Advocating Indigenous mental health – Nature Mental Health

Please can you tell us a bit about your path and how you became interested in medicine and psychiatry?

As a First Nations young person growing up in a small town in Northwestern Ontario, I never imagined, or was encouraged to imagine, a career in medicine. Instead, I devoted much of my youth to competitive track and field. The training and work involved in being an elite athlete taught me a lot about discipline, determination and setting goals. At university, I did a degree in kinesiology and a Masters degree in biomechanics — on the surface, not related to psychiatry at all! However, my secondary education helped me to gain confidence to realize I could do anything. I was curious when a research colleague mentioned that she was applying to medical school and so I asked her about it. She replied, “Oh, I don’t think medical school is for you — I don’t think you’d be good at it.” In hindsight, I owe her thanks. That moment motivated me to prove her wrong, and ultimately, it’s what let me to medical school. I always say to First Nations youth that revenge is not the best motivational message but, with humor, I would say I had to combat the stereotypes of First Nations people and the low expectations that non-Indigenous people had of us. In medical school, I initially thought I would specialize in physiatry, neurology or even neurosurgery, but after completing a placement with a psychiatrist I realized that I loved hearing people’s stories. It seemed to ‘fit’ with how I wanted to show up as a physician. It also aligned with the oral history tradition of First Nations people, exchanging knowledge verbally. I wanted to see people who were probably having some of the worst days of their lives and try to offer them something that would help them. I also wanted to be in a specialty that I knew would change dramatically over the course of my career in terms of diagnostic testing, available medications and therapies broadly.

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