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68 | Atlantic Business Magazine | January/February 2011
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of
the
MENTAL ILLNESS ISN’T RARE.
ONE IN FIVE CANADIANS
WILL EXPERIENCE IT IN THEIR
LIFETIME. WHAT IS RARE IS
WHEN AN ENTREPRENEUR
DECIDES TO ‘COME OUT’ AND
TELL THE WORLD ABOUT IT.
By Ryan Cleary
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represents Paul Vincent’s coming out. Not out
of the closet, but “out of the fog”.
“It’s sort of like, ‘I’m gay—here I am’, or ‘Look at me, I have
HIV/AIDS’.” Only Vincent (shown right), a 53-year-old
entrepreneur living in St. John’s, Newfoundland, says he suffers
from mental illness, specifically attention deficit disorder
(ADD) and chronic depression. He sees the publicity of a
magazine article as a way to confront the stigma associated
with mental illness and as a means to “free” himself from the
societal “shadows” where the illness is still swept. Most
importantly, he wants to help other entrepreneurs and business
people who may suffer from mental illness by forming a local
support group.
“I was always a big fan of helping folks, especially in
Vancouver where we lived for years and where AIDS was a big
issue in society, but I honestly now understand the stigma. Boy
do I understand the stigma, because all of a sudden I was in the
same boat, and there are a lot more like me.”
Vincent is keen to name his
support group “Rare Birds” after the
2001 Hollywood movie shot in
Newfoundland, because he related to
one of the “oddball” characters played
by actor Andy Jones. The use of the word
‘rare’ may be deceiving. Mental illness is
seen by some experts, at least in terms of
anxiety disorder, as an “epidemic”.
According to figures provided by the
Canadian Mental Health Association, 20
per cent of Canadians of all ages,
cultures, education and income levels
will experience a diagnosable mental
illness in their lifetime. Research indicates major depression impacts eight per
cent of adults; 12 per cent suffer mild to
severe anxiety disorder; one per cent
experience bipolar disorders; and
another one per cent is affected by schizophrenia.
It is rare, however, for an entrepreneur
or business person admits to the broader
community that they have mental illness.
70 | Atlantic Business Magazine | January/February 2011
Pages 68-71: Paul Daly photos, pauldaly.net
This
article
“It’s only in recent times that we hear
people like Margaret Trudeau come
forward, but there are others,” says
Vincent, listing Sir Winston Churchill,
the late prime minister of Great Britain;
Sir Richard Branson, an eccentric British
billionaire industrialist; Axel Rose, lead
singer of Guns N’ Roses; and actor
Robin Williams.
“It’s time to put a face to this illness.
We’re not dangerous people, we’re not
manipulative people… there’s another
side to us, a very positive side, and we
can function in society quite well.”
In Vincent’s case,
he’s the founder and chief proponent of
Far Atlantic Yachts Inc., a company
trying to establish a refit and repair yard
in Newfoundland for luxury super
yachts. To pull it off, Vincent must
attract an international partner, and
while interest has supposedly been
expressed in a prospectus he prepared
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this past fall, he doesn’t fear that his
“coming out” may jeopardize a potential
deal.
“The idea stands on its own,” says
Vincent. “If tomorrow I thought I was a
roadblock to this happening… if I were
at the table, I would leave the table—
unequivocally. I challenge anybody to
read this (prospectus) and say it doesn’t
stand on its own merits. That’s success
for me now.”
Still, Vincent’s poor mental health has
cost him and his family dearly over the
years.
In fact, the cost of mental illness to the
Canadian economy is staggering: an estimated $51-billion a year, with 500,000
workers off sick everyday nationwide
due to mental health problems. It’s generally acknowledged that mental health
statistics are difficult to gather, primarily
because of the stigma attached with
coming forward. Companies, for
example, are only lately starting to
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measure what’s been coined ‘presentism’,
workers who show up for work but
remain largely ineffective because of
mental illness.
“Part of the problem is (that) mental
illness is not visible,” says Lorne Zon,
interim CEO of the Canadian Mental
Health Association (CMHA). “I mean,
you phone in sick, right? You don’t
phone in and say, ‘I’m not feeling
mentally healthy today’.”
