MONTREAL—Depression forced Giller Prize-nominated novelist Samuel Archibald to take a leave last fall from his job as a professor at Université du Québec à Montréal. The refusal of the school’s insurance provider to approve his disability claim last November pushed him deeper into his dark hole.But it was only in early February as Archibald was facing financial ruin that his doctor informed him that the company, Desjardins, had based its decision to deny his claim on Facebook and Instagram posts that showed him exercising, taking care of his children and generally looking like the happy guy he longed to be.“They said, ‘You’re active, you’re in shape, you don’t look sick,’” said Archibald, whose 2011 book Arvida was a finalist for the 2015 Giller Prize after being translated into English. “It was the moment that I became angry.”Last week Archibald went public with his ordeal — one in which his emergence from a mental health fog for a few media appearances and an outgoing social media façade were taken as signs of his deception.With the publication of an opinion piece in Montreal’s La Presse, a reckoning has resulted in Quebec. Archibald said he has been flooded with messages from people who have taken a medical leave from work only to be challenged by their health insurers.The Collège des médecins du Québec, which represents the province’s doctors, called on the insurance industry to trust the diagnoses of front-line physicians rather than seeking the expertise of their own roster of doctors paid to review and pick apart clients’ cases.The Quebec wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees called on the province to create an independent review board to assess disability claims.“We regularly see cases like that of Samuel Archibald … The evaluation of mental health files is very complex and this complexity serves too often ...
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