Latest / Authentic Living / Mind Aid with Matthew Dickson (Part II)

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Mind Aid with Matthew Dickson (Part II) · Authentic Living

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Welcome to authentic living with Roxanne, a place where we have as conversations about
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things that really matter in our lives.
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And now here's your host, Roxanne Derhodge.
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Thanks for tuning in again to our podcast Authentic Living with Roxanne.
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Last week, my guest Matthew Dixon and I had such great time sharing information, that we
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decided to turn it into a 2 part podcast If you missed out last week, no big deal, just check
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out the link in the show notes to listen.
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It's not mandatory that you listen, but it's recommended.
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So don't miss out.
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On all this great information that we discussed.
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And here we go to part 2.
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Yeah.
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So one positive that has come out of COVID.
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I think you're right.
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You hit it on the head there.
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The nail on the head is that in fact now we're quite open to say I'm, you know, I'm having a
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tough day or I'm anxious or You know, I'm depressed.
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I haven't moved today or, you know, I wanna, you know, I'm not getting along with my husband
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and my children.
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People are more open versus ever before when you'd ask the questions.
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Hey, you?
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Oh, I'm fine.
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How are you?
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And people are gonna be losing quite figuratively losing limbs and not sharing, you
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know, that they're they're having a tough day.
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And it's it's it's normal and natural.
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It's human to to have, days that are not good, and there's nothing wrong with teaching, I
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think, especially your children about the vulnerability about saying, yeah, today is not
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a good day.
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I'm having a rough time, or I've had a tough day at work or I've had a conflict with, you
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know, X Y Z or this isn't going well, I think that permissiveness models things that allows
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people around us to recognize, hey, it's okay to just be vulnerable, and that creates a a
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deeper level of connection as well.
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Yeah.
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The power line workers here in the province where I live.
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They I heard them talk.
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Get get the talk, and they talked about they asked, how's your 10?
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And they say 10% of our of our, thoughts at at any is about or about the present.
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And I forget the numbers, but let's say 50% are in the past and 40% are in the in the the
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future.
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So things if you've got things you're worried about in the future of the past and they sneak
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into your 10% in the present.
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It's not good to go up in the power lines because it's dangerous.
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So what they do is that they ask each other, how's your 10?
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Throughout the day.
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How's your 10?
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How's your 10%?
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How's your 10?
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And I tried it at work the other day with, I was doing some field work with, river quality
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sampling.
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And it worked beautifully.
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It's, it it was, you know, just sneaked into the I just snuck it into the conversation, and
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it was very very under the radar and it's a request.
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And I I just sat told him about about the power line workers doing that, and I just sort of
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continued it throughout the day.
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And It was, yeah, I just said, how's your 10?
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Oh, you know, I'm sort of, sort of thing about this sort of thing.
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It's a very quick con just very quick response, and then you're good to go.
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It's a
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a check-in.
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It's just instead of how you're doing, and everybody's gonna go fine fine, and then move
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on.
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And they're probably not having a good day.
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Why why not be aware that someone's having a tough day.
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And and, you know, and life happens to all of us.
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Right?
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So it's recognizing that someone could be going through a loss.
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So someone could be sick, or somebody could have had a conflict at home or whatever.
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They don't have to get into the details, but at least you get a bit of a likred scale about
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potentially where that person's at, which gives you the a bit more information and with how you
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need to kind of, interface with them through throughout the day.
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So let's talk a little bit about working with someone with mental health and, you know, what
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managers and leaders need to be aware of and what kind of things that you know, was helpful
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or continues to be helpful based on the work that you're doing And what are the things that
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we know does not work?
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So that, you know, for for leaders or people managing others that are listening that they
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might be able to kind of think through what kind of things they should discontinue doing
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and some things that maybe if they're not doing, they should start doing the I like the
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10, the check-in 10.
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That's something that, I like that.
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What else?
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What other things might you share, Matthew?
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That would be helpful.
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One of the things is not being afraid to have a conversation about it.
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I I had no problem talking about what I was going through.
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Some people say, you know, when you're talking about your mental health, your your story.
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They talk about your deep dark secrets.
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And I I understand that for sure, but that at the same time, I'm like, well, how many of us
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have deep dark secrets?
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You know, how deep how dark are they?
