Windsor's youth struggle to find mental health help

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Beatrix Wilson was just nine years old when she first heard voices.

Her mother said it was just her guardian angel.

It wasn't.

It was severe mental illness that worsened as she got older. By the time she was a teenager, it was interfering with school.

No one saw it for what it was, in part because she hid the full extent of her illness and partly because she was getting the wrong help.

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In high school, she would see and smell things that weren't there. Dark shadows would follow her and terrify her. She remembers one drama class in particular at her Windsor high school.

"I could feel things, grabbing me on the inside and it just felt so gross and then I felt them squeeze my stomach.The teacher was talking or somebody was performing for a project and I just got up and I just threw up in the garbage, just out of nowhere and everyone was like, 'oh my god. Are you okay?' And I was like, 'oh yeah. I'm fine. Sorry about that.'"

Wilson, now 25, suffers from severe psychosis and depression. It would take nine years of seeking treatment before she finally got the help she needed in Windsor.

It's a story familiar to educators and mental health agencies in the city.

Normal teenage problems?

According to the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health, 70 per cent of people say their mental illness reached a critical point in high school.

Treating young people is complicated.

The early signs of psychosis are hard to identify, even for trained mental health professionals. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, early psychosis can look like normal teen problems.

"Early psychosis can look like teenager-ism," said Tara Payne, an early intervention worker at the CMHA. "So things like being irritable, isolating oneself, not doing things that you normally enjoy, having trouble sleeping, having a more difficult time with managing stress or emotions."

In Wilson's case, she was convinced everyone hated her.

"I honestly believed that nobody cared, not even my parents, not my brother, not my friends, nobody would care if I disappeared, if I ran away, if I died," said Wilson. "[I thought] how long would it take for people to find me? They'd find me when I was a skeleton."

She decided at 16 to seek help for the first time.

She saw the school psychologist once. When Wilson poured out many issues, including her depression and briefly her confusion with her own sexuality, she says the psychologist focused on the sexuality issues.

"So she had me pick up that phone and call my mother and tell her I was gay when I had just told her not to two minutes ago I'm not sure. I don't know what's going on right now, I'm really confused about it, I'd like to talk about it, I need some help," Wilson said.

Wilson wasn't ready to give up. She saw a guidance counsellor next, but the counsellor could only help her deal with her anger issues and couldn't prescribe referrals. So, she tried one more time, with another psychologist.

She had six sessions with this one and although he did recognize her depression and prescribed her anti-depressants, the psychosis remained undiagnosed. Wilson said she felt like he didn't really care.

"I thought he treated me like a regular teenager going through regular teenage problems and I knew I wasn't and either I didn't convey it properly or I felt he wasn't listening," said Wilson.

After the six sessions, she was done trying to seek help and two weeks after being prescribed her anti-depressants, she was done with those too.

'It's a matter of funding'

Wilson's struggle with getting appropriate care is partially due to a lack of resources in schools.

Mental health professionals in schools have limited roles. There are counsellors who do crisis intervention and clinical psychologists who help develop learning education plans for those with developmental disabilities.

Scott Scantlebury, public relations officer for the Greater Essex County District School Board, says the board's mental health nurses deal with students throughout the system and they deal with more addiction-type issues.

"But there's only two of them," he said. "So it's a matter of funding that we don't have."

Even though the school board recognizes the importance of mental health, Scantlebury said their main focus will always be education.

Wilson didn't seek help right after high school but, even if she had tried, the CMHA's director of communications Kim Willis said she would have found a gap in services for youth transitioning to adulthood.

'It's very overwhelming'

"I think it's very overwhelming for individuals," said Willis. "I think, too we can do a better job of having that seamless entry and navigation through the system so that any door [youth] come into the system is the right door and they're only having to tell their story one time."

Bill Marra with Htel-Dieu Grace Healthcare hopes the new Transitional Stability Centre downtown will make a difference.

It is a three-to-five week stabilization facility with 25 beds, for now. Even though the centre is meant to provide stabilization for those with acute mental health disorders, anyone can walk in off the street and receive some form of help, whether that means they get it at the centre or are referred to a more suitable place.

"I think we just need to do a better job working together and realizing that even though you're not a direct service provider for mental health services for example, we might be dealing with the same clients," Marra said.

He said police services, food banks and housing information, for example, often deal with some of the same mental health patients.

Wilson said she just hopes mental health service providers will hear her story and figure out what needs to change.

"I can't necessarily say they're not doing anything. It's a complicated situation," Wilson said. "I can absolutely sit here and say not enough is being done for people who need help. We really need to step up our game because this is really a life or death matter"

For the most part, Wilson is stable now, which she said is thanks to the early intervention program at the CMHA, which provided her a prescription for anti-psychotic medication and three years of counselling.

Wilson used to see a psychologist weekly but now she only sees one once every month or every other month.

She has no idea what the future holds but she does know is she has come a long way.

Her hope is there will be easier access for everyone who goes through the mental health system so that no one has to wait for almost a decade to get proper help like she did.