This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.
It’s always felt natural for me to connect with people, and I’ve been interested in the human condition since as long as I can remember. Growing up in Canada as a teenager—I moved there from Mexico when I was 16—I got really positive messages about the importance of mental health and therapy. A major telecommunications company in Canada would have a yearly mental health awareness talk and summit, where they would talk about how to create programs and awareness, and remove stigma, and all these hyper-progressive approaches. I was like, “Oh, wow, this is cool. Good for them.”
I eventually went to university in Vancouver for psychology. I wanted to work with all kinds of people and have a tangible effect on them—something I could see. This work can seem very abstract, and I wanted to really get out there in the community. After university, I got a job working with children with autism, teaching them verbal skills and emotional regulation. It was pretty intense, but it was really rewarding because you could see the effects throughout a whole network of people. I also worked at a group home with families of kids with Down’s syndrome. Then the pandemic started and I lost those two jobs. Halfway through the pandemic, I got a job in a group home with around 40 adults.
I’d never dealt with people with severe psychotic disorders like schizophrenia before. I’d read a lot about it, but I never actually talked to people with those conditions. This was also my first experience in a clinical setting. My main job was looking after the place and the residents at night, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Even though most people were asleep, there was a lot of activity, and a lot of the accidents happened during the night. People would go out at night, because they were free to come and go—it was not high security. I could also administer some basic painkillers and other medicine, although I wasn’t allowed to give the heavy antipsychotic medication.
The nurses were like machines following orders, and they were often harsh and rude with the patients.
There was a big clash between workers like me and the nurses, who seemed very desensitized, very cold, like they lacked critical thinking. The care was just like, “Here’s a prescription and that’s it.” They were like machines following orders, and they were often harsh and rude with the patients. Some of the people in the group home had difficult behaviors and were intense—not aggressive, but obnoxious or annoying, and it required patience to be with them. I would see the nurses getting really exasperated and just forgetting their compassion. They would disregard the residents’ concerns. They were disciplinarians; it was just a job to them.
There was also no deeper, more well-rounded treatment. The point was to keep the patients kind of sedated with a cocktail of medications. I was always wondering, Where is the more holistic, pro-active care? Shouldn’t a therapist come a couple of times a week? Where was the structure, the support, the workshops? There was none of that.
I quit the job after eight months. The night shift was destroying me mentally as well as physically. I didn’t feel like I was helping or improving their lives. I found a job at one of the universities being a job coach and mentor, helping students who had mental health challenges find internships. I felt like I was making tangible positive change. The company was a not-for-profit and well-run, so it was very different from the group home. There was no involvement from the public health care system. It was very much run by the university as a private institution.
Later, I got a sense that my experience at the group home is pretty prevalent all over the country—not just one bad facility. It’s typical care in a country that says it values mental health. I strongly believe that, ironically, Canada’s progressive approach to drugs makes their mental health system worse, as they’re more unwilling to see that some of these patients rely on drugs to cope. They don’t quite connect the dots.
Canadians do believe their progressive politics, but there’s this deep gap between those beliefs and their own personal lives and actions. That was kind of the theme of living in Canada for me—that profound disconnect. Canadians love to compare themselves to the U.S. and think of themselves more like a Scandinavian country. They’ll say the U.S. is backwards and conservative and discriminatory and not open. And it’s true—Canada has public healthcare. But in other ways they’re so similar to the U.S.; they just don’t admit it. At least with Americans, you know where you stand.
