Through the course of this year, I have embarked on two journeys. One has been the experience of being a columnist for the Daily, during which I had the privilege of hearing and often narrating my peers’ experiences with mental illness (with their consent), and attempting to ensure that my preconceived notions do not affect the content of my articles. Another journey has been the harrowing personal experience of struggling with old illnesses and adjusting to new ones. A combination of these two factors have made me reflective of the environment I am in, and the impact of this environment on the people around me.

McGill claims to have several resources on campus to ensure that the mental health of students remains a priority. These include the Mental Health Clinic, the Eating Disorder Program, the Office for Students with Disabilities, Nightline, as well as the supposedly accommodating nature of most faculty members. However, both the findings of my research and the casual conversations I made in waiting rooms, have made one thing very clear for me – most students who avail themselves of these opportunities are doing so because something in their university environment has triggered them. The existence of triggers in a university environment does not demonstrate that university creates illness, but rather the fact that the environment can exacerbate existing disorders. The question I ask, therefore, is whether the mental health facilities on campus are sufficient to provide for students, considering the fact that the environment of university can be very detrimental or triggering in many ways.

Triggers exist all around us – some may even argue that the most important step towards recovery is learning to identify what triggers you. Triggers are rarely mild – they present themselves in the form of intense waves of anxiety, sadness, paranoia or dissociation, to name a few. Common triggers include the inability to cope with academic pressure, continuous time management issues, adopting and normalizing unhealthy eating and lifestyle choices, as well as implicit and explicit encounters with fat-shaming. First year students, like myself, are also especially vulnerable to toxic relationships and friendships, given how some students may either intend to seek out a quick fix for loneliness, or are simply seeking to check off an imaginary checklist for what is considered socially acceptable and desirable among their immediate and extended peer groups. Triggers inevitably vary among students and generalizations cannot be made about the form in which they may present themselves, or subsequently the way individuals may choose to cope with them.For instance, this can be illustrated by the different reactions people have to medication, as I have explored in one of my previous articles. While some people are able to adjust without difficulty and begin reacting positively to their medication, others may take weeks to adjust to the side effects, or never be able to adjust properly to them at all.

It is important to realize that progress will only come as a result of making the consistent effort to ensure that you do not demonize your own mental illness.

It feels to me like the mental health facilities on campus place more of an emphasis on the importance of medication and psychiatric care than they do on psychological care and therapy. Several of the survey responses I received from my peers over the course of research for my articles, for example, expressed dissatisfaction at the fact that their psychiatrists sometimes changed or increased their medication despite their discomfort or hesitance.

My friend told me about how recently, she broke down during a session with her psychiatrist, who was left at a loss for what to do, because although they can prescribe medication, it is neither their job description nor their expertise to be able to provide the emotional support or engage in discussions about improvement and recovery. On the contrary, this is a job only a therapist or psychologist can adequately perform. Although many students often only see psychiatrists, it is imperative to remember that holistic recovery can only be achieved when all dimensions of the issue are dealt with.

It is important to remember that some mental illnesses are far more normalized than others. These include anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. While all mental illnesses are stigmatized to a great degree, other mental illnesses like bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, dissociative disorder, and schizophrenia, to name a few, are far less normalized, in part perhaps due to the fact that people consider them less common. Moreover, because these mental illnesses are not spoken of as much, it is difficult to understand how they might be impacting students in a university environment.

As a result, my column had a comparatively restricted focus, because I could not hope to do justice to the experiences of individuals with certain illnesses without making unjust generalizations. However, four months into the journey and I can safely say that the research this column required enabled me to explore previously uncharted territories, educating me further about the illnesses that I assumed I knew all about. However, it also brought my attention to the fact that McGill’s mental health facilities still need significant reform and improvement to ensure that the toll that a university environment has on the mental health of students can be addressed. Ultimately, the mere existence of these institutions is not enough to guarantee that the mental health of students will be catered to. If McGill really claims to care for its students, it needs to step up and meet the challenge of supporting all the students across its campus who have mental health needs – until then, its work is insufficient, and its promises hollow.

