Asante said Not Today

People who look like me

Asante Haughton agreed to volunteer for CAMH's Not suicide. Not today. campaign for one reason and one reason only.

“I am doing this so I can be a voice for people who look like me.”

Born in Jamaica and raised in Toronto by a single mother, whatever the normal arc of his childhood would have been was derailed by the emergence of his mother’s psychosis when he was a teenager.

“That’s a transformative time for most people, when you are supposed to be experimenting and figuring out who you are,” says Asante. “I never really got to do that because I was either worried about my mom or taking care of my mom.”

A gifted student, Asante initially found school to be a safe place from his troubles at home. But as his mother became increasingly ill, his personality changed.

“I went from being a very sociable kid to being very dark and morbid for a few years.”

“I never physically attempted suicide, but I was putting myself in more compromising situations. I used to pride myself on being a good kid who stayed out of trouble, but as my condition worsened and the suffering accumulated over time, I stopped living up to my own values. I was almost trying to see how far I could go.”

He entered the most dangerous phase in his young life, when he began to get specific about visualizing how he was going to end his life. He wrote three suicide notes.

Then one day, he had a sudden moment of clarity that changed the direction of his young life. 

“I was feeling really despondent that day, but then just watching these kids play and be so full of life and the joy that they embodied just by existing reminded me of myself when I was that age. It showed me how far away I was from that and how much I wanted to have that joy again. That was the moment I decided that ending my life was not an option.”

Now a sought-after public speaker and human rights activist, a lot of Asante’s focus these days is on looking at mental health through the prism of racism and helping people who look like him find their way.

“When I think about Not today, I think about myself growing up young and Black and in poverty and all the challenges I had navigating society as a Black person. I was such an ambitious young person and there were closed doors everywhere I went because of racism,” says Asante. “I was able to eventually break through, despite any assumptions folks were making about me based on how I presented physically to the world as a 6 foot 4 pretty dark Black man. But what about all those other young Black men and women who look like me who don’t feel safe talking about their mental health? I want to help create a space where people can talk about their authentic experiences as Black people, and to know that there is a whole community out there to support them.”