Canadian woman refused U.S. entry because of depression [View all]

[HereSince1628]

Sadly this is the face of the US toward COMMON mental illness at the border. Assuming Canada has similar rates of depression as found in the US, about 15% of Canadians crossing the border could be barred on this basis.

I suspect it's a consequence of the general stigmatizing of the mentally ill pushed by "the monsters among us" narrative typified by comments of VP of the NRA Wayne LaPierre.

Giving this story a home here so it will be easier for people to find later...
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/canadian-woman-refused-u-s-entry-because-of-depression-1.2444960


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Ellen Richardson says she was told by U.S. customs officials at Pearson International Airport on Monday that because she had been hospitalized for clinical depression in June 2012, she could not enter the U.S.

As a result, she missed her flight to New York City and a Caribbean cruise, for which she had paid $6,000.

"I was in shock. I was completely in shock," Richardson said Friday on CBC's Metro Morning. "I had no idea how that was relevant to my seeking entry into the U.S. for a holiday."

Richardson is also an author who published a book, Hope for the Heavy Heart, in 2008 about her struggles with depression.

On a website promoting the book, Richardson describes how she became paralyzed from the waist down after jumping off the Bloor viaduct in a failed suicide attempt in 2001. In the book, Richardson says it was one of three occasions when she tried to take her own life.

Richardson told CBC News that border guards referenced her 2012 hospitalization, and not her book, in denying her entry into the U.S.

At the time, Richardson was told she could only enter the U.S. if a doctor — not her own doctor, but one from a short list of others whom she had never met — signed a document vouching for her. She would also have to pay a fee of $500.

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