Thirty Years Ago Today

Thirty years ago my mom died. It’s mind-boggling to think about that. It’s mind-boggling to think that I’ve now lived far more of my life WITHOUT her then I have with her.

As some reading this will already know, my mom struggled with schizophrenia for most of her life. I suspect that she actually had early onset schizophrenia. And by “early onset,” I mean most likely in her teens. Am I sure? Nope, far from it. One of the tricks with mental illness is that it’s very hard to know when it starts. To put it another way, there’s a chance — probably a pretty good chance — that the mom I knew was never NOT struggling with schizophrenia. All of my memories of her are tinted with that disease, especially because she died so young (she was only 48 years old).

Since I don’t want to get maudlin about this (you don’t wanna read that and I sure as hell don’t want to write it), I thought I’d take a different angle on it this time. When my mom died, she was on welfare, struggling with intense poverty. There was no life insurance policy. No inheritance. No nothing. If an uncle of mine hadn’t stepped in, she would have had a pauper’s funeral¹, Canadian-style. Since she didn’t have any assets, there wasn’t much “stuff” to inherit. I did, however, manage to take some things that were important to me. Some photos and other keepsakes. And her notes. She wrote a LOT of notes.

I think, but I’m not sure, that these notes were part of her therapy. I’ve never actually managed to sit down and read them all, mainly because they are actually very difficult to read. Part of that difficulty is emotional; these are written, after all, by someone I loved, someone I miss to this day, and someone who had a very unfair life. It’s MORE than that, though. They are really “stream of consciousness²”-type writing, very difficult to understand. These are also not a diary, at least not a diary that most people would write. Like a diary, my mom’s writings were not censored. Unlike a diary, she clearly showed at least some of them to her therapist, though I’m not sure exactly how they were used in her therapy.

What’s really hard about reading them, though, is that they are all over the place. Contradictory, nonsensical, rambly, very emotional, and so on. She wrote in cursive, and even her cursive would change depending on the day and her “mood.”

It’s actually difficult to try and describe these to you in words, so I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to SHOW you some of them.

Some caveats first.

1. The main reason I’ve never shared them before is that they were very personal to my mom. And to me. Sharing them felt like an intrusion… or maybe even a violation of her privacy.
   
   What’s changed with that? Two things:
   
   The first is TIME; simply put, a lot of time has passed. I don’t feel as protective about her writing and her privacy as I once did.
   The second thing is that schizophrenia and mental illness are still difficult to discuss openly in our society. Some would call this “stigma,” but I’m on the fence with that term. I’ve seen some push-back against it and I’ve seen push-back against that push-back. At any rate, SHOWING some of my mom’s writing might be useful to some. I hope so, anyway.
   
   
2. The other issue was that my mom, in much of her writing, named people. Her parents primarily. Me. Her therapist. And a few others here and there. I was concerned about privacy issues, especially by posting anything like this online. However, time has passed and most of the people that my mom addresses are now dead (my grandparents foremost amongst them). I think (he says cautiously) that I’m on firmer ground³ then I might have been once upon a time.
   
   
3. The last major issue was trying to put my mom’s writing in some type of chronological order. Simply put, it’s impossible. I have a giant box of her writing as well as a large binder full of even more of her writing. With only a few exceptions, these are a jumble and it’s hard to know when something was written. That’s made harder by both her tone and the context of her writing. That’s a big part of why they are so hard to read; there is no page one. There is no beginning. There’s no “right place” to start. I don’t even know when she started writing these in the first place.
   
   That said, there are a few helpful occurrences. First, she did date some things. Second, she occasionally organized them, even page numbering some groups of them, I presume to share with her therapist. That helps. And, of course, I only wanted to share some fragments of her writing, not try and share (let alone read) everything. Whew, boy. There’s no way that would be tenable.
   

Mixed with her writing are photographs of my mom. I took some time over the past few days to scan in some old photos of her that I have. Most of these are childhood photos. The sad reality is that after my parents split, when I was around 5 years old, all photos basically stopped. There are a couple of exceptions, but my mom’s deteriorating health (both mental and physical) combined with poverty meant that there just wasn’t “space” for photos. I don’t have photos of her as I grew up. I rarely have photos of myself from that era, too. So it goes.

