KirstenMiccoli
The New Albany Community Foundation in collaboration with the Well-Being Connection will continue its focus on mental health by presenting Margaret Trudeau, bestselling author and mental health advocate, on May 4.
Calling from Montreal, Canada, Trudeau spoke with Healthy New Albany about her bout with depression and bipolar disorder and her advocacy work in mental health. The conversation was edited for clarity and space.
Healthy New Albany: What attracted you or sparked your interest in becoming a speaker at the New Albany Community Foundation Lecture Series?
Margaret Trudeau: Well, I have been a mental health advocate in the last 20 odd years, trying to break the stigma of mental health …and the community has tried to raise awareness through our story of the importance of mental health. That it’s as important as physical health and that we have to take care of it … We have to have the clearance to reach out and get help and be comfortable with the notion that it’s the more natural healthy choice to seek treatment, to try to get better from something that is not your fault, but is very real and can affect your relationships, your job, if you don’t take care of your mental health. I have done some public speaking and found the audiences in America incredibly receptive.
HNA: How has your mental health advocacy journey evolved since you began?
MT: I’m an advocate. I have my own story. It makes it very human when people are not lectured about the clinical side of mental health but hear about people’s real struggles and how they found balance in a wonderful life, a whole life again after suffering with a mental illness. I can testify to it because it’s my story. As a result of being around and doing some work in the United Kingdom and the United States, I really learned a lot about the mental health community, the changes that are needed, and how I can help educate.
One of the things is helping people understand that mental health is not a weakness or a shame … the thing that helped me the most is that I had a great amount of pharmaceuticals because I really had gone after my son died, I couldn’t cope one bit with bipolar condition and became very sick and getting out of it was a long process with pharmaceuticals to balance my brain, biologically. But it was the cognitive behavioral therapy that helped find another way of thinking and reacting to life, making good healthy choices. I had to do that for almost three years because I was a hot mess with that, I had to do it for an awfully long time. I know the truth; you can’t help yourself if you have a mental health crisis. You have to reach out for help and then you’ll get better, honestly.
HNA: What’s one conversation we still need to have about mental health?
MT: I think the conversation is changing. I think it really is. I think mental health illness is like any other illness and must be treated as such. It impairs and disables an individual from contributing and participating in their lives … The big conversation will always have to be acceptance. Acceptance that you have an illness and acceptance that you need treatment. And you can’t fix it yourself and your loving family can’t fix it either, and we need professionals who understand how our brains and our emotions are triggered and how the brain functions.
One of the things is helping people understand that mental health is not a weakness or a shame.
HNA: What has the COVID-19 pandemic revealed about issues related to mental health?
MT: Oh, my goodness … one of the big symptoms that you’re going into depression is that you stop going out and doing things you’ve always done. Meeting with friends we’ve always met, going to art galleries, going to concerts, having lunch whatever is your choice. If you start isolating in your own home and stop engaging, that is a symptom of depression. And we’ve all been forced into isolation, certainly the senior population has been forced into isolation … what we have to do is rely on our initiative, and innovativeness and resourcefulness and resilience and all the things we have learned to be as human beings and get them in play. Be resilient. Don’t be mopey and complain about being alone, just make every day special. Get busy, keep yourself fit.
I really do believe in living in the now and making the best of a situation … we have to accept that it’s a reality, a true thing and (the virus) is really dangerous and we have to stop it. And how we stop it is by compliance and adherence. It’s not a question of losing our liberty, it’s a question of how we regain it back.
HNA: What are some techniques people who struggle with their mental health can take advantage of?
MT: What we have to do is know that there is telehealth out there … reach out and talk to someone. When you have a mental illness one of the things that goes very quickly is your confidence and self-esteem and you stop thinking of yourself as important. You stop thinking of yourself as worthy. The way you can change that is just communicating and reaching out and getting somebody – not your sister, not your best friend, not your husband – talk to a professional who will clearly to be able to see what your stress is and give you coping skills to manage it because in the end it’s all about us … so reaching out for treatment is awfully important.
Peter Bregg
Margaret Trudeau at photo shoot for Zoomer MagazineToronto March 30, 2016. Peter Bregg
HNA: How has being an advocate for mental health awareness affected your own mental health journey?
MT: Without question, I tell everybody who has gone through an experience and come out the other side … is we have to be advocates (for mental health). People need to see (someone go through the) worst of mental illness and come out as a very happy grandmother in the end, with a beautiful grandchild, and they have their grandmother and they wouldn’t have had their grandmother (without getting treated). After I lost my boy because I was very distressed and ill from the reaction to his passing and I needed help and I got it. But it was mental health help. For me I get a sense of pleasure to be able to talk to people and see the light bulbs go on when they first understand (about mental health), because I talk about the lay terms about what’s happening in the brain, when we’re suffering from depression, or mania or anxiety.
HNA: What can local leaders in New Albany do to address mental health issues in their community?
MT: Just exactly what your New Albany Foundation is doing, is raise awareness. Get conversations to start, change minds. Get people to open their minds to the reality… that you really need professional treatment to get better (over a mental illness).
HNA: How has being in the political limelight affected your mental health and how do you see that reflected in current society?
MT: Because I was married to the prime minister at a very young age and I had three babies very quickly for us, in one of the first (pregnancies) I suffered what many women do. It’s called postnatal depression, it was my first bout with depression, it was the first of a long series with depression because we didn’t understand what mental illness was then. I had to raise (the children) while my marriage with the prime minister ended because he was 30 years older. It just didn’t work, but we continued to parent our children.
I gave my children my hope, and helped them, as a parent, make good choices. I ended up with my eldest son becoming prime minister himself. I stay out of politics now. It’s not my turn, thank goodness. Justin and his colleagues of Generation X, who are just a little older, are enthusiastic and ambitious for changing the future in healthy ways, I think, with climate change and racial equality. So, all I do is look from the outside like everyone else and love my boy like every mother loves their boy ... and I love my grandchildren. I love to cook for them and I love to cook with them. But right now, we all have to suffer the isolation and we can’t get together because Justin lives in another province from me, so I can’t cross the border nor can he. And we adhere, because if we’re not doing it right who has to do it right?
Brandon Klein is the editor. Feedback welcome at bklein@cityscenemediagroup.com.
