I was fortunate to be able to attend the Student Leadership Conference at UBC on January 10, 2015. Every year the conference features student initiatives that attendees can sign up to attend a session with. For one of my sessions I chose “Redefining Mood Disorders.” Natasha Kolida, a senior Psychology student at UBC, led the session, which focused specifically on bipolar disorder and depression.
She opened the session by describing her own experience with bipolar disorder, an illness characterized by both manic and depressive episodes. However, Kolida suggested that “condition” would be a more appropriate word than “disorder” or “illness.” I was personally conflicted by this idea. On the one hand, I like how using “condition” can de-stigmatize what we currently refer to as mental “illnesses” or “disorders.” On the other hand, I wondered if using “condition” would fuel the perception that mental illnesses are not “real” illnesses, in the way that we think of physical illnesses, which is also a major problem in the mainstream discourse around these issues. Her suggestion certainly gave me food for thought.
She described dealing with Access and Diversity, an organization on campus which aims “to create an inclusive living and learning environment in which all students can thrive.” They work with students who may face difficulty in an academic environment like UBC because of their gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or mental health condition, among others. She explained that while Access and Diversity does acknowledge depression as a reason for academic accommodation currently, when she first approached them, they did not. Kolida had to fight to explain to them that during depressive episodes she was sometimes unable to attend class. Eventually Access and Diversity added depression to their list of conditions of eligibility for academic accommodation.
Kolida also discussed her negative experiences with mental health professionals. This is something I feel is not discussed enough. It seems like a kind of double bind because there is a stigma against seeking counseling, and also against discussing bad counseling. She specifically mentioned the shortcomings of UBC Counselling Services. I could relate to this firsthand. Essentially patients can meet with a counselor for an initial session, but if they wish to receive further individual counseling, they are given a list of professionals in the wider Vancouver community and sent on their way, usually without any follow-up from UBC Counselling Services.
For me, the most poignant part of Kolida’s presentation was her experiences in Psychology learning extremely bleak statistics about people with bipolar disorder, regarding the likelihood of someone with bipolar disorder to stop taking their medication, or committing suicide. The tendency of people to forget that mentally ill people are their friends, their peers, their students, is painfully recognizable.
After her presentation Kolida took questions and I was gratified to hear the questions that audience members were asking. There seemed to be a number of current or aspiring mental health workers in the room and many of them seemed very interested in how they could be the most helpful and non-judgmental in working with their patients. The theme of this year’s Student Leadership Conference was “the next step” and I felt that this was an example of how a next step might be enacted: learning how to help mentally ill people by asking them, instead of relying solely on scholarly research.