The main reason to post photos of my mom, though, is to help document her life, to contrast the photos with her later writings, and to pose a question to everyone reading this. Can you tell when her schizophrenia started? Can you tell when the disease was really sinking its claws in? Was she 20? 14? 11? 7? 5?

What’s my point? Simply this. There’s no way to look at a photo of her and say, “yup, THERE it is. That’s schizophrenia right there. Got it!”

Our society is better (not great, but better) at dealing with physical illnesses, at least when compared to mental illnesses. When someone is having an “episode” in public, it can be scary. My mom’s episodes would certainly scare the hell out of me. Even now, all of these years later, I can still get uncomfortable thinking of them.

And yes, certainly some episodes can be physically violent. That’s terrifying, too. However, I find it important to remember that the perpetrator is also the victim, ravaged by a disease that we can’t see. Is it any wonder why people struggling with mental illness might turn to self-medicating to help? Especially if they are poor? Especially if they are victimized twice over; once by the disease itself and then again by the lack of societal support?

The late actor James Garner was in a 1986 film titled PROMISE. The film deals with two brothers. Bob (played by Garner) is the eldest and he winds up inheriting his mother’s estate after her death. He also inherits custody of his younger brother D.J. (played by James Woods). D.J. is, you guessed it, struggling with schizophrenia.

In his 2012 book THE GARNER FILES: A MEMOIR, co-written with Jon Winokur, Garner wrote the following:

Jimmy [Woods] researched the part of D.J. by spending time at a halfway house in Santa Monica called Step Up on Second… People in their late teens or early twenties — usually men, but it happens to women, too — can suddenly develop schizophrenia. Their odd behavior is often misinterpreted and they go undiagnosed. They self-medicate with alcohol and illegal drugs, and many wind up homeless, strung out, muttering to themselves…

I had no idea what schizophrenics have to endure. I learned that they inhabit a terrifying world of hallucinations and inner voices that seem completely real. Even when they’re well, they have the burden of knowing they can lose control in an instant. I’ve never forgotten what one of them said: “When I was awake, I seemed alone, even when I was with people. My life was narrated by thoughts that weren’t mine.”

… One day at Step Up on Second, Jimmy Woods met “Sam,” who gave a beautiful, eloquent description of what it’s like to be schizophrenic, Richard Friedenberg put it in the script:

• D.J.: Do you want to know what it’s like, Bobby? It’s like, all the electric wires in the house are plugged into my brain. And every one has a different noise, so I can’t think. Some of the wires have voices in them and they tell me things like what to do and that people are watching me. I know there really aren’t any voices, but I feel that there are, and that I should listen to them or something will happen…

  I can remember what I was like before. I was a class officer, I had friends. I was going to be an aeronautical engineer… I’ve never had a job. I’ve never owned a car. I’ve never lived alone. I’ve never made love to a woman. And I never will. That’s what it’s like. You should know. That’s why I’m a Hindu. Because maybe it’s true: Maybe people are born again. And if there is a God, maybe he’ll give me another chance. I believe that, because this can’t be all I get.

Accepting the Emmy for Best Teleplay, Richard Friedenberg said he hoped the film would help schizophrenics by calling attention to their plight. I’m sorry to say that twenty-five years later, schizophrenia is the worst mental health problem facing the nation. Asylums have been closed, and government spending on mental health has been cut to the bone. There are new medications for schizophrenia, but though more expensive, they’re not much more effective than the old ones. And there is still no cure.

Garner and Winokur wrote that in 2012. I’m writing this in the early fall of 2024. Has anything changed? From where I sit, no. In fact, in June 2022 the World Health Organization (WHO) published WORLD MENTAL HEALTH REPORT: TRANSFORMING MENTAL HEALTH FOR ALL. In it, they note the following:

Schizophrenia, which occurs in approximately 1 in 200 adults, is a primary concern: in its acute states it is the most impairing of all health conditions. People with schizophrenia or other severe mental health conditions die on average 10 to 20 years earlier than the general population, often of preventable physical diseases… The most impairing state across all health conditions… is acute schizophrenia, which is given a health state weight of 0.78. Put simply, this means an individual experiencing acute schizophrenia is expected to have only one fifth of the health and functioning of a fully healthy person.

