Mental Health Week: Concert ensures Brent Powell's legacy lives on
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
On Sunday, May 24, Seaforth First Presbyterian Church will be hosting its 10th annual Brent Powell Memorial Concert with Exeter’s Graham Bedard headlining, but for those behind the event, it’s about so much more than the music being played or the money being raised.
It was March 28, 2016 - just over a decade ago - that Brent Powell of Seaforth died by suicide at the age of 23. He was the youngest son of Carolyn and Richard Powell. His visitation was held at Seaforth First Presbyterian Church and memorial donations to the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Huron-Perth branch were welcomed by his family.
Carolyn, speaking with The Citizen on Monday, said the world was in a somewhat different place regarding mental health awareness and compassion 10 years ago, so she saw her son struggle in real time to find the help he needed. Doctors, counsellors and others tended to turn the emphasis on care back around on Brent, in many ways leaving it up to him to find the proper avenue of care, all while he was struggling with his mental health.
Navigating such an environment would be challenging and frustrating at the best of times, Carolyn said, let alone when someone is in the midst of a mental health crisis. As a result, her son often found himself at dead ends, unsure of where to turn next, all while being painfully aware that he needed help.
One of the more frustrating aspects of watching that process unfold, Carolyn said, was that mental health wasn’t being treated the way physical health is. For someone fighting cancer or working through heart disease, for example, there are avenues of care and an outpouring of community support, compared to a mental health challenge, at the time, which left treatment in the hands of the patient and came with the stigma of embarrassment and shame.
Carolyn is happy to have seen that change in the decade since she lost her son - whether it be the medical approach to mental health care or the public’s level of understanding - but acknowledges that there is still plenty of work left to be done.
Locally in Seaforth, Carolyn said she felt the urgency of the conversation rise. She lost her son in the early months of 2016 and then, in June of 2017, Tanner Steffler - the namesake of the Tanner Steffler Foundation - lost his battle with addiction. Losing two of the community’s young men in such short order made people take notice.
Since losing her son, Carolyn has been advocating the slogan with which we have become familiar in recent years that mental health is health. She says that while it was too late to save Brent, perhaps raising awareness and starting the conversation around mental health could save others down the road.
So, when people from her church approached Carolyn and asked how they could help, furthering this conversation was what leapt to mind.
Dale Ann McKichan said that she has known Carolyn since the 1990s through the church and Sunday school and that when the congregation lost Brent, it felt very much like a family losing one of its members.
McKichan said that the church had often held concerts in both the spring and the fall and members of the congregation wondered about honouring Brent with one of them. They of course asked Carolyn for her thoughts. She was all for it, but when she spoke to her other three children, they were a bit more hesitant due to the stigma associated with mental health and addiction, but eventually found a way to support the concert.
And so the first-ever Brent Powell Memorial Concert was held at the church. It has continued to grow in the years since, always including a guest speaker and displays on mental health and related resources throughout Huron and Perth Counties. McKichan also says that the annual spring show, since its inception, has raised close to $10,000 for youth mental health resources across the two counties, but that’s hardly the point. Starting the conversation around mental health and keeping it going has been the church’s goal and one with which Carolyn very much agrees.
Carolyn says she has seen the attitude towards mental health change in the last 10 years and if the concert and Brent’s legacy has played a small role in that, she’s proud.
This year’s concert, scheduled for Sunday, May 24 at 7 p.m. at the church, will feature Exeter’s Graham Bedard. Carolyn says he’s an extraordinary musician to be performing for the group, but he’s also been candid about his own struggles with addiction and alcoholism and open to discussing it with anyone who perhaps needs help themselves.
There are no tickets for the concert, but there will be a free-will offering at the door on the night of the show with all proceeds going to benefit youth mental health resources in the area.