T1D Documentary Proposal

I wonder if anybody would be interested in collaborating with me on a documentary that illustrates the challenges that families with children living with chronic and mental illnesses face hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Before my son was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, I had no awareness of the lifestyle that the immune disorder demanded - or the challenges that doing simple things like attending school or having the flu would prove to be.

Similarly, I see how the life of my daughter (who is now thriving as a teen with a mental illness) is made more difficult by an archaic education system that still does not recognize depression and anxiety - and the roller coaster ride of finding the right medication - as reasons for missing school. So many kids are dealing with their health problems on top of the usual angst associated with school - fitting in socially, getting good grades, poor teachers - and that is not even considering the junk they may have to deal with at home - which could include dysfunction and abuse.

It is important to educate people about the daily lives of kids who have so much to think about. Otherwise, without anybody else sharing the burden that children carry, they can only survive and not thrive. I was inspired by the March 9th, 2014 CBC article (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/psychiatric-community-care-belgian-town-sets-gold-standard-1.2557698)  that discussed Geel, a Flemish town in Belgium where the mentally ill have been fostered by families, sometimes multi-generations, as a social fact of life for 700 years. The Toronto Star has also had a series of articles devoted to the triumphs and troubles faced by the mentally ill that I have found informative and poignant. We make it very difficult for people living with chronic and mental illnesses to work part-time while receiving subsidized income - we cut them off at the legs by clawing back earnings despite the hardships endured while working. There is no dignity in this punitive and inflexible system. We can do better as Canadians - we know through cross-cultural analyses that other nations have more success with their societal approach to illness.