In Vincent’s case, he says his mental
illness positively impacted his job
performance by amplifying his determination. “I went around corners and over
mountains and whatever I could do to
get to the finish line.”
The severe downside is that he can’t
handle money. More specifically, he says
he can’t focus on accounting or paying
basic bills like his cellphone. “You just
say to yourself, ‘I can handle that next
month when we sell our first item or
when I get a new investor on board to
help us out’,” says Vincent, “and you
move along the path looking like a superstar because you’re able to move ahead,
with nothing, and then all of a sudden
you hit a wall. Then you go into a severe
depression.”
Vincent is bluntly honest about his
past, volunteering the information. He
says he served time in jail in the early
1980s for fraud, and declared personal
bankruptcy about 10 years ago. Within
10 days of his initial interview with
Atlantic Business, Vincent says he was
contacted by the Royal Newfoundland
Constabulary and told he’s being investigated for “two bounced cheques.”
Further, he says he was arrested the
same week at his home on a separate
charge for missing a court date. He says
he was brought to the St. John’s lockup
where he was fitted with leg irons and
put in a cell. “I’d like to write every bank
and say, ‘Here’s my picture guys. Do not
take a cheque from me’,” says Vincent.
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The Facts
of the Matter
•
Mental illness is the
No. 1 leading cause of
disability in the world.
•
Eight per cent of
Canadian workers take
medications to treat
depression and other
mental health conditions.
•
An estimated 20.6 per
cent of workers will suffer
a bout of mental illness,
most in the prime of their
working lives.
•
Forty per cent of shortand long-term disability
claims involve a mental
health problem.
•
There is a 60 per cent
drop in family income
when a breadwinner is
diagnosed with mental
illness.
•
500,000 workers are off
sick every day in Canada
due to mental health
problems.
•
Each year employers
and insurers spend
$8.5-billion on long-term
disability claims related
to mental illness.
•
The annual cost of shortterm leave for mental
health problems is
$9.3-billion.
•
Mental illness costs the
Canadian economy
$51-billion a year.
Sources: World Health Organization, Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health, Canadian Public Health
Agency, Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in
the Workplace, Statistics Canada.
72 | Atlantic Business Magazine | January/February 2011
The obvious question
is whether he’s using his mental illness as
an excuse for criminal behaviour?
“The consequences of my actions are
my responsibility,” answers Vincent,
who doesn’t shy away from any query.
He says he has no reservations about the
magazine printing any detail of his life.
“I’m freeing myself by telling you all this,
and admitting to the wreckage my life
has left behind,” he says. “My sister may
look at this and never speak to me again,
and that’s happened to me. I’ve had
people walk away from me in a heartbeat. But that doesn’t help the cause; it
doesn’t help change things.”
Vincent says he has the support of Far
Atlantic’s other players, including Blake
Cryderman, who’s listed in the
prospectus as a member on the management board.
Cryderman, 64, recently retired from a
management position with the College of
the North Atlantic in St. John’s after a
36-year government career, and has had
business dealings with Vincent for
several years.
“Whether he has kidney disease,
AIDS, liver illness or a mental illness, I
don’t know if that matters to me,” says
Cryderman. “I’m looking at what we
have here (the prospectus). I don’t see
that there’s any particular risk. My
opinion is that it stands on its own. I
have no problem with Paul coming out,
so to speak.”
Then Cryderman makes a bold decision: he, too, announces he has mental
illness, diagnosed as bipolar in 1994
after he checked himself into the
Waterford Hospital in St. John’s.
Cryderman’s close friends have known
about his illness for years, along with the
senior management at the College of the
North Atlantic, and he doesn’t mind
“coming out” himself to the broader
community in a magazine article.
“I have no hesitation in coming out
because the people who do count in my
world know that I am (bipolar), and I
think it would be productive for people
to realize that you can have a mental
illness and move forward in society.”
Cryderman says his illness actually
helped him in his job by giving
him elevated energy levels. “They all
thought I was super hyperactive.” But
Cryderman also had to tell the more than
two-dozen employees who reported to
him to be on the lookout for erratic
behaviour. “They needed to know they
didn’t have the problem, I had the
problem.”
