Centennial College enables its students to make a real difference in the world, and our Addiction and Mental Health Worker program gives students the experience and tools needed to help vulnerable members of society thrive. For one student in the program, Cleoni Crawford, there’s a more personal connection to the career. Cleoni has a unique kind of lived experience, having previously been hospitalized for bipolar disorder, and in taking the program, she’s helping to support others experiencing mental health crises. And she’s been staying busy while doing it, between being an avid YouTuber, podcaster, author, speaker and more (it’s all available on her website). Beyond it all, though, she wants to help people who’ve gone through experiences like hers.
History and Mental Health
"2019 is when I first came to Centennial College," Cleoni says, "because I was sick and tired of my life. I had escaped, I had been homeless, and I had been incarcerated." In one of her many YouTube videos, Cleoni would later discuss the events that would lead to a gap in that Centennial College education.
"I have lived experience with bipolar disorder," she explains in the video. "Just one year ago I was locked up in CAMH [The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health] due to my mental health, which had taken a turn for the worse." She was released in January 2022 and would return to Centennial College to complete her program.
"Just one year later from being in the hospital," she adds in the video, "locked up, hopeless, away from my son, away from my family and friends, missing Christmas, missing New Year’s, and just being in a state of hopelessness, just one year later, my mess has now become a message." And she’s spreading that message through the program’s practical co-op placement, which she’s taking at Taibu Community Health Centre, an organization established to serve the black community.
"At Taibu, you can actually find your own doc, and you can get black doctors, nurses and a whole lot of other practitioners," she explains.
"Today I had the opportunity to use my lived experience to help a client that was in crisis with their mental health," she’d say in her video. "I was shadowing, but I was able to give my perspective as coming from someone who’s been in the hospital, I’m helping people who look like me, but who are also living the same battles and journeys that I have gone through."
Giving back
"I understand what it is to have an abundant life. And the way I get an abundant life is five things: My relationship with Jesus, my music, the word of God, giving, and prayer," Cleoni says about herself. More importantly, she wants to spread that abundance.
"I want to bring healing to the sick, the broken-hearted, the confused, the homeless, the sad, the ones that don't feel gorgeous, the ones that have been lied to and the ones who are currently in prison."
And through her college education, she’s working to make that possible. "Today, Centennial College is giving me back my identity," she says.
As Cleoni prepares to Centennial after another interruption on her studies, she’s set on continuing her journey towards program completion and accreditation.
"I’ll be returning to school on February 13," she says, because, "I am resilient."
By: Anthony Geremia