Dr Kelly Fleming

Mental Illness is still stigmatized in society. As a result, people are not seeking the help they need or would like.

Those that do seek help are often faced with barriers preventing them from accessing assistance.

I want to discuss barriers that Disabled People have in accessing assistance.

• Sign Language interpreters for the Deaf
• Wheelchair accessible locations
• Understanding by mental health programs, directors, facilitators, and psychiatrists about disabilities
• The assumption of the above people that if a Disabled person is seeking help, it must in some way be related to their disability.
• This assumption often causes individuals to not receive appropriate mental illness diagnosis which in turn can affect medication prescribed, or not prescribed.

Disabled people have to fight for access. They need to fight for the care they should automatically be provided with.

When someone is in crisis, they don’t have the strength or the state of mind to fight for these and when this happens, suicide may be the only answer they feel that they have.

I have lost several friends in the Disabled community to suicide, mainly because of lack of accessible assistance.

Several years ago, I found myself in a difficult position. I wasn’t suicidal with a plan but I refused medical help for my SJIA which put me at high risk. I found myself outside in the cold one night and I had fallen asleep without a winter coat on. I woke up several hours after I remember going outside.

In my city there’s a phone number for a helpline called HERE247. You call the number to talk to someone and the team there can assess your immediate needs.

I’m Deaf, I can’t hear on a telephone. Something inside me said to call the number anyway. I rung the number and repeated into the phone about 5 or more times, “I’m Deaf, text me.”

The person who answered that call texted me and ultimately saved my life.

It wasn’t easy. They wanted me to go into the psychiatric hospital. I can’t go into a hospital without an attendant to assist me as well as an interpreter.

The pandemic was my saving grace as services were being offered virtually instead of in person. This needs to continue. Services that would have otherwise have been inaccessible to me were there because the general population had “come up with ideas to communicate” due to social distancing.

These services are what the Deaf and Disabled communities have been fighting for years to receive. The answer as to why this wasn’t a viable option was used with a blanket statement of issues of confidentiality.

If a Disabled person cannot physically go to a building for groups regarding mental health or the buildings are minimally accessible or they require an attendant to go with them, the chances of people reaching out for mental health assistance is reduced.

When they can access these services directly from their home, THAT is accessibility.

When Deaf people seek out assistance but need to book an interpreter (often at their own cost which is extremely expensive and becomes an accessibility barrier), people more often than not, do not receive the services they need.

Mental illness does not discriminate against ethnicity, gender, disabled, non-disabled, age, etc.

Therefore services must be provided in an accessible manner.

Lives will be saved as mental health services become more accessible.

If virtual meetings, email addresses, text communication and so much more were legal during government lockdowns, then they are legal every single day.

Organizations, doctors, counsellors and others in the mental health field can no longer use the confidentiality clause as a barrier to accessible services.

Every person who seeks help for mental illness deserves access.