What Inspired Firefly Moments.
Society is getting better with acceptance and learning how to help their loved ones, however, there is still so much more to do.
The Waitlist Gap: The ‘waitgap’ is a space between when a person reaches out for help in psychological distress and when that care service is available to them. This gap is evident on all levels of care, from suicide emergency services and withdrawal units up to in-patient, long-term, or group therapy programs to having access to doctors, nurses, and quality medically trained staff in hospital, clinical and police intervention settings.
If there were more and better quality health services dedicated to mental health and addiction, there would, by default of healing, be less fear and stigma to face. People need options that respect their dignity and empower their choices.
Stigma is still a Reality
Only 49% of Canadians said they would socialize with a friend who has a serious mental illness. — Canadian Medical Association
Stigma persists towards chronically mentally ill and addicted people, and sadly, ‘such people’ are still being avoided in our society. Difficult, dramatic, emotionally draining, a person with severe or active mental illness is generally undervalued as someone to get to know, to spend time with, or to love. They are exhausting to be friends with because they are high-strung, high maintenance, and complicated. Yes! This can all sometimes be absolutely true. It is built into the very nature of the illness after all. Worse, this sort of passive rejection creates even more devastating isolation. People can easily encourage others to get help, as long as they are not the help.
Very often, during someone’s most critical moments, when they are desperately begging, they are turned away from hospital emergency rooms, long term treatment programs, safe withdrawal, use and injection sites… They can be beaten, jailed, shot for just being abnormally distressed! Usually accused of seeking attention or drugs, their words become minimized, rejected even ignored, disbelieved, and mocked. They die of suicide, violence, and overdose. Then, even in their grave have been accused of selfishness. “But why didn’t they just tell someone? Why didn’t they fight it… ? Why did They leave Us? Owning up to these questions is a very hard pill to swallow, so people project anger at the victim.
What about choices?
"...[T]throughout the world, social programs have been cut, services to the needy curtailed, communal enterprises devalued, communities torn asunder, inequality has risen—in other words, the environment required to meet people’s fundamental needs has been degraded. Does anyone believe it to be pure coincidence that loneliness has reached epidemic proportions, the number of children and adults diagnosed with and medicated for mental health problems has burgeoned, suicide rates are skyrocketing, and the number of people afflicted by and dying from substance addictions has dramatically increased?"---Gabor Maté
Very simply put, any suggestion that a person with a medical condition is making poor health and lifestyle choices, must also assume there are options to choose from. Telling someone to make better life choices, does no good when no options exist. There are no places to go. There are only waitlist lines months and years long. This lack of awareness contributes to people genuinely believing there are actually places to go and people to see to get help.
Hospitals have no beds on already small psych wards. Emergency services have no quiet rooms for psychological crisis or sobering sites for addicts. Where does the suicidal person go when they are told to leave? Where does the addict go when they want to be clean but can’t get medication? They go off to die or get high.
What can we do about it?
Let’s talk is only the beginning
There needs to be a next step in the Talk About it movement. In order to combat systemic stigma. We need to create a culture of listeners. People must be willing to sit and hear out tales of traumatic experiences and broken minds.
“Let’s talk” planted the seeds of knowledge that mental illness is not such an uncommon problem, people spoke up and even more people chose to get help. As a result, there has been a major shift in perspective for people facing psychological difficulties.
Accurate mental health awareness is still overwhelmingly misrepresented in our society. Stigmatized and largely hidden, people with mental illness rarely come forward. People with psychiatric difficulties are usually compared to healthy people (they don’t look sick), and it is often thought they are only making bad choices, destroying their own lives. A healthy mind has never been handicapped by a disorder that changes brain function, it really can seem easy to believe behavior is strictly a mind over matter.
People still don’t really want to hear the down and dirty of living with mental illness, it can be hard stuff hear to after all. The results have been that no real action is taken to solve the long-term problem of dealing with stigma. Consequently, the real purpose of the “speak-up” movement is getting lost in the world of trends like hashtags, memes, and comma tattoos. It is becoming diluted by social media testimonies of success, that never reveal the ugly days. Showing ugly realities loses followers.
Speaking up has never been enough on its own.
Without an active listener, talking about anything inevitably goes nowhere.
The moment that anyone with a psychiatric illness musters up the courage to speak up is delicate and fleeting and truly terrifying. When anyone is unsupported at that point, the danger is potentially life-threatening. With no easy access to appropriate medical care, asking a vulnerable person to talk about their deepest fears can be dangerous. Without validation, emotions can escalate quickly and potentially lead to more trauma and pain. Talking still isn’t totally safe, mostly because the illness itself makes it difficult to be appropriately assertive enough to ask for help.
In a world of healthy minds, good people can have preconceptions they don’t know about, moreover, there is no way to predict someone’s reaction to speaking up. Talking to the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, using the wrong tone or words opens that speaker up to additional self-doubt. This can take a person back into the deep dark again, it takes tremendous effort to try talking again.
When you talk, you are only repeating what you know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.
Dalai Lama
We can fight stigma with resources, education and our ears
Listening is where love begins: Listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors
Fred Rogers
In order to help the mentally ill population make better choices, we need to have options for better health outcomes to offer them. Starting with validating trauma that causes illness, we can provide people with resources tailored to their needs, empower them with quality therapeutic skills and engage everyone in a larger network, a community of support and trust.
We need to create a new brand of active listeners. Sometimes the only thing someone in distress needs to calm down is to be heard. Sometimes a life can be changed with simple validation and trust knowing your support is there to help when they ask for it.
What is Firefly going to do about it?
Facing down stigma through Love, Validation, Opportunities, Self Care, and Community Connections
Firefly’s Moments primary goal is to connect Psychiatric and Psychological professionals, agencies, organizations, institutions, services, non-profits, companies, volunteers and service providers to each other and to the people who need them. By offering information, pooling resources, connecting, and creating a central network of support we hope to offer better treatment opportunities at lower cost and reduced wait times. Our main ambition is to keep people engaged in their own wellness while they sit on waitlists and as they progress through their personal treatment plan.
Our cause Project comfort kits is a plan to support people facing personal crisis and psychiatric illness. Our cause also supports small business’s, artisan’s, creators and makers through promoting their work using their products in our care & comfort kits.
Find out more about what Firefly Moments is doing to help change the way we think about mental illness…..
