Your Good Mental Health

Business Can Lead the Way on Addressing Mental Health

2011-12-28T13:48:00.000-08:00

From theSpec.com comes this post about workplace mental health concerns and how corporations may be in a better position to do something about it.

Here is a link to an executive summary of the report referenced in the above item.

Wavelength

2011-12-17T19:58:00.000-08:00

http://sharetv.org/images/the_merv_griffin_show-show.jpg

When I was a kid, one of the high points of my day used to be coming home from school to watch the Merv Griffin Show.

Long before he was a real estate tycoon and game show visionary, Griffin was a singer and, for a quarter of a century, he was a talk show host.

The show's format was similar to that of Carson's Tonight Show and he had many of the same guests; you just didn't have to stay up past 11:30 in order to see it.

We saw the show on a UHF station out of Burlington, Vermont. UHF was fascinating to us because, unlike the “regular channels” two through 12 that you selected with the rotary switch tuner that had hard, definitive stops for each channel, UHF was more of an interpretive spectrum and its stations were literally “tuned in” in the same way that you tuned in a radio.

I watched the show in the same way that an anthropologist watches a new culture: I most often had no idea what they were talking about, but I was captivated because these were adults talking to other adults about adult things. Perhaps, in some way, I was looking for a way to understand the adults in my world.

I have a few very clear memories of the show: the banter with trumpeter Jack Sheldon whose voice I recognized from the seminal “I'm Just a Bill” segment of Schoolhouse Rock; the regular appearances of Arthur Treacher, the British character actor who went on to lend his name to a chain of fish and chip shops; David Letterman appeared on the show early in his career as a stand-up and one of his jokes was “Hands up, everyone who's in the country illegally.” Mel Torme was on the show many times and I remember them talking about how he came to write “The Christmas Song” that Nat “King” Cole made unforgettable.

The genesis of that song is the stuff of legend now, but I can recall marveling at the disconnect between what they wrote and the circumstances that inspired it. It was the middle of summer and the hottest day of the year and Torme, with his writing partner Bob Wells, wrote the piece in an effort to imagine themselves into a cooler place.

As I have gotten older, I have come to the position that it is in the remembering that this time of year has its greatest power.

When you're a kid, the details of any given holiday season are a blur: it's uncomfortable clothes, strange foods, toys, visits to people you don't know, but who seem to know an awful lot about you. All that you want to do is play with your stuff, or depending on your age, the packaging it came in.

There is not a lot of nostalgia for this time of year when you're young. Like doctor's visits and exams, it comes around every year and the only thing that changes is the quality and variety of the gifts you receive.

Once you become an adult, once you break the annual cycle of holiday celebrations, you are driven to replace them with some sort of idealized facsimile.

Each of us I think goes through their first experience of this time of year as an adult when we are separated from family and familiars, from tradition and history. It can be a very disturbing, disorienting experience. It's like going from having your own room to staying in the guest room: nothing is where it is supposed to be and you are under some pressure to get up on time so the rest of the house can use the restroom. This is probably one of those foundational experiences that we all have to have in order to define ourselves as distinct from our families of origin.

And, as hard as it might be to experience, it is more difficult for parents when their children no longer come home for the holidays. It's one of those benchmarks that are as inevitable as they are unsettling. A corner has been turned when the annual holiday portrait can no longer be organized without benefit of negotiation and trips to the airport.

http://ow.ly/82PU3

So, even though this might be the “most wonderful time of the year” our hearts our full and our feelings mixed with a kind of sad nostalgia We look back on our memories of holidays gone by and while we might speak in terms of Currier & Ives, what we see in our mind's eye is more akin to an Escher drawing—exquisite in its detail but something that could never exist in the real world.

And yet every year we relaunch our efforts to turn our holiday fantasies into reality because we all want to do a good job. Long after we may have abandoned Santa Claus we still try to make it onto his list and avoid the lump of coal in our stockings.

Like so many of our traditions associated with Christmas, this high-stakes behavior modification has its roots in central Europe where more than just the weather is grey.

http://ow.ly/82PTe

Deeply rooted in our celebrations are the figures of St. Nicholas and Krampus. St. Nicholas would reward children's good deeds and Krampus would round up the bad ones and eat them. In those days, being good for goodness' sake was not good enough; it was literally a life or death proposition.

To this day, we frame Christmas as a merit-based holiday where we expect to learn our place on the naughty-nice axis and be rewarded accordingly. If we are nice, we get a gift from St. Nick and if we are not, we get eaten. Even as adults, as the days get shorter, we alter our behavior in a kind of campaign for recognition and reward. Our self-worth is tied to the quantity and quality of the presents we receive.

Intellectually, we might know this is not true, but this risk-versus-reward idea is so ingrained that parents will question the love of their children if they are not able to provide the latest and the hottest gifts each year.

Celebrating the holidays is to hold oneself to an impossible standard: the tree is never big enough, the gifts are never exactly what was wanted and the meal was never good enough. Making matters worse are the seemingly endless array of self-appointed experts with tips and tricks on how to get the “perfect” this or the “ideal” that.

Lubricating the entire year-end celebration machine is a relentless musical soundtrack designed both to evoke and to provoke.

We are the the shoppers who “rush home with their treasures” so that we can get out “walking in a winter wonderland.” We buy chestnuts even though we don't have open fires. We commit to memory the names of the reindeer by humming the one about Rudolph and yet, when pressed can never come up with Comet, Donder, Cupid and Blitzen.

http://ow.ly/82PXk

My favorite music for this time of year is instrumental. I am a big fan of the music recorded by Vince Guaraldi in 1965 for “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

I haven't quite figured out whether it's the music itself, or my associations to it, but every time I hear a cut from that recording I think of a warm fire, hot chocolate and many of the items from the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” list. Most of all, I think of a time when Christmas was much less complicated.

In the days before the VCR it was always a challenge to figure out when the special would air each year and arrange our lives accordingly.

Even as a kid, I strongly identified with Charlie Brown and his struggle to come up with his own definition of Christmas.

It is a tribute to Schulz's artistry that, in just over twenty minutes, he and the animators are able to capture the complexity of Christmas. Each of the characters in the Peanuts universe speaks to some aspect of Charlie Brown's character. His eternal optimism comes from Linus, his ego from Lucy, his artistry and imagination from Schroeder and Snoopy, his self-worth from Pigpen. In the show, these and other characters literally dance around to their own music until Charlie Brown is able to direct them toward a coherent holiday celebration.

In the end, we are not presented with a simple answer: that this or that is the true reason for the season. Schulz uses Biblical language, but the real lesson is Charlie Brown's search for a meaning that makes sense to him, a personal vision.

Each of us has a spectrum of memories about this time of year. Each Christmas has a different character and each of those characters has its own music, or theme, and, like Charlie Brown, it is our responsibility to find a personal coherence. It's like the radio in that regard, you have to keep adjusting in order to stay on the proper wavelength.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

How Would You Feel If You Were in Poverty?

2011-11-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

At a recent Prosperity and Problem Solving Supper (PPSS) for the Licking County Bridges Out of Poverty ininitiative, we asked students from a youth group at St. Francis de Sales church in Newark to interview one another about poverty.

What follows is an assembly of their answers to one of the questions.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

The following is from a letter received at our YES Clubhouse.

Through the generosity of local organizations (churches, service clubs, etc.), we are periodically able to provide care packages to the families of our YES Club members.

Thank you so much for the food you sent home to our family. On two separate occasions your staff sent us food. I appreciate this so much, without this food our family would have not been able to eat any meals.

I work 45-50 hours a week to try and make things work, but unfortunately it doesn't always happen. After paying bills and gas to get to work, there is not always enough money for food.

Holidays are rough for me, as it takes everything I have to just pay daily living expenses that there is no money left for anything extra.

I thank God my children understand this, but it breaks my heart that can't even put up a Christmas tree.

I hope all of the YES Club staff have a wonderful holiday and again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for making sure my family does not go hungry.

We don't always hear back from our parents, but when we do, it quickly puts the holiday season in the proper perspective.

On behalf of the Board of Trustees and the staff of Mental Health America of Licking County, including the YES Clubhouse, please accept our very best wishes for a happy Thanksgiving.

--Paddy Kutz
Executive Director

Voices from the Poverty Simulation

2011-10-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

On October 8th, Mental Health America of Licking County's Bridges Out of Poverty Initiative, in partnership with Denison University, conducted a poverty simulation. This activity is designed to show participants in a tangible way the many complex challenges faced by those who live in poverty.

After the simulation, the participants, some of whom role-play as persons in poverty and others as those public and private sector service providers on whom the poor are so dependant, were given the opportunity to reflect on their experience.

Two of these reflections were captured on video.

Meanwhile, Over on Facebook

2011-10-31T05:50:00.000-07:00

The mind is willing, but there isn't always the time to write for this blog. So we have opted to put this up as a kind of place-holder until the next big idea comes along.

More People Using Free Preventative Benefits Provided by Affordable Care Act

2011-10-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

Number of people who received 50 percent discount on prescription drugs also rises

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported today that nearly 20.5 million people with Medicare reviewed their health status at a free Annual Wellness Visit or received other preventive services with no deductible or cost sharing this year. In addition, nearly 1.8 million people with Medicare have received discounts on brand-name drugs in the Medicare Part D coverage gap, also known as the "donut hole," between January and August of this year. The total value of discounts to people with Medicare in the donut hole is nearly $1 billion through August of this year, with an average savings of $530 per beneficiary.

“Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, more people with Medicare are getting preventive services like mammograms for free,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “The new health care law is also making prescription drugs more affordable for millions of seniors and people with disabilities.”

Some of the free preventive services available to people with Medicare include:

Mammograms and cervical cancer screenings
Annual Wellness Visit
Cholesterol and other cardiovascular screenings
Colorectal and prostate cancer screenings

“October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month – a great time for women with Medicare to schedule a free Annual Wellness Visit with their doctors. At that visit they can talk about their personal risk for breast cancer, if they should have a mammogram or how often to have one,” said CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, MD. “If you and your doctor decide that a mammogram is in order, Medicare will cover that preventive screening annually, free of charge. Already, more than 4 million women have taken advantage of that benefit this year.”

The rising number of people who are taking advantage of preventive benefits and prescription drug discounts comes as people with Medicare are beginning to review their plan options for next year. The popular web-based Medicare Plan Finder is now available to help beneficiaries, their families, other caregivers, and senior program advocates look at all local drug and health plan options that are available for the 2012 benefit year.

The annual enrollment period begins earlier this year than last year, on October 15, and runs through December 7. People with Medicare will have seven weeks to review Medicare Advantage and Part D prescription drug coverage benefits and plan options, and choose the option that best meets their unique needs or keep the plan they have today. The earlier open enrollment period also ensures that Medicare has enough time to process plan choices so that coverage can begin without interruption on January 1, 2012.

Every person with a Medicare Advantage or a Part D drug plan will also see better value in those plans for the second year. Average Part D drug plan premiums will remain virtually unchanged in 2012. Those in the Part D coverage gap, or do nut hole, will continue to be able to get discounts on covered brand name drugs. People with Medicare will get deeper discounts in the years ahead until the gap is closed in 2020. On average, Medicare Advantage premiums will be 4 percent lower in 2012 than in 2011, and plans project enrollment to increase by 10 percent. All beneficiaries will have access to Medicare-covered preventive services with zero cost-sharing, including the Annual Wellness Visit, bone-mass measurement, colon cancer screenings, and diabetes screenings, as well as influenza and pneumococcal vaccines, to name a few.

To access the Medicare Plan Finder, go to: https://www.medicare.gov/find-a-plan/.

