Thursday, July 28, 2016
Evelyn Harford
OTTAWA - The news of Abdirahman's Abdi's death after a violent arrest hit close to home for a woman who shares two things in common with Abdi: mental illness and Somali roots.
Ayan Yusuf, 29, has lived with the symptoms of schizophrenia for the past 10 years. And she has been an outspoken mental health advocate in Ottawa’s Somali community for years.
"When I first heard the news and read the articles, I cried because it hurt, because that could have been me," she said. "A lot of people are just talking about Black Lives Matter, you know, and I think it’s a bigger issue than Black Lives Matter."
The discussion surrounding Abdi's death needs to include a larger conversation about mental health stigma more generally, Yusuf said.
Abdi was described by his family's spokesperson as having a "mental illness." His specific condition is still unknown — something that's doesn't surprise Yusuf.
"You’ll see kids with autism and stuff and their parents don’t bring them out into the community because a lot of people will start talking about them, they’ll put them down," she said. "There’s a big stigma (in the Somali community), it’s a taboo. People don’t talk about it. They don’t bring it up. They hide their condition."
Medicine or doctors are often not the first resort for someone who is mentally ill in the Somali community, she said. People will often go to religious leaders or pretend like mental health issues doesn't exist.
Yusuf said she felt the same stigma from her community and didn't get diagnosed until 2011 — about five years after her symptoms first began.