[Locke]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Yeah, this is pretty spot on.

With regard to CC's post above, I'll say that of the things you might pick up on talking to people with mental illness, two of note are a general penchant for gallows humour (you might be able to guess why) and a general disdain for Bell Let's Talk day.

The view from some quarters goes, great, well done, raise money for an important cause. But the day itself is sort of like if Black History Month was instead just called "FedEx Deliver Racial Equality month", or Pride was instead called "Taste The Rainbow of Progress month, presented by Skittles". And while I'm not saying that everyone feels that way (just as I know there are a range of opinions in the gay community about the current role of Pride and the commercialization of those events), the ironic thing about this one is that for the most part, the people who feel this way generally do not want to get into it and are more inclined to just shut up and let the day happen. So that conversation doesn't really seem to get a lot of air.

Equally (or maybe more) importantly as the superficial, focus-group-ish commercialization of the whole thing, the other reality is that this is one of the more alienating days of the year from the perspective of a lot of people who struggle with mental illness, because of what the rest of the population tends to take it to be all about. I mean, sure, it's great that workplaces are holding seminars about how tough it's been to get through the COVID lockdowns, and how stress can sometimes lead you down a negative spiral. Those are important things to shine a light on and deal with, and people should talk about their experiences with those issues and how to cope with them. But it also has a ring of the general population of well-to-do upper middle class people talking about how hard things are for them while patting themselves on the back for how understanding and inclusive they are... that the whole thing is really about them. And it probably is about them, because as noted, this is at its core a marketing campaign. And then the day's done and no one has to think about it the rest of the year, having performed their slacktivist duty by posting something on facebook declaring how they "know how tough it is right now" because they "feel that way too sometimes" and they're "here to talk if anyone needs to".

Not to be a downer or to suggest that this is on the whole not a good thing for Bell to be doing, because it clearly is. But yeah. There are some... concerns... about the whole enterprise.