For more information about how the Affordable Care Act closes the donut hole over time, go to: http://www.medicare.gov/Publications/Pubs/pdf/11493.pdf

For state-by-state information on the number of people who are benefiting from discounts in the donut hole in 2011, go to: https://www.cms.gov/Plan-Payment/

For state-by-state information on utilization of free preventive services and the Annual Wellness Visit, go to: http://www.cms.gov/NewMedia/02_preventive.asp

For more information on Medicare’s prevention benefits, go to the Share the News. Share the Health! website: http://www.medicare.gov/share-the-health/ or call 1-800-MEDICARE.

From SAMHSA CMHS Consumer Affairs E Newsletter Oct. 6, 2011

Losing

2011-09-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

Last week, I came across this video post...

It's hard to watch because it feels very honest and direct.

As adults, we are caught off-guard. It challenges our ideals of what childhood should be like knowing full well that, at the same age, we all kept secrets and pretended to be somebody who only really existed in family snapshots.

To watch this is to have unfocused outrage. Tillie has experienced things that no child should experience, even though to be an adult is to experience everyone of them in some form or other.

We want to help, to reach through the little YouTube window and try in some way to make it better even though we would, at best, only be delaying the inevitable disappointments of adulthood.

The real message of this video is not in the incidents of her life--shocking though they may be--but in how she has chosen to respond. The take-away is that, after all that has happened to her, she is still accepting, still willing to listen, still thinks that everybody, no matter who they are, is "beautiful."

* * *

One of my jobs is to keep the Agency's Facebook pages supplied with new material. To do that, I look at lots of blog posts, news stories and videos from all over the world. Lately, there has been a whole lot of material relating to teen suicide.

It doesn't seem to matter whether the suicide happened in the developing world, the developed world, across the street or across the country, it was remarkable to me how similar the stories are one to another.

The players in each of these dramas have experienced loss, or have been threatened with loss; have been shamed, or believe they have brought shame to their families.

One story that has produced a number of different articles concerns a murder-suicide in Mississauga, Ontario near Toronto. A 16 year-old male jumped from an overpass onto a busy expressway just prior to the discovery of the body of his 17 year-old female friend. The young man survived the fall and being struck by at least one car only to succumb to his injuries a week later.

In the days since this double tragedy, it has come out that the male and female were friends, but that the male wanted more of a romantic relationship and the female did not share the same feelings.

The impact of this story and others like it on adults is generally one of shock and surprise. We can't seem to understand why the young man would take the life of his friend and then try to kill himself. Surely, this was just a case of unrequited puppy love. What's the big deal? Right?

The arc of childhood development is the evolution of empathy. As infants we are completely self-obsessed and, hopefully, before we are turned loose on the world, we have some sense that others may have equally, if not more, compelling needs and desires than our own.

Researchers are now telling us that the brain is not fully developed until the mid-twenties. Seen in that context, the challenges of navigating high school and relationships--romantic and otherwise--seem much more perilous. As adults, we think we are lucky when we find the love of our life, but, as teenagers, every relationship is the love of your life.

I remember the last day of elementary school very clearly.

It was a bright late June day and I was walking home from school crying.

I was absolutely inconsolable because I was never going to see Jane again.

This WAS a big deal. For most of the previous 7 years, Jane had been part of my life. She, along with the Wood sisters, was one of the three who were perpetually ahead of me in terms of grades.

It's not like she and I were friends, but now that school was over, we never would be. She and her family were moving to Ottawa and I wasn't.

I think I can still find the park bench that I collapsed on and where I spent what seemed like an eternity sobbing.

I was learning about loss.

And it was more than the loss of a pet, or a cherished toy, or even a beloved relative: this was the loss of an idea. A secret vision of a theoretical future that was so special that I had dared not speak of it to anyone. In fact, I don't think I really understood how I felt about Jane until I realized that I would never see her again and even that wasn't really real until after I had seen her for the last time.

But when I did, it hurt a LOT.

Everyone has had an experience like mine; one where you figure out what you want and then learn that not only can you not have it now, you won't ever have it. The kind of want that so easily gets mistaken for need. The kind of want that makes your heart race and your chest feel tight and your breath seem hard to catch. The kind of want that makes an 11 year-old kid think that he could take a 90-minute bus ride to Ottawa despite having no earthly idea where to find Jane and a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn't exactly be happy to see me if I showed up.

Everybody has been that way about something, or somebody and so, no matter how hard we might wish to deny it, we all have a way back to understanding what it is, and how it is, that our teenagers are thinking.

We can make that journey--make that connection--if we want to.

But, paradoxically, to be a teenager is to be in a rush to be an adult and we learn from our parents that teenage thinking is not nearly as important as adult thinking. Teenagers are encouraged to "grow up" and to "get serious" even while their brains are still changing and their passions are so monumental because they are so new.

After the constant upheaval of being a teenager, what is desired is to have "adult passions" that are properly sized, proportional, manageable.

It is only after having been an adult for a while that you recognize the trade off that has been made and the space that has been emptied of outsized passions and filled with many too-small and far too trivial sentiments.

* * *

I try to take my dog for a walk every night after work. I should be better about doing this considering all of the things he continues to teach me.

We have two or three routes that we take on a rotating basis. A couple are pretty short and one is so long that he is dragging his tail before we are two-thirds done. I try to mix them up just to keep it interesting for him--go a different route every day--but what I have come to understand is that it really doesn't matter. We could walk the same route every day and it would be the same treat for him. The choice to change up routes is one that I am really making for myself. As far as the dog is concerned, so long as he is out walking, he's happy. I might not be able to tell, but every tree--even though it was in exactly the same spot yesterday--is a new discovery, a chance to catch up on current events.

I have to keep reminding myself of this.

I watch him engage with his world from the other end of the lead. I have to correct myself, stop myself from getting impatient as he makes his tree-by-tree, post-by-post inventory of the neighborhood. I catch myself thinking how could he possibly be interested in smelling the same dried smells that he smelled the day before. To him, they are of course fascinating and nuanced because he receives a lot of his information about the world through his nose. I get much of my information about the world through my head. I associate new information with old information, I see, or perceive, patterns based on experience. As I get older, it takes less and less input to create new, fully formed impressions of the world. My dog gets up every day thinking that it is the best day ever.

* * *

I'm much older now. In theory, I could go to Ottawa any time I wanted.

In theory.

I want to be absolutely clear. I have no interest in tracking down Jane, or anybody else. I'm married and have a dog. (We have a cat too, but we're never sure he's made up his mind to stay with us.)

In theory I could do a lot of things, but the other lesson you learn as an adult is that every choice has a consequence, every decision to move toward something is to move away from something else. And choice by choice, day after day, the once seemingly endless possibilities of your future become the responsibilities of your present.

Instead of treating each new opportunity as a sensation to be experienced, it become an obstacle over which it becomes harder to see from where you have come and that blocks your path to the future.

Tillie, for all the growing up she has already done, has not yet done so much that she can't see her future.

We all know a Tillie, probably more than we realize. Get to know their stories. Listen without judging. Acknowledge them. If you're feeling brave enough, tell them what scares you. The life you save, just might be your own.

World Mental Health Day 2011

2011-09-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

The following post was developed with material from the website of the World Federation for Mental Health. Where the pronouns "we" and "our" are used, they should be read as World Federation for Mental Health.

World Mental Health Day 2011 is October 10. World Mental Health Day raises public awareness about mental health issues. The day promotes more open discussion of mental disorders and investments in prevention and treatment services. The treatment gap for mental, neurological and substance use disorders is formidable especially in poor resource countries.

Physical and mental health are intertwined. There is a real need to deal with the mental health problems of people with chronic physical illnesses and physical care of mental health consumers through a continued and integrated care.

This year’s theme is “the Great Push for Mental Health.”

The major themes of the Great Push are Unity, Visibility, Rights, Recovery, and planning of this program is now in progress.

UNITY - Perceptions of disunity in the mental health world, probably exaggerated need to be dispelled. The first round of the WFMH (World Federation for Mental Health) Great Global Consensus has demonstrated substantial agreement on fundamental issues with over 530 replies from organizations and individuals demonstrating over 95% agreement on the 10 principles of the World Federation The second round is in preparation and will address the inclusion of mental health as one of the Millennium Goals. The Consensus is designed to culminate in a WFMH/MGMH Consensus Summit" where participating organizations will be invited to fund one representative to the Summit at which the Consensus will form the basis of a WFMH /MGMH “Charter” to the United Nations and Governments stating clearly what mental health related and consumer/users/survivor organizations around the world require governments to do to improve mental health.

VISIBILITY- Mental illness and the mentally ill are invisible, but stigma is everywhere. Our support for mental health must be made visible to governments. How can that be achieved but by public events? We will encourage organized parades, rallies and parties starting on World Mental Health Day (October 10, 2011), involving consumers and their families marching in public together with the support of mental health associations, professionals, academics, volunteers, managers of services and students! Countries will be encouraged to create and fund their own national parades. WFMH insures they happen together on World Mental Health Day. Parades should celebrate good mental health with celebrities and sports persons while calling for better awareness of, and services for mental illness. Parades should be attractive and entertaining for the general public while carrying a strong message. They could collect signatures to hand to governments with demands to do more for mental health both in their own country and abroad. Parades might continue year by year growing in strength and entertainment until a significant change in public opinion and government action is demonstrated. This is already happening in many places, particularly in India and in 2009 in Kalmunai, Sri Lanka, where nearly 5000 students, government and non-government sectors participated in a march two kilometres long. We need to be visible. They have shown us the way.

RIGHTS - Appalling conditions are tolerated in many mental hospitals and abusive treatments for mental illness are common. Governments must not be allowed to tolerate these conditions: There is clearly a strong grass roots need to bring together legal experts and existing organizations to collect evidence and to lobby governments to address these issues across the world and bring them to public attention. We proposed the setting up of a Centre for Mental Health and Human Rights to tackle such issues with governments.

RECOVERY - is an important concept but the term is used in many different ways. WFMH will convene a conference to sharpen the concept and define its principal features. Meanwhile, thousands, perhaps millions, receive no mental health care because of the absence of professionals to assess and diagnose their illnesses, the first rate limiting step to recovery. We now have methods using computer technology able to empower nurses and health assistants, aimed at improving the detection, diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. We recognize that these are only the first steps to true recovery; nevertheless they are an essential starting point. Such methods are already being successfully piloted in India, Europe and Australia. They have potential to bring relief to the untreated. The campaign will promote any appropriate and culturally acceptable method for bringing relief to those suffering mental illness.

Some major activities that WFMH is embarking on include:

The development of a grass-roots campaign so that mental health can have more visibility and priority in the public mind internationally;

Work with the Commonwealth Secretariat in anticipation of the UN Special Session on Non-Communicable Diseases scheduled for September, 2011;

Participation in the United Nations process to reformulate the Millennium Development Goals;

Developing strategic partners with international agencies and advocacy groups to promote the Great Push; and

Promotion of the Great Push using both traditional and social media.

The World Health Organization has recently (September, 2010) released a report titled Mental Health and Development which makes the case for the integration of mental health in development efforts. Mental health is intimately tied with key areas of development such as education and human productivity. Our World Mental Health Day theme this year underlines the relationship of mental health with chronic physical illnesses. As we identify non-communicable diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer and respiratory diseases as the new scourge, the relationship to mental health is both intimate and unavoidable. The bottom line is that there is no health without mental health and that there is no development without health AND mental health.

Physical and mental health are intertwined. There is a real need to deal with the mental health problems of people with chronic physical illnesses and physical care of mental health consumers through a continued and integrated care.

Suicide and Social Media

2011-09-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.editorsweblog.org/special.php?tag=social%20media

A key strategy in suicide prevention is to talk about suicide and to ask those you suspect of being suicidal whether they are thinking of harming themselves.

Somewhat paradoxically, it is also true that suicides, especially among teenagers, appear to happen in clusters and so there is this notion that suicide is contagious.