They then added that “On average, countries dedicate less than 2% of their health care budgets to mental health.” What an unbelievable policy failure that is.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. My mom had dreams. My mom had hopes for the future. She didn’t want to be sick. And she didn’t want to be dead at the age of 48.

In all of her writings, the most haunting line is this one:

“I’m afraid I’m going to die alone.” But that’s exactly what happened.

Thirty years later, I still feel her death is a tragedy. I never got to know her as an adult. She never got to know me as an adult, either. She never got to meet my wife. She never got to meet my dogs or my cats. She never got to see me draw.

And I never got to see the things that she could do, either.

THAT is the awful part of her disease. It took her away. Yes, she had good days and bad days. It’s hard for me to remember or to know which good day was tied to medication and which bad day wasn’t. I suspect it was a mix, but I’ll never know. And as she got into her 40s, her physical health declined. That was mainly due to years of not taking care of herself. That wasn’t a conscious choice. I view it as an example of the spoon theory. She simply didn’t have the spoons for proper hygiene, exercise, nutrition, and so on. Sadly and inevitably, that caught up with her.

Since so much of her decline was tied to my own teenage years, I don’t have memories of my mom being healthy. I wish I did, but I don’t. I’m left, as always, with questions and “what ifs,” but no answers.

I wish that there had been better supports for her, in all senses of the word. And I dearly wish that other people who struggle with mental illness had better support, too. That my mom’s death, as sad as it was and is, might have led to change. But her death didn’t change anything. In fact, if she had lived, she would have been victimized by the so-called “Common Sense Revolution” that the Mike Harris government enacted in Ontario in 1995. These social service cuts eviscerated welfare income and other public health supports, as Scott Sørli so aptly demonstrated⁴. I do honestly feel that if my mom had somehow lived to experience those cuts, they would have killed her.

She was a deeply caring human being who was given a brutally unfair disease through no fault of her own. I am proud to have known her. And I miss her.

I’ll leave it with that. Please do look at her photos. Can you tell when her schizophrenia started?

Photos of my Mom

These are photos travelling back in time, from when my mom was pregnant with me to back when she was a baby herself.

Samples of my Mom’s Writing

A quick note: I’m not going to explain these or try and clarify them. I’m far happier to let them sit “as is.” But to clarify one point: I use the pen name “Von Allan” for all of my art-related work. My real name is Eric. So when you see that name in her writing, you know she’s referring to me.

Foot Notes

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_funeral

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_of_consciousness

3 http://cactuslaw.ca/service/defamation-laws-in-canada/

4 PDF at http://euclid.psych.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/images/commonsenserevolution6.pdf Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20190324160431/http://euclid.psych.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/images/commonsenserevolution6.pdf

Talk Ottawa Interview

One of my very first long form interviews and one that I thought was lost! This was done way back in 2008 with James Hendricks, then host of Talk Ottawa here in Ottawa, Ontario. This interview meant a lot to me since I was basically just starting out and he and the producers of the show were very open and welcoming.

James and I chat about comics and graphic novels, the challenges of being an indy artist, and the changing face of technology and how that applies to comics. We also do a deep dive into my very first graphic novel, titled “the road to god knows…”, that deals with parental mental illness. In the case of that comic, I drew on a lot of my own experiences growing up with my mom; she was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was very young. We talk about that, too.

Oh! My art that was presented in the original video was pretty rough, so I decided to update it with art revisions I did some years ago.

The player should work below. If not, or if you'd prefer to watch on Youtube, please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS8ADTEwBcI

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

Panel Discussion from 2018 Low-Beer Memorial Lecture

On September 27, 2018, I was part of a panel discussion during the 2018 Low-Beer Memorial Lecture that followed a screening of the documentary film "I Am Still Your Child." The film and panel discussion were presented by AMI Quebec (Action on Mental Illness) and was held at Concordia University's Oscar Peterson Concert Hall in Montreal. It was a pretty amazing evening!

