Let’s Talk Less About ‘Personal Responsibility’

This is my article to be published in the upcoming spring edition of The Busy Signal, the newsletter for members of Unifor Local 1-S.

We have been experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic for over a year now. It has been a long and isolating year. Family, friends, and loved ones forced apart in order to keep the novel coronavirus from spreading and (potentially) killing us. This sacrifice of our social lives and support systems has had a toll on the mental health of many of us.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said he would not institute a circuit breaker lock down citing some of these reasons. How much does our Premier and his Sask Party government truly care about our mental health, however?

From not meeting with Tristen Durocher after he walked 635 km and went on a hunger strike for 44 days to highlight the issue of suicide in Northern Saskatchewan, to allowing the Lighthouse Serving the Battlefords to close after losing their funding, to rejecting the funding of a new addictions recovery center in Saskatoon, it certainly puts in question the Saskatchewan government's commitment to mental health.

Even if the Premier was being disingenuous when he used it as an excuse to not mandate another lockdown, he wasn't necessarily wrong about the effects of isolation on our mental health. Humans are social creatures, and we need real connection with other human beings; this is a component of our essential human needs. Rapidly evolving technology like Zoom and Instagram cannot replace the evolutionary benefits of physical interaction with our loved ones. For some, its easy to fulfill those needs. For others, it can be a challenge.

When people are lacking their human needs—whether it is an inability to pay for food or rent, an inability to find meaningful employment, an inability to pay the cost of treating an illness, or an inability to start a family—the effects can be devastating for one's mental health. Speaking as someone who knows about mental illness, it tends to have an increasingly isolating effect on those who are suffering. The type and severity of the symptoms are often different between men and women. For example, men have three times the suicide rate than women. I believe a major factor in this mental illness and addiction epidemic, and a reason why many sufferers are unable to crawl out from under it, is because of our society's individualistic mantra of personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility contrasts with personal accountability in that the former refers to the responsibility of one's life being in their hands and their hands only, while the latter refers to the consequences of an individual's actions on others—which is not in question here. Personal responsibility seeks to allow society to avoid both responsibility and accountability of its members. The problem with this is that letting people suffer and live in poverty usually ends up costing us much more in the long run from lost productivity, crime, and higher healthcare costs. In the knowledge-based country, as Canada is quickly becoming, if we are going to have a strong and competitive economy, we must be responsible for ensuring every person is given the best opportunity to seek their own potential. And if we aren't holding ourselves accountable for those who fail to do so, then we are purposely keeping our society from reaching its full potential. Not only is this bad for the economy, but it's also immoral and cruel.

It might be true that not everyone can be helped, but at least we can try the best we can—as we do for other severe illnesses like cancer. Despite a certain marketing campaign from one of the members of Canada's telecom oligopoly, there is some evidence that simply talking about mental illness does nothing to cut down suicide rates. We can and must do better! Many people suffering from mental illness require specialized and expensive treatment, and it should never have to come down to choosing between treatment and other life necessities like food or rent. Nor should it be confusing for people already having troubles with the way their mind works to find the treatment they need. This is when the community needs to step in to pool its resources and offer the best solution we can, no matter one's ability to pay. We decided to do this for most cancer treatments, but for some reason we do not treat mental illness the same way.

Many, including myself, have experience in navigating the market of mental illness and/or addiction treatment. Just like there are many types of cancers, there are many types of mental illnesses with varying types of treatment options. Most major hospitals have dedicated cancer centers for diagnosing and treating patients but when it comes to mental health, families are, for the most part, left to their own devices to find help for themselves and their loved ones. It shouldn’t be that way for cancer or mental health.

We can consider two things to better help people suffering from mental illness.

First, like we do for other widespread, severe illnesses—such as the coronavirus gripping our world today—we can fund research into the cause, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illnesses. And most importantly, we must get the people who need the help the immediate and long-term treatment required to recover. And if something doesn’t work, then we must try something else. No matter what, we should never allow someone to suffer alone.

Second, we must use what we learn to be more proactive and prevent the situations where people lose the support systems they need to maintain a healthy life. This means ensuring everyone has access to their essential human needs, no matter their ability to be personally responsible. We don't need a toxic, individualistic race to the bottom in order to be an innovative and globally competitive country. We can be both a wealthy society and a compassionate society that looks after each other.

We don't need to have homelessness. We don’t need to have child poverty. We don’t need to have seniors being profited off of as predictable revenue streams for shareholders. We don’t need to have a society where there is a savage competition for any type of job, driving down wages. We have the ability to do better. We just need to have the courage to accept the way we are currently doing things is neither sustainable nor moral. We don't need to trash our current way of life entirely but if we want to prepare our society for the economy of the future—and for the next pandemic—something does have to radically change. And that is focusing less on personal responsibility, and more on social responsibility and accountability.