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And for me, I was thinking, well, I just wanna talk about my symptoms.
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It's they're not deep dark secrets.
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These are just symptoms of my disease, and and I'd like to talk about them and say, like,
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look, this is how it's this is how it's like for me today.
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And and my experience of it.
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I don't want to talk about other things in my life that are that that may be private or
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whatever.
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It's just I just wanna talk about my symptoms just in very clinical way.
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You go to the doctor.
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He asks you, you know, how are you feeling?
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Well, my throat's kinda raspy or I got a headache or there's a throbbing pain in my leg
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or whatever.
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I I just wanted to talk about it like that.
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With friends and family, colleagues, coworkers, yachts.
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This is how this is these are my symptoms.
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It's not my deep dark secrets.
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Yeah.
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So I I had no problem talking about that.
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And when the tsunami happened in Japan, a journalist went over and was talking to
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surveying the scene and and describing it, and he said they were clean the Japanese, they're
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cleaning up this horrible mess, but he said that you got the sense of they just wanted to
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get on with their day.
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They were sifting through rubble and whatnot, and they were just polite.
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How are you?
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How are you?
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You know, what are you how are you doing today and what's going on?
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And they just wanted to talk about their day.
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And that's the way I was through my recovery.
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Like, at some point, sometimes I wanna talk about my disease, but another point, I have a
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day to get through.
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I wanna I wanna talk about, you know, this or that and just and just have it like a normal
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day.
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I wanted to I've accepted the fact that part of my life is awful, but I also just wanna get
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through my day and talk about the weather or this or that.
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Just, you know, it's, another thing, Sarah Blakely, the creator of Spanks, she talks about
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how the workplace culture, there's not a lot of humor in it.
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She's self deprecating humor often works well, but I works well in the workplace, and I sort
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of have a challenge to people say to, you know, how many people we all have a sense of humor.
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We all love a good joke.
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But how many times do we try to make other people laugh?
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And I'm challenging people to try to tell try to get one person to laugh there or just even
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try to tell a joke whether they laugh or not just to try to do that in a situation where you
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might not otherwise.
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It's it's so for people with mental illness at work, try to tell them a joke, see if you can
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get them laugh, right in the mood.
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And it doesn't always have to be dark and serious and somber around people with mental
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illness.
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Like, I when I was for all the years sick, I've I've enjoyed watching movies that made me
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laugh.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So yeah.
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There's
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just some basic things.
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Right?
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Just The person is a person just like you.
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They may be dealing with something, but they just wanna have a normal, like, as as normal
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the day as possible.
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And just connect with them and treat them with the same respect that you want for yourself.
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Yeah.
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And, like, when I showed up to work at the the job I did for years, I show up to work.
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I didn't wanna just sit there and, there comes a point where someone's too sick to work, but
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should work as there, you know, I'm here because I I wanna do stuff.
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And it's, I I don't know if I know at some point, you know, it's it's a gray area.
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You know, when do you have to send someone home if they're too sick to work, but they don't
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want to, but they think they should be at work.
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For me, I wanted to get stuff done.
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And I heard a lady on CBC radio, the national radio here in Canada, and she said she she
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worked with mentally ill people and she said, you have to take them and say, now we're gonna
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do this and you do an activity and now we're gonna do this and you do another and now we're
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gonna do this.
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And that's the way it was with me.
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I've I've read with schizophrenia and probably other mental illness too.
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Is that you it's hard to self direct and I let alone other direct.
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And that's the way I thought I I showed up to work.
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I can do stuff.
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Just tell me what to do.
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You don't have to micromanage me.
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Just tell me to do something.
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It might take a few hours, few days.
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What whatever it is, but just come back to me and point me in the right direction again.
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Just keep pointing me and now now do this mapping.
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And it's, it doesn't take a lot of drafting.
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Just a few minutes here and there, to to say, okay.
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Now do this or do that.
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And
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Your check-in might be a bit different, but, ultimately, You know, structure is important
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and maybe the interface between the the direct supervisor.
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It just has to be, you know, just a bit, hey.
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What what's what's matching you up to.
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I just checked in with him.
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Oh, he's on to the other task.
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No big deal.
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Like, there's no not need to hover other than you know, but structure is probably more
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important is what you're saying that kind of helped you through your day when you were at
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work.
