How Toronto Is Mismanaging Mental Health

After battling anxiety for many years, I can’t say I’ve conquered it. I have conquered the worst of it. To make it clear, this piece is coming from a perspective of someone who has experience with therapy and is an advocate for mental health awareness. Mental health in Toronto is becoming a hot topic that is finally being discussed, in my opinion, too late and not to the basic degree it needs to be at. Laws have allowed mental health issues to be left to the point of a crisis. Mentally they define someone in a crisis when you are at the point where you are “a harm to yourself or harm to others”. I have been blessed not to have been at a point in a crisis but I am frustrated in a system doesn’t intervene earlier.

The reason this system is ineffective is because it creates a society built on this stigma that you need to be at the extreme end mentally before you can seek help. Once you hit rock bottom that’s when you finally get support? What logic is that? In the educational realm, we need to grow up learning in classrooms the basics of understanding our emotions, recognising symptoms of depression and anxiety, and see a therapist at a young age.

Depression and anxiety comes in various forms and is different for many people. Many of us either don’t know how to recognise the signs or acknowledge what these feelings are. Some of us live our entire lives not realising our negative patterns and assume these things are normal which is scary, to say the least. Sometimes this can turn into chronic problems or severe long term mental health issues.

I’m not a doctor nor do I have a medical background but I am keen on understanding how we can create a better society that values basic mental health and intervening before someone becomes their worst version of themselves, is the least we can do.