Meet Me (Michael)
There's a decent chance you know who I am. I've hosted more TV than just about anyone in Canada. There's also a very good chance if you know me that you've had mixed feelings about me. Yeah, I know how it works. "Landsberg is aggressive and pushy and cocky and I'm not sure if I like him or hate him."
I'm fine with that. In fact, I courted that. Now, sadly I have lost the ability to engender anger. This happened when I started openly talking about mental health. My mental health. My mental illness.
I've battled anxiety since I was a kid, and depression for the past two decades. I never spoke about it on TV until, by chance I asked a guest about his battles with depression. That changed my life. That was October 2009. Since then I can say without hesitation not a single day has gone by where I haven't spoken about mental health.
In 2016 my daughter and I launched a charity called Sick Not Weak. Our existence centers on one goal: to show people that mental illnesses like depression and anxiety are sicknesses, not weaknesses. We believe that the perception of weakness is at the heart of the stigma. The most powerful and impactful words I can say are simply these: "My name is Michael Landsberg. I battle depression every day. I take medication every day. I have been devastated by depression. I understand why people take their own lives. But, make no mistake- I am not ashamed or embarrassed and I sure am not weak."
The coronavirus pandemic has created a parallel pandemic of mental illness. Mental illness in Canada is worse than it's ever been and there is no vaccine on the horizon to change it. That's why we created Isolation Nation: a digital program dedicated to mitigating the dangerous effects of social isolation on mental health.
Today we offer Isolation Nation 2.0. A chance for me to directly- on the most personal level possible- impact the lives of people you care about.
