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Owen even got some of the Victoria HarbourCats to participate in the Pushing For Awareness campaign. (Submitted by Lindsay Gee)
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With only six more days to go a Langford family is pushing their cause a little harder — literally — in hopes of reaching a goal they set 44 days ago. Lindsay Gee and her 10-year-old son, Owen, committed to do 50 pushups for 50 days to raise awareness for childhood mental illness. Now, with the deadline looming they’ve come close but still need a bit more support. The Pushing For Awareness Campaign has raised just over $3,700 with the goal of $5,000 in sight. “The cool thing about Owen is he has said he will continue to do pushups everyday until we get to $5,000 and I love him so much but I don’t
want to do them anymore,” says Gee with a laugh. When Owen was in was in Grade 2 he started having panic attacks. Over the next few years the panic attacks got worse, eventually turning into a weekly occurrence and then multiple times a week lasting two to three hours every time. When Owen finally got the chance to see a psychiatrist he was diagnosed him with panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety and depression. Gee says what’s been surprising is some of the criticism she’s gotten since the campaign began. “There’s comments and I get some emails wondering if I’m doing this for the right reasons, if I’m doing this to get attention or am I doing
this to promote my business which is not at all what I’m doing,” says Gee. “It’s really just my son who wanted to do this.” Gee says throughout the campaign she’s learned a ton of vital information that can be scary which makes it hard to talk about. Recalling a moment, a few weeks ago, when she was talking about the campaign and raising awareness for childhood mental health, Owen interjected to correct her. “He said ‘we’re raising awareness for mental illness and that’s different’,” says Gee. “I was like ‘you’re totally right.’ I, as his mom, had trouble saying my child has a mental illness because that’s scary and there’s no way around it.” Continued on A9
“I can quit anytime I want.” Dr. Richard Stanwick, the chief medical officer for Island Health, says if that refrain sounds familiar, it should. It’s one of the many rationalizations that smokers once trotted out as they diminished the impact of smoking in their lives. These days it’s being used by young people who have taken to vaping in near epidemic proportions. “They have changed the composition of the liquid cartridges so that it mimics the fast hit (of nicotine) that you used to get from a cigarette,” Stanwick says. “Combine that with the fact that they’ve created candy and fruit flavours and made the devices far more cool looking so that they look a lot like a USB stick, decorated with all kinds of designs, and they are obviously targeting young people.” Continued on A5
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