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Yeah.
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It's I mean, because at the same time, I should have to work sick.
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Because the doctor said, you know, Matthew, if you want to improve your chances of survival
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and getting better, try to find a job.
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I'm like, wow.
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You want me to go to work feeling like this?
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Okay.
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And, anyway, but I I went I I only went to work if I thought I could do it.
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I didn't want to to, you know, waste anybody's time.
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But at the same time, I'm thinking, wow, I can't believe I'm actually going to work and
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doing all this stuff and getting going through my day.
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As much as it's hard, you went to work and you you you probably function and felt better as as
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you were doing something constructive as well.
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Well, yeah, exactly.
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I one of the reasons I showed up to work was to get better.
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It wasn't to work on my career or to do this or to do that or to put a even to put a paycheck
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on the table.
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I I wanted to go to work to save my life.
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Mhmm.
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You know, work, you know, working in an office, doing things in an office to save my life.
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Mhmm.
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It's a
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different way to look at it.
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They hadn't thought about it.
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Right?
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But just to be able to function day to day and have meaning and purpose just to get through
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your day, and that helps you each each day you get under your belt.
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You probably, oh, I was able to accomplish that and then get into the next day versus kind of
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these long term aspirations.
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And I know oftentimes when I've dealt with people chronic depression, what that becomes
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very important.
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The last thing they wanna do is move, but the best thing for them is moving.
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And, you know, we would we would quite literally sit down and create a structure where
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we would itemize kind of everything and then put alerts that would allow them to kinda to
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know to switch.
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Right, to, okay, you're on to this now or whatever.
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And after a while, it became kind of now the body kind of expected, you just do something
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different.
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Versus doing what the body's telling you.
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You're over overriding what the body sensations are, in in the case of so again, you're right.
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Just being able to do something day in, day out.
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Oftentimes, I know with my clients has helped them over the years, and it sounds like it was
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the same for you.
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So
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it's, you know, with all this and kind of and I know you do a lot of more, bigger work with
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mental health What are you seeing out there?
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I know, like, I talked to you a little bit about here in Ontario that it takes, you know,
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an average sometimes, you know, I'm here in Niagara.
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It takes about 6 to 8 months to get a good psychiatrist, and I take I I think it takes
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about 6 to 8 months to burn out a good psychiatrist as well.
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Because we're often all looking for really good resources.
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What are you seeing out there kind of?
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I know you've been working with some, different organizations.
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About mental health in some of the developing countries.
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Yeah.
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So there's a man.
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He's from Harvard University and he spoke at the UN, in the last year or so.
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And he said this.
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Every country he wanted to know health care is a developing country.
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And I'd like to learn more about his reasons for why that is, but I can certainly understand
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it.
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I mean, the mental health care system in Canada and other developed countries, they all need
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work.
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And so, anyway, I the whole time I went through mental illness, my heart went out to people in
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developing countries or war torn countries who have mental illness to go through as well on
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top of all that.
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I went through mental illness here in Canada and a sleepy part of Canada.
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Very quiet.
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And I felt like I was living in a war zone.
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Just, in fact, someone saw me walking down the street one day at my worst in 94.
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And they said, Matthew looked like he was walking through a world of flying glass.
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But, yeah, that's what feels just bombarded.
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And I I anyway, so I it was 2017, and I found, the first content on the that I'd somewhat upon
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on the internet about mental health and developing countries.
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It was a TED Talk by a Vikram Patel.
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And he it's a they found, well, some countries have only one psychiatrist, a million people.
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There are over 270,000,000 people in developing countries with no mental health care.
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And What's worse is that some people that they estimate 100 of 1000 of people in 60 countries
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are actually kept in chains with mental illness because they don't know how to deal with them.
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Wow.
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And it's it's it's inhumane, and it's horrible.
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And, Robin William's son, Zach Williams, is helping to promote this, on his with some other
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people, Allison Janney, the actress from the West Wing TV show, Tim Shriver, who created the
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special Olympics.
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They have a hashtag break the chains platform, and I tell people about that on my website,
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minda.ca.
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And it's so, anyway, I well, I made this website to try to help.
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I thought, well, if I'm going to help anybody with Mandilla, because over the years
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throughout my recovery, I thought, you know, when I get back up on my feet again, when I'm
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ready to help other people who I help in for years, I thought, well, I'll focus some people
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here in Canada or wherever.
