Conference with Luc Vigneault

During Interdisciplinary week, I attended a conference about mental health and recovery presented by Luc Vigneault. He himself was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 17 and later suffered with depression and addiction as well. He works as a "pair-aidant", which means he helps people with mental illness, without being a psychologist or psychiatrist. He is also the first mental health patient in Canada to teach a university psychiatry class. He talked about his experience with mental illness and how he was able to persevere despite all the odds against him. He also shared ideas on how to help someone recover from an intense mental illness, mentioning how medication isn't always necessary and the most important thing is believing in someone and helping them find a life plan. His presentation was followed by a questions period that was also very interesting. I found this conference really useful since I might want to be a psychologist and learning about how to help patients is very useful! It is also just helpful information everyone should know about because anyone close to you could also be suffering from a mental illness.