my advocacy for mental health: from professional mission to personal passion
"we live in a stressful world, and people don’t choose their circumstances. i think if we include more advocacy, we can shift more to a proactive approach (to mental health care).”
7 minute read
natasha halliday, mental health advocate, aims to eliminate stigma and reduce barriers to care.
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natasha halliday is a registered social worker, professor, and mental health advocate by day and a comedian by night. her work in the mental health space has allowed her to give back to her clients and the community in a way that makes a real difference.
her involvement in mental health advocacy grew from her professional career as a social worker. once she got an inside look at the state of mental health support in canada, she realized that there are gaps to be filled to be able to provide canadians with proper care.
“i think advocacy naturally develops out of those things (seeing and wanting to fill the gaps) where you look at how you can support individuals in other ways that maybe isn’t happening as frequently as it should, as much as it should, or perhaps it isn’t happening at all,” natasha said.
since she began her foray into mental health advocacy, she has grown a reputation for being able to develop programs geared toward specific demographics as a way to offer the most personalized approach possible.
natasha puts a special focus on marginalized communities, or those that need more help than others, to foster a better, more supportive care environment for people who are faced with nothing but barriers when seeking or finding mental health services.
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“the more we uncover where people suffer, the more we start to realize where there are needs and ways we can be of service,” she said.
from dreaming to doing
ever since natasha was seven years old, she knew what she wanted to do with her life: help people. she narrowed her professional options down to two choices—a lawyer or a child psychologist.
when she was gearing up to start her education that would take her to where she wanted to go, she realized that heavy reading was involved in both her chosen professions, so she had to choose—read about the law or read about psychology and the human brain.
natasha chose the latter, and today, she dedicates much of her professional and personal life to helping people overcome and cope with mental health challenges.
“i initially thought i wanted to be a psychologist, and then when i was in high school, i did an orientation program called child youth work at a local college,” she said. “when i started it, it felt like they designed it for me. that’s how good a fit it was.”
now, natasha is well into her career in the “helping profession.” she describes her days as full, with a bit of this and a bit of that, as she navigates the world of mental health in a way that can benefit as many people as possible, whether it be her students at the local college she teaches at, her clients that she works with directly, or those who attend her public speaking engagements.
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advocating for a reason
for natasha, advocating for mental health isn’t simply helping people find support. it’s also about eliminating stigma and supporting people who experience high levels of stress in other “helping professions.”
when it comes to stigma, natasha continues to educate and spread awareness about various mental health challenges so that the people experiencing them, as well as those who have yet to truly understand that mental health is health, can grasp the concept in a much more knowledgeable and compassionate way.
“we live in a world where it’s much more acceptable to have a medical illness, but a mental illness is something that scares people,” she said. “i’m always fascinated because i’m like, if stress can cause an ulcer, why are we so upset?”
she believes that stress-induced physical illness gets far more attention than stress-induced mental illness and that disparity continues to drive stigma surrounding mental health and the resulting gaps in care that should be provided. if stress causing physical illness is taken seriously, so should stress causing mental illness.
she also heavily advocates for workers, who are often left in the lurch when it comes to support because many believe it’s all a part of being a working professional. natasha, however, has different views, and one of her advocacy goals is to help workers avoid and work through burnout.
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“one of the things that i’ve been dealing a lot with more recently is working burnout (like) people who are on stress leaves,” she said. “i do that through public speaking but also when i’m working with individual clients.”
natasha works with people to help “reintegrate them back into work if they’ve been off.” she doesn’t stop there, though. she believes that when workers are burnt out, there may be a lack of support from employers and organizations. her public speaking and advocacy efforts toward supporting organizations in a way that better supports their workers are at the top of her priority list.
“when you look at what’s happening in the healthcare system, what can organizations do or what can management do to support workers more,” she said. “hiring more staff isn’t always the easiest thing to do because of funding, but there’s other things people can do.”
“when i look at advocacy, i love helping workers, but i’d love to spend more time with the management and supervisor levels to say, ‘okay, here’s ways you can support your staff to make the work environment and more feasible place to be and a more manageable place,’” she said.
addressing barriers to mental health advocacy
through her professional and advocacy work, natasha has seen various scenarios play out. some of these were positive and beneficial, while others only highlighted the systemic issues that still plague the country when it comes to equitable treatment and supportive environments.
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one scenario natasha recounted was where a child went to school and was physically assaulted by their teacher. the child who was hit was given a much harder time by the superintendent of the school than the teacher who did the hitting because of a racial difference between the two, showing that the system can make it much harder for people to deal with mental health issues, and advocate for those with mental health issues.
“they’re (the system) kind of rooted in a certain way of seeing things, and so it makes it much harder to do that advocacy work because … they end up protecting those who need to be dealt with so that those things can’t continue.”
natasha also deals with other barriers when trying to advocate, such as those who act as though they want to learn more about mental illness and ways to foster healthier minds without having to have the tough conversations or make the necessary changes.
“what’s fascinating is being invited to come in to have some dialogues, but i don’t know what they’re expecting because sometimes … there’s such walls that go up,” she said. “it’s like, ‘hey, this is just something you wanted to have on paper that you did.’”
natasha sees firsthand how some organizations can be more inclined to keep up appearances than make any actual changes. she believes it’s often because they don’t want to be seen as “the bad guy” or have others point out their failings.
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but she always aims to have organizations understand that “it’s not about pointing out who’s the bad guy, because that’s not the issue. the issue is there’s some things that aren’t working, and we need to be honest about what those things are before we move to look what the steps are to make those changes.”
pushing back against those resistant to change isn’t easy, and natasha and others in the field of advocacy understand that all too well.
the issue of being undervalued is also a rampant one in the advocacy community. many advocates, including natasha, fail to receive adequate compensation for their work, which often requires hours of research and preparation to be ready for the hour-long talk they’re asked to do at conferences and other presentations.
“sometimes people don’t want to pay in this area, and i think that’s something that we’re constantly trying to work at is helping people understand, yes, sometimes there’s limited budgets,” natasha said. “but you have to understand that this is still something that people get paid for, and if you see value in it, why then do you expect to not have an investment put in something that you find of value that should be good for your organization?”
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helping to “carry the load” through advocacy work
with all her advocacy work, natasha hopes that more people will be able to access the support they need and more organizations will take the mental health of their employees seriously.
she also acknowledges that it’s not just on any one person or group to help foster change, but rather, everyone involved is needed to make a real difference. she likens her work and the work of advocates to a metaphor.
“if you think about trying to move a couch, if somebody picks it up at one end, it’s slanted. but if somebody picks up the other end, you can carry it versus trying to fight to do that on your own,” she said. “i think that’s one of the great things about doing advocacy work is being able to help carry that load, which makes it more manageable.”
regardless of the barriers that still exist, natasha will continue to fight the good fight to ensure that everyone who develops mental health issues will know where and who to turn to and have access to those very people when they need it most.
“people struggling with their mental health is so prevalent. we live in a stressful world, and people don’t choose their circumstances,” she said. “i think if we include more advocacy, we can shift more to a proactive approach (to mental health care).”
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