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But what I heard, what some people have to go through, it's it's just horrible.
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So I thought, well, if I'm going to help anybody, I should help people to need it most.
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People kept in chains with mental illness.
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It's hard to believe.
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Right?
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I mean, I know, you know, it wasn't too long ago, but we didn't have the knowledge that we
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do now, but Our biggest thing is probably getting the right kind of experts to assist
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someone, right, because, obviously, if you go to a social service agency, for instance, I'm
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not sure where what how long the waits are here, where you are, but I know here, in public
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sectors, sometimes can takes 6 months.
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So if you're having an issue, that's a long time to go to wait for the support.
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Right?
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So, you know, but, you know, it's not 1 in a 1,000,000.
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It may be that you need different kinds of supports, but especially if you need
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psychiatric health, to obviously get a proper diagnosis.
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You know, so if you're waiting 6 to 8 months and you're you're dealing with all these
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symptoms, you can see how that can exacerbate the experience.
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You know, absolutely.
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So what kind of things are you doing, with these organizations and how are they helping to
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kind of deal with some of the causes that, like, you know, what parts of the world are
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they keeping people still in chains and what can be done?
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Yeah.
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So the, on the hashtag break the change platform, they estimate 60 countries.
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There's a report written up on it, and that came out about a year or so ago.
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And I found 6 non profits that are helping people on the ground get basic mental health
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care.
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This model of basic mental health care.
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It's it's been modeled after a a physical health care model, basic physical health care
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model where there's no doctor.
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No no hospital for hundreds of miles.
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How do you treat someone with a broken leg or this or that?
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And back in the nineties, I believe they modeled this after this, a basic mental health
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care model, how do you treat someone with depression or anxiety where there's no hospital
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psychiatrist medications.
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And this the good news, the good news in all of this is this model is proven effective It's low
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cost, and it's also scalable.
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And they're trying to figure out the World Health Organization is trying to figure out the
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best way to roll out the masses And until they do that, I don't know when what kind of
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timelines they have.
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I mean, that's a big job.
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But until they do that, I found 6 non profits that I secure people towards on my website.
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And if anyone hears of any more, please tell me about them.
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That are using this model or variants of it, with success and they're helping thousands of
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people, in Africa and other, developing, countries.
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It's, it's successful.
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They unchained people with with who kept in chains with mental illness.
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And it's it's wonderful.
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It doesn't help everybody.
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Just like everyone here in developed countries aren't, can't some people are resistant to
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treatment and whatnot.
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But it's it helps large numbers of large numbers of people.
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And so I'm I'm trying to do this for a living.
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I want to make, this not all advocacy for developing countries is my main thing.
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I haven't been able to make a paycheck from it yet.
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And so I've I've got a Patreon page where people can donate to help, give me a monthly
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income to do this advocacy work.
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And I've kept the website simple because in the last so many years, I've still been working on
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my own recovery, and I haven't wanted to take on too much.
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But so I've made the website my own website simple.
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I just steer people.
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If they want to donate our fundraise, I steer them directly to those 6 nonprofits, their own
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websites.
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We can fund, donate our fundraise red on their websites, and I keep myself out of the
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financial transaction.
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Right.
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Right.
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Well, that's that's amazing.
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And, you know, the the thought is if somebody needs so this model is based on if you're not
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if you need medication, but you don't have capacity to get medication to use a physical
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model assist people to at least start to take some steps with their mental health.
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This and I may be simplifying it.
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Yeah.
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So it's the the World Health And World Health Organization, they have a mental health gap
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action program, MH gap, And on their website, they'll have like a it's like a 100 page
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document.
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They teach people.
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What they do is they go into a community that has no mental health care whatsoever and and,
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you know, lots of other things, you know, maybe no clean water or whatever.
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They're they're struggling.
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And they teach they handpicked some of the people in the community.
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And they teach them how to give basic mental health care to others in their community.
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And it's a community workers there's some other terms for it too, but they they had peep had
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picked some people with some basic skills, maybe in leadership or some other kind of
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health skills, and that's how they rolled out.
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So it's
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That's amazing.
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So like a almost like a a peer model in a way.
