Social support

Sarah*

Reprinted from the "Systemic Racism" issue of Visions Journal, 2021, 16 (3), pp. 37-39

My nine-year-old son, the oldest of my three children, was diagnosed with an unspecified anxiety disorder presenting as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) at the age of three.

An exercise in fearlessness

Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra MA, PhD Candidate

Reprinted from the "Systemic Racism" issue of Visions Journal, 2021, 16 (3), pp. 20-21

Unexpected observations about the pandemic from the street

J.B.W.

Reprinted from the COVID-19 issue of Visions Journal, 2020, 16 (2), pp. 16-18

I live in Nanaimo. Before COVID-19, I’d spend a lot of my time at the library. Now, the library’s closed. Like most other places, there’s a ghost-town feel.

Jim’s son Joe was always hyperactive and needed extra support. The stress ended Jim’s marriage and Joe went to live with his mother. When Joe was eight, Jim received a call from the Ministry of Children and Family Development: he could take Joe full-time or allow Joe to go into care. Jim had to be there for his son no matter what. A Child and Youth Mental Health team helped, but it wasn’t always consistent—Jim often had to quit work to take care of Joe because he couldn’t afford specialized support. Joe is now an adult and has aged out of some supports, but Jim is still fighting to find the right help.

Navjot grew up in the Okanagan in a multigenerational Punjabi home with strong ties to India. She felt like she didn’t belong in either world. With little support from others, she started to drink alcohol and attempted suicide a year later. That created a constant tug-of-war between traditional healing and Western health systems, and even more pressure to hide her experiences from others. Navjot felt like she had to stay silent, but she now works to break the stigma and find healing in the space between two cultures.

With years of experience through the “ins” and “outs” of a child’s recovery, attentive parents can build skills to recognize and support wellness. For Heidi, mother to an adult daughter with bipolar 1 disorder, the biggest transition has been adopting a recovery mindset. Hear about what this mindset means for Heidi’s family and why it’s so different to the end-point that recovery is often framed as.