A recent internet posting from New Zealand prompted this blog post on our Suicide Prevention page on Facebook.

Why We Care

2011-09-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

by Paddy Kutz, Executive Director, Mental Health America of Licking County

At your age, why are you still working? I hear this question frequently and my current answer is “because not everyone in Licking County is mentally healthy.” Seriously though, I am driven by our vision for our county which is of a just, humane and healthy society in which all people are accorded respect, dignity and the opportunity to achieve their full potential free from stigma and prejudice.

One in four people will experience a serious mental disorder in his or her lifetime, including major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and severe anxiety disorders.

Mental illnesses are no-fault, biologically based brain disorders which cause disturbances in thinking, feeling and/or relating. Persons living with these disorders deserve the dignity of medical treatment and a wide range of supportive services from mental health care providers, friends and family, including caring congregations.

Though the majority of individuals living with mental illness can successfully be treated, stigma and misinformation continue to be significant barriers to treatment.

Consider these facts: this is “Why We Care”

depression is the number one illness around the world (not just in the United States)
one third of homeless people experience mental illness
90% of persons who die by suicide have a serious mental illness
there are more people with mental illness in jails and prisons than in state mental institutions
at least 67% of youth who drop out of school have an untreated mental health condition
treatment works and people recover
there is no health without mental health

It is our mission to promote good mental health, wellness and for victory over mental illness. We need everyone’s help in understanding these disorders and what it takes to be mentally healthy. Good mental health isn’t just the absence of illness. We must have good self-esteem, get along with others, and cope with life’s demands. When you have a mental illness, all of these things can be tougher to achieve but possible.

Having good self-esteem means to like oneself, but remember, you have to be likeable. Good self-esteem is a quiet feeling of liking who you are. So anyone who is boastful or a braggart does not have good mental health.

Getting along with others includes respecting differences and leaving the person alone if you don’t like them. A mentally healthy person doesn’t bully, name call, fight with, put down, or intimidate other people. You maintain self control and deal with conflict and anger in healthy ways.

Coping with life’s demands means that you use positive ways to deal with stress. There are many good ways to relieve stress, but drinking and drugging doesn’t solve anything and just leads to more problems.

Consider some of these constructive choices: this is “Why We Care”

Figure out what is really causing the stress, write it down and then brainstorm solutions that will reduce the stress. Turn to a trusted friend, family member, school counselor, professional, minister, priest, rabbi, faith leader or call Mental Health America of Licking County at 740-522-1341 or email at mhalc@alink.com. Don’t suffer in silence, talk it out
Eating right, sleeping right and exercise are so important to deal with life’s demands too. In fact, new research shows that exercise works just as well as many anti-depressant medications, so get up and move it.
Get rid of that stinking thinking and remember this is where many people need help, so ask for it.

I met former first lady, Rosalyn Carter, many years ago and have never forgotten her quote “People living with mental illness are our neighbors. They are members of our congregations, members of our families; they are everywhere in this country. If we ignore their cries for help, we will be continuing to participate in the anguish from which those cries of help come. A problem of this magnitude will not go away. Because it will not go away and because of our spiritual commitments, we are compelled to take action.”

This is a perfect time for you to help me help others. Our website has lots of helpful information about mental health and mental illnesses as well as the services we provide throughout Licking County. Check us out at www.mhalc.org. On the left side click on the donate sign to contribute. If you have questions, please ask. I care and I want to be helpful for another 30 years.

Glob

2011-08-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

Golb – that’s blog spelled backward which is exactly how I feel when dealing with such “modern” ways to communicate. How about rettiwt or koobecaf – those too are backward and are even more accurate about my skills in using them. When Mental Health America of Licking County first got computers – how many years ago? – our staff gave me an etch-a-sketch. Their message was loud and clear “get with it girl!” Even though I ordered the computers and support stuff to use them, they tortured me over being backward about these modern day tools. Of course today we can’t do without them.

I would encourage you to read a wonderful blog. It is on our website and written by Graham Campbell, Associate Director. He is a very talented writer and has so many fabulous things to say. Let me know what you think of our website: www.mhalc.org . We can always make improvements. It is our mission to promote good mental health, wellness and for victory over mental illness. Get on our bandwagon and contribute your time, your money, your talents. I can be reached at 740-788-0302.

Paddy Kutz, Executive Director, Mental Health America of Licking County

To the End of Love

2011-08-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

I went to visit my Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Bill and they shared something very profound with me: in preparation for death they taught me an important lesson about living.

Marjorie is in the last act of a 5-year battle with kidney failure. Most of her factory equipment is gone and what little is left doesn't work well enough on its own. She has been on home dialysis and on hospital dialysis and at 86, she is nobody's ideal candidate for a transplant.

For the last few months she and Bill have been making every-other-day trips from Truro down to Halifax where she undergoes a 4-hour session with refrigerator-sized dialysis machine.

I had no understanding of what dialysis was prior to this trip. I had seen episodes of "House" and "Medical Center" and "Marcus Welby, M.D." I thought that it was a pretty passive process where they hooked you to a machine and you just sat there until the final spin cycle was over. It seemed like you could read a book, or watch a movie and when you were done and your blood was all clean, you could go on to your next appointment. What I didn't understand was that there is a fair amount of suction required in order to get your blood into the machine and the whole experience can literally leave the patient failing drained. Marjorie described it as feeling like having the life sucked out of her.

Repeated trips to the dialysis unit have taken their toll on Marjorie and her blood vessels. Earlier this month, her veins collapsed and they were unable to hook her up to the machine.

It was while sharing this news with me that my mother let me know that she thought her sister was ready to stop fighting.

It’s uncomfortable for me to even write that sentence. I don’t come from people who make those kinds of decisions. I have no experience of family members preparing for death. I know only prolonged illness, or sudden death. I know about processions to the bedside and to the hospital and how to be awkward at a reception. And I know about remote death where the relative got sick and died out of site, so all there was to experience was the service and the absence of their presence.

When my dad learned that he had lung cancer, it seems that he decided pretty quickly that it was a death sentence. From diagnosis to memorial service was, for me, a slide show: a series of images and impressions that I continue to try and make sense of. Marjorie’s illness and some additional health conditions much closer to home have made my mom get her affairs in order and to have “the talk” with me about what she does and doesn’t want when the time comes. But even this seems disconnected from my reality. I’m not certain if it was for my benefit, but when we had the talk, when she showed me where papers were and introduced me to Ed who could help me when the time came, she said she was perfectly comfortable with the whole process. For me, it was like I was a tourist in the conversation: in town for three brief days and then back to my own planet.

In my family, we have a pretty limited vocabulary: we either don't talk much at all, or we go right to the grand gesture--there is no in-between. It goes from "Could you pass the salt?" to that scene in "The Godfather" where Michael tells Fredo, "You're not a brother, you're not a friend. I don't want to know you or what you do. I don't want to see you at the hotels, I don't want you near my house. When you see our mother, I want to know a day in advance, so I won't be there. You understand?." No passing "Go", no collecting $200. I am largely absent from Marjorie and Bill's life for two decades and suddenly I want to be on their doorstep in forty-eight hours

This would be the part where I try to explain some of why there was such a gap in my relationships with my aunt and uncle and my three cousins. If I had any skill as a writer, I would carefully illustrate my good intentions and the missed opportunities so that I strike a balance between looking bad and being too self-serving. The simple truth is that for too long we did not affiliate with my mom’s family. My maternal grandmother stayed in New Brunswick even when both her children moved to Quebec. And prior to relocating to Nova Scotia, my aunt and her family did not live all that far away, but they might as well have been living on Mars. We would see them a few times during the summer, but not that much. My cousins are all older than me and there was never really much to talk about.

We spent more time chasing relationships with my father’s side of the family where there was even less to talk about and even greater differences in ages and, as a result, we let my aunt’s family slip away.

I was also driven to try and close some of this time and space distance because, having turned 50 this year, I have become acutely aware of being disconnected from my own life and history for too long. I made choices that took me away from my family that were, at the time, intended to give me some perspective, but instead have left me feeling rootless and alien.

These questions of my personal identity and place in the world may be the refuge of the chronically self-involved, but they are nonetheless powerful. I am very lucky that I have been able to share the last 23 years of my life with the same person. We have a good life together, but there is still the other 27 years to try and make sense of and for that you need family.

That's where I was when my mother called, so the decision to go was clear.

As I was trying to book my flight, my mother called back and said that end-stage kidney failure might not be something that my aunt and uncle would want to share with a long-distance relative.

A fair point. I know first-hand how painful it can be to pass a kidney stone, I could only imagine how much more painful complete failure might be.

It was at this point that I elected to do something completely out of character: I called my aunt.

I’m not sure where this idea came from, probably from my wife--she is fluent in many strange forms of communication--but it was the right call and also my first indication that I would have no template for my visit, no relevant frame of reference.

I called and offered my services to be a “relief driver” for their next trip down to Halifax. My only condition was that if I was going to make the trip, my aunt had to be there when I arrived: no early departures! She agreed and reservations were made.

My mother had prepared me for the conversation by sharing that she had spoken to Marjorie the previous day and that she was, during that call, at a very low point. She didn’t want to go on and, to my mother’s understanding, was ready to catch the next bus out of town. (Stop me when the metaphors become too much.)

The Marjorie that I spoke to on the phone the following day was apparently a much different person. She was clear and focused, practical and deliberate. She and Bill would be happy to see me, but they had a schedule that was driven by her illness and that would determine what was and was not possible during my visit.

Reservations in hand and the prospect of a series of short-hop flights punctuated by extended waits in Detroit, and New York City ahead of me, I began to worry about how to behave once I got there.

I went through all the possibilities: the wailing, the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments. I thought about the first scene in "Citizen Kane" complete with the solitary house on the hill and the heavy curtains and the gloom. (I watch a lot of movies.) It didn't help that I got into Halifax late in the evening and had to drive an hour to get to Truro. Too much time to think.

What do you say to someone you haven't seen in almost a generation and then, when you finally do show up it's because they are at the end of their life?

The laughter caught me completely by surprise.

I was there for two days and, aside from the trip to Halifax and the dialysis session, there was a lot of laughter. Marjorie and Bill and I had a laugh. There was laughter when my cousin Iris and her husband came by. More laughter when cousin Audrey and John and their dog Enzo took Bill and me to a classic car cruise-by in Halifax. And when cousin Karen came on Sunday..., well you get the idea.

Instead of finding Marjorie husbanding her energy in preparation for her trip to Halifax, I found her in her chair, by a bright sun lit window looking at her iPad. She wanted to hear about my trip and about what I was up to and about how I had spent my morning prior to showing up at her door. She was a sponge: thirsty for information and for stories and for life.

I had been prepared for a series of brief visits so as not to tire Marjorie. She had said herself at one point that she was good for about an hour at a time. But somehow that all changed when I arrived. They had a full day planned with lunch, Iris and Greg's visit, a field trip to see the tidal bore and then an evening trip to Halifax for dialysis, cousin Audrey and the car show.

This was not denial or misdirection; there was no anger or bargaining: this was acceptance.

One of the first things that Bill did was show me the boxes of sterile fluid that they had stacked in their breakfast area and the machine that they had relied on when home dialysis was still feasible. His life's work as an educator was on display as he explained each step in the process needed to connect her to the machine. His background as a Maritimer was on display as he expressed regret at having to discard all of the unused and unusable inventory.

No, there was no ignoring the fact that Marjorie was sick and that she was wrestling with deciding how much longer she would continue to fight. She and Bill had been dealt a crappy hand and, instead of turning away, they were determined to face it and make the best of it that they could.

I should have expected nothing less.

