WELLINGTON COUNTY – Helen Fishburn, CEO of the local chapter of the Canadian Mental Health Association, has been named the recipient of the 2021 Champions of Mental Health: Community Individual Award.
Presented by the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health, the award recognizes seven Canadians each year whose work has helped to advance the mental health agenda across the country.
“The creation and implementation of Here 24/7, a coordinated access centre for all mental health, addictions and crisis services in Waterloo Wellington, and the IMPACT police crisis program are some of the defining achievements in Helen’s career,” states an Aug. 19 press release from the Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington (CMHA WW).
“More recently, Helen has been a key participant in the popular ‘Finding the Balance’ webinars, created to respond to and support the mental health needs of our community during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Fishburn is also celebrating her 20th year with CMHA WW, where she has been a leading advocate for mental health and addiction.
“It’s a tremendous honour,” Fishburn said of receiving the award.
“There are some really amazing people doing some incredible work within the mental health and addiction space so just to feel that I’m part of that group is really quite overwhelming, but I feel incredibly honoured.”
Fishburn said she accepts the award on behalf of staff members at CMHA WW who have done the heavy lifting through the pandemic to support the mental health and addiction needs in the community.
“I’m just one of many people doing the work but I’m really, really pleased that mental health is being honoured in this way,” she explained, adding an important part of the award is that it allows her to continue to talk about mental health and the needs surrounding it.
“I just think being able to champion mental health has been a huge passion for me and part of what I find so rewarding and fulfilling because there’s such a need for people to understand.
“And just putting my heart and soul into the work I think is so important because this is a life-and-death issue, so your heart and soul has to be fully in to really embrace and have an impact in this work.”
Continuing conversations in mental health
As part of her priorities at CMHA WW, Fishburn emphasized continued conversations around mental health need to be front and centre, even more so since the pandemic.
“The need, the pressures and the gaps in our health care systems relating to mental health has just gotten bigger,” she explained.
At CMHA WW, Fishburn said suicide prevention is a huge part of the work, and they’re seeing even more people at risk through the pandemic.
“We want people to reach out to us who are struggling, but we also need more help and support so that we can reach in to those people who aren’t able to reach out.”
Fishburn said a big challenge facing the system is the need for more funding for mental health and addiction support – “it’s that simple.”
She said while CMHA WW is able to respond to people in crisis and reach them, it’s when people require ongoing care that they don’t have enough support.
“So then people go back into crisis, they go back to hospitals, there are police calls that happen because we just don’t have enough ongoing care,” she said.
In addition to lack of funding, Fishburn said systems are fragmented and people still aren’t sure where to turn for help.
“Even our HERE 24/7 service is well used and well utilized particularly by people in Wellington County, which is awesome, but we still have so many gaps in our care,” she noted.
Hospitals and family doctors are becoming overloaded with mental health concerns and people walking into emergency departments seeking help, Fishburn explained, adding CMHA WW’s also seeing an uptake in 911 calls.
“But we just don’t have enough care to be able to meet those needs,” she said, adding there are currently 3,824 people waiting for ongoing care across Waterloo Wellington.
Addressing the stigma
Fishburn noted another challenge facing the mental health and addictions system is the stigma.
“The silence and the stigma around mental health continues to be an issue even though we’ve made progress,” she said.
“We want to continue, we need our community to be outraged by the wait times, by the lack of care that is available and to demand our federal and provincial governments listen to what the needs of our community are.”
Fishburn said CHMA WW is currently advocating for a funded comprehensive mental health and addictions service across Ontario, which she noted currently don’t exist.
“We have pockets of great care, but we do not have a fully funded mental health and addictions system and that’s what we need.”
In collaboration with the Ontario Health Team in Guelph Wellington, Fishburn explained, CHMA WW is working to drive changes forward in the health care system.
“We’re really working and moving together to work as one seamless health care integrated team to make the care experience better for people and to have better healthcare outcomes and mental health is very much front and centre in the conversation,” she explained, adding there’s still a lot of misconceptions about mental health.
“People think you should just pull up your socks and try harder and you won’t be depressed but it doesn’t work that way,” she continued.
“Mental health is an actual illness and people need support and treatment for it the same way for diabetes or other physical health conditions.”
Fishburn said part of her goal at CHMA WW is to get people more comfortable speaking about mental health.
“We want to have people talk about mental health the same way they talk about a broken arm. There’s no shame when you break your arm, and we don’t there to be any shame or stigma attached to mental health either,” she said.
Fishburn noted there has been a lot of progress made in working to change and shape conversations surrounding mental health in the community, but more needs to be done.
“When I think back to years ago, we had to elbow our way into health care conversations and we were never invited to those tables and now we are; thanks to the stress created by the global pandemic, we are actually the conversation these days,” she said.
“We’re very much out of the shadows and we’re very much front and centre.”
