Life Unscripted - Stories of Mental Health and Addiction

Insanity-The Mental Health Crisis

• Janice Arnoldi

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The documentary Insanity – The mental health crisis by Canadian documentary film maker Wendy Hill-Tout tells the story of her brother Bruce – who was schizophrenic – and disappeared 25 years ago. Hill-Tout weaves her poignant family story with the mental health crisis we’re facing today. 

Steve Borisenko, whose son Jacob died of an  overdose, talks about the documentary and the website savemylife.ca.

Janice Arnoldi:

Last week the Performing Arts Centre showed the documentary Insanity - The Mental Health Crisis. The film is by Canadian documentary filmmaker Wendy Hill Tout. Wendy's brother Bruce, who was schizophrenic disappeared 25 years ago, and she weaves her poignant family story with the mental health crisis we're facing today. I moderated a panel after with Tara McKendrick, Executive Director of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Erin Clayton from Pastsone Mental Health, and Steve Borisenko, whose son Jacob died of an accidental overdose two years ago. Steve is on the show today to talk about the film and his website savedmylife.ca. Hi, Steve, how are you?

Steve Borisenko:

I'm good. Janice, how are you?

Janice Arnoldi:

Thanks for for coming on and talking to me. We're going to follow up on the quite thought provoking movie we saw a recently called Insanity, The Mental Health Crisis. And you were on a panel with me and someone from CMHA Niagara and someone from Pathstone Mental Health after the film to talk about what we saw there, which as I said, in my introduction, the film was sort of mixed the poignant story of the Hill-Tout family who have not seen their son/brother in 25 years, and he was schizophrenic, with other families. And then with the drug and homelessness crisis in Vancouver. What was your reaction to seeing the film?

Steve Borisenko:

My, my, my reaction was that well, I sympathize with these families, because I know what it's like to lose your child. At the same time, I can't blame the system for everything. There was a there's a lot of system blaming, there was a lot of it's the system's fault. It's the system's fault. When I watched the families walk out and interact with homeless people while she was looking for her brother and showing pictures. I after after thinking about the movie for a little bit, I thought to myself, shouldn't it start there? Like these people on the street that have mental illness and are addicted to drugs? We talked about getting rid of the stigma, and we talk about losing the stigma around these people. And yet, when the actress was in, what was her name, Christine Booth, I think her name was, she there was a point in the movie where she said, she's walking down the street and she sees someone hitting themselves in the head and she still crosses the street.

Janice Arnoldi:

I was I was very surprised by that. Given that, given that her brother had a fairly severe level of you know, he was living with a fairly severe level of manic depression.

Steve Borisenko:

Yeah, but that's pushing the stigma. Like I've started now, I did it before my wife has done it. Always. But I did it before where when you see someone begging when you see someone down on their luck. What these guys want is they want some dignity. They just say hi, just go "Hey man, how are you today?" If you got a loony give them a loony if you don't then just have a conversation with them and the smiles on their faces. I've particularly paid attention to it over though, since I've seen that movie. And now every time I pull up to a stoplight or anytime I'm walking down the street, they just give a man, oh, are you and the smile that you get back absolutely is incredible. And yet I stand there and I watch other people, and they're just ignored. They just walked by head down. Don't don't talk to the boogey man in the corner. Well, yeah, we can break a stigma. We can try to break a stigma and we only want but until people actually start going, you know what? I'm just gonna risk it and say, how are you? That's, I've watched I've watched what happens. And the reaction on these guys. Now I'm sure there's some dangerous ones out there. I'm sure there's situations where you shouldn't put yourself in. But just walking down the street seeing somebody down on their luck and saying, Oh, are you okay, can I get your coffee? Here's tears two bucks. I don't know. Every time I've done it, the look on their face. It's like you just made their week. And it took what 10 seconds. Yeah, so when I watched that movie, and I saw her looking for her brother, I didn't see her sympathising with people on the street. I saw her very much in her own head trying to figure out her own problems when it's been a 25 year problem for her, which I completely understand. And it's awful. But at what point do you go it's not about me anymore. It's about all of them. So with Jacob, it was immediate for me. It was like, I jumped right into it. Maybe I shouldn't have I went a little crazy at it and I'm just starting to grieve over him now. This is what I find.