I recognize in myself a painful habit of living in tenses other than the present. I dwell on the past and wait for the future and am generally ignorant of the present. Marjorie and Bill, and from what I can tell about Karen, Audrey and Iris, live in the present. To a certain extent, kidney disease has dictated that response. There are good days and bad days, bad hours and worse hours, but I think they are able to cope as well as they have because they are very familiar with the present tense.

After lunch. after bearing witness to the tidal bore and after a brief conducted tour of Truro, it was time to go to Halifax.

Watching Bill get Marjorie ready and get her into the car was like watching a precision military exercise. It seemed to happen purely on muscle memory. I wanted to be helpful, but I quickly recognized that I was in the way. It was not that I was impeding the process, so much as they knew what to do and how to do it and having an extra hand would be like having an extra hand--they couldn't quite figure out how to work it in.

He helped her from her chair into her walker, from the walker to the lift that helps her down the handful of steps to the carport and then there is the wall and the car itself to support Marjorie as she takes the painful steps to the passenger seat.

Once she is in and secured, Bill seems to spring into his spot behind the wheel and, suddenly it seems, we are on the road down to Halifax.

It's a pretty quiet trip. Not too much talking.

Occasionally, Marjorie will tell Bill where to turn or whether there is traffic coming from the right, but on the highway, it's pretty quiet. It's as if Marjorie is preparing for the ordeal ahead of her. Every so often, Bill reaches over and pats her hand, but he doesn't interrupt. Again, it seems that repetition has taught them the best way to manage this aspect of their lives.

Marjorie has a counter she keeps with her in the car. It's one of those hand-held mechanical counters that used to be a popular way for counting the number of people in a line at tourist attractions and movie theatres. They use it to count recreational vehicles--campers and travel trailers. When I catch a glimpse of the reels, I see that she is closing in on 400. It's a distraction and also an indication of how unpleasant the ordeal of dialysis is.

We pass a water tower and Marjorie quickly calculates their anticipated arrival time in Halifax from this, their half-way marker. Turns out she is within a minute of her projected ETA.

Once we get off the highway, Marjorie is like an on-board navigation system as she directs Bill to the hospital. Right turns, left turns, alternate routes, anticipated obstacles, special events: she seems to account for them all.

Marjorie's dialysis clinic is in a part of Halifax that seems mostly closed down for the weekend. We are able to park less than 50 feet from the front door and are the only car in the lot.

After we check in, there is a bit of a wait while they prepare the machine. Marjorie and Bill sit quietly in the waiting room with other patients and family members waiting for their name to be called. Surprisingly, the television is set to CNN and they are currently obsessed with some very domestic American news story. Everyone and everything, including the TV, seem to be occupied with their on proprietary thoughts.

Occasionally, Marjorie and Bill will recognize a familiar face and greetings are exchanged. There are "regulars," even here.

Finally, her name is called and we wheel Marjorie into the clinic and to the hospital bed that will be her home for the next few hours.

Once she has been safely maneuvered into bed and her wheelchair parked, Bill and I are dismissed.

We go to dinner, we go and meet Audrey and John and Enzo, we go so that Marjorie can concentrate on what is ahead of her.

When we return three hours later, after dinner, after a cruise-by car show, after spending a couple of hours with Audrey and John and Enzo, there is still about an hour to go before Marjorie will be ready, so we sit in the waiting room. Bill starts to read the paper, but quickly falls asleep.

While we were gone, someone has changed the channel on the television and, instead of CNN, there is an episode of Survivorman. This is the show where they leave a survival "expert" in an extreme environment and then we watch as he adapts and survives and finds his way back to civilization. So as not to be confused with the multiple variations on this theme, this one is produced without benefit of a production crew. The survivor is his own camera crew.

In this particular episode, he was in an arctic environment. He has to search for food and make his own shelter and find drinking water. In addition, he has to set up cameras, change tapes and make sure he gets the shot. There are several instances where he shoots himself climbing a hill to get his bearings, or pulling a sled across a frozen body of water and when he is done with these activities, he has to go back and get the camera. So, in effect, he has to "survive" everything multiple times.

The longer I watched the show, the more it made sense to me as a way to understand what was happening around me. The TV host, Marjorie and Bill were all engaged in trying to adapt to their environments, make sense of their surroundings and make it through the day.

I don't think this was how Bill imagined spending his Saturday nights, but to look at him is to understand that he would much rather be sitting in this green and yellow waiting room than be anywhere else if it meant that he would be without Marjorie. The whole time I am with them, he is unfailing bright and cheerful and positive. It would be ridiculous to infer that there are no bad days, but he seems determined to make the best of whatever happens and that is a more powerful survival technique than anything happening on the television.

Before the show was over, before the Survivorman made it back to civilization, Marjorie was done. As she said later, she couldn't take it anymore.

The nurse wheeled Marjorie over to where Bill was still sleeping and she prodded him awake. Intermission was over and it was time for the second half of tonight's play: the return trip to Truro.

This is what they do: drive to Halifax, drive home, spend a day recovering and then repeat. It used to be worth it because it gave Marjorie a good day, some respite from the pain and discomfort, but now the recovery is no longer complete and the good days are harder to come by.

I am overwhelmed by their perseverance and their commitment to one another. As Marjorie decides what she wants to do, or stop doing, it is a personal choice, but it is not a selfish one. She doesn't want to keep putting herself through this process and she does not want to do it to Bill. As for what Bill wants: he just wants Marjorie.

My mom told me that, if I got a chance, I should go downstairs and see Bill's desk. Bill took me down and showed me the wall of photos over his computer. There were photos of my grandfather and of my grandmother's family, but the photos to see were the ones on the table to the right of the desk. These were pictures of Marjorie, of how he saw her when they were at the beginning of their love.

And now, having ticked off all of the options covered by the wedding vows, richer and poorer, health and sickness, through three kids, grand and great-grandchildren, they are coming to the end with heads up and eyes wide open.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to visit with and learn from Marjorie and Bill. They are an example and an inspiration.

There is no neat ending to this story, no tidy resolution. It will just stop and it will be up to all the parties concerned, as it is to the reader, to make their own sense of it. I will, instead, leave you with the words of a far better writer, Leonard Cohen. Like most other things in my life, I discovered him too late. His 1984 song, "Dance Me to the End of Love" seems to capture best what I am trying to say. Cohen's rich, world-weary voice is a perfect match for the lyric that reads in part:

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance Me to the End of Love - Amazing videos are here

Tool No. 10: Get Professional Help If You Need It

2011-07-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

We have come to the end of our inventory of the 10 tools in the Live Your Life Well Toolkit and, in many respects, this is perhaps the most difficult one of all.

It's a difficult tool to use because asking for help requires a measure of self-awareness. You have to be able to identify that you are in a hole before you can ask for a way out. Once the situational aspect is addressed, i.e., where you are, the next question is transformational, i.e., how does one change and who can help.

There are a whole series of jokes about people in crisis asking a variety of specialists how they can resolve their circumstances. If they ask an economist, the solution invariably involves economic theory, a surgeon advocates for an intrusive operation, a politician promotes legislation as their answer. Everyone has a unique opinion and it is frequently a challenge to figure out how to make the best choice--kind of like picking a calling plan for your cellphone.

For some, the journey to self-awareness comes easily and they can move seamlessly into action, but these are less likely to be the people for whom help is required. I remember watching a performance of Penn & Teller where Penn--the talking giant--was juggling broken bottles. He says as part of the bit that he gets asked about whether he is concerned that he might catch the flying bottles by the wrong ends. He says something like that is unlikely, but if it were to happen, if he did catch one of the bottles by the jagged end, he would almost immediately let go of it.

For the rest of us, those less like Penn and more like lobsters in a pot, the recognition that our circumstances have become a problem comes on much more gradually. Instead of responding instinctively, we take the time to map the pot and appreciate the blending as our shells move from green to red. We don't know we need help until we catch a whiff of melted butter and by then the response options are far fewer.

I am forced to admit that much of my early thinking about mental health comes from comedy psychiatrist like Bob Newhart and, later, Dr. Katz. One of the earliest jokes I can remember is about a guy who rushes into a psychiatrist's office and says, "Doc, I've been having suicidal thoughts all week, can you help me?" And the doctor says, "Sure, but from now on, you pay in advance."

The only other thing I knew about psychiatry was that they had sample packs of medications that looked like packages of Dentyne gum. I only knew this because my father had a sock drawer full of them. One year he took me to England and talked about how hard it was for him to drive on the "wrong side of the road". The pills helped him with that, he said. I don't think he ever had a professional relationship with a psychiatrist, but it seemed like he always had samples. Later, when my mother went back to school, got degrees in applied social science and became a trained counselor, my father would dismiss her chosen field as the "helping professions."

Once you get to the point where you begin to think about professional help then there comes with that the unasked question about what it says about you if you think you need professional help.

Although I didn't fully understand it at the time, I think this was how I learned about the stigma associated with mental illness. I learned that it was something to be made fun of, mental health was the obsession of celebrities and none of it was to be taken seriously. I don't think anyone ever said that if I was sad I should just get over it, but I also know that when I was sad, I was most often left alone to deal with it. (At least that's what I recall.)

Identifying the need for help and getting past whatever internalized stigmas you might carry are important steps, but they only serve to bring you to the next question and that is identifying what kind of help you need to address your situation.

There are many paths toward recovery and the "right" path is going to be different for each person. A quick trip through your local bookstore's self-help section will demonstrate that there as many therapies as there is shelf space to hold them. Recovery could also lead you to connect with a community of faith. Your path to recovery may seem, at first, more like a maze with many false starts and dead ends, but the drive to get out of the hole, or out of the pot, should sustain you through this period.

Kind of like Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz", you have the power to influence your recovery. It's most likely going to be more complicated than clicking your heels and reciting "there's no place like home" and there is a very real chance that, at some point, you could have your own encounter with flying monkeys but the only way to get home is go through that.

Another thing that Dorothy had going for her was the support of trusted friends--see Connect with Others. At every step of her journey they helped her to make the best possible decisions.

For some, medications can play a role in their recovery. There are many success stories about the use of neuropharmacology, but there are also questions as to the risk vs. benefit of this approach. It is a subject to discuss carefully with your psychiatrist. As with most medications there is the risk of adverse side-effects and you should learn as much about those as possible.

Whether you are dealing with a social worker, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or other mental health professional, it is important to have trust in that relationship. If you don't have confidence in the help you are getting then it is often possible to change providers.

Mental Health America of Licking County dies not provide direct treatment services, but we can make referrals to area providers.

I need to go home and walk my dog, so I am going to leave you with this short clip from "The West Wing" in which the late, great John Spencer tells a story about a man who found himself in a hole and needed help.

-- Graham Campbell
Associate Director

9 Steps to Take When Your Recovering Teen Comes Home from Treatment

2011-06-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

Good advice here.

Tool No. 9: Deal Better with Hard Times

2011-05-23T13:28:00.000-07:00

As I write this, the airwaves are full of what seems like relentlessly bad news for the people in Japan in the wake of the combined impact of an earthquake, a tsunami and a crippled nuclear power plant. And in Libya and Syria we are watching a handful of rebels take on deeply entrenched and deep-pocketed autocracies. Even in the wake of an errant attack by their supposed NATO protectors, the rebels claim no animus. Despite the loss of life of some of their number, they support NATO’s work on their behalf.

These are present examples of what is sometimes described as the capacity of the human spirit; the ability to get knocked down and then get up again. This capacity is celebrated in song and story and film and television show. It is a central story in the national mythology and it is also why boxing movies are almost always successful.

So, how do you develop this ability? How can you make yourself more resilient? How do you make sure, after having been put in life’s deep fat fryer, that it all comes back, except one table spoon? These are the central questions in protecting your good mental health.

On the Live Your Life Well website, they suggest basic strategies for dealing with hard times:

¨ Write it out

¨ Tackle your problems

¨ Shift your thinking

¨ Get support

***

Does writing about a problem make it any easier to deal with?

