Young minds

Katie Balnar experienced everything a normal teenager does. Making friends, losing friends, bullying, and finally reaching the day every high school student dreams of: graduation. But throughout it all she was struggling with something deeper.

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Katie says she always knew something was wrong, but she didn’t know exactly what.

(Photo Illustration) According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, Canada's youth suicide rate is the third highest in the industrialized world.

“I’ve noticed stuff all of my life, that I was different from my brother and sister,” Katie says.

There was ordering everything around five. There was the obsessive counting. She was sometimes paralyzed by her fear of germs.  And she often had extreme anxiety in social situations.

For a long time she didn’t say a word.

Katie Balnar and her boyfriend, Matt, one of her strongest supporters.

“It really got to a bad point in Grade 10,” Katie says. That’s when she decided to finally tell her mom.

Katie soon learned she suffers from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, general anxiety disorder, social phobia, and depression.

She started going to therapy, but avoided telling her friends about her mental illness or her visits to her therapist.

“At first I was kind of ashamed and embarrassed,” she says of her experience. “I told my best friends first…my two closest friends.”

Katie says she feared the stereotypes and the judgment her peers might make about her.  She told her best friends about her diagnosis, but for a while she kept quiet about her treatment.

“[About] six months to a year after I started therapy, they found out I was actually in therapy,” she says. “They seemed to be [supportive], but in my final year of high school I was bullied quite badly…they poked fun at the mental stuff.”

Despite difficulties at school, Katie says her family and her boyfriend have always been there for her as a strong support system.

Katie, now 19 years old, is attending Wilfrid Laurier University, studying psychology.

“I want to do what my therapist does, [I want to] help kids or teenagers with OCD and depression.”

“I want to do what my therapist does,” Katie says. “[I want to] help kids or teenagers with OCD and depression.”

Katie says when it comes to high school, there needs to be a greater acknowledgement that there are many students who are dealing with a mental health issue.

But in many provinces, there is no mandatory curriculum that teaches students about mental health. With more and more people being diagnosed with a mental health problem, some experts say the lack of education in our schools has resulted in a generation of people unarmed and unready to cope.

Are we failing our youth when it comes to mental health awareness?

Capital News spoke with two experts about how mental health is addressed in high schools across the country, and whether anything is changing.

Experts on young minds

Capital News interviews mental health experts Denise Waligora and Michel Poirier.