Janice Arnoldi:

I had a little bit of a different take on the movie because I felt that and when we were talking on the panel we said "let's not start with the problem". And let's talk about where we're going from now, how do we go forward? Because I felt that she showed what was happening in Vancouver with, with people on the street. And I think that that there was a sort of the, you know, the idea that you would connect her brother and his mental illness and the fact that he probably did live on the street. They don't know if he's alive anymore. It's been 25 years. But it, I found it interesting that she lived in Calgary. And I know she was in Vancouver, I guess, when when Bruce disappeared, but that it was focused on Vancouver, and we kind of already know a lot about Vancouver. And so it would have been a bit interesting to see a take on a different part of the country. But I was to get back to the second part, what really struck me with you on stage is the first time we talked was about six months after Jacob died. And then we talked about a year after so it was I don't know, eight months ago, I think the last time we talked when saved my life.ca was was first launched. And to hear you on stage, I immediately was struck by this new place that you're at, with with with Jacob and Jacob's death. And it's interesting that you say you're just starting to grieve, because you're definitely in that different place from totally Nam the first time I spoke to you to the way you could talk about it. So tell me Where where are you in that in that process?

Steve Borisenko:

I still it still shakes me to the core, I still, I still cry a lot. I don't have I still have a passion to make a change. I'm a lot more. I think a little bit more before I jump now. Whereas before it was all reaction, it was all and for the first little while you start to think I can fix this. And I know it sounds crazy. And everybody out there is like no, you you just buried your son how can you like I saw him being cremated? How do you fix that? But up here, you're like, No, no, I can fix this. So the first year, I think I was still convinced I could fix it. I was still convinced that there was and then the second year was I took a step back a lot from stuff we still worked on Saved My life.ca took a step back. And then probably about three months ago, I started therapy again, which helps a lot. And it just we started to learn that I did it in reverse kind of I went manic. And I jumped in and tried to fix everything. And then after a while, I just got so tired and so beat down that I backed away for a little bit. And then as I started to come back to it, I'm rejuvenated. But now the grieving is starting. Like now I'm sad a lot. Now I It doesn't take much to bring me to tears. Like right now. So it's uh, but anyone who's going through this, I know there's especially and I know we talked about it the back especially boys. Therapy isn't a bad thing. I know a lot of boys and a lot of men are like, I'm not taking therapy, I'm not going to therapy probably saved my life. Just just to have somebody nonpartisan to talk through it with and bounce ideas off of so you can get a better

Janice Arnoldi:

understanding of how non judgmental right, that's, that's completely non judgmental.

Steve Borisenko:

So it it's been a it's a journey, it's gonna be a journey for the rest of my life. But I'm, I mean, I'm in a better spot now. But the grief is still It's heavy. It's just it's always gonna be there.

Janice Arnoldi:

What I heard you talking about compared to, you know, even eight months ago, was that the guilt that you're now feeling, right, like really intense guilt. So there was guilt at first in in not being able to prevent Jake's death, but the guilt that you're feeling now is really, really, really complex. And you're I mean, you're kind of like understanding that, you know, maybe what Jake did wasn't I don't know what the excusable is the right word, but you know what I'm getting to, you're really trying to take responsibility, but you're also giving putting some responsibility on the way Jake was living. Absolutely. It wasn't like a one night thing.

Steve Borisenko:

No, this wasn't it was Jake would Jake would he would turn to drugs when things got heavy for him. He would he would self medicate is But he would do. He did. Because there were weeks and months where we would be fine and everything would be good. And I would know that because I would be urine testing him and nothing would come up and we'd be okay. And then something would happen. And he would go back. And that's, that's what happened. The he, we had a we had a family thing happened. And he Yeah, he went back to drugs, and he went back doing it at the same rate that he had done previously. And you can't do that. Because when you can, you know, after time, you have a tolerance to it. And he went immediately back to where he was when we were bed. And yeah, did you lose your kids that way? I did.

Janice Arnoldi:

I don't know having never gone through this. I do know that you related to the tothill family and in the fact that they hadn't seen Bruce in 25 years. And not knowing not knowing what happened, and what you've gone through, in knowing what happened. And knowing that you lost Jacob.

