If we understand more, will we judge less?

Last week was Mental Health Awareness Week. So what you say? Well, not all that long ago a man with a mental illness was arrested in a bank in Kentville because he got upset.

Only last week the police were called several times because a mentally ill man in the Kingston area had gone off his medication. If we understood more, wouldn’t we judge less?

Five per cent of the general population suffers from depression alone and there are other mental illnesses out there. Many are influenced by social, economic and historical factors.

John Cochrane, who volunteers on the Annapolis Valley Health Board, pointed out just lately that Dr. Alexander H. Leighton died in August at 99. It was Leighton who charted the ground-breaking Stirling County Study into community mental health.

Despite his long age and productivity, Leighton was little known in this region.

Yet in 2002 Dr. Elliot Goldner, writing in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, said, the renowned Stirling County Study set a gold standard for studies in psychiatric epidemiology throughout the world.

This remarkable exploration of a community in Nova Scotia (AKA Digby County) was designed and initiated by Leighton in 1948. Now directed by his second wife Dr. Jane Murphy and her colleagues, Goldner says, the study continues after more than 50 years to produce rich insights into the mental health (and illness) of Canadians. “It remains a beacon to illuminate the human experience, set within the context of a living and evolving Canadian community.”

While teaching at Cornell, Leighton re-established childhood ties with Nova Scotia with his research program. He focused on depression and anxiety and their relationships to life circumstances and social conditions. The Stirling County Study was extended and, according to Dalhousie University, today continues to address trends and outcomes.

After retiring from Cornell, Leighton taught in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie and he received numerous awards as well as honorary degrees from Acadia and Laval Universities. I suspect he was quite a character.

From his early youth, he developed close friendships among the Bear River First Nation and the woodsmen of the back country, and he traveled the woods, lakes and rivers with them often. In 1927, at age 19, he began documenting back country canoe trips, natural phenomena and oral history.

Because of the Stirling County Study it is possible to trace historical trends regarding the prevalence of different types of mental illnesses. The eldest person in the first survey had been born in 1864 and the youngest person in the 1992 survey was born in 1974. One of the key findings is that untreated depression is associated with situations of chronic stress and is more serious in reducing both the quality and quantity of life than had previously been realized. 


Medical columnist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones says the work Leighton started fractured a myth about depression. Interestingly in his later studies he found more women under age 45 were suffering from depression due to social factors, like trying to be Super Mom.

Gifford-Jones says depression is a “debilitating, persistent and deadly disease. And it affects every strata of society. Winston Churchill called it ‘the black dog of depression’ and fought this problem for years.”

Due to Leighton’s research and better awareness, there are tools today to battle depression, but we all need to boost our awareness on the mental health front.