Prisoners are five times more likely to die by suicide due to severe mental health issues, said Lydia Dobson, legal coordinator for the Jail Accountability & Information Line.

Bell Let’s Talk prison phone contract and its limited access to communications available to prisoners is the biggest problem, said speakers at a panel discussion Wednesday night.

While they have been raising money for mental health issues since 2011, they are ultimately destroying them in prisons since 2013, said the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project.

Isolation fueled by corporate greed

“When you can’t get a hold of your family, it is truly stressful and frustrating,” said Marc Zammit, a writer and an activist who is incarcerated at the Toronto South Detention Centre.

Zammit had given an audio statement, as he was still in jail at the time of the panel discussion. He said that it “was hard to control yourself when you couldn’t get a phone.”

The lack of communication available to the prisoners to contact their families has worsened their mental health conditions, said many ex-prisoners.

“If you don’t have a mental health illness when going into jail, you’re definitely going to have one when walking out,” said Lindsay Jennings, a provincial program coordinator at PASAN, a prisoner health and harm reduction organization in Canada.

Jennings was incarcerated a few years back but had no one to call for help while in prison.

“I spent many years wishing that someone would want to hear from me,” she said.

PASAN offers services to those in desperate need of it, receiving hundreds of calls every day from prisoners asking to connect them to their families and let their loved ones know they are doing ok.

Bell Let’s Talk is supposed to advocate for mental health. Yet ultimately, they are jeopardizing the mental well-being of not only prisoners, but their families and the community as well.

They are using this to exploit serious mental health issues for an easy self-advertising opportunity and showcase how much they are [trying to] help.

In reality, it pressures people to publicly tell their stories of mental health issues because Bell Let’s Talk does not offer their services to everyone.

Mental health services: only for those who can afford it

While Canada prides themselves in their “universal health-care system”, what we lack is “a universal medical system that doesn’t guarantee access to some of the most basic mental health services and supports,” said Dr. Patrick Smith, national CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

With 85 per cent of Canadians saying mental health services are among the most underfunded services in our health-care system — and majority agreeing that the Government of Canada should fund mental health at the same level as physical health, how much are campaigns like Bell Let’s Talk that preach about how much they’re doing for mental health issues, really helping?

The truth is, they’re not.

Another problem that arose from this discussion was the cost of calling from prison, said several speakers.

Pure Greed

Cost of calls varied but it was mainly $100 monthly with an additional $1.50 per call, with long distance prices being even more hefty.

For Warren Abbey, who was convicted of first-degree murder at 18 and thrown into segregation, that phone [call] was “his lifeline.”

Sacrificing it all, just for a call

“All I wanted to do was call my mom and tell her I’m ok. Tell her that it’s not her fault I'm [in] here,” said Abbey.

Abbey, whose single mother could not afford to load the phone cards every week, had to fend for himself.

“I made myself self-sufficient in a place where all you have is yourself,” he said.

He got a job at the jail kitchen and started to sell fruits and vegetables to make enough money in order to call his mom.

“I didn’t shower for days on straight, because it was either you talk on the phone or take a shower. I needed to talk to my family,” said Abbey.

The call that never came

For Yusuf Faqiri, whose brother Soleiman Faqiri was killed by two prison guards, [family] relationships are what’s between life and death.

“For everyone that has a loved one that is suffering from mental illness, remember that the illness is just a part of them. Don’t let it define who they are,” said Faqiri, a senior policy and research analyst at Ministry of Francophone Affairs.

Faqiri’s brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and moved temporarily to Central East Correctional Centre on Dec. 4, 2016.

However, an Ontario judge had ordered Soleiman to be transferred to the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Science, but the only reason he had not been transferred was because he was waiting for a bed.

“They took the one thing that he needed, the communication and the support, away from him,” said Faqiri.

In the 11 days that Soleiman was there, his family was not allowed to see him.

“He was at the custodian of the state, killed under government care. My family kept Soleiman alive for 11 years, yet it took the justice system 11 days for him to be killed under their care,” he said.

He said that his mother broke the stigma of mental illness, that she forced everyone to accept her son for who he was, which was rare for the community they come from.

But the question of how to end the stigma surrounding mental illnesses still remains.

“To end the stigma, talk about it,” said Jennings.

For Faqiri, it means becoming aware of the “closed” systems put in society.

“If we begin with the notion that all the jails are closed systems, with no transparency or accountability, then we can begin to destroy it. We have to destroy and dismantle the dehumanization of these systems,” he said.