Shauna Ruby Valchuk:

In this video, Shauna Valchuk reads from her Honours Thesis in Creative Writing  at Western University. The project is titled No More Magic.

How Many Students Have to Die for Us to be Heard?
(an excerpt from No More Magic)
By Shauna Ruby Valchuk

Through my experience being there for Alyssa, I realized that Ontario treats the mentally ill one of two ways: like prisoners or like they don’t exist. Alyssa and I are both great case studies in how the provincial and federal governments have failed the mentally ill.

I’m proudly an example of those who get treated like they don’t exist. I thought I had felt the worst of my mental illness in high school, which was the first time I tried to take my life. Turns out, people listened to me then. At Western University, not so much.

In first year, I was catatonic. I could not leave my bed, not even to shower or eat. I spent what felt like days crying, tossing and turning, weighing the pros and cons of killing myself or just sitting still for the rest of my life.

Early in December I slipped into a deep depression. I missed all my classes, I slept till 5 PM, I didn't eat, I'd cry all day, and would ask myself over and over again what was wrong with me. My best friend directed me in the right way: to seek medical attention. So, I booked an appointment at Student Health Services here on campus. Fantastic, I was on the road to recovery and one step closer to a diagnosis! Right? Well, not entirely.

It was in 2016 when I tried to reach out for help at Western the first time. I managed to book an appointment on the phone with Student Health Services and, once my roommate had left our shared room, I tearfully explained how I was scared I was going to take my own life. I was given an appointment with a general practitioner and, to my amazement, I actually made it to the appointment.

I arrived at the University Community Centre and sat in the waiting room. I was called to a small room and met with a nurse to whom I explained my fears. Not too long after, the general practitioner arrived.

I didn't eat the day I went to the doctors on campus. I sat in the waiting room patiently and waited for my name to be called. A nurse sent me into the second doctor's room where I tried very hard not to cry as I told her I was depressed. See, that's the thing about stigma, even telling doctors you're depressed will make you cry. You don't go into the doctors and fumble over yourself when you attempt to admit that you've been having irregular bowel movements. Because, well, that's physical.

I have repressed a lot of these memories because this was the first real time I told a professional I was scared I was going to kill myself. In high school, I had lied to both my family doctor and my counsellor, out of fear of my suicidality getting back to my parents. But this time I finally gained the courage to tell someone about what was eating me alive.

All my life I've had access to health resources without even knowing it. I've never struggled to talk to my family doctor and never had an issue with being sick, contacting the doctor, and receiving a diagnosis.

What has kept me alive for 22 years is appointments like these, appointments that might bring something new to the table. Meeting new people whose job it is to save my life gives me hope that I might finally be heard and be given the help I need.

But, unfortunately, I got whatever the opposite of hope is. This doctor watched me sob and then, stone-cold, gave me two options: to be put on a six month waiting list to see a counsellor, or to call one of the numbers on the list of psychologists in London that cost 200 dollars per hour. He let me go back to my residence with a list of psychologists that I had no way of paying for and with none of my pain alleviated. No crisis help. Nothing.

I remember the doctor being a prick and making me uncomfortable. As I cried and tried to tell him my symptoms, he tried to force answers out of me. I get it, you have places to be but this is the only place I am right now. He then told me I have options. Of course, he couldn't give me a diagnosis because, you know, it's psychological. My options consisted of: 1) seeing an on campus psychiatrist, 2) seeing student volunteers in the Student Development Centre, or 3) going to psychologists in London. All very viable options. Except for the fact that the first two had six month long waiting lists and the third would cost me two hundred dollars an hour that I didn't have.

University is a pressure cooker for mental illness. I know people who didn’t have an ounce of depression or anxiety before they entered university. But when you have thousands of dollars riding on getting good marks, societal pressure, and the constant fear of making the wrong career choice, it would be hard not to develop a mental illness. However, I think the problem with university mental health resources is that the systems in place are combined for both chronically, life-long mentally ill students and students whose mental illnesses have been brought about by the high stakes of their post-secondary education.

There’s not much of a difference in these, but there is a certainly a difference in treatment. You can’t exactly measure suffering, and there’s still so much about the brain (and not to mention the developing brain) that we still don’t know. Students who want to die need different help than students who are having panic attacks because of their upcoming exams. When you treat a suicidal student with only peer-support groups and therapy dogs, you’re putting a Band-Aid on an issue you don’t have the capacity to even comprehend. When you treat an anxiety-ridden student with crisis support that they never even hinted at needing, you’re doing way more than that student is even asking for. You can’t weigh suffering, but you can weigh treatment options.

In 2018, I tried again to reach out for help through Western. This time, it went a little better. Instead of going to Student Health Services, I tried Dr. Prick’s second option and called the Student Development Centre and booked a single session appointment with a therapist. According their Health and Wellness website, Western defines their single session appointments as:

An additional service available for students to swiftly access individual support.
Single session appointments are booked a maximum of 3 days in advance
following a triage appointment, based on availability (first come, first served). A
single session is a one time 90 minute appointment and is not a route to ongoing
therapy nor does it replace crisis services.

To finally get some sort of help at Western was a game changer for me. In my triage appointment, I felt like I was heard and that a professional was taking my fear of suicide seriously. The only problem here was that the day of my first single session appointment, it was promptly cancelled by my therapist, because she was sick. I had never met this woman, and I know people become ill. My main gripe with this experience was, once my appointment was cancelled, there was no follow-up to book another.
           
As someone who had just finally gained the courage to reach out to Western again and give them a second chance, this destroyed my hope. And as someone who has social anxiety, especially on the phone, there was no way in hell I was going to call again to reschedule my appointment. I guess there’s no system in place to check up on students who have confided in Western that they are going to kill themselves. I’m sure this has something to do with the dozens of students who have killed themselves in my five years here at Western.

I don’t know if these single session appointments would’ve worked for me. I don’t know if my suicidality is something that can be encompassed in a 90 minute appointment that I can only get on a “first come, first served” basis. I don’t know if anyone’s suicidality can be.

I understand completely that sometimes, there just aren’t enough resources. But to present yourself as a school that has accessible mental health services when you don't, is another thing. I remember coming to campus for the first time with my mom and her saying: "you know, from what they're telling me, if you ever have an issue there's resources to solve it." Yet students have to wither away from crippling depression for six months until they could speak to a professional.

Being suicidal is a completely different problem than any other mental illness. Suicidality is life-threatening. I don’t think it should be a competition of well, I’m suicidal and you’re just depressed. I think it’s a whole different game people with suicidality are playing.

At universities, mental health is often looked at through the lens of students wanting to get out of assignments. But to that I ask: if someone’s going to kill themselves to get out of their assignments, don’t you think that’s a problem in and of itself? Does it matter the reason that people want to self-terminate? Can you even measure suffering?

Mental health resources should be fucking accessible to all, that’s like not building a wheelchair ramp for students who need accessibility and being like well, yikes, you’re going to have to wait six months for that. School’s over in six months. What then?

Shauna Ruby Valchuk studies at Western University. She graduates in 2020 with an Honour Specialization in Creative Writing, English, Language, and Literature with a minor in Cultural Studies and Popular Culture. She primarily focuses on creative non-fiction and essay writing. In the future, she hope to be comfortable, whatever she ends up