The panel discussion was moderated by the always awesome Loreen Pindera from CBC Montreal and featured Megan Durnford (the film's writer and director), Rebecca Heinisch, Marie Leavens, and myself. AMI Quebec's Dr. Ella Amir added closing comments. It took a little while, but I'm very pleased to announce that the audio recording of the panel discussion from the panel discussion is now available! Yeah!

The MP3 can be played directly in your browser at http://vonallan.com/Audio/Low-Beer-Memorial-Lecture-September-27-2018.mp3. You can also directly download the MP3 by right clicking on the link and choosing "save as" (or whatever is appropriate in your browser).

It can also be played in the audio player below:

Panel Discussion from the 2018 Low-Beer Memorial Lecture:

Oh, and some additional photos from the events can be found right here.

CBC Montreal interview with Von Allan on Homerun

Just prior to the screening of the documentary film I AM STILL YOUR CHILD in Montreal as part of the 2018 Low-Beer Memorial Lecture (photos from the event are here), I scampered over to CBC Montreal to do an interview with Sue Smith on the drive home show "Homerun." And thanks to the CBC's Loreen Pindera, I now have an audio copy of the interview I can share!

You can listen to the interview by clicking here or by clicking play on the old timey audio player below.

Low-Beer Memorial Lecture Photos

As I noted in my last post, I was invited to participate in AMI Quebec's 2018 Low-Beer Memorial Lecture that featured I AM STILL YOUR CHILD, the documentary I'm involved in. The screening and subsequent panel discussion was held at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall on Concordia University's Loyola campus in Montreal. It was a terrific evening. Possibly the best part for me was just being able to reconnect with so many of the awesome people who were involved in the film (writer/director Megan Durnford, producer Katarina Soukup, designer Sara Morley, as well as film participants Jessy Bokser, Marie Leavins, and Rebecca Heinisch). And to meet new people, including our fantastic moderator Loreen Pindera of the CBC and AMI Quebec's Dr. Ella Amir.

What follows are various photos of the event. These are courtesy of myself, I AM STILL YOUR CHILD's twitter page, and AMI Quebec's Facebook page. The panel (from left to right) featured Rebecca, Marie, Loreen, Megan, and me.

2018 Edith and John Hans Low-Beer Memorial Lecture

I'm very pleased to announce that the documentary film I AM STILL YOUR CHILD will be presented at the 2018 Edith and John Hans Low-Beer Memorial Lecture in Montreal on September 27th 2018. The film is presented by AMI-Quebec Action on Mental Illness. Even better, there will be a panel discussion on the film featuring myself, Jessy Bokser, Sarah Leavens, Rebecca Heinisch, and Megan Durnford, the film's writer and director. It should be a pretty special evening and I'm really looking forward to it!

Update! Charlie Fidelman did a lovely piece on the film and some background on the screening in the Montreal Gazette on September 25, 2018. 

Here are the specific details:

Thursday, September 27 at 7pm
Oscar Peterson Concert Hall
Concordia University
7141 Sherbrooke West
Free admission
Presentation in English

The poster is below. And a PDF of the poster can be found at http://vonallan.com/press/I-AM-STILL-YOUR-CHILD-lecture-in-Montreal.pdf

The film's trailer is below:

Glashan Symposium on Student Wellbeing and Mental Health

On April 20th, 2018, Glashan Public School hosted a symposium on mental health. I was invited by principal Jim Taylor to be one of the guest speakers at the event. It was a little daunting for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm actually a former Glashan student and, since my time at the school was not the happiest, stepping back inside was going to be weird. I literally hadn't been inside the school since I left it on my final day of grade 8. As it turns out, it was a "good" weird, but weird all the same.

Second, I was going to be talking a lot about my mom's struggle with mental illness. And since my mom died quite young, it was going to be emotional. On top of it, this is intertwined with my own memories if being a young teen while I went to Glashan.

It was, I'm very pleased to say, a very positive experience. All of the staff as well as the students helped me feel very welcome. I led two sessions of grade 8 students in a discussion about all of this. Probably about 30 minutes each, maybe a bit longer, plus a Q&A after. A number of kids approached me after each session to chat a bit more, too, which I take as a very good sign.