By working as a columnist for the Daily, I hope I am doing my part (although an insignificant one in the grand scheme of things) towards facilitating a healthy dialogue regarding mental illness and destigmatization. For every friend, acquaintance, or relative I made uncomfortable by vulnerably talking about my mental illness, I can only hope that there is someone out there who has been driven to engage in an honest and unafraid dialogue about their illness.

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For the purpose of writing this article, I asked a few of my friends, across a host of different majors and faculties, approximately how many pages of readings they had per week. One friend had around one hundred and twenty-five per week, another had around two hundred and fifty, a friend in Science had a hundred while a friend studying Chemistry and Political Science had around two hundred. As for myself, I have to read a novel, a play, a short book and hundreds of pages of information about political theory every week, which comes up to approximately seven hundred pages of entirely new information I am expected to remember inside out.

You get the picture. College students have a lot of work to do. While some may not have as many readings as others, they make up for it with grueling, never-ending labs, surprise quizzes, and of course, essays upon essays to write. To put it simply, nobody has it easy. This creates a sense of community and brings people closer together – it is okay that you can’t go out today because neither can your friends, it is perfectly fine that you just barely passed that quiz after not leaving your room for days because everyone else just barely passed as well, it is no problem that you have forgotten how long you have been in this library trying your hardest to cram seemingly irrelevant information into your mind because everybody else is in the same boat as you.

But that’s the thing – no matter how much we try, we can’t seem to normalize the toxicity that surrounds the unfair amount of work universities expect students to complete weekly. This is not just McGill’s problem; the same, if not more, can be said for higher education institutions across the globe. To an extent, this constant pressure is good for preparing students before they are cannonballed into the reality of being a working adult in a potentially corporate environment. But on the other hand, one cannot help but wonder, how much can you really learn while under this stress?
Perhaps it’s just me, but having to read and retain information while an invisible clock ticks away, aggressively indicating that I am constantly losing precious studying time, does not exactly make for the most ideal environment.

In the summer, I read upwards of ten novels. I remember details vividly, I can recite quotes from memory, I smile every time a character I like is mentioned, it warms me inside to see something that reminds me of one of the novels. That’s just the thing about reading for leisure. It creates an environment where you are able to read without the constant stress of having to be tested on it later – I miss that feeling.

In college, you have to do much more than readings. You have to maintain your GPA, you have to be sociable; sometimes you even have the added stress of some form of employment. The question here is simple – where does mental health come in? How do you stay sane in an environment that demands you to work every passing moment, that distributes pamphlets about the importance of mental health but fails to give you even a second to inhale, exhale, take it all in? Where does the learning end and the pressure begin? When does friendship become irrelevant, to be replaced with intense competition? They tell you that you can ask for help, take a bubble bath, or kick back with some Netflix, but it will never be enough to calm the anxiety that will surface when you realize even the action of de-stressing has only augmented your stress levels.

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Recently, my mother and I were stopped at Toronto Pearson International Airport customs and asked to wait in a room so that a security check could be performed on our baggage. As we nervously wheeled our trolleys in the direction we had been pointed, I realized that every single individual in the room was brown, just like us. People stood nervously before the members of the security who emptied their bags, scrutinizing all of their personal belongings as if it could explode in their hands at any given moment. One particularly keen guard was looking inside every shoe. That is when I realized that, on the spectrum of racial inequality, we were still privileged. In the hundreds of cases of police brutality that had occurred throughout the U.S. and Canada over the past years, Black people were treated with more force and violence by authorities than any other demographic of people. So as I wheeled my trolley towards the counter for the ‘random’ security check, I looked at my mother, swallowed my anger, and said, “it could be much worse.”

Reginald Thomas, father of eight children and with another baby on the way, was described as a loving man, deeply devoted to his family. He suffered from bipolar disorder, and it was during a manic episode on the night of September 30, that he called the police. The police knew he was a “5150” — an individual recorded in the system as needing psychiatric care. According to Shainie Lindsay, his partner, Thomas called the police on himself for his own protection, as well as to ensure the individuals surrounding him would be safe. Instead, when the police arrived, Thomas was tasered and brutally beaten by six policemen. His girlfriend believes, rightfully so, that the assault killed him: “They was wrestling with him, kicking him in the head and beating him with the baton stick. Then, after that, they was doing CPR and then he was dead.”