I am a horrible diarist. I keep buying different types of notebooks thinking that the right tool will inspire me to be more disciplined about capturing my impressions of the events of my life. In reading through a lifetime’s worth of false starts, I find that I have had a particularly uninteresting time of it. When Seinfeld was on TV and everyone was marveling at a show about nothing, I remember thinking that I could keep a diary about nothing, but even I lost interest in that.

The Internet has provided a diarist something they haven’t had before and that’s an audience. Sure, maybe your mom discovers your diary under your bed and learns the shocking secrets of being an adolescent, but a real audience of strangers was something most diarists got only when they left their notebooks on a bus and, even then, there was no feedback loop, no opportunity to learn if they, the readers, liked your stuff. Now, depending on your tags, you have, in theory, the opportunity to reach the entire world.

Does the opportunity for feedback change the process of trying to work a problem out on paper?

I think the answer will be different for each of us. In my own case, I think of writing for the web like writing for my teachers: I try to be coherent, try to apply my best understanding of grammar (which is, I admit, highly fluid) and I hope only to get positive comments in response.

Clearly, journaling is a recurring element in a variety of therapeutic processes. The mere act of committing pen to paper forces some measure of structure on to the content. Letters, words and paragraphs follow in a linear sequence to document an idea. And while my circumspect nature might wrestle with finding the “ideal” sequence and structure, for others—perhaps most—this is not an overriding concern.

I remember watching a documentary on Woody Allen where he described his writing process. Like a great many writers before him, he made the point that stories are not written so much as they are rewritten. At the time, I remember thinking that he could save himself so much work if he just thought a bit more carefully about what he was trying to say.

Since that time, I have done a lot more writing and have come to recognize the “truthiness” of what he said. Sometimes, most times really, you have to get all of the pieces of a story out of your head in order to look at them and to figure out if they are any good.

This was a difficult and expensive realization to arrive at. I think I’ve spent/wasted a great deal of time working out ideas before committing them to paper when I should have just started writing. It sounds trite, but I really have only recently learned this: ideas and, for that matter, solutions to problems never arrive fully-formed, they are more like a block of marble from which the idea must be carved.

In trying to work out a problem, a block of an idea might drive you to your notebook or your keyboard, but it is in trying to explain it that it acquires any elegance.

The next step, the toughest step, in evaluating an idea, or any solution to a problem is to test it.

***

The second step in building resilience is by tackling your problems.

On the Live Your Life Well site, they advocate listing your problems and then identifying without judgment as many solutions as you can. By not ruling any solution out in advance, you give yourself permission to consider every possibility.

This is particularly difficult for me as I have an active inner monologue and thoughts do not get a chance to dry before I have evaluated them and criticized myself for having had such a stupid idea in the first place.

I remember taking a design class in school and, because the teachers were so appalled at the general level of drawing talent in the class, they instituted a series of life drawing classes. One of the exercises was what is called “gesture drawing” wherein you put pencil to paper and, while keeping your eye on the model, you try to capture their form while they are moving.

I found this very difficult to do because I wanted to keep checking my work. I would fuss over trying to get the first line right that the exercise would be over before I had even started.

Problem solving is always easier for other people. When dealing with personal issues, you lose the ability to see the forest and become completely absorbed by the individual trees.

My wife says I watch too much reality television. She’s probably right. But there is something very compelling about immersing yourself in other people’s challenges. Whether they are making cupcakes or salvaging logs from riverbeds I find it equally engaging. To me, problem solving is problem solving: the process is the same, only the nouns change.

I was watching “Ax Men” recently and they featured a sequence in which one of the “aqua loggers” became so focused on recovering a sunken log that they caused their boat to sink.

It wasn’t that they did not properly evaluate the risk, or were somehow unaware that there was water pouring over their decks and into open hatches, they made the decision that the risk was offset by the potential for reward. As it would turn out, their assessment was not accurate and the results are captured on video, but they took the risk.

Certainly they were frustrated to have lost their work boat. As it turned out, they were close enough to shore that they were able to secure their craft and take their equipment off. By their reactions, they seemed very equivocal, like this sort of thing happened every day.

On the same show and working the same stretch of water is another crew with a very different approach to dealing with difficult times: they blame one another.

Theirs is a father-son operation and each believes that their work would go so much easier if the other would only shut up and listen to them. Granted, they have not had their boat crippled by partially sinking it in water, but they have experienced just about every other possible failure situation and all of it punctuated by the Morse code like rhythm of bleeps to obscure their relentless cursing of one another.

I’m not sure they would have profited much from the journaling process, although perhaps having a camera crew following your every move serves the same purpose.

And as for problem solving, they seem ready to tackle symptoms, but cannot yet agree on what their problems might be. For them, it would seem important to move on to the next part of the resiliency process.

***

Shift Your Thinking

I remember coming across a quote from the science fiction writer David Gerrold: “One fact can change your whole point of view. For instance, did you know that King Kong was a lesbian?”

If you accept his thinking, suddenly the story is transformed from a giant monster on a rampage story to a tragic story of unrequited love. Those pilots trying to shoot Kong from the Empire State Building are transformed from heroes into villains and producer Carl Denham’s last words, “It was beauty killed the beast,” become much more resonant.

Changing your perspective can often improve your ability to respond to life’s challenges. This is why people go on vacation.

I remember watching a program on the principles of magic and a demonstration where Lance Burton was explaining misdirection. He demonstrated by throwing a tennis ball against a garage door and having his dog chase after it. He would throw the ball and the dog would chase it and bring it back.

On one occasion, he mimed throwing the ball and the dog repeated his response and chased after a ball that wasn’t there.

By all appearances, the actions were identical only Burton never released the ball. The dog had been trained to expect the ball and was therefore at a loss for what to do next. He had every reason to expect there to be a ball and so responded as if there was one, even though he could not find it.

Not having a context for magical thinking—that we know about—the dog expected that there would be a ball and when there was none, he went to solve a problem that did not exist. He assumed that the ball had gotten past him and not that he was being tricked.

We are just as gullible as that dog, just as easily misled by patterns and expectations. And while we might not fall for such an obvious example, there are plenty of other examples from the world of magic where repetition is used to disguise the secret of the trick.

And what is perhaps most interesting is that our sophisticated brains will first try to explain away the effect and, when no satisfactory solution can be made to fit what we think we saw, the we are all too quick to accept that the demonstrator, the magician, has some special powers not available to the rest of us.

Nurturing the ability to break free of patterns of behavior and response is an important part of becoming more resilient. This doesn’t mean that you have to completely blow up your life, or take up ballroom dancing. It can be as simple as taking a different route to work or stopping at a different place for your morning coffee.

My wife’s grandmother was the very definition of resiliency. I came away from my first meeting with her with the absolute certainty that she was someone who would only ever tell you the absolute truth, regardless of how it might make you feel.

Cancer had claimed her husband and had gone a couple or rounds with her as well. This was never treated as anything remarkable, but in much the same way that people talk about the infamous “winter of ’78.” She did not focus on having undergone a mastectomy, but rather on the benefit of subsequently having a convenient place to store her tissue.

My wife tells the story of her grandmother buying a knit cap with the explanation that it would come in handy the next time she got cancer and the chemo made all of her hair fall out.

My dad, on the other hand, was not able to change his thinking. He saw cancer as a death sentence and, when he got his diagnosis he became resigned to what he saw as the inevitable outcome.

The capacity to shift one’s thinking can be very powerful, but it is not always easy and it is not necessarily something you can do on your own. Sometimes, you need help.

***

Get Support

When we were getting ready to move half-way across the country, my wife and I spent a lot of time cleaning our apartment so that we could get back our damage deposit. While we were in the place, we got our first dog and, as puppies will do, he “claimed” different parts of the apartment as his own and was, for a while, almost prideful in his marking of his territory.

There was a lot of scrubbing and disinfecting and a lot of ammonia used prior to the landlord’s exit interview.

Because of scheduling, the walk-through was conducted after our departure and we subsequently learned that we would receive only a fraction of our deposit. We were in our new place and almost a thousand miles out of town, but I was pretty steamed. The apartment was cleaner than when we moved in and all traces of the puppy had been erased. How dare we get anything less than a clean bill of cleaning?

A whole range of responses ran through my head up to and including small claims court.

At the time, our local radio station carried the nightly talk show of Bruce Williams. Bruce has a tremendous radio presence, one that inspires confidence. He talks to people who are thinking of starting a business, or who are having a property beef with their neighbors, or who are planning a cruise. He doesn’t give advice to the love-lorn, or a forum to UFO conspiracies, he helps people navigate through life.

One night, I heard him say that he would be staying late to answer calls off the air for broadcast at a later date. I thought I would call and get his take on “puppy-gate.”

I dialed the number and, while on hold, fumed and fussed and generally thought of ways to justify my high dudgeon.

And then it was my turn.

I laid out my case and, in what seemed like no time at all, it was over. He pointed out that it would be virtually impossible for the landlord to distinguish the ammonia smell produced by our dog from the ammonia smell produced by Proctor & Gamble. His advice to me: let it go.

I’ve never been comfortable with that advice. When people tell me to “get over it” my hackles go immediately to the upright and locked position. It has always seemed to me to be dismissive of my experience.

This was the one time—and perhaps the only time—when such advice made sense to me. I was half-way across the country with no hope of influencing my now former landlord to change her position and any action I could envision was just going to take time and money from me. Letting go of the rope was the only sensible option.

And while it was not a response that came easily to me, a life-long grudge holder, I did. And I really have not thought that much more about it until writing this.

***

I am not very resilient. It would be a better finish to this piece if I were, but I’m not. My apple cart is not so much overturned as it is relentlessly targeted by the vehicles in movie car chases.

We have all seen moments in movies when the good car chases the bad car through an urban environment with tires squealing and pedestrians jumping out of the way. At some point, the pace of the scene slows as we watch a fruit seller, or some other street vendor, push their wares across the street and right into the path of the racing vehicles. For variety, sometimes one of the vehicles will jump the curb and drive through a newsstand, or a parade, or some such obstacle creating massive chaos.

I am forever cleaning up after car chases.

But, then again, if I shift my thinking, I should take heart from the fact that I am still selling fruit, shouldn’t I?

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Dear Me

2011-05-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought, "If I only knew then what I know now"?

In this link to a blog post the writer, Erin, sends a letter to her younger self.

Mental Health America of Licking County: The Case for Funding

2011-04-11T14:27:00.000-07:00

Recently, Mental Health America’s QA (Quality Assurance) Committee reviewed an incident involving a local 14-year old school girl who contacted our office because she had received some inappropriate attention from an adult male in an online forum. She called our offices about the incident because she remembered a classroom presentation from our PAVE program from a year before.

She didn’t engage her parents, or the school, or the police, she called Mental Health America and we made sure that the proper authorities were notified.

By being in the schools and teaching age-appropriate lessons on issues relating to cyber bullying and relationship violence and media literacy, Mental Health America provided that student with the tools to recognize that she had gotten herself into a dangerous situation and we were a resource to decrease the impact on her and her family, not to mention the potential risk to her personal safety.

The authors of a 2004 World Health Organization (WHO) summary report entitled Prevention of Mental Disorders: Effective Interventions and Policy Options include a definition of mental disorder prevention from Mrazek & Haggerty:

Mental disorder prevention aims at “reducing incidence, prevalence, recurrence of mental disorders, the time spent with symptoms, or the risk condition for a mental illness, preventing or delaying recurrences and also decreasing the impact of illness in the affected person, their families and the society. (WHO, 17)[1]

It might be argued that receiving a photograph of male genitalia is not a public health risk, but mental illness is and trauma and trauma-related stress can be contributing factors to mental health conditions. In the same WHO report, the authors write: “Adverse conditions such as child abuse, violence, war, discrimination, poverty and lack of access to education have a significant impact on the development of mental ill-health and the onset of mental disorders” (WHO, 14).