And if anyone wants to get a sense of what it all looked like, Glashan's Instagram page has a number of photos from the event. They're right here.

To prepare for each session, I made quite a few notes. I'm including them below (because, why not?) but the interesting thing is that I wound up not referring to them during the actual sessions. I felt comfortable enough and prepared enough not to need them. That doesn't always happen and I wasn't sure it was going to happen this time, but it did and I think (well, hope) that it means that it was a more natural conversation then a dry presentation.

Anyway! Here are my notes. A little stream of consciousness, but remember that these were here to help guide me if I needed them.

Starting with the Ending

I’m going to do something weird and start with the ending. So! My mom was diagnosed with mental illness when I was quite young. Maybe when I was around 8, but it may have even been earlier than that.

So, the bad news and the sad news was that my mom died quite young. 48, when I was 20 years old. It wasn’t her fault and it wasn’tfair. Life’s like that sometimes, but it can be very hard to place.I’ll get into the specifics in just a sec.

My mom was never able to recover or lead a normal life. I don’t really want to say “beat” or “defeat.” It’s not that simple. But she could never find the right mix of medication to help her lead the life that she wanted to lead.And as she got older, she got physically sicker, too. It was a double-whammy; she was struggling with schizophrenia and everything else and then her physical health declined, too. Partially because she was getting older and partially because it was hard for her to look after herself.

This can be an issue with mental illness; it’s hard, very hard, to exercise and eat right when getting out of bed is almost impossible. That made everything worse. She didn’t have a lot of “reserves.”

This is important: she didn’t make a mistake and get mental illness. She didn’t make a bad decision and get mental illness. It just happened.

But, at the same time, it wasn’t like it was always bad. The danger in talking about situations like this is that it tends to make them seem worse then in some ways they were. Compressed.

My mom wasn’t sick every single day. She’d have good days and bad days. Good weeks and bad weeks. And sometimes even good months and bad months. We did have fun together. And there were good times mixed in with the bad.

Beginning

I was born in Arnprior.

I’m an only child.

My mom and dad split up when I was around five years old.

My dad moved to Ottawa shortly after that for work. His health wasn’t great, either, but it was all on the physical side. A lot of surgeries and a lot of pain. And he was ex-military, so he and I had very different personalities.

My mom and I moved to Ottawa when I was eight.

I went to Mutchmor and then Glashan and eventually Glebe high school.

Through it all we were pretty poor. A lot of poverty. There was never much money and it meant everything was a constant compromise. My mom went to food banks. Declared bankruptcy. We were on welfare. It was pretty tough.

And slowly, over time, I was becoming aware, probably around the time I was eight or nine, that my mom wasn't like other moms; but I didn't really understand why. She was my mom. And I think, looking back, she probably tried to hide some of what she was going through, too. Until she couldn’t anymore.

My Growing Awareness

Only later did I realize that what she was going through had names. Mental illness. Schizophrenia. Anxiety disorder. Nervous breakdown.

These descriptions are not well-defined. And, to make it even harder, science is still figuring it out. So, “schizophrenia.” What does that mean? Practically, it means that my mom couldn’t deal with things very well. She’d hear voices. Her sense of time (hours, days, weeks) would be very distorted (she’d say something happened yesterday that happened last month). Her thinking could be very confused. It was very hard to know if what she was saying was true or just what she thought was true.

What about “anxiety disorder?” Well, sometimes she’d get very, very worried and have a very difficult time calming down. She would imagine the worst (often involving me), focus on it, and be unable to imagine anything positive. This could go on for days.

What about a “nervous breakdown?” Well, generally it means that someone just can’t cope anymore. But what does that mean practically? In my mom’s case, everything became so overwhelming she’d be almost paralyzed. In these cases, she’d check herself into the hospital and get help. I can’t imagine the courage that must have taken. And how scary that must have been. She wouldn’t have known how long she’d be there. She wouldn’t know what would happen while she was there or when she got out.

And, to make it worse, she was also on medication and that would have an effect on her, too. Sometimes she’d be very, very dopey. Sleepy, but more than that. Other times the medication would work great and she’d be herself. It was just very unpredictable.

