Stigma drove me to a career in Mental Health

by Margaret Odari

I was a daddy’s girl. I got a lot of attention from a very kind and caring man – a truly lovely father to me.

I had three older brothers. One of them in particular took good care of me.

 

In my teens, all three older brothers developed schizophrenia. It was obvious from my brothers that stress played a huge role. I was stressed too. I lived in fear that I would be next.

My brothers must have felt the stigma the worst, but I felt stigmatized as a family member even though I did not have schizophrenia.

We lived with the strain of family upheaval inside the house and the fear of rejection and stigma outside the house. The strain was made worse by the silence.

I was drowning in the silence. I hated what was happening to my family. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. There was so much stigma.

I had to remain silent. This was my secret.

But, keeping secrets comes with its own burden of stress. The silence and secrets worsened my already frail mental health. I was very depressed and no one knew.

With three brothers with schizophrenia requiring huge amounts of support- and seeing the strain my caregiving father was feeling and worrying constantly about him – I sometimes found myself having to find a private place to cry at school for ‘no reason.’

My father  was always there for me when I got home. He was proud of me. Somehow, he always let me know that I was special. He was the bright light in my life. His kindness was the best gift he could have given me.

I remember waiting for the Sunday paper, the Daily Nation in Kenya. It was an outlet for the isolation I felt when it came to my pain. The Sunday paper would temporarily and briefly break the silence that was eating at me.

I waited for this paper partly because a psychiatrist Dr. Frank Njenga sometimes wrote a short column about mental illness.

I would read his words again and again and find comfort in them. He humanized people living with mental illness in a world where everyone, it seems, spoke disparagingly of them.

They were de-humanized, rejected, ridiculed and mocked as the ‘crazy’ people in Mathari Mental Hospital. In ridiculing and mocking people living with mental illness, they were mocking everything my brothers represented.

The ‘mentally-ill’ label ensured no one saw the caring, protective, very loving brother I knew. I felt like an outcast by affiliation.

Many years later, my burned-out father would lose his life to suicide and my favourite brother would pass away after many years living with schizophrenia.  

Now, in addition to dealing with the stigma around mental illness, I would be faced with the stigma and silence around suicide. 

Stigma has a way of making people with irrational beliefs feel justified in making life a living hell for people who are already enduring more than their quota of suffering.  Some may do this unintentionally, but still, their targets suffer immensely.

My shame turned to rage once I wrote my own story and began to ‘see’ for the first time.   I grew weary of the silence and stigma that demonized two very beautiful compassionate souls that are the very reason I am blessed with the life I have today.

 I decided to go back to school to study social work.

Critical Social Work Valuable in Mental Health

I am now a critical social worker.  

Critical social work challenges the social worker to question all knowledge.  It recognizes that a lot of oppression in society is woven into laws and what a society believes is common-sense or right.

The critical social worker must examine themselves first – to see what biases they are bringing to the table – as these biases can oppress the clients they think they are helping.

For me, this critical social work training was self-empowering and life-changing and provided me with important tools I needed for social justice work in mental health.

I now understand what it means when they say an inner peace comes from living your life according to your values.

Career-wise, I am finally home. I believe that some of the most driven advocates for social justice are people who have experienced mental illness, their family members and friends.

The social services, I believe, would benefit from more people with lived experience with mental illness in the professions.

Yet careers in mental health and suicide may also come with their own stigma attached to them and to the people who practice them.

I was discouraged by many people in both Canada and Kenya  from changing to a career in mental health.

In Kenya, I was reminded that I was an African and that suicide is a western phenomenon.   However, WHO statistics show that 78% of suicides occur in low and middle income countries.

The prevalence and visibility of suicide in countries like Kenya is often obscured by night burials of people who die by suicide and the secrecy brought about by the taboo nature of the subject.  More recently, I have noticed more news reporting on suicides in the Kenyan media.  

While not everyone goes to jail for attempting suicide, some do. I would like to see the outdated laws changed so that no one ever goes to jail for attempting suicide. Why jail people for feeling indescribable pain? Watch this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANXODERKX0U

We are all intertwined.  When I show kindness to anyone, I am passing on the gift of love and kindness my father and brother gave me.

When I advocate for suicide prevention, I am driven by my father’s life and love and his sacrifices for a better world for me.

When I advocate for more humane treatment of people with poor mental health, I am driven by how my brother showed me an immense amount of caring in spite of his poor mental health.  

My father and brother continue living in me and never die.  Through me and the work I do, they will touch a person today or tomorrow – they will touch someone who feels alone because of the stigma and silence in their lives.

Through me and the work I do, my father and my brother will provide that isolated person with the same reprieve I felt some decades ago as I waited for that Sunday newspaper to break the silence.

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Margaret Odari worked as an accountant/Financial Administrator for 19 years before changing careers to become a social worker. She has volunteered with hospice patients, worked with women on parole and people living with mental illness.

She recently completed her Masters in Social Work and in addition to working part-time as a mental health worker and teaching suicide prevention in high schools, she is working on developing an independent practice which she hopes will benefit stigmatized people in both Canada and Kenya.  

She loves writing and creating and hopes to weave these passions into her advocacy work

@suicideKenya (twitter)

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