Reginald Thomas did not deserved the ending that was written for him that night. The brutal, sickening series of events is unfortunately only one of the countless reported and unreported instances of police brutality against Black people across North America. Other names include Amadou Diallo, Manuel Loggins Jr., Ronald Madison, Trayvon Martin, Kendra James, Sean Bell, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Terence Crutcher, Keith Lamont Scott, Alfred Olango, Tyre King, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and many, many more.

These are not merely names written in the fine print of some news article to soothe the conscience of those who read it under the guise of being politically aware. These are the names of people, real Black people, whose lives were deemed unworthy by a system of white supremacy.

These are the names of people who became victims of a system that feels no remorse for intentionally killing Black people. It is unapologetic in its disproportionate incarceration of Black people, and for manufacturing and perpetuating the circumstances in which Black people are often forced to live in poverty, with inadequate access to housing, education, employment, and basic human rights.

These are the names of people who threw up their arms and cried, “Don’t shoot!”

These are the names of little boys who were shot dead for carrying a toy gun in a playground, of little girls who were sleeping in their living rooms, of men dropping off their kids at school, or women driving home from work.

These are the names of people who once had beating hearts and blood coursing through their veins. Why is it that, even as protesters across North America take to the streets to remind us that “Black Lives Matter,”, the people who wear uniforms and call themselves “law enforcement,” whose duty and mandate is to serve and protect, are still shooting and killing Black people? Why is it that, despite years of meticulous training to become a member of the police force, they somehow still skip out on the basic lessons of morality and justice?

‘Tolerance’ is what many say we should aim for but it is not the word to use here – there is so much more we can work towards. Instead of choosing only to tolerate the fact that the world, or specifically North America, is a diverse mix of individuals of different races, ethnicities, languages, cultures and identities, we should be embracing it.

There’s a word for people who believe that difference should be tolerated rather than embraced – racists.

There’s a place for people who commit such atrocities as murdering black people– prison.

But prisons are reserved for people of colour, who make up 60 per cent of the prison population, despite comprising only thirty % of the actual population of the United States of America. The situation in Canada is not much better. Black Canadians make up a mere three percent of the population, but comprise ten percent of the federal prison population. Meanwhile, the real murderers are the officers who are killing disproportionate numbers of people of colour and going home without facing prosecuion, washing the blood from their hands.

The notion of intersectionality becomes crucial here, as mentally ill Black individuals are even more disproportionately discriminated against, with 124 mentally ill individuals being killed by members of the American police in the year 2016.

Today, the hashtag “Black Lives Matter” remains perpetually relevant, a reminder of the brutality that is ongoing and the lives that have been extinguished and are now memories. This movement developed in July 2013 in protest of the killing of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin, and the movement grew when 18 year old Michael Brown became another victim of police brutality in August 2014. In addition to protesting the deaths of Black people at the hands of police officers, and the social contexts which perpetuate these killings, the Black Lives Matter movement also raises concerns about the militarisation of America’s police forces.

On October 17, Venida Browder died of what was described by her family as a “broken heart.” This had to do with the fact that her son, Kalief Browder was arrested at only sixteen years of age and held in prison for three years on a robbery charge. During his time there, he was beaten by fellow inmates, as well as authority figures, and was contained in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day. Upon his release, he excelled at Bronx Community College, but his academic career was interrupted by his paranoia and depression. In June 2015, he hung himself using bedsheets in his own home. Venida Browder, graceful and eloquent, then became a civil rights activist, singlehandedly fighting two lawsuits against the state. The stress of this, coupled with the enormous grief of losing her son, can be seen as contributing to the heart attack that tragically ended her life.

Black mothers have had to deal with their children being stolen from them by the clutches of white supremacy for centuries now. Despite some privileged sections of the populations choosing to believe that the U.S and Canada have achieved a post-racial society, there is a recognised pattern of violence against Black people which needs to end. Protestors should not have to spend every day reminding us of the validity and value of Black people. Mothers should not be grieving their children, nor children losing their parents so early – but this is what the system of white supremacy, upon which this entire continent is built, has brought us to. Protestors will continue to march and the words will continue to ring out: Black Lives Still Matter. They always have; they always will.

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