#camh

Crooked Channel, Folded Temple

Two paintings for the Globe & Mail - David Gratzer, an attending physician at CAMH writes about what led us to a crisis of mental illness and potential paths towards meaningful change.

On one hand, it feels very validating to know I'm not alone

please, if this topic is upsetting to you, you are under no obligation to read this. this is a combination of my personal experience, and an attempt to educate on how harmful the mental health system is. I will tag this for triggers/content as best I can, but if I miss anything you are welcome to let me know.

when I was 15, my mental health brought me to the point of going to the emergency room at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto

I was admitted to the youth wing of their psychiatric unit, but all of the bedrooms in the unit were gendered in a binary way

at the time, I identified as a trans boy. I told them that I was not comfortable sleeping in a 'girl room', but I was fine with a 'boy room'. they refused to accommodate me, based on the fact that "parents of other patients might not like that". because I continued to refuse to stay in a room that would mean constant misgendering, they came up with what they considered to be a compromise: the PICU

the psychiatric intensive care unit is for adults who (in the eyes of the hospital) require 24/7 surveillance. by 24/7 surveillance, I mean cameras in the washroom, cameras in the bedrooms, being locked in your room at night and locked in the ward during the day. me, a 15 year old, with grown adults.

the only clothes that I was permitted to keep were a t-shirt and my underwear, so I was forced to hide the fact that I was wearing a binder. a binder is tank-top-like article of clothing that compresses breasts to give the appearance of a flat chest. in order to hide my binder, I had to wear it over night, which is extremely dangerous as it lead to me wearing it for multiple days without a break, so that I could keep it and not have people see me as a girl.

my deadname was on my hospital bracelet, and all the staff used that name for me, despite me repeatedly telling them what my name actually was.

aside from the transphobia, there was a life-changing approach to my medication. my panic attack medication is highly dependence-forming, a controlled substance. normally I take it as needed, a few times a week when I have a panic attack. instead of following this, the hospital fed it to me in higher doses than I was used to, multiple times a day. this meant that I was high for most of my time there, and was a huge part of me becoming dependent on this medication.

so that I could escape this traumatizing situation, I lied and said that my mental health crisis was over, so I could be released.

THIS IS NOT AN ISOLATED EXPERIENCE

people I know have been denied their medical cannabis, deadnamed, guilted, and isolated by various psych units, from Sunnybrook, to CAMH, to SickKids, and many more

the system is failing us, and while my experience was 6 years ago, this is continuing to happen today.

I am telling my story to try to increase awareness of this, of the way mentally ill and neurodivergent people are being hurt by the system. I don't know what the solution is, but I know that the current system is doing more harm than good

Troy Montes-Michie: Rock of Eye

You can just hear the vrooooom.

This has me thinking of that episode of WKRP in Cincinnati when a state trooper is on the air to talk drinking and driving and test reflexes. Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap keep drinking on air and their reflexes get better as they get drunker.

Canada’s largest psychiatric facility is throwing its support behind mounting calls to remove officers from the front lines for people in mental health emergencies.

--