Indeed,
the issue of mental illness dominated
Newfoundland and Labrador headlines
last fall with the disclosure of a controversial e-mail that questioned former Premier
Danny Williams’ mental faculties. Written
in February 2009 by journalist Craig
Westcott, the controversial communiqué
was released publicly by the premier’s
office this past October (20 months
later) after its author was appointed
communications director for the
Opposition Liberal party. (You can read
the contents of that e-mail on
atlanticbusinessmagazine.com)
The public release of the message
spurred a firestorm of condemnation in
the form of letters to the editor and
outrage on radio call-in shows.
“The problem of discrimination still
remains and the stigma still hovers over
this issue, even in the medical community, where colleagues who have a
history of being seen by a psychiatrist or
are treated for anxiety due to a physiological disorder could have their credibility and career destroyed forever,”
wrote Judith Day of Fredericton, N.B., in
a November letter to the editor of the
St. John’s Telegram.
“The questioning of whether the
premier has a mental illness is viewed as
a personal insult to him,” wrote Ed
Downey of Marystown, Newfoundland
in another letter to the daily paper. “Fact
is, many people with this affliction
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Blake Cryderman, a member of the
management board of Far Atlantic
Yachts Inc., recently retired from a
management position with College
of the North Atlantic. He’s also
bipolar. He hopes that going public
will demonstrate to other people
with mental illness that they can be
successful in society.
(bipolar), with proper medication and
other supports, are leading productive
lives and contributing greatly to our
society.”
The upside of the e-mail is that it
focused attention on the issue of mental
illness. It also raised some interesting
questions, including this one: If Westcott
had questioned whether the premier had
diabetes, would his comments have been
given a second thought? The answer is
probably no, even though both illnesses
are caused by chemical irregularities—
one involving the brain, the other
involving the pancreas.
Vincent says he was “pissed off” by
Westcott’s e-mail. “I felt I had been a
fool,” he says, having built himself up
for months to inform various business
colleagues of his mental condition. “All
it said to me was that the leaders in
society, the people we respect, are
playing the same game. They all
acknowledge it (mental illness) and
shake your hand… and then leave the
room and forget about it.”
Vincent says a meeting with his banker
is an apt case in point. He wanted to
open a new business account, but
knowing his weakness, he insisted he
couldn’t be the signing authority. He
eventually opened the account, but with
so many restrictions it was practically
useless. “The vibe I got from the whole
experience was to forget to ask for a line
of credit or loan. They’re not going to
look at you.”
To Vincent, who grew up in
Corner Brook, mental illness is deepseeded in the Newfoundland psyche. The
Waterford Hospital in St. John’s, for
example, has treated the mentally ill
since 1854 when it first opened. “People
are scared to drive by the Waterford
today because when they were kids they
were told it’s the nut house,” he says. “I
remember growing up and your parents
would say, ‘Just pull up your socks, my
son. Ah, there’s nothing wrong with you;
you just need a good boot in the arse.’
This is the thing in Newfoundland, that
it’s better not to talk about it, to ignore it
or hide it.” As a result, 25 years passed
before Vincent was diagnosed with
mental illness. Years more flew by before
he accepted the initial diagnosis and
followed a course of treatment.
The tendency
to ignore or hide mental illness isn’t
unique to Newfoundland and Labrador,
however, as indicated by a 2008 Canadawide survey of attitudes and experiences
towards mental health care. The results
shined a “harsh, and frankly unflattering
light” on Canadian attitudes, said Dr.
Brian Day, then-president of the
Canadian Medical Association, which
commissioned the survey.
“In some ways, mental illness is the
final frontier of socially-acceptable
discrimination,” Day said. “Can you
imagine the public uproar if mental
health was replaced with race, gender or
religion?”
The survey’s findings concluded:
almost half of Canadians think people
use the term mental illness as an excuse
for bad behaviour; one in four
Canadians are fearful of being around
people who suffer from serious mental
illness; just half of Canadians would tell
friends or coworkers that they have a
family member suffering from a mental
illness; and the majority of Canadians
would be unlikely to hire a lawyer, childcare worker, financial advisor or family
doctor with a mental illness.
