Jim's Story: Finding Purpose & Breaking Stigma

It’s an honour for us to share the personal stories of CMHA Kelowna program participants. Today’s story is extra special, because it was directly penned by Jim S., Wellness Development Centre (WDC) participant.

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I retired June 29, 2018, and moved to Kelowna July 31, 2018. My younger sister Lisa and her husband who lived here had been looking out for my mother since my father passed away in early 2000. I came at my mother's behest; I moved in with her and took over looking after her and her home.

Lisa, my sister who was eight years younger than me passed away suddenly September 3, 2019, from something similar to a brain aneurysm. Lisa was a psych nurse, her funeral was attended by all sorts of people from the medical community in Kelowna and family and friends from near and far attended the services. Donations at the service were accepted for the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Kelowna and also for the homeless because Lisa believed in helping both.

We established a bursary for people who attend UBC for the Psych Nurse Program. Lisa taught a course at UBC for a couple of years. She also ran a store front through Interior Health where Psych help was provided at the community level. 

My mother passed away at 90 the day after Mothers' Day in 2020. I bought my mothers' house from the estate partly because covid was happening, partly to support my brother in-law who was gutted by the loss of both my sister and my mother, and partly to get the estate settled. I went through a period of mania around this time and had been referred to a psychiatrist.

I had almost lost another sister - I had five - to cancer in 2022; immunotherapy saved her, and a different brother in-law had a bad reaction to medication and almost had liver failure in 2021.

I used to drink but found I didn't have a need for it since retirement and quit for good in 2023. I mentioned to my psychiatrist I was feeling pretty low and he prescribed a medication which is supposed to act as a booster for the anti-depressant I was on; it's also used to treat schizophrenia. It didn't occur to me I might be feeling low as a consequence of not drinking after six months but looking back on it I feel this was the case.

After a while on the medication, I started to get anxiety which progressed. I had another sister who was having back pain and it was misdiagnosed; by the time it was correctly diagnosed they found she had cancer in her liver and it had spread to her spine. 

My anxiety became overwhelming, I knew my sister's cancer would be terminal.

The weekend after I heard about my sisters' prognosis I phoned the national suicide prevention line five times and on the holiday Monday in October of 2023 I checked myself into the hospital where I stayed at the same psych-ward that my sister Lisa worked at early in her career.

I was there for five days, one day a person from CMHA came to the ward and talked to everyone gathered in the common room. We did some participation games and he talked about astronomy which he had an interest in.

I found it really helped me.

Upon discharge I received a referral to the CMHA Kelowna Wellness Development Centre. I stopped there on my walk home from the hospital and after meeting staff I got a schedule and the green-light to start attending various programs there at the Wellness Development Centre.

After attending most days for some weeks, it was announced at Peer Support, one day, that there was a job opening for a Kitchen Aide at Ellis Place which is a place where people going through various mental health issues live, CMHA runs the place amongst other sites.

I applied for the position, got hired, and started in November of 2023. It was something I could do that gave me a routine which really helped me. My Supervisor was patient with me. My Supervisor there, besides doing the cooking, also oversees the Meals That Matter program for CMHA. He coordinates between the kitchens at Ellis Place and McCurdy Place which provide meals for the seven different places in the program where people with various mental health challenges live.

Amongst other things both kitchens cook food in batches which is then plated in microwavable containers and frozen before being distributed to the sites. In some cases, people would just not survive if they did not receive this help, in my opinion. As well, they provide meals for the sites on special occasions to celebrate Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas for example.  

My mother had a sister with a mental handicap and because of that, Mom instilled values of helping others less fortunate than us. This is why Lisa became a psych nurse.

That has a bearing on myself but also, I support CMHA Kelowna because they have someone going to the Hospital helping out people, they gave me a job to give me purpose when I needed it, they run the Meals That Matter program, they run the Wellness Development Center that helps people like myself going through short term issues and also people with long term issues which, in my view, is critical for them.

I still attend the Wellness Development Center for Peer Support on Mondays to help myself and to support others; people there supported me in my time of need. Some people are just passing through, others have nowhere else to go for programs that CMHA Kelowna offers.

Recently, CMHA Kelowna’s Community Engagement Team Lead, Heather Smith had the privilege of interviewing Jim. In addition to his very personal written story above, we decided it was important to share a few notes from that interview as well:

Jim’s story highlights some of unique stigmas that surround mental health, particularly for men. As a former manager for a heavy equipment distributor, Jim was able to speak to an environment of silence and stigma and a cultural expectation to hold emotions and struggles inside.

“You can go through a crisis,” he says. “It can happen to anybody.” Jim went on to say that he’s pleased to see changes in the way men are viewing and speaking about mental health. “The attitude out there has changed,” he says. “I think [men] are more aware that they’re not bullet proof, that you need to spend some time on yourself.”

To learn more about the importance of men’s mental health, please check out our podcast: A Way Forward: Conversations on Mental Health.