And, of course, it meant that my childhood and teenage years were pretty different from a “normal” one (whatever that might mean).

And there wasn’t much support. My grandparents and aunts and uncles didn’t understand and didn’t help much. My dad was there, to a point, but he didn’t understand, either. We’re not close, but to his credit he did help, especially when my mom was hospitalized. I could stay with him for a few weeks and that gave me some stability. There also wasn’t much government support (aside from welfare) and there wasn’t much in the way of education.

I also felt ashamed. It was hard to be poor. Hard to be embarrassed about my mom and my home. I rarely invited anyone over. And it was hard to fit in. It was hard to afford nice clothes, good school supplies, and all of that stuff.

It also meant I was pretty shy. Shy, quiet, poor, fat. So there was bullying and whatnot, too.

And sometimes it was hard to go to school. It felt kinda surreal compared to what was going on at home. Managing as a student was really hard sometimes. You need to have homework done and you need to be in school and all of that stuff. I’m not saying that school isn’t important, but there were times I’d get home from school and my mom hadn’t gotten out of bed all day. Or there were a few times on a school night that she passed out and I was picking her up off the floor. And then, of course, there were the times she couldn’t function at all and wound up being hospitalized. Or times where she just couldn’t function but wasn’t hospitalized. That meant she couldn’t be a mom. And there were times where she wasn’t even herself. Like a stranger had taken over.

Compared to that, things like homework didn’t seem that important.

Confusion and Stress

In my case, there was also a lot of confusion. No one really ever told me anything. And I didn’t know what questions to ask or even who to talk to.

There weren’t any supports at the time. Or at least none that I was aware of. It’s hard to know what to ask for when you don’t have the right information. Or who to talk to. Or who to ask. And remember this was pre-internet. I didn’t know who to turn to and there wasn’t anyone I could really ask.

No one really explained it to me; my mom tried, but it was very hard to understand what she was going through. It was pretty scary and it left me feeling very insecure and shy. This also meant that I didn’t talk to anyone about it, so no one knew what was going on.

Other parents didn’t know because I didn’t tell my friends. Teachers didn’t know, mainly because there weren’t any teachers I felt really comfortable about talking to. And I didn’t talk with guidance councillors because I never really trusted them.

And I was scared; what if I talked to a parent or teacher about this stuff and then they called social services? What if I was taken away from my mom? I loved my mom and I didn’t want to be separated from her.

Epilogue

But...the weird thing about this is that in some ways it got easier as time went on. What do I mean?

Well, at first I didn’t know what was going on and I was scared. A lot. And unhappy. A lot. And stressed. A lot. There was tension all the time, mainly because my mom’s struggle with mental illness meant that, emotionally, she was really up and down.

But slowly, I got better at taking care of myself.

The big thing that helped me was escaping. Just being able to read books or comics and kinda lose myself in them for awhile. Hang out with friends, playing games or watching movies or whatever. And exercise helped, too. I started doing a lot of biking.

Basically, getting away from it sometimes and learning to give myself a break.

I don’t mean running away. And I don’t mean pretending that everything was okay (though I did some of that). What I mean is just finding some joy, some happiness, and taking a break from the crap that was going on around me. I realized that I had every right to be happy.

Also, my mom did start talking about it, on her good days, sometimes. She was seeing a psychiatrist and was more open about what was happening with her. And she had a lot of hope.

And I got more experienced. The first time she was hospitalized was very scary. But it got less scary as it happened a few more times. I started to have a better sense of what to expect.

I realized, and this was hard, that I couldn’t fix this for her. I could support her as best I could. I could love her and be there for her as best I could be, but I couldn’t fix it.

And I started to understand that the mental illness is just that: an illness. It wasn’t my mom’s fault.

And, you know, my mom was a pretty amazing person. She was very kind, very loving, and very courageous. She liked to read. She taught me a lot about life, about being thoughtful and compassionate. I didn’t doubt, through it all, that she loved me. And she was a teacher. Despite all the ups and downs, I consider myself very lucky to have met her.

And you know, I started to realize that mental illness isn’t that scary. Yes, there are scary moments. Sure. And yes, it can be weird. And yes, it can be really frustrating.