We have reached a point where the deterioration in available resources has intersected with the process of responding to a growing public health concern, i.e. mental illness. No longer, it seems, can we consider a broad portfolio that would permit tailored responses based on the condition of an individual, but we must adopt a one-size approach based on a medical model where patients are assessed, prescribed and allotted targeted engagements with a counselor.

It seems less a medical model than a factory model.

Responding to mental illness is a huge problem and getting bigger, no question about it. It is forecast that by 2020, behavioral health disorders will surpass all physical diseases as a major cause of disability world-wide (Harding, p. 21)[2]. One forecast quoted in a paper called “Mental health promotion and mental illness prevention: the economic case,”[3] prepared by the London School of Economics and Political Science looked at the expected costs of mental illness by condition in a 20 year period from 2007 to 2026. Their findings indicate that costs of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar, eating disorders, personality disorders, child and adolescent mental health and dementia will increase by an average of 79% (Knapp, McDaid & Parsonage, eds. 2011).

Higher prevalence and more costs with no clear sense of when there will be more resources in the public system with which to respond.

A reasonable person might conclude that the medical model is the wisest choice in that it stands the greatest chance of impacting the largest number of people. But, just as there is no single mental illness and not everyone with the same diagnosis will respond to the same treatment, there has to be room in our response to the challenge of these disorders to offer a variety of responses.

Cost containment is a laudable goal, but it is not a patient goal and it should not be our only goal in designing the next generation of public health care.

A generation ago, we convinced ourselves that the state hospitals were a draconian response to those who experience mental health conditions. Our leaders felt that it was better for the patient that they be returned to their communities where they could be closer to family. Prior to that time, conventional wisdom held that persons with these conditions should be locked away where they could not harm themselves, or others and where the general public would not have to encounter them.

Time and circumstance have combined to bring about significant changes in community attitudes toward those who experience mental health conditions. We have come to understand that, instead of being the “other” and different from us, persons with mental health conditions are our friends, neighbors and even our family members.

And, just as we have become more comfortable with the prevalence of mental health conditions, we are also learning that there is much we can do to mitigate their impact.

Health promotion/education and disease prevention are tools that also come from the medical model and have enabled us to respond to and prevent all manner of medical events.

Prenatal and perinatal care are clear determinants in childhood development. We know expectant mothers should be monitored during pregnancy and we know that their children should get vaccinated because there is risk to both mother and child, but that risk is manageable.

By the same token, we know that while “there are genetic and biological components to mental illness…emerging evidence suggests that certain behavioral health problems can be prevented, while in others onset may be delayed and severity of symptoms decreased” (San Mateo, p.1)[4].

Mental health promotion/education and mental illness prevention can play an important role in supporting the psychiatrist-counselor-case manager relationship. Educating the public about the signs and symptoms of mental illnesses and their contributory factors supports help-seeking behavior, as in the case of the student who contacted our office following the inappropriate contact. Education also empowers those who engage with medical personnel to make better informed decisions about their care. Anti-psychotics are powerful tools in response to mental illnesses but they can come with significant side effects and an informed consumer is a more equal partner in their own recovery.

The returns on investments in health promotion/education and prevention are more difficult to evaluate than other mental health expenditures because their impact is in that which is not seen. Ideally, the outcome of an effective program would be an increase in patients not seen, prescriptions not written, persons not arrested and children without behavior problems.

What is easy to see is their cost. Prevention and health promotion/education can be delivered in a variety of formats, but there is evidence suggesting that they are most effective when they include a personal contact between the program recipient and an advocate. Anecdotally, we know that the 14-year old student remembered MHA’s classroom presentation.

Our funders recognize the value of health promotion/education and prevention and have made considerable investments in the programs of our agency and others throughout Licking County. The challenge faced presently is in prioritizing the limited funds available. Can they afford to mount a robust medical response and still offer mental health and prevention programs?

Of course, it is our position that they cannot afford not to.

There is compelling research indicating the returns on investments in a long term education and prevention strategy. From our work on workplace mental health we know that integrating mental health into the benefits package can return $4 - $5 dollars for every dollar in expense. In the LSE paper, they calculate Year One returns on suicide prevention training for family practice doctors at more than 19:1 (Knapp, McDaid & Parsonage, eds. 2011, p. 40).

The costs associated with responding to chronic diseases such as mental health conditions are staggering. The financial costs in terms of treatment services and lost productivity are estimated at $247 billion annually (Institute of Medicine [IOM] Policy Brief, p. 1)[5]. There is a broad consensus that something must be done to “bend the curve” in health care expenditure in order to prevent a crippling burden on our economy.

Where the consensus begins to fall apart is in how to go about lightening that load.

An often-heard answer is that we should get more patient buy-in, that they should have some “skin in the game” and once they know what the real cost of healthcare is then they will be more invested in what services they purchase, not elect so many expensive tests and unnecessary procedures. Sticker shock will control costs.

This makes sense when you are evaluating accessories for your new car, or premium services for your cable TV, but not when discussing people’s health. Illness is not a choice. The uninsured cancer patient is just as sick as the insured.

It is unrealistic to expect that those two patients will receive the same level of care, but if life choices and bad luck have left a patient without insurance coverage, do we not have some responsibility to do what we can to help them be as healthy as possible for as long as possible?

This is the promise of health promotion/education, prevention and early intervention programs.

In a recent compelling article in the New Yorker[6], it was noted that a statistical analysis of hospital visits in Camden, New Jersey revealed that between January of 2002 and June of 2008, two buildings and a combined total of 900 residents were responsible for 4,000 hospital visits and some $200,000,000 in medical bills, or roughly $222,000 per person (Gawande, p. 4). The story goes on to document efforts to provide coordinated care for these and other high-cost patients, the net effect of which is to reduce their impact on health care resources. Granted, part of the response to these high-cost patients involved connecting them with more targeted health interventions, but a significant part involved lifestyle interventions designed to mitigate symptoms and delay hospitalizations.

What is clear from the New Yorker piece is that while both interventions would be impactful on the patient’s quality of life, it is in their combination that there lies the greatest opportunity to both control costs and improve health outcomes: the health promotion/education, prevention and medical models working together with everyone educated to the fullest extent possible.

We are all interested in achieving the best possible outcome for the consumer while being responsible stewards of available resources. Times being what they are, we know that we cannot do as much as we perhaps might like. What is troubling is how, during the current contraction of services, does that 14 year-old girl, or her peers, get the information they need to respond to a stressor, mitigate a potential traumatic situation and support her mental health? There isn’t a pill for that.

Mental disorders are inextricably linked to human rights issues. The stigma, discrimination and human rights violations that individuals and families affected by mental disorders suffer are intense and pervasive. At least in part, these phenomena are consequences of a general perception that no effective preventive or treatment modalities exist against these disorders. Effective prevention can do a lot to alter these perceptions and hence change the way mental disorders are looked upon by society. Human rights issues go beyond the specific violations that people with mental disorders are exposed to, however. In fact, limitations on the basic human rights of vulnerable individuals and communities may act as powerful determinants of mental disorders. Hence it is not surprising that many of the effective preventive measures are harmonious with principles of social equality, equal opportunity and care of the most vulnerable groups in society. Examples of these interventions include improving nutrition, ensuring primary education and access to the labour (sic) market, removing discrimination based on race and gender and ensuring basic economic security. Many of these interventions are worth implementing on their own merit, even if the evidence for their effectiveness for preventing specific mental disorders is sometimes weak. The search for further scientific evidence on effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, however, should not be allowed to become an excuse for non-implementation of urgently needed social and health policies. (WHO, foreward).

[1] World Health Organization. “Prevention of Mental Disorders, Effective Interventions and Policy Options: Summary Report.” United Nations, 2004. Web. 11 April 2011 <http://www.who.int/mental_health/evidence/en/prevention_of_mental_disorders_sr.pdf>.

[2] Harding, Fran. “Strategic Initiative #1: Prevention of Substance Abuse and Mental Illness.” Center for Mental Health Services, Draft 10/01/10. Web. 11 April 2011 < http://www.samhsa.gov/about/siDocs/prevention.pdf>.

[3] Knapp, Martin, David McDaid and Michael Parsonage, eds. “Mental Health Promotion and Mental Illness Prevention: The Economic Case.” London School of Economics and Political Science, 2011. Web. 11 April 2011 <www2.lse.ac.uk/LSEHealthAndSocialCare/.../MHPP%20The%20Economic%20Case.pdf>.

[4] San Mateo County Health System: Behavioral Health & Recovery Services. “A Primary Prevention Framework for Substance Abuse and Mental Health.” San Mateo County, CA, 2009. Web. 11 April 2011 <http://www.sanmateo.networkofcare.org/contentFiles/PreventionFrameworkFinal_050909.pdf>.

[5] Institute of Medicine.” “Preventing Mental, Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities, Report Brief for Policymakers.” Institute of Medicine, 2009. Web. 11 April, 2011 < http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2009/Preventing-Mental-Emotional-and-Behavioral-Disorders-Among-Young-People/Preventing%20Mental%20Emotional%20and%20Behavioral%20Disorders%202009%20%20Report%20Brief%20for%20Policymakers.pdf>.

[6] Gawande, Atul. “The Hot Spotters,” The New Yorker January 24, 2011. Web. 11 April, 2011 < http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_gawande>

Take Care of Your Spirit

2011-03-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

The USS Arizona Memorial
(Photo from Hawaii Magazine)

Writing about spiritual matters has been the making and the breaking of many authors, so let me begin by saying that it is not my intent to diminish, ridicule, or otherwise judge in any way the beliefs of anyone.

As noted elsewhere in this blog, I am not a religious person, but I do believe in ghosts.

I'm not talking about the Scooby Doo kind of ghosts that chase those meddlesome kids and compell Shaggy to overdo it with the Scooby Snacks, I am talking about ghosts in the sense of resonance. The sense that there are no new paths through this life and that our ancestors have "gone on ahead" to lead the way.

I think that each of us have had the experience of being in the presence of ghosts. It might have been on a forced march while in school to some nearby historical site, or it may have been the discovery of a long forgotten photograph of a parent, or sibling. Perhaps it came when finally making the pilgrimage to the birthplace of a childhood hero, or when you literally walk in footsteps from the past.

When we were kids, my mother tried her best to connect my brother and sister and me with our Canadian history. She took us to a place called Upper Canada Village which is in eastern Ontario and, like Colonial Williamsburg, is a recreation of a point in time. While many of the buildings are authentic to the period and had been moved to the site from locations all around Ontario, it never had the sense of having been truly historical. It was more like an historical amusement park, but without the rides. It was interesting to see how a water-powered sawmill worked, or how food was prepared, but it was more a shrine to history than a place where history had been made.

Many years later, I was in Wyoming and on the way to dinner one night, the car pulled to the side of the road and my friends showed me a pair of parallel tracks running off to our right through the grassland. It wasn't much to look at, but when I learned that these were the tracks left by the wagons following the Oregon Trail west from St. Louis then it became a place--about half-way between Laramie and Centennial--that I recall to this day. I am not a serious student of American history, but, standing there, I had a strong sense of the many ghosts that had to have passed that point. That the grass had never grown back to erase those tracks was downright spooky.

My wife and I went to Paris and one of the many highlights of that trip was a visit to the cathedral at Notre Dame. There are many majestic images to take away from a visit to this crown jewel of gothic religious architecture. For some it is the famous Rose Window, for some it is the gargoyles that line the roof, others may be inspired by it as the setting for Victor Hugo's famous story. For me, the resonant image is of worn stone steps.

