Don’t Aim for the Ditch: How My Friend Jason Turned His Darkest Years Into a Lifeline for Thousands

Quick question, folks: how many times this week did you say “I’m fine”?

And how many times did you actually mean it?

Here’s the thing about “fine.” It’s the most overworked word in the English language, and it’s usually doing a second job — covering for something we don’t have the words, the time, or the safe place to say out loud. We say it in the elevator. We say it in the Monday meeting. We say it to the people who love us most, right up until the moment we can’t.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, because my friend Jason Balgopal just received the Queen Elizabeth II Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship — the province’s second-highest honour, sitting one rung below the Order of Ontario, presented by Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor. It’s the kind of medal that goes to people who quietly change their corner of the world. And Jason’s corner? It’s the one most of us are too polite, too busy, or too scared to talk about.

(If you’re struggling right now, skip ahead — the resources are at the bottom, and there’s no wrong time to use them. I’ll wait.)

The lawyer who looked completely fine

On paper, Jason had it handled. He’s a trial lawyer — Osgoode Hall, called to the Bar in 1999, the kind of career where he’s argued cases in every level of court in Ontario, including murder trials. That is not a résumé we associate with someone who’s quietly falling apart.

But that’s exactly the point. “High-functioning” and “struggling” are not opposites. They’re roommates. Jason will tell you himself that perfectionism in an imperfect world was one of the things that started his slide, and by the early 2000s that slide had a name: depression. In 2007, it took him to the edge — an attempt on his own life. As he puts it, it was terrible for him, and terrible for the family who loved him and didn’t know how to help.

With doctors, a therapist, medication, a whole stack of books, and a wife and family who refused to let go, he clawed his way back to what he calls a “better headspace” by 2014. Seven years. Let that sit for a second. Recovery isn’t a weekend workshop.

The piece that was missing (and this one’s for the workplace)

Here’s the part that I think every manager, HR lead, and team leader needs to hear.

Jason had good doctors — and he trusted them. He had a family who wanted to help — desperately. But something was still missing, and it’s the thing our workplaces are quietly terrible at providing: peers. People who had actually walked the mile in his shoes. His doctors hadn’t lived it. His family, bless them, were burning out — because loving someone through a hard season without knowing how is exhausting. “We want to help,” they’d say, “but we don’t know how, and you’re wearing us out. What do we do?”

If you’ve ever managed a team, you’ve felt a version of this. Someone’s struggling, you can tell, and you’re standing there with all the good intentions in the world and none of the right words. That gap — between wanting to help and knowing how — is where a lot of good people fall through. And it’s expensive: in a post-COVID world, Jason describes the need as a “tsunami,” with waitlists so long that “immediate help” can feel like a punchline.

So in 2015, Jason did the bravest, most practical thing you can do with your own pain: he built the thing he’d needed himself.

“If you build it, they will come”

It started as one peer group, once a month, chairs in a circle at a local community centre. Very Field of Dreams, minus the cornfield.

Eleven years later, Beaches Mental Wellness (find it at the beautifully named MentalWellness.help) runs a group every single night of the week — sometimes two. Around 400 meetings a year, helping roughly 2,500 people. And the model is disarmingly simple:

Peer support groups — about an hour, virtual or in person. You show up. You can share, or you can just be there. As Jason says, “simply being there is enough.” The feedback isn’t a lecture on what you “should” do — nobody’s a professional, nobody’s telling you how to live. It’s empathy, and it’s “here’s what worked for me when I was in your shoes.”
Peer-plus groups — same warmth, but led by a licensed therapist.
Free professional therapy — and this is the jaw-dropper. A regular member can be in front of a licensed therapist within a week, for up to five free sessions, then continue with that same therapist at half rate. If you know what therapy costs, you know that’s not a discount — that’s a rescue.

You can join from anywhere on Zoom. You can keep your camera off. You can attend in your pyjamas (Jason’s words — and honestly, a mental-health service that lets you show up in pyjamas understands something important about being human).

Where the philanthropy comes in

None of this is free by accident. It runs on donations — generous individuals, Rotary clubs (shout-out to Scarborough and Toronto East), a supporting church on the Danforth, and, for the first time this year, federal funding. And it runs on facilitators who are peers themselves — people who came through the groups, healed a little, and stayed to give back. They’re from all over the world — Sri Lanka, multiple languages, one turning 80 next year. Jason says he walks out of every group he runs feeling like he’s “on cloud nine,” because he knows he made a difference.

That, right there, is the whole secret of philanthropy — and, not coincidentally, of good mental health: giving back is part of getting better.