The Canadian Mental Health
Association sees the results as
“absolutely frightening,” says Lorne
Zon, pointing out that people cross the
line from mental health to mental illness
when they lose the ability to cope.
Zon says only one in three adults get
the mental help they need. “When you
look at children’s mental health the
figure can get as bad as one in six actually getting the help they need, so there’s
a huge capacity issue out there in terms
of service provision. Unlike your arm
where if you break it you get a cast, a
little bit of physio and you’re fine…
mental health is very complex.”
Dr. Ian Dowbiggin, a professor in the
Department of History at the University
of Prince Edward Island, has published
extensively on the history of mental
illness. He says life today is more
stressful than ever due to the faster pace,
as well as the media, which is constantly
bombarding people with stories
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Helen MacDonnell formed Women &
Wellness following her brother’s suicide
in 2003. “What’s really important… is that
some other family doesn’t have to lose a
brother or sister or loved one because
they didn’t understand or didn’t see the
signs.”
Women and Wellness
Helen MacDonnell (above) of Moncton,
New Brunswick is the force behind
Women & Wellness, a group that
began meeting in 2004 to bring
together people tired of whispering
about mental-health illness. That’s the
“pretty story,” says MacDonnell. The
harsh reality is that the group was
instigated by her brother’s suicide in
2003.
MacDonnell’s 47-year-old brother
Duncan killed himself while living alone
in Vancouver. His family didn’t learn he
had suffered from bipolar disorder until
after his death when they cleaned out
his apartment and read his journals.
MacDonnell says her brother had an
IQ of 130, and was well educated with
degrees from Queen’s University and
Mount St. Vincent, but he couldn’t
manage money and bounced around
from job to job. “So he tried really
hard,” says MacDonnell. “He tried
really hard to get help for himself
(including medication), but he also had
previous suicide attempts, none of
which we knew about.”
After one particular suicide attempt,
MacDonnell says her brother wrote two
questions in his journal: “Have I done
any damage? Should I go to the
hospital?”
“All of a sudden I read that and I
went, ‘Oh my God, this guy didn’t want
to die.’ It was like there’s such a
blackness and despair and loneliness
that comes with mental illness.”
MacDonnell read all she could about
mental illness. She started talking to
people, and began to realize the
number of people whose lives are
74 | Atlantic Business Magazine | January/February 2011
impacted by mental illness. She joined
the board of the Canadian Mental
Health Association in Moncton, but she
wanted to do more to raise money and
awareness.
So she had a little party in her
kitchen in January 2004, for her own
mental health, and the event (which
raised more than $1,200) grew into
Women & Wellness, an opportunity for
women to share their personal stories
with mental health. “Having mental
illness doesn’t mean your life is going
to end,” MacDonnell says. “You can
get help, you can survive and thrive.”
Women and Wellness events will be
held this January in New Brunswick,
Nova Scotia, PEI, Ontario and British
Columbia. Last year more than 1,600
women took part, with an estimated
$400,000 raised to date. Major
companies like Scotiabank, Medavie
Blue Cross and others enthusiastically
support Women & Wellness because
they understand that mental health is
important among their employee base
(as well as their customers) and they
realize the benefits of building
awareness and supporting fundraising,
not only to their business, but to
society. Great momentum is building
as more people find the courage to
“speak, not whisper” about mental
health.
MacDonnell says awareness of
mental illness is critical. “What’s really
important for my heart and soul is that
some other family doesn’t have to lose
a brother or sister or loved one
because they didn’t understand or
didn’t see the signs.”
(terrorism, climate change, eco-disaster
and finances, to name a few categories)
that can trigger increased anxiety levels.
In fact, there’s been a reported explosion
of anxiety disorders in recent years,
with reports of more than 3-million
Canadians diagnosed. The World Health
Organization goes so far as to say there’s
a “global epidemic” of anxiety in the 21st
century.