Again, mental illness is an illness, just like any other illness. Science and research are getting better and better all the time. If someone was in my mom’s situation now, there’s now a whole range of options that weren’t there for her. So there’s a lot of hope.

A really good example is here, right now. When I was at Glashan, an event like this would not have happened. It just wouldn't have.

A lot of things are changing for the better. How we, as a society, approach mental illness. How science treats it.

It’s really amazing. We have a long way to go. There is still stigma and resource issues and all of the rest. But there's a lot of hope. And a lot to fight for.

Documentary Short - Coping Strategies

I'm one of the subjects of a documentary titled I AM STILL YOUR CHILD, dealing with parental mental illness. In conjunction with the film, a number of short videos have been released; kinda like extra features on a film. The below deals with coping strategies. In my case, my mom was dealing with schizophrenia and it led to some pretty rough experiences. Being able to escape into comics as well as sci-fi and fantasy really helped. Sarah and Jessy, two other subjects from the film, also talk about their strategies in the short.

The entire short series can be viewed on the film's official Youtube page. They add up to over 30 minutes of bonus content. While the documentary is only available for streaming inside Canada right now, the short videos should be watchable anywhere in the world.

Documentary Short - Financial Impact and Poverty

The filmmakers behind the documentary I'm involved in, I AM STILL YOUR CHILD, have released a number of short supporting videos that focus on different aspects of living with a parent struggling with mental illness. The one below deals with the financial impact of mental illness. Simply put: it ain't easy.

The entire video series can be viewed on their Youtube site and add up to over 30 minutes of bonus content. While the documentary is only available for streaming inside Canada right now, the short videos should be watchable anywhere in the world.

Ottawa Citizen front page article on Von Allan

Well, this is pretty neat! Reporter Blair Crawford along with photographer Julie Oliver from the Ottawa Citizen did a feature story on yours truly. The story explores my childhood, my mom's struggle with mental illness (specifically schizophrenia), my graphic novel the road to god knows..., and the documentary film I'm involved in titled I AM STILL YOUR CHILD.


The full article can be found online at the Ottawa Citizen's website at http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/a-child-of-schizophrenia-graphic-novelist-von-allan-on-growing-up-with-a-mentally-ill-mother


I should add that the online article also contains a short two minute video interview with me. Plus the great and mysterious Corbin makes a surprise guest appearance! I've embedded the video below:

Scans from the Ottawa Citizen are below:

And the interior page (the scan is a bit hard to read, but the full article can be found online here):

Update!

As it turns out, the Citizen's sister paper the Ottawa Sun also ran a story. This is pretty much the same thing, though there are a few minor differences. I'm not crazy about the headline, but pretty neat all the same.

Trailer for I AM STILL YOUR CHILD documentary

I've been fortunate enough to be involved in a documentary project focusing on the children of parents with mental illness (COPMI). It's a pretty amazing project and I've been thrilled to be involved. Megan Durnford, the writer and director, Katarina Soukup, the producer from Catbird Productions, Stéphanie Couillard, Alex Margineanu (cinematographer), Stéphane Barsalou (sound recorder), and the rest of the crew have brought an empathy to the film that is quite remarkable. There are still a lot of societal taboos regarding mental illness and I think this film might help challenge that.

So why did they get  in touch with me? Well, my mom was diagnosed schizophrenic when I was quite young. I actually wrote and drew a graphic novel titled the road to god knows... that is an account (albeit fictionalized) of my experiences with my mom's mental illness and my growing awareness that she was not "okay." I didn't go the full autobiographical route for a number of reasons, but one of the main one's is that my mom died before I even started the comic and I wanted some emotional distance from the work and my own life.

The documentary uses quite a bit of my art through it, but I should note that I actually re-drew a number of pages specifically for the film (I'm going to do a follow-up post specifically on this subject in the near future).

The film will be airing on CBC Montreal through the documentary series Absolutely Quebec on Saturday, September 16th. It will have a wider release shortly after that. I'll update the website as I know more.

In the meantime, the trailer linked above really captures the tone of it very well.  I think it's beautiful. For more on the film, keep an eye on the Facebook page and the official website.