Mental Health Champions: Why & How Dr. Patricia Celan, Dr. Universe, Is Helping To Champion Mental Wellness
An Interview With Eden Gold
I make time to enjoy music. Sometimes the best source of a cathartic release is a good song, whether that song needs to help me release grief, anger, joy, or something else. It’s necessary to step back from a tough time and find a way to shake it off!
As a part of our series about Mental Health Champions helping to promote mental wellness, I had the pleasure to interview Dr. Patricia Celan.
With a lifelong passion for healing psychological pain, Dr. Celan is specializing in psychiatry to help her patients. When she won the title of Dr. Universe, she embarked on a mission to raise awareness about different psychiatric conditions and treatment options, through a compassionate and trauma-informed lens.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?
Thanks so much for inviting me to speak with you! I grew up in a small city outside of Vancouver, BC, Canada. While the community was wonderful in teaching me that I can achieve anything if I reach for the stars, unfortunately I lived a sort of double life as I was raised in an abusive childhood home. This impacted me in many ways, one of which was inspiring a curiosity about healing the mental health impacts of adversity. It became my lifelong dream to become a psychiatrist in order to help those suffering after traumatic experiences.
You are currently leading an initiative that is helping to promote mental wellness. Can you tell us a bit more specifically about what you are trying to address?
I have been active in pageantry for the past 15 years, in the Teen, Miss, and Mrs. divisions, which has been an avenue for advocacy for me. I have been primarily raising awareness about signs of abuse and resources to help survivors, including supporting them through the mental health impacts of abuse. I’ve primarily done this through the website I created, IsThatAbuse.com, through fundraising in some of my abuse-related community service, and through various speaking engagements where I discussed different elements of abuse in more detail. I spoke about domestic violence in Canada when I represented our nation at the Mrs. Universe pageant, winning the Diamond Heart Award for my speech at their annual Domestic Violence Symposium.
When I crowned my Mrs. Universe Canada successor, that looked like the end of my career in pageantry at first. But then I discovered that there is another, newer division of pageantry. I moved on from marital pageantry to doctorate pageantry, winning the Dr. Canada title, placing 2nd runner up to the Dr. World crown, and then I won the Dr. Universe title. This honour comes with the responsibility of raising awareness about my doctorate field. Since then, I have been raising awareness about various aspects of psychiatry through my Instagram account, @Dr.Universe.MD, with a lens of improving public perception and compassion around stigmatized conditions such as autism, addictions, and trauma disorders.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
I primarily started raising awareness about abuse as a way to cope with my own experiences of adversity in my past, because I could find meaning in what happened to me by helping anyone else who may be suffering through similar experiences. As you can imagine, growing up in an abusive home had a lasting negative impact on me, and it did ultimately affect my mental health in ways that required me to take some time off work to focus on healing. The experience of being on the other side of the doctor-patient relationship was very eye-opening regarding the difficulties faced by patients in a world where there is still so much stigma about mental illness, even among the doctors who ought to be helping patients non-judgmentally. I also came to realize that the psychiatry training curriculum is currently insufficiently trauma-informed in general, which provides an opening for formalized quality improvement projects in the future. In the meantime, I am doing my part to educate the public and I hope some physicians will also take note about the trauma-sensitive approach!
Many of us have ideas, dreams, and passions, but never manifest them. They don’t get up and just do it. But you did. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were actually going to step up and do it? What was that final trigger?
Honestly, I thought I was done with pageantry until I experienced some workplace bullying when I started my postgraduate psychiatry training. As much as I experienced great psychological harm from the person who bullied me and the bystanders who either did nothing or supported her, I also have all those people to thank for my decision to continue my pageantry journey. I would not have won the Mrs. Canada title, then gone on to win awards in several international pageants and succeed in doctorate pageantry, if I had been treated well in my training program. The bullying was a catalyst, much like that moment in Legally Blonde when Elle Woods has enough of being bullied in law school and she says, “I’ll show you how valuable Elle Woods can be.” Then she goes on to be a great success!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your initiative?
It’s more a general, ongoing story of connecting with my audience in touching ways. I have seen many followers commenting about their own experiences with abuse or sharing their stories relating to the different mental health challenges or treatments that I’ve covered. It warms my heart to know that they see my page as a safe space to be vulnerable, and that I am helping them by opening their eyes to new angles, information, or treatment options!
None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?
That is absolutely true. I have a fantastic pageant coach who has supported me every step of the way, and a wonderful trauma therapist who has helped me in my recovery from my adverse experiences. They have raised me up so many times when I was feeling down about either my progress in pageantry or about difficulties surrounding workplace bullying. I owe them eternal gratitude for their support. And of course, my family have been great cheerleaders for me in my journey toward success, for which I am also very grateful.