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What we would do in employee assistance programs here when we go see and, train people
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on stage trauma response and we do a peer kind of team within the company.
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So it's a basically a better, bigger model on the macro level where you go in, you figure out
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what the advocates, what skills they have, and you train them accordingly to at least be able
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to teach them how to regulate their emotion or maybe teach them about things like how to stop
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your not stop your thoughts but to slow your thoughts, how to stay in that 10% present,
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right, as a psychotherapist, there's a basic things that, you know, you you don't think
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about.
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Right?
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Like, you you just assume that everybody would know that, but being able to teach those
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skills, if somebody shows acumen and being able to pass it on would make a lot of sense because
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if I can teach somebody how to stay present, you know, I can do that within minutes, not
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thinking it's something that's a skill.
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How who could you touch?
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You could probably touch a lot of people's lives.
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Obviously, you know, with the background that I have and not thinking that there's some people
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in the world that doesn't even know how to do those things.
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Right?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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1 of the group's basic needs US, one of the nonprofits, they use medications find mind,
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another group, they use medications, strong minds.
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They work in Africa.
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They help women with depression in Africa, and they don't use medications.
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They use a it's a talk based group therapy.
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They get women in groups of 8 or 10 people.
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And over so many weeks, they they talk in this group and they talk about their depression and
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whatnot and they're getting astounding results of women one way, not depressed anymore or at
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least, alleviated symptoms to a certain degree.
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And a lot of times with depression, it's about connection.
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Right?
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You
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know, really if you think about it, we are mammals, and depression is the opposite of
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being mammalian, it's actually being reptilian.
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Right?
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So oftentimes when we're depressed, we kinda lean away and we curl up quite figuratively.
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And then even being able to open up, right, which is what we're we're meant to do that in
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of itself, helps us heal, right, because our bodies are able to connect heart to heart, type
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of thing.
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So those basic things, you know, are are so very, very important, but that's the last thing
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that you feel like doing when you're you know, when you're not feeling good.
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Yeah.
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You can self sabotage for sure.
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Absolutely.
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Well, Matthew, this has been amazing.
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And, what what amazing work you're doing in the world.
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You know, if I can ever help in any way, along the way, please reach out to me.
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I would be more than, willing to any expertise that I think I could help you out with on your
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path.
22:40
Let me know.
22:42
You know, for the employers that are listening, you know, just be aware of some of the amazing
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things that Matthew has shared today.
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Think through your strategy in reference to mental illness, do you have the programs, but
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even more so, do you have the skills associated with what your management needs in order to
23:00
integrate people and treat them with respect like Matthew is saying on a day to day basis to
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help them live the best version of themselves at work as well.
23:09
So, Matthew, any last words for you, again, tell people where they can get ahold of you if
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they wanna chitch out with you where they can reach you.
23:17
Yeah.
23:17
So my website is mindaid.camindaid.ca.
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I've recently created a Facebook group on my Facebook page for Mind Aid where people are
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welcome to join and meet each other and brainstorm ways to help fundraise and spread
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awareness about mental health and developing countries because most many people don't think
23:38
about it.
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And know all these stats, like, but some people actually kept in chains.
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So the Facebook group, I'm hoping I've got forty one people in there as of today.
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I'm hoping to grow that, and get people talking about this.
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It's, it's so easy to bring into a conversation, with because we're talking about
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mental health so much these days.
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It's not a stretch, not much of a stretch to to throw in some of these stats like some
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countries of one psychiatrist per million people.
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Point people towards my website because my website is a bit of a hub for the cause.
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A lot of the areas being worked on are sort of scattered across the web.
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I tried to make my site just a one page.
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I'll send you in a bunch of different directions when you go on there.
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And so they'd give you a bit of an overview of the cause.
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And instead of having to go find all that stuff yourself like I did.
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Awesome.
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Matthew, you have a an amazing day.
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And I hope there are paths for us again.
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Again, thank you for sharing all your wisdom, and we'll stay connected.
24:38
Thanks for tuning in to authentic living with Roxanne, creating the space for positive
24:44
healthy change.
24:45
Roxanne is a keynote speaker, psychotherapist, and coach to work with Roxanne.
24:51
Visit rocksandurhaj.com/blueprint.
24:55
We'll see you next time, an authentic living with Roxanne.