DONATIONS

We encourage donations to the Benjamin Woo Memorial Fund at the Vancouver Foundation. 

American friends and family can donate directly to the Lieber Institute for Brain Development at libd.org or to the Henry Amador Center on Anosognosia at hacenter.org, in memory of Benjamin Woo.

WRITE YOUR MLA

Benjamin’s untimely and preventable death shows we badly need to change how we treat people with serious mental illness and anosognosia in British Columbia. We encourage you to reach out to your MLA or Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, requesting comprehensive wraparound support to enable community treatment and reform to the “deemed consent provision” of the Mental Health/Representative Agreement Act to ensure the right to have a trusted representative, family member, or friend help with care and treatment decisions when needed.

LOVE

Benjamin wrote that love was “the stimulating force of goodness.” However, he often felt stigmatized by the way others viewed his illness.

In a draft memoir that Benjamin had begun writing with his mother, he wrote: “[few] psychiatrist[s] I have met [have] gathered more than an ounce of who I am, as far as I can see, and more often than not projected their own depictions upon me. So if you want to know my story, you’ll have to get it from the family.” 

In his honour, we hope you take the time to take in “more than an ounce” of someone who is overlooked or ignored, perhaps someone who, like Benjamin, struggles with a severe mental illness.