In order to get to the roof to see the gargoyles, you have to climb a circular staircase of some 387 steps. Doesn't sound like a big deal and it certainly didn't sound difficult while we were standing in line waiting our turn. What makes it difficult is that the steps have been worn from the centuries of those who came before. Your footing is uncertain and you are under a certain amount of pressure to keep up with the person in front of you in order not to incur the wrath of the endless chain of those behind.

The stair tower is a little bit like a chimney: it's tall and narrow and lined with stone. Cold air rushes in at the bottom and the smell of sweat and desperation comes rushing out the top as people quickly recognize how much physical effort is required to actually climb all of those steps. Aside from the occasional kids who rush past you in their exuberance to see where the Hunchback lives, it is remarkably quiet as this league of overweight pilgrims prays for the stamina to make it to the top without collapsing and promises to begin an exercise regime just as soon as they get home.

You can't climb those stairs, or stand anywhere in that magnificent building and not think of the passion that sustained the generations of builders over the 182 years of its construction. Day after day, year after year, they worked to capture their beliefs in stone and glass. And, in the process, they created a place that has inspired the spirit for generations of their descendants.

You don't have to believe what they believe in order to appreciate the church. There is, however, no escaping the power of the beliefs that drove its creation. Being in that space is inspiring. Contemplating the achievement that is Notre Dame helps to understand all that we are capable of.

* * *

I love writing with a fountain pen. Not only is it increasingly rare to see handwriting practiced at all--and mine could use a lot of practice--but writing with a fountain pen is a little like painting with a fine brush: the pen lets the writer not only capture an idea, but also something of the emotion behind it.

My newest pen is perhaps 70 years old. It belonged to my grandfather--the one I never met--and it came into my possession only recently. I just got it repaired and I am learning how to write with its fine point.

I know little about my mother's father. I know that he was an electrician. I know that he served in both world wars. I know that he was well-liked and came from a large family. I also know that he and my father's father were at Vimy Ridge during WW I, although there is no evidence that they would have known one another.

With such a meager framework, the pen has no context and yet it contextualizes me as a tangible souvenir of one-quarter of my family tree. It resonates with my history.

As I consider this subject, I recognize the ever-present threat of hypocrisy: I claim not to be a person of faith and yet I am writing about having a certainty of things unseen and unseeable.

Taking care of your spirit is a strategy to reduce tension and relieve stress. For some this may mean meditation or communing with nature; for others it may mean being more observant of one's particular faith. People of faith are known to have experienced more rapid recovery from illness and are better able to deal with life's rich variety of potholes and detours. The promise of a brighter day, regardless of its source, has inspired many to endure much.

I am forced to acknowledge that I am not that optimistic. I do not trust in that brighter day. I know that there are people who do, but that ain't me. I have today and I want to get to the end of it thinking I did more right than wrong and more good than bad.

I am inspired by ghosts and the things they have done and the spaces they have built. I know that most of the meaning of life is, like an iceberg, largely unknowable until you run into it. Though they represent significant hazards to navigation both in the shipping and in the metaphorical sense, it is important to consider the challenges these icebergs may present.

* * *

I need to explain the choice of the photograph of the Arizona Memorial.

When I was in high school Life Magazine was relaunched as a monthly and I had a subscription for a couple of years. In the December 1981 issue they predictably commemorated the 40th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. On the Table of Contents page there was a small photo taken from directly overhead of the Memorial.

Anyone who had ever seen Hawai'i Five-O had seen pictures of the Memorial but they were always taken at sea level. It looks like a post-war modernist houseboat where the names of the 1100 sailors lost when the battleship sank are inscribed on the end wall. What I had never understood until I saw that Life Magazine photo was that the USS Arizona lies just below the surface; that this site, for all intents and purposes, is the shallowest of shallow graves and, as the constant leak of diesel fuel from its tanks shows, one in which the corpse still bleeds to this day.

In that one image, the Arizona went from being a citation in a history book to being a visceral war wound. I am not a member of the "Greatest Generation" but I can appreciate the power of everything that the Arizona represents to them. Even though I have never been there--and am frankly too afraid to go--my life is informed by that image.

It is a powerful testament to the cost of war and a reminder of the value of peace. The Arizona itself is a testament to self-sacrifice, its crew still aboard.

Human beings are messy, disorganized creatures who can occasionally be united in the service of grand ideas. We spend more than we earn, we eat more than we plant, we race when we are not being chased and yet we can also seek common ground, follow our curiosity and strive to be better. And we do, eventually, learn from examples which is why I welcome the presence of my ghosts.

I don't have a good close for this. There is no tidy resolution, no fortune cookie takeaway. Taking care of the spirit is a profoundly personal task and, despite what you may have heard, my answer is no better or worse than anybody else's. However, I imagine that each of us benefits from considering the question.

Eat Well

2011-03-17T06:22:00.000-07:00

I went to visit my mother for Christmas.

Like most of our visits of late, the length was in inverse proportion to the distance travelled. (I feel as though I spent more time with airport security.) And, because the visit was so brief, my mom made a Herculean effort to try and recreate the features of those long ago holidays when the family was together. There were stockings hung by the chimney with care, wrapped presents under the tree and lots of food, including a fully stocked bunker of Christmas cookies.

But, despite all of these preparations, which had to have started right after I told her in October that I would be coming, my mother outsourced the stollen.

Stollen is a German sweet bread that is prepared for the holiday. While it looks unassuming on the outside--kind of like French bread with raisins and sugar frosting--it is dense liken those pills you drop in water that expand and expand until they become a castle, or an airplane, or a Barbie-sized figure.

For this, what was a relatively late addition to our Christmas morning menu, my mother had contracted with the local Swiss pastry shop and it was one of my Christmas Eve duties to go downtown and pick it up. This was an assignment that I cheerfully accepted because I have a real fondness for bakeries and I am partial to Swiss bakeries most of all.

Bakeries are like magic shops in the way that a few relatively simple ingredients are transformed into something amazing. I remember, as a young child, watching my mother make bread and the great treat it was when my grandmother came to town because she would make her wonderful rolls. It was to a bakery that we would go after ski lessons to replace the calories accidentally burned by exercise with those made by expert, flour-covered hands and then drenched in icing. Is there anything more delicious after a winter day spent outside than tarte au sucre (literally, "pie of sugar")?

But the real attachment to baked goods and the nostalgia for Swiss pastry is due to my grandfather.

I recall, as a child, looking forward to Friday afternoons because it meant he would come with a cardboard pastry box wrapped in string from the Select Pastry on Ste. Catherine St.

It seems like there were other items in the box, but I recall the croissants and the Black Forest Cake most of all.

It was after this introduction to the pastry arts that I recall seeing a television commercial for Pillsbury "Crescent Rolls." The shapes may have been similar, but the experience of pulling apart a warm-from-the-oven croissant and putting soft butter on the wisps of bread it watching them melt away could never be equaled by something that came from your grocer's freezer case in an overgrown toilet paper roll.

It was not only the quality of their work, but also the idea that my grandfather had selected these "Select" pastries that made them special. He was a difficult person to know and, as kids, we were never entirely certain that he wasn't mad at us all the time. The pastries were a delicious contradiction.

There came a day when the pastries stopped coming.

After that it was as though we had been set adrift in a world without pastry. There would be times when some adult, or other, would appear with a cake or other creation, but it was never the same. You always remember your first time and that goes for pastry as well.

It is perhaps this abrupt disruption in the supply that has fueled my life-long search for pastries as good as those my grandfather brought. Somewhere there must be a Black Forest cake good enough to be select and, judging from my waistline, I seem intent to keep looking until I find it.

I walked into the Swiss Pastry from which my mother had ordered her stollen and, even before I noticed the counter staff who all shared a fondness for facial piercings such that it seemed to be a condition of employment, I saw a piece of Black Forest cake in the display case.

It was automatic, a process beyond thinking, I instantly recognized it as being identical in appearance to those long ago cakes selected by my grandfather.

It was like stepping into a sugar-frosted time tunnel: I had to have a piece.

The intent of including "Eat Well" as one of the 10 tools to Live Your Life Well was not necessarily to promote holiday gluttony or even my chocolate shavings and maraschino cherry lined walk down memory lane. The intent was to promote healthy food choices. The information management mantra of "garbage in, garbage out" applies to all manner of systems, including the digestive. We know about food pyramids and calorie counting and dealing meals and yet, as I write this, I am staring at the picture of the Black Forest cake and wondering how I can "get me some of that."

But it also cannot be denied that food has many powerful associations with memory--both good and bad.

To make my point, I will cite an extreme example. My family heritage is Scottish and so I have virtually no standing to write about food. A thrifty people, we are known for extracting the maximum value out of all of our possessions. One such strategy was through the creation of dishes that would use otherwise unusable parts of our livestock. The most famous such dish is haggis.

By just about any measure, haggis is a disgusting idea. And that's a determination based solely on the finished product. The mind boggles at the number of possible iterations that must have been tried before settling on the final recipe. Nothing ever good comes from the sentence, "Taste this and tell me what you think."

Having said that, I will admit to having a fondness for haggis that is driven solely by memory.

My father loved butcher shop items--"special cuts"--that would not immediately come to mind on a visit to the corner store. He liked things like beef tongue and something called "blood pudding." I can remember being dispatched to the coldest part of the basement to turn over the tongue that was pickling in a spooky brine between the inner and outer doors. These "treasures" would be served up to us kids as though we were the most luckiest people in the world, but I am here to tell you that tongue is tongue, no matter how you slice it.

So it was with some trepidation that I responded to the prospect of having haggis. I was 16 and being permitted to attend an annual event for persons of Scottish heritage. It was a fancy dress affair featuring a band, a formal dinner and a late night snack. I was even to be "fixed up" for the event. Through a colleague of my father's, a date was brought in from out of town. (Apparently, none of the locals would have anything to do with me.)

It was an event my father looked forward to every year. He had been president of the sponsoring organization as had my uncle and my grandfather.

It was not something I had been looking forward to because I have never been very socially "ept" and the prospect of getting dressed up and spending the evening with someone I didn't know was paralytic in its effect.

To detail the events of the evening would be to tread ground covered more skillfully by more talented writers. It is sufficient to say that cliches were honored, many many cliches.

More than half a lifetime later, I no longer remember the woman's name who was forced to put up with me, but I do remember the pomp and the circumstance surrounding the event and I remember the smart-aleky remarks made by my father's friends concerning me and my prospects with my "date" (she was that far out of my league). It was the first time that I can recall not being treated like an appendage, like a child, something to be "seen and not heard." It was kind of a secular confirmation.

Instead of having to go to class and practice reading religious texts, I went to a fabulous party, featuring manners and practices with which I was only marginally familiar. (I mean, really, how do you keep track of all of those forks?)

At one point in the evening, around midnight as I recall, the haggis is "presented" like an honored guest. It is ceremonially cut to a round of applause, kind of like at a bris and then is served to everyone.

Talk about an awkward situation: your at a formal dinner, seated at a table with people you don't know and with a date who is doing her level best to put up with you and they serve you haggis! What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?

Women learn a host of ways for handling such situations, but men have only two choices: we storm out, or we suck it up. My plate was served and I had to go with either "A" or "B."

As a Canadian, I really only had one choice. I mean, after all, somebody worked hard to make the dish and it would be rude not to try it. (We are a polite people.)

And you know what, like the evening, it wasn't that bad. Not my first choice of how to spend a Friday night, but I am glad that I did it.

It was shortly after the haggis that my date and I became separated. I don't remember the circumstances, but I do recall that I was alone for the rest of the evening. Perhaps she had to leave early the next morning to go back to Toronto, or perhaps the haggis was a deal-breaker.

Facts lose potency over time, what lingers is the association and, to this day, I have a positive association with haggis. That is not to say that I have had it since, but I can honestly say "it's not that bad" and, in part, be referring to the food.

