Photo by Matt Barnes
By Nick Krewen
Since being diagnosed with a bipolar disorder in 2007, Burnaby B.C., born singer and songwriter Matthew Good has been very vocally active about the state of mental health in Canada, although it can be applied to the bigger global picture. Given the world we are all currently living in Matthew Good’s album Moving Walls is even more relevant. Here, Good talks with Nick Krewen about the album’s meaning, his mental health and an important message for all of us.
Good, who is about to embark on a cross-Canada tour in support of his 15th album, Moving Walls, speaks about the imagery behind his new collection of songs, the state of mental health in Canada and the importance of therapy in his life in this recent Q&A..
Nick Krewen: You called the album Moving Walls…
Matthew Good: That’s been the last two-and-a-half years of my life. It seemed fitting at the time and it just kind of stuck.
NK: I guess everybody’s life has moving walls at one point or another. You think something is going one way and it ends up going another.
MG: You just kind of hit the nail on the head, because it is far more metaphor than it is the reality of being in different places. Going from the divorce (from Good’s second wife) to moving in with my parents – my Dad has dementia and then terminal cancer – and then helping looking after him, I’m living in a spare bedroom all this time and I demoed the record in their fucking garage. They live in a small townhouse and I’m recording six fucking feet away from the garbage and recycling. After 25 years, it’s not exactly the environment you’d think you’d be making music in.
NK: Is that album title a statement? That no matter what, you’ll always find walls in front of you?
MG: No. Things move. Everything that is around you, beside you, behind you, it all moves, you know? It’s kind of like a house of mirrors, but you can move the mirror. Things change directions but you’re always reflected in it.
NK: You’ve always been an advocate for mental health, and in terms of speaking out about it for so long, what kind of benefit has that given you in terms of helping people, just in terms of feedback?
MG: Well, I get a lot of feedback from people. A lot of people reach out to me on social media about issues and stuff. The thing you’re supposed to say about it in these situations is that it’s great, because people are talking to you. But it’s disheartening as fuck – I’m not going to lie.
You see things like (the annual national Bell Media mental health campaign) “Let’s Talk Day” and shit – that’s not going to change how our national health care system is dealing with mental health right now: It’s a disaster.
I get direct messages on Instagram from people in small towns across Canada who can’t get proper help: there isn’t a fucking psychiatrist to be seen. They’re seen by a counselor – and to me, that’s outrageous. It is outrageous to walk into an emergency room, in state of stage four of mania or hypomania, and sit there for six hours while some dude with a broken leg gets to go in ahead of you. The leg is going to get set, but you’re just kind of ignored.
And it even gets worse when you start talking about the cycle of addiction and of substance abuse that has combined mental illness and how society and the health care profession perceives that.
Don’t get me wrong, there are many wonderful people that work in health care that understand that reality, but there is a general perception by a lot of people that just treat us like, ‘Oh my fucking God – not again!’ Or, whatever.
And it’s a huge problem, man. Talking about it is a huge thing, but we gotta do something about it, too. We just can’t talk and feel good about the fact that we’re talking about it. People in this country are entitled to health care and that includes mental health care.”
NK: What would you recommend?
MG: What I’d recommend is there has to be a reconstitution of committed facilities, either within hospitals or in connection with hospitals.
I’m not talking about the whole institutionalization of people with mental illnesses: there needs to be a committed system that’s in place, a committed system that is physical, that is in place where people can actually get help and respite is available. And one in which it’s not one of those situations where the system is so overloaded that you’re in for 72 hours and then you’re out the door. Because, if you have heart surgery, that’s not the case, right? It’s not the case if you have cancer. But if you’re dealing with someone who, given a mental situation, could very much the next day, go and fucking kill themselves, because they don’t see a way out of it, whereas if you could have helped them for a week or two – and they could find a way out – that’s a whole different thing.
So, I think that that infrastructure needs to be vastly more prevalent throughout the country, especially in smaller communities.
NK: Do you think it’s a case of governments not understanding the issue?
MG: Hell, yeah! Listen man, stigma just doesn’t exist on the street. It’s endemic. It’s in the system itself. The whole system. I’ll never forget when they closed Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam (Ed. Note The Riverview Hospital was a mental health facility operated by BC Mental Health & Addiction Services that was closed in Coquitlam in July 2012). They were taking schizophrenics downtown to Lower East Side hotels and saying, “here’s a cheque, here’s your meds and here’s the key to your room.”
(Former patients) go downstairs; some slumlord gives them 50 cents on the dollar for their cheques, they forget their medications in their room, they go outside and there’s an entire apparatus waiting to prey on them. The So-Cred government did that and my best friend was one of the people that was involved in relocation. They basically completely emptied the place and didn’t try to reconstitute it into something else. No one’s done or tried it since, and it was a fucking travesty. Now they’re wondering why people on the Lower East Side have mental health issues. And that’s not including the ones who go there because that seems to be the collection area for people with mental health issues. Poverty and mental health are very much linked in a lot of ways.
NK: Sounds like hospitals and mental health hospitals should be split between two different entities.
MG: There’s differentiations between things, too. You have to have dedicated psychiatrists and dedicated psychologists, too, depending on what you’re dealing with. Psychiatrists are doctors. You need to speak to people – psychologists as well – but people need to be there that are dedicated and that goes all the way down to psych nurses and the rest of it.
And one of the people would say that what I’ve told you is a fantasy land. Oh, C’mon, really? Should we really endeavour to put that kind of money into it? But it seems to me that either it’s a growing problem or it’s just that a lot of teenagers who are just stoned because they’re listening to a lot of The Smiths when they’re depressed.
NK: How important is a therapist in this whole process?
MG: For me, I have a psychiatrist. I have a neuro-chemical mental illness. I was born with it; it deals with neurotransmitters at the nucleic level, so medication is required.
My mental illness is saying like if you had diabetes and you went to your endocrinologist and they said,’ Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s flu. Just go do hot yoga.” {Laughs). “Everything will be fine.’ It just doesn’t fucking work that way. The same with schizophrenics – you don’t just go, “Just meditate dude – you’ve got it under control.”
I have a fantastic psychiatrist. But it’s massively important. If you’re someone who struggles with any kind of traumatic stress; with depression, with anxiety, with any kind of thing – an outlet is massively important. An impartial outlet, even more so.
Because anyone in the family and the rest of it – there will be compassion and sympathy, but there won’t be complete impartiality. You need someone that can not only listen to you but be an educated guide with regards to the realities of what it is that you’re dealing with and facing – and in a long-term sense – not a short-term sense. Short terms answers are easy; long-term enaction of diagnosis is more relevant than anything. You can’t just go in for four sessions and have a person say, “well, this, this and this.” There has to be kind of a progress to it where you have the ability to go back to that touchstone and report in and go, “is this discourse of action working?”
NK: How do you know you’ve found the right one for you?
MG: Well, that’s difficult in this day and age. When it comes to psychologists, for the most part, they’re not covered by fucking medical. So, and trying to see a psychiatrist in this country, you might as well try to book a four-year vacation to the fucking moon before you’re going to get in to see someone, especially if you’re in a small town.
They’re almost like an endangered species there. And even in those cases, you might be dealing with some poor son of a bitch whose workload is so overwhelming that he’s ready to jump off a fucking bridge.
But it’s important. Therein lies the problem – it’s a conundrum.
