When it comes to discussing his mental health journey and his encounters with the health care system, 33-year-old John Broadhurst describes himself as an “open book”.
In fact, it is his experiences with the health care system that have driven his decision to commit to leaving a legacy gift to the Health Sciences Centre Foundation.
“HSC is at the forefront of mental health care in Manitoba. I would even hazard to say within Canada,” says Broadhurst. “I can’t think of a better organization to support with a planned gift. I know that it will make a difference.”
Broadhurst understands now that his struggles go back to his early childhood in Calgary. By the time he was 18, despite much therapy and the unwavering love and support of his parents John and Bev, “things started to sort of bubble over” as he describes it. With intense anxiety becoming overwhelming, Broadhurst made his first visit to a hospital psychiatric ward in Calgary—the feeling of being admitted, he says, was one of “utter despair, like complete hopelessness”.
His experience in the psychiatric ward was not a positive one, but he was stabilized enough to start attending the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. After some time, his anxiety intensified, and he again needed to go to a psychiatric ward for emergency care. Again, the experience was not positive or helpful in an enduring way, but it was in Vancouver where Broadhurst finally turned a corner and started turning “hopelessness into hope.”
After becoming fully stabilized, Broadhurst moved to Winnipeg and fell in love with the city.
He works teaching English online to children in Korea and Taiwan. He wakes up at 4:00 in the morning so he can be ready to teach when his students are finished with their regular school day and their extracurricular activities. Broadhurst is passionate about language in general and is fluent in Mandarin and Korean. He taught himself Korean during the COVID-19 pandemic and likes to show off his skills to his students (and will occasionally mispronounce a word on purpose to elicit a few laughs).
Aside from the language, he is also a fan of Korean culture, especially K-pop music and, by his own description, “trashy” Korean soap operas.
Since arriving in Winnipeg in 2017, Broadhurst had not required emergency psychiatric care until early July 2022, when he was treated at the Crisis Response Centre (CRC) on the HSC campus and at the Crisis Stabilization Unit. He describes the care as exemplary: “The CRC is a model of what all emergency care should be like in mental health. The people are outstanding and even the physical environment is healing.”
The team at CRC worked with Broadhurst, and with the guidance of a physiatrist, they discovered a new, more accurate diagnosis: Level 1 autism.
“The CRC team at HSC got the ball rolling on my proper diagnosis. With this diagnosis and the tools they have provided me, I have never been happier. I have been given the gift of being able to live in my own skin,” he says.
Broadhurst’s autism diagnosis was confirmed in late 2022 and since that time he has been working to learn new strategies that allow him to live well as an autistic person.
“Going through the struggle of finding the proper diagnosis gave me a lot of perspective about life, and about our health care system. As Manitobans, we are lucky to have HSC, and we are lucky to have the Foundation backing HSC. I couldn’t be more grateful for the care I received.”
Since 2023, Broadhurst has been volunteering every week for HSC’s Volunteer Services, where he helps patients find their way through the hospital.
“I love to give back to the place that gave me my life back,” he adds.
Indeed, John Broadhurst is an open book, but he is also a man with an open heart and a spirit of generosity. He hopes that by sharing his story through the Bannatyne Legacy Circle, he can inspire others to give.
