When former Tory MP David Batters committed suicide in 2009 after a battle with depression, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke at his funeral. His speech offered some of the most beautiful writing on the stigma surrounding mental illness I have ever read:

“We need to know that mental illness like Dave’s is shockingly common in our society,” Harper said. “It affects the great and the small alike despite the stigma that still too often surrounds it.”

The problem is that the same quality of treatment is not offered to the great and small alike.

Last month, the Mental Health Commission of Canada released a report revealing the need for drastic changes in our failing mental health system and calling for increased spending of between $3 billion and $4 billion. “If there is one thing we need Canadians to hear today it’s this call for action. We all have a stake in this,” said Louise Bradley, CEO of the commission.

I have a stake in this.

I live with mental illness. I write this in the hopes that the next time I get sick I will be able to afford to get better. That people will have a better place than my email address to go for help.

Mental illness is the first thing that comes up when you Google my name. As a result of sharing my story of living with mental illness, I’ve received thousands of letters from Canadians who looked for help and couldn’t find it. I’ve talked strangers out of suicide after they were in and out of emergency rooms, deemed not suicidal enough to warrant help.

I have been failed by the system. Dealing with terrible insomnia and anxiety that made thinking torture, I was told I would have to wait six months to a year to see a state-sponsored therapist.

I recovered, because my family could afford to pay $150 an hour to a therapist. I have talked to mothers who lost children because they couldn’t wait six months. I have lost friends who learned what a difference a wait list could make. Economic status shouldn’t dictate whether we are able to get better.

Neither should a criminal conviction.

In 2008, the Correctional Service of Canada reported that 13 per cent of male offenders presented mental health problems when they were admitted. That’s up 86 per cent from 1997. For women, the figure reaches 24 per cent, an 85-per-cent increase over the same time. They are offered little to no treatment.

Or worse. On Feb. 1, Tory Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu said he believed every murderer “should have a rope in his cell and he can decide on their own life.” He advocated that criminals should commit suicide to save taxpayers the cost of keeping them in prison.

Wouldn’t it be more cost-effective for these people to have been treated in a hospital when they needed help? Couldn’t we build a dream, instead of a prison? Isn’t there a more productive use for a rope?

We scaled Everest with a length of rope and the belief we could do the impossible. With ropes and pulleys we built the wonders of the world. Couldn’t we build a world they could live in, where they could experience that wonder?

No minority has ever been given rights without demanding them. The struggle for rights for people living with mental illness is complicated by the fact that no one wants to admit they have been sick. We need to break the stigma. Our only hope is each other, that we who have been lucky enough to recover will remember that darkness and leave no man, woman or child behind.

Every year we in Canada lose 4,000 of our brothers and sisters to suicide. How many of our children can we afford to lose?

As Martin Luther King preached that we deserve liberty no matter the colour of our skin, as Harvey Milk took to the streets to demand the right to love, we must take to the streets to demand the right to live.

Great changes begin with a single step. Until we are comfortable saying what we suffer, there won’t enough beds in hospitals, access to therapy will depend upon economic status not need, and we will continue to lose irreplaceable people. We can’t change the world by hiding from it.

This isn’t It Gets Better; there is no better future promised unless we make it. Until we can admit who we are without shame, things won’t get better.

This is our story. It’s time to tell it.

Michael Gray Kimber is the writer behind Colony-Of-Losers.com, which has received almost two million views since its inception in late 2010. He is currently shopping a narrative non-fiction novel based on his experiences called The Cure.

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