At 22, Jean-François Lacasse opened his private law firm on the South Shore of Quebec City with an immense desire in his gut to make a difference. “I saw myself defending causes like Erin Brockovich!” he says. “In my head, that was what law was all about.” But the reality of the profession hit him hard. From one trial to the next, he quickly became disillusioned.

Making a difference, differently

Noting in his practice that many people had a poor grasp of budgetary basics, he changed direction. “Starting from scratch after losing eight years of my life wasn’t easy,” he admits. The perception of stepping down from a pedestal and the judgment of others weighed heavily on him. After training, he became a financial advisor. “I had managed to translate my desire to make a difference into this career,” he explains. Once again, his boat capsized. “With the economic crisis of 2008, I could no longer guide my clients. I had had enough of entrepreneurship. I was exhausted from struggling in the void to move forward.”

Jean-François then flirted with depression for a while, a feeling of not being in the right place. He then took the plunge into employment, in a solid institution. "At Desjardins, they saw my potential, I was finally recognized. They breathed air on my wings and I climbed the ladder." A position opened up in business development. His clients? Entrepreneurs! "I understood their language, I liked listening to their stories of success and challenges. Their financial planner had also been there." The flame was rekindled. For more than ten years, Jean-François charged forward.

…straight into the wall

In the meantime, his personal life was faltering: the unhealed grief over his father, a marital relationship that was on the rocks, an in-law family in crisis. "The JF who wants to help everyone so that they love him was waving his banner and playing the savior, but I was forgetting myself," he admits. "I was repressing everything. A badly placed plate in the dishwasher was driving me crazy. The slightest thing would irritate me, I would lose my temper."

Jean-François got drunk on work and ran away from his emotions. “I trapped myself in performance. And no one stopped me.” An appointment with his doctor confirmed that he was in major depression. The following month, he was isolated, and in tatters. The image of the perfect go-getter had just been torn apart, and with it a large part of his confidence. Everything had to be rebuilt.

A major turning point

At the end of that summer, an event marked the fate of the vapes: his reunion with his daughter born 25 years earlier, Alexandra, on the quay of the same name in Old Montreal. "I had been trying to meet her for years, I had made contact with her mother who had raised her alone. It was like being in a movie. The beginning of my process of reconciliation with myself began at that moment."

Feeling calm, he broke off his relationship that was hanging by a thread and went back to work. "Everyone thought I looked good." While he was spending his first Christmas vacation alone, eureka! "At the spa, I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote: Forced landing = Depression . I brainstormed aerial metaphors for psychological distress. Instead of spending my next week in the South leaning on the bar, I observed people and wrote. I came back with 150 pages." The future webpreneur had just developed his conference, Mayday: Is there still a pilot in the plane?

In March 2019, Jean-François spoke about his crash for the first time at a public event. “My speech was a jumble, but what reactions! I was onto something.” He had found his niche. He then contacted the Cervo Foundation to partner with a well-known mental health research center and promised to donate all the profits from his conference. A full house in September and an additional one. “Since then, I have never looked back.”

At the end of 2019, he requested a three-month unpaid leave to write. “I had a high-profile position with 20% of the branch’s savings targets on my shoulders, so my manager refused. But I wasn’t going to fall back. A few sleepless nights later, I walked into the big boss’s office and said: I’m leaving.” His departure? February 14, 2020, a desired date: “I choose myself!”

An entrepreneur on his X at the service of others

A few weeks earlier, Jean-François launched the mutual aid and resource sharing community Mayday! Help Me , surrounded by well-known ambassadors. “A great start, with over 100,000 visitors to my site!” he rejoices. He then created personalized and team-building workshops, including the Pilot Project , a preventive transformation program based on the pillars of global health. The pandemic caused him to lose his corporate speaking contracts, but the motivator, more passionate than ever, focused his efforts on the web: “I want to flood social networks with my story, raise awareness among teams, destigmatize the subject, and democratize access to prevention tools.”

His research confirms his intuition. “I asked my former CEO what percentage of employees were on short-term disability. He told me: 10 to 12% per year, about 5,000 employees, half of whom are on mental health.” The numbers quickly add up in the former financial advisor’s head. He multiplies them by the number of companies in Quebec and calculates the extent of the costs to society. “We don’t talk about it for fear of judgment. No one dares point out the elephant in the room. It’s no surprise that cases of psychological distress and burnout are increasing.”

To build his reputation and credibility, the man who will soon write a book and dreams of becoming the Pierre Lavoie in mental health in Quebec surrounds himself with specialists in the global approach. “I am not a psychologist or an expert,” he reminds us. “I speak only from experience. When you have experienced depression, you do not want it to come back. The collateral damage is immense. I would not wish it on anyone. My story could change someone else’s trajectory.”