Steve Borisenko:

It's one thing to have to have closure. On on that side. Even though at the time I probably didn't recognise it was closure. Eventually, my brain comes around and you recognise that, okay, we're not this, we're not, there is no hope. We like it's there is no hope, to not have that as a parent. And to constantly be wondering every day, where is he? Does he need me? What's happening to him? Who's got him? What what like, and as a as a father, my instinct was always, when we were having problems with Jacob worst case scenario. You're always like, Oh, my God, he's in a drug den. He's like bla bla bla, when the reality of it could be as easy as he's just washing his car. But then in your head, you're always like, got to protect them got to protect him. Evil men are after him like you go into father mode. So I can't imagine what being a father and losing your son or daughter after 25 years, the toll that would take on your mind? I can't believe he's still alive to tell you the truth. I don't I don't

Janice Arnoldi:

Well, they don't know. Right? He may not be. That's the mother. Oh, his father. I'm sorry. Yes. Yes. And, and when you're saying, you know, when in Where's Jake and not knowing that they had, which is not uncommon with people who are living with schizophrenia, they had gone to a couple of different places that he had moved to, you know, so one of their thoughts was, maybe he's in Florida, because he liked Florida. But how do you how do you locate that person? We talked about some of the things are out there now. So everybody recognises that we have far too many opioid deaths in in the country. And Vancouver, of course, is is overwhelmed, you can see that from from all of the tents in the in the people who are homeless living rough. We know that that people who are homeless, it either starts with a mental illness, and they end up on the street. And maybe they do or they don't use drugs, or they have become addicted to some generally an opioid. And they're on the street and from being on the street. They develop a mental illness. So this always goes goes hand in hand. One of the things that we're talking about now, because again, it's hard to get people who are in that situation, to a treatment centre or to mental health counselling. And we're not going to go into whether it exists or not. But but just it's hard. Once people are living on the street, for example, for a while they've developed a sense of community. And she talked about when he talked about that. And some of the people that she interviewed who are on working on the street with people in Vancouver, talk about that sense of community, and how hard it is for people to let go of that sense of community. But the other thing that we're looking at, and talking about is to try and reduce the number of opioid deaths and and Niagra has a very high. I think we're number two and two or three in Ontario for the number of opioid deaths per year. So there's two things that I want to ask you about. One is naloxone.

Steve Borisenko:

I absolutely Jake had an overdose before he passed away and he was saved by naloxone. I think in the immediate Oh my God, what do I do if everybody had an Oxfam kit or every corner store carried Naloxone or every it was a lot more accessible? Well, if people knew what it was, and we talked about it a lot more, I think you'd see a lot more live saved. Having said that, unless there's something to back up, after you save their life, they're going to be out on the street again, and they're going to do it again. So you're while you're saving their life, and I completely, wholeheartedly can't say how much Naloxone means to do that. Yet, I think there has to be some sort of, like, you got to back it up. It can't just be Naloxone, that's just a band aid. That's to get them through the night and to keep them alive, then what do you do? And this really is the question that I think every region and every province is, is looking at and going what? Because there is no overall solution. And you can't just throw money at it. You can't just what do you do? There's there's so many homeless, there's so many people with mental problems. There's so many people addicted to drugs. How do you treat them all? Because we don't have enough doctors just to treat colds? How do we how do you treat all of these people that don't necessarily even want treatment? And they feel included in their own little tent city community that is under the bridge? Now you're going to try and pull them out of that? And say, No, that's bad. You don't go there. You don't belong there. You belong over here. Well, what are they gonna say? They're gonna go, No, I belong there. Because these people accept me. I think that comes back to my original point of dignity. If main society if everybody in society could just start saying, Hello, just start building some sort of, you know, you're not a homeless person.

Janice Arnoldi:

You're a person.

Steve Borisenko:

You're you're Joe. You're Dana, you're I don't know what, like, you're not homeless, and I want you to stay away from me. You're down on your luck, and I want to help you. Just by a hello, just by buy them a coffee, give them a sandwich just to have a talk with them for five minutes. And you know, make them feel like a human again, not like a beat dog in the backyard. Yeah, I think we need both, I think, to answer the question, Naloxone will save their life, but society can make their life better.

