Roundtable #2: Men's Mental Health Panel

ARICHAT - Alex Forgeron remembers the night that he came face-to-face with the realities of mental illness - and it happened onstage, while he was playing music for a four-hour dance at a local community hall. 

The West Arichat native, participating in Telile Community Television's latest mental health panel for the second edition of the station's Roundtable series, recalled a night in 2006 that saw him and his bandmates kicking off their first 90-minute set of the night. Moments after he played the opening notes on his trusty electric guitar, "it hit me," Forgeron recalls. 

"My heart was racing, I was sweaty - I thought the end was near," Forgeron told Roundtable host Adam Cooke in a conversation recorded at the Telile studios on the morning of Thursday, November 4. 

"I announced a break [from the music], I went into the bathroom - I hadn't had anything to drink or anything like that - and, quite frankly, I got on my knees and I prayed through my tears. And my greatest wish was to die...I was hoping a drunk would come in with a beer bottle and [end it all]."

The intense anxiety persisted, and Forgeron found himself turning to alcohol - specifically, vodka - to numb the pain in the days and weeks to come. Today, he is clean and sober and urging others around the Strait Area to speak out about their mental health issues in order to destigmatize conditions that have been hidden for far too long. 

Similarly, Byrson Syliboy - originally from Shubendacadie First Nation and now living in Port Hawkesbury - has experienced symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder but has had difficulty dealing with them, particularly in the public roles he has taken on in recent years. These include activism for First Nations communities and the LGBTQI sector, but also a political role as the NDP candidate for Richmond in the recent provincial election.

A former student of the Maritimes' so-called "Indian Day School" program whose parents and grandparents are also residential school survivors, Syliboy feels that more attention is required for BIPOC people struggling with mental illness. Citing the case of Chantel Moore, a New Brunswick indigenous woman who was fatally shot in her home by RCMP officers during what was officially described as a health and wellness check, Syliboy insisted that health officials, politicians and police must work together to erase the mistrust that currently exists among Mi'kmaq seeking help for their various mental health concerns.