Though he agrees – to an extent –
Dowbiggin wouldn’t go that far. “I think
a lot of it is artificial, a lot of it is
inflated,” he says, before quickly
pointing out he’s not suggesting the
emotional pain felt by people who report
anxiety isn’t real. “If people are encouraged to adopt certain sick roles, then of
course that’s going to create a certain
amount of artificially inflated anxiety.”
An author of several books and
articles on the history of medicine,
including “High Anxieties: The Social
Construction of Anxiety Disorders”
published in the Canadian Journal of
Psychiatry, Dowbiggin blames the
rise in anxiety on what he calls
an “illness breeding,” and “illnessaffirming” culture.
On one hand, the current age is a
stressful one. On the other, it’s become
socially acceptable to feel anxious about
our lives, with anxiety becoming almost
a “badge of honour.” Symptoms of
anxiety include feelings of panic, excessive sweating, discomfort and headache,
he says, adding many urban professionals report such symptoms, which
they blame, at least partly, on their work.
It’s easy to be
diagnosed for anxiety, Dowbiggin says,
and the treatment is often drugs.
Psychiatric drug use has risen sharply
along with the diagnoses of anxiety, he
notes, but then the pharmaceutical
industry also plays a role in the “anxiety
story”.
He admits to being skeptical of “mass
prescription drugs, or at least the mass
prescribing of drugs for people with
anxiety disorders.” It’s a matter of record,
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“Levi is my medication,” says Paul Vincent of
his faithful canine companion. Spending time
with his dog helps him manage his mental
illness. Paul Daly photo, pauldaly.net
he says, that drug companies have pushed
certain medications, especially drugs
known as SSRIs (Selective Serotonin
Reuptake Inhibitors), which are typically
used as anti-depressants.
By pushing such drugs, Dowbiggin
says the pharmaceutical industry
pressures organizations like the American
Psychiatric Association to change the diagnostic systems to include more types of
disorders.
“If you’re asking whether medication is
the proper treatment for anxiety, I would
say there are other forms of treatment,
including counseling, that in some cases
have proven to be just as effective as drug
therapy,” Dowbiggin says, “but, of course,
drug therapy in the eyes of third-party
insurers tends to be less expensive than
long, drawn-out counseling, so you can see
also that the economics surrounding health
insurance favours the use of drugs.”
While the stigma surrounding mental
disorders like bipolar and schizophrenia
remains intense, Dowbiggin says it isn’t as
heavy surrounding “less serious mental
illnesses,” including those that affect the
so-called “worried well”.
Like anxiety disorders, delusional disorders also aren’t on the extreme end of the
mental-illness scale. “Very often delusions
(once referred to as paranoia) can derive
from fears that you’re being persecuted,
that people are talking behind your back,”
Dowbiggin says. “I would imagine that
people who suffer from delusional disorder
must experience real challenges in the
workplace, especially in workplaces where
it’s hard to see the actual chain of
command.”
Jeremy Bennett
racks up a fair number of miles each year as
a motivational speaker.
Many of his keynote addresses are about
business and the mind; how to achieve your
goals and grow your company. But the 27year-old native of Flat Bay near Stephenville
on Newfoundland’s west coast usually
spends a few minutes of each speech on his
struggle with OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder), depression and anxiety.
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Following one such keynote address in
the spring of 2009 to the Atlantic Provinces
Chambers of Commerce in St. John’s,
Bennett said he received a load of e-mails,
90 per cent of which didn’t have to do with
the business part of his speech, so much as
the few minutes he touched on mental
illness.
“I came to notice very quickly that a
large portion of the people who come to see
me, to talk about business, suffer from
anxiety, OCD and depression,” says
Bennett, who holds a degree in psychology
from St. Francis Xavier University, and
wrote the 2010 book, The Power of the
Mind, How I beat OCD.
“I don’t know if they’re diagnosed … but
they often confide in me about what they’re
going through with mental illness and they
usually say, ‘Jeremy, you’re the first person
I’ve ever told’.”
Bennett says most of the business people
who approach him haven’t reached out for
help “because they’re scared to death of the
stigma”. That said, he says he generally
advises them to seek professional help,
while at the same time delivering the
“unorthodox” message that anxiety isn’t
such a bad thing.
