City of Gardens

Health/Wellness
Andrea has taken up the slack where the system and society has failed in the past. She soon realized that when it came to servicing our youth with mental illness that in many cases it was only focussed on the adults.
Even things like shelters, addictiction councelling is near non-existant and this especially true for a young woman. There is not one single shelter designed for young women in Victoria, BC, Canada. The boys have limited space at the Salvation Army but does not come close to servicing approximately 300 to 400 youth and emerging adults. The youngest homeless person that was reported to be living on the streets alone was a 12 year old boy.

This is not acceptable! Many are fleeing violence. Some were living with mental, sexual and mental abuse and left the home for it was safer to live on the streets than sleep in their own bed.

Almost half the population living on our streets are mentally ill. If we use those numbers, that means that there are nearly 200 young people not being treated for their condition. Without help, their health, dignity and hope will quickly disappear. Two or three decades later, they will also disappear from the face of the earth. No one will notice or care as another victim of society dies on the streets.

All this pain, suffering and destitution can all be avoided if we switched gears and talked to our youth. If our child is dispaying some odd behaviours, we shrug it off as growing pains, a phase or being just a bad kid. Parents quicky dissacociate themselves from their children and dismiss the possibility that there may be a medical condition affecting their behaviour.

Parents think of mental illness as a weakness and that this could not happen to their child. The stone-age generation are scared of the truth about mental illness that they base their beliefs on misconceptions, assumptions and plain ignorance. They don’t want to hear anything about it and refuse educate themselve of all possibilities including mental illness.

The stone-age generation affects most of our adult population, so common sense is not applicable. This is where Bipolar Babe comes in. Andrea Paquette is is a youth mental health educator and a survivor. She knows the accedemics of mental illness as well as her visiting fire and brimstone on a few occasions herself in her young life. She knows the facts and how to deal with them. Emotionally, she is driven by compassion, understanding and love.

Like many others with mental illness she too has some incredible and shocking stories to tell. Unfortunateliy in many cases, there was nobody there to tell. She quickly found out who were her real friends were and how this news would affect her career. Neither one were sympathetic or understanding.

After a few bouts of fireworks, Andrea realized the social resentment of mental illness, especially in the formative years of the onset of the illness in the person’s youth.

Andrea started the project Bipolar Babe in which she provides awareness of the facts about mental illness in hopes of eliminating stigma. Her website is dedicated to our youth, but not restricted to the general public.

Andrea provides a blog full of inspiration and hope, educational info and a rad forum where you can talk candidlly about your experiences without being judged, discriminated against or ignored. The movie is really well done. We know you will like the site, it is really upbeat and fun. We waste too much time on saddness, Andress will help guide you in your journey. You can ask her questions, blow off steam or even talk about how your day went.

In this modern world of ignorance, Andrea is giving you the opprotunity to break that silence and be heard. Please forgive me for my raw style, this is who I am, but Andrea is highly intelligent and more politically correct. In other words, she is a real sweetheart.

On the behalf of Andrea and the Bipolar Babe Team, we invite you to join our forum and check out the site. We will listen to you and most importantly, we will understand!