nursingforsocialjustice

In the last few weeks I find myself feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness about the situation of people living with mental health issues, poverty and homelessness in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. I think this feeling of sadness was amplified by being in the DTES on social assistance cheque issue day yesterday. This is also amplified by listening to CBC reports about how the vacancy rate of rental suits in Vancouver is less than 0.5% and rental prices are ever increasing as those who own rental suits want to capitalize on their investments. It seems like it’s a losing battle to try and help people get into stable housing because it’s not really that stable in terms of financial burden. I also feel like there are so many predators in the DTES waiting for vulnerable people to get their money on cheque day so they can sell them drugs and often those people who are pushing the drugs are also vulnerable people themselves who also have their own mental health and substance use issues and likely have their own long histories of trauma. And that is what I get caught up on. The people who are capitalizing on the situation of the most vulnerable are also vulnerable and being preyed on as well.

It is strange to me that there are so many resources in the Vancouver DTES  and it’s probably made much more than a dent in helping the vulnerable people that live down there but how do these issues get resolved as a society if people seemingly do not care. I think that it is wonderful that there are still so many people who are very passionate about helping and changing the lives of the people who are most stigmatized, those who are most ignored and forgotten. But I feel like there must be a better way to organize services so that we are all working together instead of seemingly working in isolation, each doing our own thing and not communicating to the other.

I also think about how much some of this may be coming from my hormonal brain in pregnancy. perhaps these feelings would not be so strong if I was not pregnant right now. Perhaps these feelings would not be so strong if the stories of those children who the social service system failed were not so prevalent on the CBC news right now. I think about the trauma and how that can be resolved and that become defeating. This battle seems unending and clearly stacked against their favour…or is it?

As I reflect on it more I realize that some of this may also be because of my frame of reference. I had never spent a great deal of time in the DTES prior to becoming an outreach nurse. Am I just in shock from seeing things that I had never seen before? Was I one of the people that participated in the invisibility of the marginalized people Vancouver because I had my blinders on? Was I naive in my understanding how how much a particular mental health program I worked in could help the client because I only had a cursory understand and no appreciation of the life that they came from because they walked through the doors and had a skewed understanding of where they were returning to? Is this feeling of defeat something that we all feel until we acclimatize and then once again become inspired?

There was a program that I worked for in the past that I came to with a certain frame of reference. When I started I would sit in the morning meeting and the and of the day meeting and think to myself, why are we even having these conversations? Aren’t people allowed to give up hope? But the team had so much hope for people and in many cases the hope that the team had was powerful in instilling hope in the clients and in turn this hope turned into action on the part of the client to become more involved in their health. There are still people who I see from this program when I am driving in the DTES or in the West End and I think about how amazing it is that that person is still alive because the hard work of the care team, in partnership with the individual were able to not just prolong the life of the person but improve their quality of life. I think about this every time I feel defeated (which seems more and more in the last couple weeks).

Peace,

Michelle D.