With Bell’s Let’s Talk Day putting mental illness in the spotlight nationwide, a radio news reporter in Nova Scotia is adding his story to the conversation, in hopes it will help others who struggle as well.

Based in New Glasgow, N.S., Michael Petter has been the voice of radio news in Pictou County for more than six years.

But his story of living with clinical depression goes back more than a decade and a half, to when he was first diagnosed.

“There was still this underlying guilt of, ‘I’m broken, and my family has to deal with a broken person’,” Petter said.

Petter opened up to his wife about his condition when they lived on the West Coast, but when the family moved east, he said little to prospective employers.

“I sort of took the, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of approach,” he said.

“If they don’t ask me about it, I’m not going to throw it out there as something that could possibly get in the way of getting me a job.”

But over the past few years, Petter said, he’s become more comfortable talking about his depression — and he says Bell’s Let’s Talk Day helped him do that.

“When Clara Hughes was here, I made sure that I got the assignment to cover her being here,” Petter said.

“Because I have clinical depression, because I so desperately wanted to make sure that I did that assignment right.”

Cecilia McRae, a former president of the Schizophrenia Society of Nova Scotia, says there’s something to be learned when someone in the public eye talks about their own real-life challenges.

“Mental health doesn’t discriminate. It happens to everyone — and it’s ‘one in five’ so it’s everyone,” McRae said.

“It’s your doctor, it’s your dentist, it’s your lawyer, it’s whoever,” she said.

Petter said he hopes that by opening up a discussion about mental health issues on Bell Let’s Talk Day that people will be more comfortable with it everyday.

“If I can help some other person say,‘Hey, he’s not ashamed of it, I shouldn’t be ashamed of it too’ — if I can pass that on, then I’ve done something positive with this day,” he said.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Dan MacIntosh