People need to lean in and not stay away.
That was part of the message from motivational speaker Stephane Grenier, who spoke about the challenges of mental health during a Bell Let’s Talk event at the 22 Wing this morning.
Grenier, a nationally known mental health innovator, spent 29 years in the military. The retired Lieutenant Colonel left the military in 2012.
He says when someone is suffering, you should go outside your comfort zone to show empathy for someone struggling with, as he called it,”health issues above the neck line.”
He recalled hearing a conversation in an elevator where two women were discussing a colleague who was on stress leave from work. He wondered when they left the elevator if they just gossiped about their friend’s problem, or if they reached out to see if they could make a difference because that colleague needed help.
Grenier says he attempted suicide four times. He sought help, but he felt the most difficult thing was dealing with his problem during the long gap between medical appointments.
“Weeks and months would go by and I felt I was reconstituting myself to say everything is fine,” Grenier told the audience.
“And it is our families that pay the price,” he continued during his one-hour presentation.
He recalled having a breakdown after returning from deployment in Rwanda. Grenier just started to cry and went to the bathroom and hid in a stall to let it out.
When he came out, another colleague saw that his eyes were wet and instead of admitting it, he told his friend he was just suffering from allergies. Because back in 1995 mental health was not a common topic to discuss, especially in the military.
While we have so many more ways to communicate, Grenier believes social media has disconnected us even more.
“Facebook, in my opinion, is the biggest junk food for the brain,” he said.
“We have never been so disconnected.”
Through all his experiences, Grenier has created Mental Health Innovations (MHI) which is described as a social enterprise dedicated to developing non-medical health interventions as a complement to traditional clinical care.
Grenier literally used some of these interventions to keep him going through his very dark times.
“I’m still here because of people who reached out,” admitted Grenier.