Numbers

Rogers Arena is where the Vancouver Canucks hockey team play. It was also the arena featured in the 2010 Winter Olympics (where Canada won gold, thanks to Sid the Kid!).

That arena holds 19,000 fans.

Knowing that people with a mental illness generally earn less money and would be less likely to be in attendance at a professional hockey game, the following is a little skewed. But let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that the population at the hockey game is representative of the population in the city.

At the hockey game, there will be 4,237 people with an invisible mental illness.

1,425 will have a personality disorder.

1,425 will have an anxiety disorder.

912 will have major depression.

190 will be bipolar.

190 will have schizophrenia.

95 will have an eating disorder.

About every fifth person in line for a beer will have a mental illness (In this post I’ve excluded alcoholism and drug addiction. That would make the numbers skyrocket).

In each row of twenty seats, four people with have a mental illness.

And on the ice, about five players will have a mental illness.

You won’t be able to tell who they are.

 

This was made all too clear by Rick Rypien’s death from mental illness in 2011. The former Canuck had battled depression for nearly a decade.

Nobody could tell how much he was suffering. No fan would ever guess that he was mentally ill.

Mental illness is just too well hidden.