Mental health created a snowball effect that attacked our family like cancer. My mother started showing signs of bipolar disorder and my father turned to the bottle. My father took his own life. I woke up not caring, abusing alcohol, and suicidal. I distinctly remember having a conversation with my manager about the direction of the album. Once I decided to treat my writing process as therapy, everything started to fall into place.
In the summer of , the album was finished, but there was one more thing to do. After speaking with a few representatives from MHA, it was apparent that I was working with the right organization. With each person I spoke with, whether it was through email or phone, I was treated with the utmost respect and professionalism. MHA and I have partnered up to spread awareness for mental health across the country.
I will be donating the proceeds from my first year's album sales to their organization. This will just be the first of many steps to assist in bringing awareness to this monumental issue. I am beyond grateful for this opportunity to give back and I want to sincerely thank everyone that has allowed this to happen.
I also want to thank anyone that is becoming part of this movement. In life, we all go through a lot, keeping things bottled up inside much of the time. I hope this piece provides comfort. I have a roof over my head, milky tea and food in my stomach and a family who loves me. I have so much, and yet when I consider my life all I can feel is the sorrow that has scraped and flayed at the meaty parts of my brain and heart. My sadness sits on my forehead like a warm, sweaty palm.
Dealing with the here and now, I acknowledge my depression as a responsibility.
Through years of experience, I know I must take my medications in the morning and at night. I must confront my anxieties and lows with a comforting voice. I must confront the bad voice, the one that repeats over and over again with messages of self-hate, with an authoritative mental smack.
Living With Depression, Insomnia and Suicidal Thoughts | The Mighty
I must seek the guidance of a counselor every week and touch base with my doctor every few months. Sometimes I feel like a sickness that needs to be isolated and medicated, but I am grateful for the sinew of medication that tightens my thoughts and my will to live. I have traveled the world, loved, grieved, sang out loud, graduated from a university, bought coordinated throw pillows — but a part of me will always be waiting there on the ledge.
Now determined not to end my life but desperate for answers. Imagining confronting the face and dance of death beneath the waves. To look deep into the abyss, and realize my purpose, my value, my joy all exist inside of me.
To look away, up into the light of my life, and kick my hardest for the surface. If you or someone you know needs help, visit our suicide prevention resources page.
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How Music Saved Me from Depression, Alcoholism, and Suicide
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Open in a separate window. TABLE 3 Cross tabulations of mental health, social support and risk behaviour variables with suicide ideation in the past 12 months among Saskatoon Tribal Council on-reserve First Nations youth. Acknowledgments The research team acknowledge and thank the member First Nations of the Saskatoon Tribal Council, the Chiefs, Elders, Health Directors, Education Director, principals, teachers, parents and children involved in the project for their cooperation, participation and support.
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Community Profiles, Census. Statistics Canada and Human Resources Development; A self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Screening for adolescent depression: A comparison of depression scales.
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Health Behaviors in School Aged Children survey. Young People in Canada: Their Health and Wellbeing. UK understanding for clinical and non-clinical populations. Fitzgerald JM, Richardson H. Use of the Reasons for Depression Questionnaire with adolescents. The construct validity of the self description questionnaire. Youth Smoking Survey — Module A. Rothman KJ, Greenland S. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins; Attempted suicide in youths: Its relationship to school achievement, educational goals and socioeconomic status.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. Risk factors for serious suicide attempts among youth aged 13 through 24 years. Bullying, depression, and suicidality in adolescents. Childhood bullying behaviors as a risk for suicide attempts and completed suicides: A population-based birth cohort study. Prevalence, risk indicators and outcomes of bullying among on-reserve First Nations youth.
Can J Public Health. Understanding suicide among indigenous adolescents: Freedenthal S, Stiffman AR. Suicidal behavior in urban American Indian adolescents: A comparison with reservation youth in a southwestern state. Attempted suicide among Inuit youth: Psychosocial correlates and implications for prevention. Adolescent depression and suicide: A review and analysis of the current literature. Canadian Journal of School Psychology.
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