Mayor’s Event for Mental Health highlights social determinants

Mental health advocate Maggie Phelan grew up in a household riddled with alcoholism. 

By age 11, she had turned to drugs and alcohol to cope after the death of her grandparents, eventually landing in a juvenile detention centre. 

She left high school at Grade 10 to work full-time at a coffee shop, moving out on her own at 17. 

“I quickly learned all the expenses that were needed to maintain an apartment. I was suffering the consequences of binge drinking whenever I wasn’t working, and my mental health was diminishing,” she said during her speech at the Mayor’s Event for Mental held in council chambers on Tuesday.

She eventually ended up in an abusive relationship, addicted to drugs and sleeping on the streets. 

While today she is six years sober and “in a really good place” mentally, her journey to recovery and stability was long and bumpy, and heavily reliant on support from community services, highlighting the vicious cycle poverty and mental health create, and a need for both systemic and societal change. 

“We need wraparound care for mental health that is accessible,” she said.

Phelan was one of several speakers at the 24th annual Mayor’s Event for Mental Health, alongside two other community members with lived experience, Barb McPhee and Sharon Henriques. 

Helen Fishburn, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington, director of the Guelph & Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination Dominica McPherson, project manager with the Guelph Wellington Local Immigration Partnership Leen Al-Habash all also spoke. 

This year, speakers explored the social determinants of mental health, highlighting poverty as the biggest determinant, with discrimination following closely behind. 

“Living with low income is exhausting. It’s stressful, and it leads to poor mental health,” said McPherson. 

She pointed to chronically underfunded supports with long wait lists that don’t always meet people’s needs. 

“Too many people are falling through widening cracks. And more often than not, despite best efforts, it’s those who are most impacted or facing the deepest crisis that are least likely to get the support that they need,” she said.

“If it were simple for people to change, don’t you think they would? If it were that simple just to stop using, or to get an apartment, or to get a job, like who would want to sit in this level of discomfort, in this level of palpable pain? Nobody would,” Fishburn said. 

“We need to show up, we need to keep talking. We need to keep understanding,” she said.