According to Mental Health America’s report, over 44 million Americans have a mental health condition. Yet there’s still a stigma about mental illness. Can you share a few reasons you think this is so?
I think the main reason for ongoing stigma is a fear of the unknown mixed with misunderstandings, like assuming someone is weak or incompetent when they’re really struggling with a treatable illness. This is why raising awareness through a compassionate lens is so important, to counter those common misunderstandings, assumptions, or unfounded fears. Media portrayals can be problematic too, sometimes featuring horror movie villains as people with mental illnesses, which fuels that stigma, or they can portray beneficial treatments as sinister in some way. There is also a long history of mistreatment and abuse of psychiatric patients that lingers in the field’s reputation, and stigmatizing old myths or attitudes have been passed down through the generations without being corrected. Essentially it all comes down to a lack of appropriate understanding.
In your experience, what should a) individuals b) society, and c) the government do to better support people suffering from mental illness?
Individuals can educate themselves when they come across someone who is different in some way. We all have Google at our fingertips and there’s really no excuse for the average individual to carry assumptions when they could learn so much that would broaden their perspective. Society and governments could also have more awareness campaigns with compassionately angled media to humanize those with mental illnesses. And funding is always such a key issue. In areas where I see lots of funding has gone to mental health, I see beautiful new facilities and this helps to diminish the stigma. Where there has been inadequate funding, I have seen horrific old facilities that appear to be crumbling, and that certainly doesn’t help the horror movie type of stigma of mental healthcare.
What are your 5 strategies you use to promote your own well-being and mental wellness?
1 . I maintain a regular fitness routine as a regular member of my local Oxygen Yoga & Fitness studio on a near-daily basis for several years now. Maintaining this is crucial for my wellbeing and mental wellness, because fitness is key for health in general and because this studio is also a source of community for me; when I’m not in the studio, my absence is noticed, and I feel welcomed like a valued part of the community when I do attend. I feel better about myself physically and socially when I have accomplished my goal of exercising for at least one hour each day.
2 . I have picked up acroyoga as a new hobby and have found it to further augment my wellbeing in various ways. One reason for that is that it is inherently a much more social version of yoga by incorporating partnered acrobatics. A base, flyer, and spotter work together in a trio and sometimes additional people join for a larger sequence or pose. This makes it a strong community, especially by frequently rotating partners, all of whom have the goal to support each other and keep each other safe while attempting to achieve fun and artistic moves together.
3 . I travel as often as I can, which may be a lot in some years and nearly not at all in other years. I find that travel is necessary to put life in perspective, as any challenges can seem very large when we stay in the place where the problems started, but all sorts of stressors shrink by contrast when we see the rest of this huge world outside of us. Plus, it’s simply fun and self-expanding to have new experiences in other cultures and see the unique beauty that the world has to offer in all sorts of places.
4 . I maintain a connection with nature. My pets are very valuable to me and I’ve spoken in another interview about pets and mental wellness. I extend this outside of my beloved cats as well. Whenever I am on hikes in forests, mountains, or ocean cliffsides, I tend to come across unexpected animals that I usually befriend fairly easily. It’s important to me to treat animals as my equals; we are all living beings who can experience both great joy and great suffering, and it fulfills me spiritually to connect with animals and nature in this way.
5 . I make time to enjoy music. Sometimes the best source of a cathartic release is a good song, whether that song needs to help me release grief, anger, joy, or something else. It’s necessary to step back from a tough time and find a way to shake it off!
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources that inspire you to be a mental health champion?
My favourite podcasts include:
- Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast with Dr. David Puder
- PsychEd: Educational Psychiatry Podcast
- Small Things Often from The Gottman Institute, which still has great content even though they seem to have stopped recording since 2022.
If you could tell other people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
We all feel better about ourselves, each other, and the world around us when we work hard to make a positive impact. Staying invested only in our own needs and desires eventually becomes empty, while helping others is a selfless way to enhance everyone’s joy. Humans are naturally prosocial, and leaning into that innate desire to make people happy and make the world a better place is one fantastic way to reach self-actualization.
How can our readers follow you online?
Readers can follow my website patriciacelan.com for updates on new content that I put out about the work I am doing in mental health!
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
About The Interviewer: Eden Gold, is a youth speaker, keynote speaker, founder of the online program Life After High School, and host of the Real Life Adulting Podcast. Being America’s rising force for positive change, Eden is a catalyst for change in shaping the future of education. With a lifelong mission of impacting the lives of 1 billion young adults, Eden serves as a practical guide, aiding young adults in honing their self-confidence, challenging societal conventions, and crafting a strategic roadmap towards the fulfilling lives they envision.
Do you need a dynamic speaker, or want to learn more about Eden’s programs? Click here: https://bit.ly/EdenGold
