By Graeme McNaughton/Active Senior’s Digest
When she was admitted into the hospital in 2000, Margaret Trudeau was a shell of her former self.
The ex-wife of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, she had been tabloid fodder for years, dancing the night away at New York’s famous Studio 54 and rumoured trysts with rock stars and actors.
But now, following the death of Pierre, as well as only two years removed from the death of Michel, her youngest son with him, in a skiing accident in British Columbia, Trudeau said she needed to finally deal with an issue that had been in the background of her life for decades.
“I’d reached the end, the proverbial rock bottom, following the deaths in my family with my son and two years later with my ex-husband, Pierre. It totally traumatized my brain. After Pierre’s death, I was no longer able to function and I was put into hospital. I was a very sick woman,” Trudeau says.
“It was that hospital stay that turned everything around for me because I got the serious help that I needed, but I also had the deep understanding that I wanted to live, that I didn’t want to die. I was close to death when I got into the hospital.”
Trudeau had been battling mental illness – more specifically, bipolar disorder – for much of her adult life. Now, she is helping others fight that battle as well, advocating for mental health awareness and reducing its stigma.
“It was triggered for me the first time with the birth of a baby, and that’s very, very common for young women to experience their first depression after the birth of their baby. Often, they hide it.
The truth is if you don’t nip it in the bud, if you don’t treat the first depression that you have, you will relapse into a depression throughout your life,” she says.
Since that initial hospital stay, Trudeau has written a book about her experiences with mental illness, Changing My Mind, and is hosting talks across the country to discuss the effects of mental health both for her and others.
Trudeau says she wants to help others because of how much her life changed after she herself got the help that she needed.
“Physically, I was just skin and bones. I had lost all of my body weight. My hair had gone all grey. I had become an old lady when I went into the hospital without any hope, and any feeling that I had a future in front of me. I only saw a horrible past filled with pain. So I learned to live with my grief, that was the first thing that I had to do to come to terms with the death of my son and Pierre and accept it and rejoice in the place that they have now in my life,” she says.
“Now I work, I have purpose, I have grandchildren who are the light of my life. I don’t know one grandmother, or grandfather for that matter, that doesn’t hold their first grandchild in their arms and vow to make the world a better place because there’s just so much in a newborn that has come from one of your children.”
Mental health among seniors
Mental health is growing issue among all facets of the population, including seniors. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, those above the age of 65 will make up nearly one fifth of the country’s population in the next five years, meaning more services will need to be made available in the coming years and decades.
With the exception of age-advanced mental illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s, delirium and dementia, the senior population has the same rate of mental health diagnoses than the rest of the country.
However, rates of diagnoses are increased in certain living circumstances, especially among seniors. In a 2002 report for the National Advisory Council on Aging, researchers found that between 15 and 25 per cent of nursing home residents suffer from major depression, with another 25 per cent suffering from minor depression. This is well above the national average for depression diagnoses, with between four and five per cent of the general population having been diagnosed with one form or another of depression.
The study adds that it is difficult at times to diagnose mental health issues in seniors for a variety of reasons, including reluctance by a person to disclose any problems they are having and other cognitive issues, such as dementia.
As well, a 1997 study found that the rate of seniors committing suicide in Canada was nearly double the national average.
Seniors are encouraged to discuss their thoughts and feelings with their doctor, and to remember that feeling sad and withdrawn is not a part of aging.
