By Colin McGregor
For our 6th Round Table, broadcast live online July 6th, we decided to team up Reflet de Société with The Social Eyes and hold our event in English. The theme was mental health, and our two panelists made it an educational and an entertaining hour.
Panelists for the Round Table on Mental Health:
Tim Wisdom
Tim immigrated to Quebec from Great Britain as a child. He completed his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke. After having graduated he decided to work as a volunteer at Cowansville Institution, a federal penitentiary. His experience with the prisoners at the prison showed him the human capacity to rehabilitate. He continues guiding people in all aspects of their mental health as Director-General of l’Éveil de Brome-Missisquoi, a mental health aide organization in Cowansville. L’Éveil offers support services for people looking to get back into society and school for people experiencing psychological or emotional distress.
Dave Williams
Dave is a proud native of British Columbia, and holds a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Toronto. He has worked in the field of social intervention and rehabilitation for 35 years – with ex-cons, addicts, victims of road accidents, and other sorts of people. Today he is a geronto-criminologist with the Service Oxygène, where he works with inmates and ex-inmates 50 years of age and older to participate actively in their community reintegration by directing them towards available services and programs.
The moderator was Colin McGregor, Anglophone journalist for Reflet de Société and The Social Eyes.
“Mental health touches everyone,” Tim Wisdom began. “Rich or poor, white or black, young or old, everyone is affected either directly or indirectly.”
His organization serves clients over a wide swath of the Eastern Townships. As to whether or not there are adequate services in the Townships for Anglophones suffering from mental health crises, Wisdom said, “Some people do fall through the cracks. Most of our psychiatrists are Francophone… I’m reluctant to say that there are not enough services in English. I think sometimes it just takes an effort… We’re a minority here and just because the psychologist might have an accent or the psychiatrist might say one word in French and continue in English it doesn’t mean it’s a bad service.”
“I’m usually the English guy working in a French environment,” Dave Williams explained. “And as you know, Tim, you always need an English guy to do work in the English native tongue, and I’ve made a career of it.” He added, “The guys in the halfway houses often come from out of province…. So it is accompanying them through the labyrinth of the Quebec health care system to get their health crises taken care of,” given that many inmates leave prison with health issues to be dealt with, as prison health care sometimes leaves something to be desired.
Find Something Wonderful
Williams argued the key to success in leaving prison is to “find something wonderful to do.” In jail for years, you have a routine and you find things to do that are available; when you’re released, “the wide variety of activities… It is about exploring out there and finding what you like and what you can do, what gives you pleasure, and that for some is quite a process… be it work or study or recreational programs. It’s about self-discovery and what opportunities are available in the community.”
In the large area served by Wisdom’s organization, isolation and accessibility are often factors. Older people often have trouble using technology like Facebook to break their isolation during a pandemic, which made things challenging when trying to treat them. It often involves a lot of travel to go see them at home, Wisdom said:
“While the young people even when we were isolated, we put everything online, we had these amazing discussions with our youth and even people in their 40s or 50s. But for that other profile of person that isn’t good online, isolation builds up, physical health problems… as these limitations slowly creep up on people… I am proud to offer services at home…. The goal is to plug them back into the community.”
With rising rents and the soaring cost of living most affecting the poorest, Wisdom said: “I’ve never seen anything like this. I believe I have a lot of work in front of me.”
Answering Reflet de Société graphic designer Keven Wong’s question of what our panelists themselves get out of their jobs, Wisdom said it’s wonderful to be able to help people. “Every day is different. We certainly don’t get bored, and we’re paid to change people’s lives. I’ve lost people to suicide, there have been some miserable days… Generally speaking I finish my week on Friday afternoons feeling really happy. To see people evolve and to learn from them is a blessing… Everyone can get better.”
Pay Attention
“It’s really not that complicated,” Williams said. “I pay attention to the person, and I listen to them to understand what their needs are. What their world view is, where they are, what they want, and we take it from there. I get a relationship out of every person I meet. I discover a new world… That’s what drives me. I get a very specific individual with specific strengths and weaknesses. We just live the life they’re leading now… letting them understand that you are not alone.”
If there was one piece of advice he could give to one of his clients, Williams said it would be: “You don’t have to suffer. There are things that you can do and there are resources available to lighten the load… You have to explore, because some things work for some people, and other things work for others.”
He continued, “The isolation thing is really key. Finding a way to break the isolation regardless of your situation: there are people to give you a hand, who will hold your hand. In order for it to happen the person has to be willing to stop fighting and let people in. Often that is the big challenge. Because there are all sorts of issues about trust and hurt and humiliation and shame that the person has to work through before they feel comfortable in any kind of relationship.”
You don’t need to be a long-term psychiatrist to carry this out, he added.
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