A memorial service will be held Saturday, June 30, for a woman who died by suicide earlier this month.
A celebration of life for Shawna Mann will be held at Powell River United Church beginning at 1 pm with Reverend Maxine Pirie officiating.
In a show of courage, Mann had told her story to Peak reporter Kyle Wells as part of a series on mental illness that ran in February 2012. During his research for the series, Wells was unable to find people willing to attach their name to their stories because of the stigma attached to mental illness.
Mann, who grew up in Powell River offered to tell her story. She was diagnosed as having schizoaffective disorder with mania.
“This is so sad,” said Danita Senf of BC Schizophrenia Society, Powell River Branch, upon hearing of Mann’s death. “I was told a psychiatrist in Victoria had taken Shawna off her medication. That is the only explanation I can think of. When last I heard from her, she was travelling and having a great time. I'm not sure what led to her hospitalization.”
Mann died June 12 in St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.
Senf said she came to know Mann when she worked as a volunteer in the society’s library. “I found her to be intelligent, skilled and hardworking. She frequently came up with new ideas, and I admired her drive to do better.”
Although her illness kept her from completing her education or finding permanent employment, Mann never stopped trying, according to Senf.
She wanted to own a home and managed to buy one in Kitimat, where she lived and worked for some time before selling it and buying a house in Dominican Republic. “The email I received from her while she was there spoke of the acceptance she felt, something that had eluded her most of her life.”
Mann had told the Peak as a child she had always felt like an outsider.
Following high school, Mann went to university where she struggled, eventually dropping out in her third year with the onset of her mental illness. In her life since that time, Mann said she had been in and out of hospital, had lived on the streets and in a variety of places with the occasional job and a marriage that fell apart because of her illness. She was attempting to piece her life together again but struggled to make connections.
Suicide, which is related to mental illness in 90 per cent of incidents, according to Canadian Mental Health Association, accounts for 16 per cent of all deaths of people 24 to 44 years old.
“I was proud to call Shawna Mann my friend,” said Senf. “Despite rejection and ridicule she stayed true to who she felt she was and expressed few regrets.”
Mann was embraced by the United Church in Kitimat and Powell River, added Senf, “where I believe she found peace with God. Ultimately, that’s all that matters.”
The last work that Mann did for the schizophrenia society was a book review on My Schizophrenic Life by Sandra Yuen MacKay which she submitted on February 14.
Our Schizophrenic Lives, A Review of the Autobiography, “My Schizophrenic
Life” by Sandra Yuen MacKay
By Shawna Mann
Even though we both started and ended up with the same diagnosis (from paranoid schizophrenia to schizoaffective disorder) our paths could not have been more different. The ending, a recovery from mental illness, has not happened for me hardly at all.
I am now just accepting that life will never truly be “normal.” I will live with mental illness for the time I have on this earth, and take my medications and accept the side-effects and limited results. I can’t even finish a university degree.
When I was younger, employers were more forgiving and gave me a job. Now it is difficult to find a volunteer job, even without actually disclosing I have a mental illness (is it that obvious?).
Sandra is an example of the miracle that I strive for. My social worker said that someday I may be able to recognize the signs and symptoms, and learn to cope. This is much easier said than done, when you are whimpering in a corner with fear and sheer terror because you feel your life is in terrible jeopardy, imagined or not.
I have stabilized with my current medications, which are not dissimilar to Sandra’s, but in my late afternoons and early evenings I am typically a real mess.
This book by Sandra Yuen MacKay has been my salvation. It is like therapy. I am reading and I am sometimes writing. Even though I doubt Sandra would ever open a dialogue with me, I already feel that she has.
At the end of the book, I was left with a feeling of hope, despite the book’s closing talk of things like “consumers.” I don’t feel like I am consuming anything but pills and food.
I want to share this book with my family. I am going to buy the copy that was lent to me, so that I can share it with others.