Jeremy Bennett, author, entertainer
and motivational speaker, has struggled with OCD, depression and
anxiety for over 15 years. He believes
anxiety “isn’t such a bad thing” and
that most successful people have a
“touch of obsession”.
Page 76
“99.9 per cent of people will say physical
pain is a bad thing, but physical pain is a
wonderful thing. If we didn’t have physical
pain, we’d all be dead. Imagine breaking
your leg but not having the ability to feel
the pain associated with your broken leg,”
Bennett says.
“Anxiety is like physical pain of the brain
or the mind. It’s here as a warning sign to
say, ‘Hold on, you’ve got to slow down’,”
he continues. “When you think of anxiety
in a bad way, you’re actually hating something inside of you. And when you hate
something inside you, you’re feeding it the
fuel it needs to grow and strengthen.”
It’s hard enough for an entrepreneur or
business leader to succeed at the best of
times. Surely it must be harder still when
they suffer from mental illness?
Bennett disagrees, pointing out that
OCD, for example, helps him to work to
the best of his ability. “I think most
extremely successful people have a touch of
obsession because, I mean, you’ve kind of
got to in order to achieve a tremendous
level of success. You’ve got to be obsessive
about your work.”
Bennett developed OCD at the age of 12,
an illness that steadily worsened to the
point where he carried out six hours of
rituals a day, including incessant counting,
tapping, and opening and closing doors.
Doctors told Bennett that his illness was
incurable, but a decade later, he is not only
beating OCD, he’s doing so without
medication. “By no means am I saying
medication is not the way to go, because
medication saves lives, but it didn’t work
for me.”
Medication works
for Paul Vincent. He takes pills every
morning for his ADD and chronic depression, but he didn’t always.
As for how he came to be diagnosed with
mental illness, Vincent says he was driving
in Vancouver one day listening to Rafe
Mair, a popular radio personality, who
spoke about his life-long battle with anxiety
and depression. “Rafe started talking about
it and how it affected his life and here was
this guy, this former politician, a lawyer, the
whole bit, and I said ‘Geez, that sounds like
me’,” says Vincent.
“So I actually pulled over to the shoulder
of the road and sat there for a while before
76 | Atlantic Business Magazine | January/February 2011
I decided there and then that I was going to
see my GP immediately, which I did.”
Vincent was prescribed medication, but
dropped it almost immediately. “The one
thing I’ve discovered about mental illness,
and anybody who’s experienced it will tell
you, that it’s so easy to be convinced that
you’re not really ill.”
After stopping his medication, Vincent
says he literally started talking to himself.
He also followed the advice of his
Newfoundland upbringing and tried to
pull himself up by his bootstraps. He
couldn’t.
Vincent carried on with his life, eventually pulling up stakes about six years ago
and moving to St. John’s with his wife. He’s
suffered from highs and lows in his business career since, but he’s been on medication for almost two years. “It’s made a big
difference,” says Vincent, who praises his
wife for standing by him (including, he
says, with the publication of this article).
Besides both being involved in Far
Atlantic, the proposed refit and repair yard
in Newfoundland for luxury super yachts,
Vincent and Cryderman are also working
together (with the co-operation of the local
chapter of the Canadian Mental Health
Association) to form a support group for
entrepreneurs and business people with
mental illness.
“Maybe if we all come together we can
help each other in terms of coping strategies and advice,” says Vincent. “At the end
of the day, I just want people in the
community at large to be better educated,
understand us much better and become
part of our support network.”
“I was just saying to Paul the other day,”
says Cryderman, “this illness is never going
to go away. …We’ve learned a lot of things.
Keep a journal. Find out when you’re
down, (and) when you go up. Record this
type of thing. That may be useful information to a business person who’s never come
out yet… he (or she) must be frightened to
death.”
Not to mention lonely.
Cryderman recalls the time he told
Vincent he suffers from mental illness. “I
said, ‘I should tell you up front I have
bipolar. If you see my behaviour and you
think it’s a bit strange, there’s a reason.’
And he just about kissed me. He said,
‘Jesus, I’m so happy to hear that’.” |ABM