarians appear to be coming forward, while in office, to speak openly about managing their mental health on the job. In this roundtable, three parliamentarians who have publicly disclosed their mental health conditions came together to talk about their experiences serving as parliamentarians while dealing with mental health conditions. With astonishing candour, they shared their stories and took the opportunity to talk to others in the same unique position about how they've persevered during trying times. The participants, while acknowledging the challenges of managing the conditions while in office also spoke of its positive effects in terms of giving them compassion, realism, and great perspective that can be used to excel at aspects of their jobs. This roundtable was held in November 2017.

CPR: In the last few years, each of you has experienced periods of depression before or while serving as a parliamentarian. Could you briefly describe the circumstances behind how and when your depression manifested?

SB: For me, I was in office and a backbencher at the time. We were dealing with a session that was being dragged out over the summer by the opposition. They were bound and determined to keep us in the chamber, so it was July by that point. There were a few other pressures. I'm a single mom and I've had post-partum depression. Going through that, I came to understand when I would have a depressive episode. I learned a whole bunch of coping skills and tools and had always done very well.

One morning we were sitting in caucus and I received a message on my phone about an event that happened in my neighbourhood. It was a news article that showed a picture of a house, and talked about two infant bodies being found and removed, and talked about the mother. As soon as I saw the house I knew exactly where it was and who lived there and I had this sick feeling that I knew what had happened. It was a constituent of mine. The last time I saw her she had been pregnant with the second child and had the first child on her hip. What we found out over the course of the day was that she was going through post-partum psychosis. As the result of a psychotic break, she ended up bathing the children and they never came out of the tub, and she would later be found in the river.

This basically triggered survivor guilt related to my own post-partum depression. This was in July 2013, and I gradually slid into my own depressive state. I was making my way through it because we had all these obligations related to house duty and we had already been told at the beginning of the summer that no one would be taking breaks because we had to maintain numbers in the house. But it got to the point that after a few days I had to take the Whip off to the side and have a discussion in my office about whether I could take a break because of how this was impacting me.

Because this was my constituent, some people were aware that I knew her and was participating in vigils and other community support events. I was granted that day off. I went home, curled up in bed, and I was right back in that place of suicidal ideation which I had only experienced once before in my own postpartum situation.

I was fortunate that we have an EAP (employee assistance program) and I reached out to them. I have an adult son who was in his early 20s, and those were two huge supports. And I also have to admit that this was a case of one condition overriding another to save my life. I also have obsessive compulsive disorder and this meant I had to come up with a water tight plan for how I was going to exit the world and this situation. It was literally that part of my brain that would eventually cause procrastination and shutting the whole idea down. I would also get the help I need, but really it was one part of my brain overriding the other.

I was able to get myself back together and function well. Most people at work had no clue what had happened, other than I was upset about what happened with this constituent. An interesting thing happened a few months later in October. I was appointed the Minister of Healthy Living and became responsible for the mental health portfolio. And then 13 months later I would go on to become the Minister of Health. I took that lived experience into those portfolios. I would have taken those portfolios seriously regardless, but it gave me some additional perspective and eventually I went public with it, and I am grateful to the media for the supportive coverage they provided.

LM: That was really moving to hear that, Sharon, thank you very much for sharing that. My experience was through work as well. I've been part of a team that has worked very hard to form a government. When we lost the 2014 campaign I started having great difficulty eating. Maybe eating 400 calories a day, if that. That went on for about two months and I just shrugged it off. I went to Israel for about a week and started eating again and feeling good, but when I came home there was so much pressure on me. People were expecting me to do things and all I really wanted to do was spend time with my family and take some down time.

By Christmas I was having what felt like paralysis, but it was really my anxiety. I felt really bad. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't enjoy life. By February, my federal Member of Parliament, John Baird, decided that he was going to leave. I had a lot of people telling me not to run for the provincial leadership but instead to run for this federal seat. I looked at that as a bit of an escape for me and my family to slow things down, but I still had a lot of pressure from all sides. That's when I started to become uncommunicative to a lot of people and started to withdraw. Really, if I could have, I would have just slept in my bed from that period of time until the end of summer.

I would be in Ottawa and going to my local hospital, the Queensway-Carleton, thinking I was having a heart attack when it was clearly anxiety. Then I'd be in Toronto, experience problems with my lungs and think it was an aneurism or something, go to the Toronto General Hospital and be there for the whole day. On both occasions I came out with a clean bill of physical health. Then in, I think May 2015,1 fractured my ankle, and that's when things got really bad because I would just sit at home and couldn't move. I really withdrew from my colleagues and my public commitments. I just think of what I put my daughter through, having to see me like that.

As the summer started, I slowly started talking to people about what was happening. I told my family doctor, and she put me on the right path. I was able to confide with people in the mental health sector and started to learn coping mechanisms to start to get my breathing under control. I had to start to learn to focus on positive things rather than things I perceived to be negative.

I'm a productive person, as we all are as politicians, so I can get up at 6am and write my list of 10 things that need to be done that day and prioritize what needs to be done first. In those days, I couldn't even put a list of one together without feeling defeated. The other thing that was a trigger for me, and I have no idea why because all of these people are my friends, was going to caucus. I would fixate on going to caucus for two days. Ours was on Tuesdays, so starting on Sunday I would begin to lose my perspective and worry--and these are some of the most supportive people in my life. I have no idea why I would start to feel this way.

The other thing was that people in my community began to notice. I pride myself on keeping a very full calendar of events in my constituency. I will go to the opening of an envelope--literally. People were starting to comment to me: why were you not there? I had lost all sense of myself. I had no self-esteem or confidence left. I would just sit there, staring at a wall and think about what a loser I was.

When I first started talking to people, it was hard. I had been calling my doctor for every little reason and I finally told her, 'I think it's in my head. There's something here that's not physical.' Saying it out loud was much better for me. It started helping me because I wasn't hiding it.

Now, I must say I made a very public declaration about it, probably a little sooner than I think I should have. But I wanted it out there. I was immediately overwhelmed. I don't think I was prepared for it. I had a media...

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