This is how I felt this week, going down the stairs of the Berri metro, on Maisonneuve, in Montreal. Already in this uninviting entrance, one could feel and observe the decadence of the place and the gloom of its “inhabitants”. There was an overflow of energy in the air and a sort of rising crisis among its occupants. Few people use this entrance to hell, apart from forced users and a few lost tourists. You enter it by hiding your face and holding your nose, while avoiding looking too much at this disturbing and disarming scene, but also out of respect for the people who live there.
I myself use this entrance when I get off the bus, and it seems to me that each time, the places always deteriorate a little more and the human beings who are there appear even more vulnerable and more risk of skidding. Misery begets misery, one might rightly or wrongly think.
Going down the escalator and smelly with its full of puddles of urine and various detritus, an individual obstructed the passage of the doors leading into the subway space. Legs apart, arms in the air, in a jacket, eyes bulging and vociferating some insanity, the poor man seemed to have come straight out of Flight over a cuckoo’s nest, this impressive film from the 1970s by Miloš Forman.
Can we ask how such a situation is possible and tolerable in 2023, in a country of abundance, with lots of advanced technologies supposedly at the service of humanity? Why are we rendered so powerless as individuals and as a society to properly care for our sick and intoxicated brothers and sisters? How did we arrive at this exponential growth of mental illnesses among our less fortunate, less privileged human colleagues and at the mercy of a society that ignores or shuns them?
To the source
As a social pediatrician, I see many children exposed to toxic stresses and life traumas that alter their brains from a young age, putting them at risk of ending up on the street too at 18 (long before, in some cases). They develop unavoidable delays, severe anxieties and accumulated failures that lead them to loss of control, extreme behaviors and even suicide – successful or not -, and this, in a state of great demotivation and loss of motivation. hope.
We have lost count of the number of rights violated by these children, knowing full well that acting early and preventively with them would turn the tide and repair the accumulated damage before it is too late. We just need to pay attention to them as we do for our own children, with empathy and passion. We just need to help them discover their strengths and talents so that they can use them themselves to get back on track and regain their self-confidence. It would be enough to provide them with the basic tools to achieve this. This powerful boost would allow many of them to begin a trajectory of success and achievement.
Eight-year-old Carl was on his third suicide attempt when we saw him in the clinic. From the first look, you could feel the deep emotions that inhabited him. His body itself bore obvious traces of it. All of his senses were on high alert, as if he was facing great imminent danger. He was only a shadow of himself, according to his father recently returned to his life. His life story, made up of multiple bereavements and frequent and chronic trauma, was painful to hear. In response to all our questions, he kept repeating the word anger, anger, anger…
Surprisingly, he remained present with us, eager to tell everything and participate in the exchange, even if we were meeting for the first time. It must be said that one of his close friends had encouraged him to meet us and that we had, therefore, a certain level of confidence at the start. We left with a promise not to take action without calling us, a commitment to make music with our team (starting at the end of our meeting) and a small smile to have found a buyer. The boost had just begun.