Janice Arnoldi:

Yeah, and I want to say that Naloxone is Narcan. So sometimes people are a little bit confused, because they'll hear Narcan and they hear Naloxone. And Naloxone I believe is a brand name for Narcan. And it's free. And it's free. Yes, and people can go and, and as a as a citizen, you can go to a pharmacy and get a free Naloxone kit and carry that in the Naloxone kit. Now, not everybody is is okay and feeling safe with administering Naloxone kit if they think that somebody is in an overdose situation. So the other thing is, if you say Hi to a person, and they do not respond, and you either don't have a Narcan kit, or you're not comfortable than call 911.

Steve Borisenko:

Let's try things that we haven't tried before. Because if we don't, more kids are gonna die. And I don't think anyone is quite grasping that our kids are dying. There is no do-over. This isn't you lost your passport. This is you lost your son or daughter.

Janice Arnoldi:

Let's go to Save my life. So again, if I go back to the first time I talked to you, you already had the ideas for saved my life.ca bubbling in your mind. And it has in it is now a reality. And it launched I believe, before Christmas last year 2010 to 2022. Yeah, it was October. Okay, so. So tell me about saved my life.ca. How did it come about? And what is it? How can when people access it? How's it going to help them?

Steve Borisenko:

So, as a parent, when I was going through this, there's so many it was so Jake passed away. And I reached out to Walter Sendzik, who was mayor time and I said, Walter, this is what's happened. And it was totally storm Walter and I on a zoom call. And Walter, I mean, what do you do right here and you have a great a freshly grieving father begging the mayor of a city to do something. You want to talk about politicians that dug in? He absolutely, this is what I was talking about earlier, he went, Okay. I don't know what to do. But here's what we did with a certain problem that we had a couple of years ago, and it moves the bar. So we're gonna build a working group. You're gonna go on to an open network meeting and you're going to ask for everyone to join a working group, which I did, and so many people came out and supported it. And I was like, oh my god, this is incredible. And then we all brainstorm for a while. And we talked about all the resources in the city and what It's available. And to me, I was like, What are you talking about? What do you there's what are you talking about these beds? What is CASON what is Pathstone? What is Raft? What is Raft? These are all foreign to me. And I realised that this city has got so many resources for so many people. But they are so clouded in red tape that you couldn't, I couldn't track down any of them. And I'm a tech guy. I'm not a stupid guy. I am a tech guy. But I just on my own, I couldn't get I couldn't crack through it. I couldn't find it in the state of mind that I was in going through all that list, Jake. I couldn't find it. So as we were talking, I was like, Why isn't there a website that shows everything? Like, what can we build a website that brings pulls everything together. And it's easy. So that's where it was born, we got a media company, we got some funding from the region, and we went and design savemylife.ca. Where are you just answer three simple questions in the beginning of it. And then it will take you to the resource that the Region offers up and they're all current, up to date, the phone numbers, work, emails work, gives you a description. Yeah, it's it's nice and streamlined and simple. It's a great first step, I think.

Janice Arnoldi:

And so when you go to the site, people have probably seen the billboards by the way, because there are billboards out there. So if you've seen the billboard, go and check out the website, because it might be something that you need to help you. When you go in, you get to pick whether you are a parent, get caregiver ally, and enter that way, or are you someone who was in personal crisis? And you can enter that way?

Steve Borisenko:

Yeah, it'll ask you, it'll ask you if your family member or your user, it'll ask you if you're over 18 or under 18. Because the resources in the in the region cater to that age. And then it will ask you if it's urgent, or this is something that you're looking for ongoing care. And then it will take you to whatever you however it fits you and then you can go through and read through it's very mobile friendly. Yeah, it was everything that we originally thought, got got all the box got checked on that one, all the boxes got checked. It's been a great. We're not We're not done, that's for sure. But it's been a great first step. And we've heard a lot of great feedback from it. We're trying to get it into the schools for September. So there's posters and media in the schools. So kids can start using it, and they can be more familiar with it. And it's not such a it's a weird subject to talk about, right. Kids don't like talking about what their parents don't want to do think they're gonna have trouble.

Janice Arnoldi:

Yeah. And this is anonymous, they can access anonymously, so

Steve Borisenko:

absolutely, yeah, completely. Yeah. Yep.

Janice Arnoldi:

Always a pleasure, Steve.

Steve Borisenko:

Thank you so much, Janice. Always pleasure.