So eating well is good for your mental health. That is not to advocate for cold water sandwiches and mineral water diets, but to give yourself permission to live a life that will permit you to develop a broad portfolio of associations with food. As with most things, moderation is key.

I brought that piece of Black Forest cake home to my mother's house and enjoyed the opportunity to remember my grandfather and a different time in my life.

That was enough and worth every dollar. There were not enough meals left in my visit for me to actually sample the cake before I left, but it was as tangible a holiday treat as anything else and one of my favorite memories from my trip.

I have a mysterious kind of depression - Mental Illness - Salon.com

2011-02-24T15:41:00.000-08:00

I have a mysterious kind of depression - Mental Illness - Salon.com

wawa-news.com - What is Stigma?

2011-02-24T06:44:00.000-08:00

Wawa is located in Ontario on Lake Superior's eastern shore.

wawa-news.com - What is Stigma?

Everybody Needs Somebody

2011-02-18T18:07:00.000-08:00

Using Your Voice

2011-02-17T13:14:00.000-08:00

In 2010, MTV’s Teen Mom star Amber Portwood was seen punching her on-and-off boyfriend Gary Shirley in the face. During one episode, Amber kicked Gary in the back as he walked down a flight of stairs. Recently Amber was arrested for two felony accounts of domestic battery. She could have faced a $10,000 fine if she had been convicted.

This incident has shed a new light onto dating violence. When most people consider domestic violence they think of a boyfriend, or husband, throwing their girlfriend, or wife, into a wall, punching or kicking her. Rarely do people consider it when the roles are reversed. This is a respect issue to be considered during February which is Teen Dating Violence Prevention and Awareness Month. Respect needs to flow both ways through a relationship and guys need to be taught the signs of dating violence. Things like possessiveness, constant texting and calling as well as threats can come from girls as well.

As the Community Liaison for the PAVE (Prevent Assault and Violence Education) program of Mental Health America, I feel that it is my duty to relay our messages to the public. There is no way to fix a problem unless you have supporters and people that believe in it. PAVE has a large following of dedicated students, however the community should be aware of what we are doing. I hope to help circulate the anti violence messages through all central Ohio communities and help to make the area a better place to live and learn.

Now that I have (hopefully) made you think about violence in our community, relationships, or teens, I have used MY voice for one more thing. Educating you. So my question becomes, what will you do with this message? How can you share the importance of true respect? 1 in 4 teens are victims of dating violence. We could use your help to change that statistic.

--Gabrielle Scopel

PAVE Community Liaison

& senior at Licking Heights High School

Richard's Story

2011-02-10T07:01:00.000-08:00

The link will take you to an article from the National Post, one of two national daily newspapers in Canada. The author writes of his friendship with a man who experiences bipolar. In the article, the make reference to Bell Canada, a major telecommunications company in Canada, who yesterday (Feb. 9) donated $0.05 to mental health for every text message and long distance call made that day.

Richard's story about his experience of mental illness is a compelling read.

First Person

2011-02-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

The link is to a blog posting relating to a Wisconsin high school dance team's performance that used psychiatric hospital imagery. The writer is someone who experiences mental illness and has had multiple in-patient stays. Her post is an open letter to the team coach to consider the impact of her messages.

http://www.our-journey-through-life.com/2011/02/mental-health-monday-guestblog.html

Quality of Life

2011-01-28T07:46:00.000-08:00

The following is an email exchange about smoking and people who experience mental health conditions. The final section was written by MHA's Compeer Coordinator, Kristen Frame.

A daughter who grew up with a mentally ill parent:

I have understood for some time that tobacco helps reduce the incidences and frequency of hallucinations and delusion of a person suffering from debilitating mental illnesses like schizophrenia. If is does, then quality of life should be in the equation. There is no cure for many of our mental illness, only control of symptoms. I ask, if you had to choose, which would you pick.

I do not at all advocate tobacco use, but I feel for the mentally ill patient, there should be some exception to the general rule here.

My understanding is that it is nicotine, rather than tobacco, that positively impacts some schizophrenia symptoms and drug side effects. Does someone in the group have some other information about positive effects from tobacco smoke or other tobacco components for patients struggling with psychosis, etc.? Certainly the negative health effects of tobacco smoke causes other immediate mental and physical issues for people with chronic mental conditions, so eliminating tobacco smoke would be helpful.

A suggestion is to reach out to the facility to do training for their staff about smoking and mental illness, harm reduction, and how to support patients in reducing or eliminating smoking. An intermediate step for these particular patients would be to use NRT - lozenge or gum - with these patients rather than chewing tobacco which can lead to oral cancers. And then work with them on use reduction of the NRT.

As you have said, the “positive” effects of tobacco usage are not a justification for not counseling individuals who experience persistent mental illness about the overwhelming evidence that tobacco usage is a significant health hazard and the leading cause of death for individuals with persistent mental illness. There is a short term alleviation of symptoms but like the elusive high of other drugs, it is very short-term and does decrease over time.

This mythology has been perpetuated by outdated “studies” that were funded by the tobacco industry, and debunked by recent more scrupulous current research. A significant portion of individuals who experience mental illness are addicted to tobacco and remain untreated because it is economically advantageous to keep them that way.

Diane writes: “I have understood for some time that tobacco helps reduce the incidences and frequency of hallucinations and delusion of a person suffering from debilitating mental illnesses like schizophrenia. If is does, then quality of life should be in the equation. There is no cure for many of our mental illness, only control of symptoms. I ask, if you had to choose, which would you pick.”

There may currently be no “cure,” but there is recovery and the opportunity for a fully enriched life on one’s own terms. Quality of life is the most important aspect of the equation. Informed decision making is not possible for those who are given inaccurate or misleading information about tobacco addiction. As an advocate, and individual who experiences persistent mental illness, I pick independence and a life constructed of my own informed choices, not reduced to passively accepting a significantly shortened and physically and economically dependent life. We do not accept the notion that alcoholics or other addicts should be supported in the state of addiction because, poor souls, their life is so terrible, we will permit them this vice. Not giving individuals who experience mental illness the up-to-date and appropriate medical treatment that we expect for their peers is not only disabling, it is criminal. Individuals with disabilities do not need to be treated as exceptions, but as equal human beings.

I appreciate your genuine empathy and concern for individuals who experience mental illness. We need equal treatment under the law, not sympathy.

MHA thanks the 20th Century Club, Kiwanis, & Licking Memorial Hospital

2010-12-28T14:21:00.000-08:00

Thousands of Licking County families have benefited from the generosity of the women of the 20^th Century Club. Since 1977 these women have provided the money to send newsletters to new parents with the goal of helping families raise mentally healthy children. The women’s service club also provides volunteers to mail the letters to new parents for the first 5 years of the child’s life. That is 34 years of supporting Mental Health America of Licking County in the agency’s ongoing efforts to promote good mental health and wellness.

A few years ago, Newark Kiwanis Club also supported this effort by providing some additional funding to help pay for rising costs of mailing the newsletters. Licking Memorial Hospital is to be commended for gathering the names of the new borns and distributing the first issue of ParenTalk in the hospital.

In 1977, the newsletter was called Pierre the Pelican but it became outdated and ParenTalk replaced Pierre. ParenTalk is written by Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Mental Health America of Franklin County. All first-time Licking County families are eligible to receive the 20 issues by letting us know the date of birth plus name and address of the parent/guardian. Our phone number is 740-522-1341 or email us at mhalc@alink.com. The age appropriate letters are sent out monthly. We do ask you to let us know if you move, so you will not miss an issue.

ParenTalk deals with everything from post-partum blues to differences in children, to discipline and safety, bottle and breast feeding, tantrums and brain development, eating and sleeping habits, doctor checkups and difficult behaviors, self-esteem and getting along with others, early intervention and sharing, stress and family fun, communication and “telling stories”, learning and creativity, dealing with emotions and expressing anger plus a reminder that parents are a child’s first and most important teacher. Each issue is full of information, advice and resources for additional help.

Another big thank you to the 20^th Century Club for inserting into ParenTalk the Licking County Reading Foundation flyers that say Read for 20, a reminder to parents to read aloud to your child 20 minutes every day. Reading aloud to your child is the most important thing you can do from the day your child is born to prepare your child for success in school.

Mental Health

America

of Licking County is blessed by our Board of Trustees, donors, volunteers, clubs and organizations, a great staff of dedicated individuals and with funding provided by United Way and the Community Mental Health & Recovery Board.

--Paddy Kutz

Executive Director

The Ghosts That Haunt Me

2010-12-12T19:03:00.000-08:00

I used to have a tabletop pre-transistor AM radio that would emit this warm orange glow through its back grill. It wasn't a very bright light, but you could make out the shapes of objects a few feet away. It was like sitting next to the embers of a dying fire.

The radio had a large yellowish tuning knob and I would run that from one end of the scale to the other listening for someone to tell me a story after my mother had left the room and turned out the lights.

There were the local stations like CFCF, CJAD, and CFOX, but on a clear winter night I could also pick up stations in Boston, Chicago and New York City. These stations would come in only after the dial had been manipulated with the delicate touch of a safecracker and even then the signal would be riding a wave of static that would routinely rise up and drown it out completely.

Between the peaks of static, I would hear about traffic on the Dan Ryan, nor'easters threatening the Cape Cod, Boston and the Maine coast. It was while listening to this radio that I was introduced to "traffic and weather together on the eights" and to "The Shadow."

On various nights at different spots around the dial, I would find rebroadcasts of old radio shows. These programs would mix sitcoms like Fibber McGee & Molly with shows like The Whistler and Inner Sanctum. These programs were once mainstays of the airwaves long before call-in shows and before computers replaced disc jockeys.

The Shadow was ideally suited to radio because only at home, in the dark, could you accept the idea that one man could convince another that he was invisible. In real life, if you saw someone talking to an invisible crime fighter then you would contact organizations like ours.

Whereas radio sitcoms tended to thrive when translated to television and the movies, the spook shows were much less successful. The camera could never show anything as vivid as the images conjured by the imagination. It's the same reason that the best ghost stories are the ones we hear around the campfire, or from our friends. We remember these stories long after the punch lines of a great joke, the phone number of that cute girl, or where we left our car keys. Our brains file them some place different, some place more primal.

***

It will come as no surprise then that my favorite Christmas story is a ghost story.

"A Christmas Carol" tells the story of a man haunted by memory, by perspective and by possibility. Though often read to children, the story of Scrooge is the story of adults and their changing perspective on the holiday.

Children don't need ghost stories to know what Christmas is all about. They learn very quickly that it's all about them.

This is such a powerful idea that the traditions of the season become like critical ingredients in a recipe that we try to follow throughout our lives in order to recreate the perfect Christmas. What we learn as we grow older is that, like in cooking, some ingredients are not always available and substitutions are inevitable.

When we were children, those ingredients seemed to be in abundant supply. With few exceptions, the tree and its decorations, the meal and its menu, the guests and their jokes didn't vary all that much from one year to the next. And that was pretty comforting. No matter what happened throughout the year, Christmas was a red and green colored constant.

After I left home, the reassuring consistency of a family Christmas became even more important, but instead of having the whole month to marinate in it I only ever seemed to have a few days.

Compressing Christmas into smaller and smaller windows seemed to make it all the more important to get home and reconnect and regenerate. The traditions that evolved over time became desperate stations that had to be checked off in the hopes that some of the old self-affirming magic would return.

It was no wonder that the holidays were exhausting and came to be anticipated with a certain amount of dread.

And then there came the years when I couldn't be home for Christmas and even that couldn't be experienced without mixed emotions: I was both disappointed and relieved.

Dickens' story does a pitch-perfect job of capturing the contrasts and the mixed emotions that Christmas evokes in me. Christmas Past haunts me, Christmas Present is unsettling and Christmas Yet to Come is always challenging me to change my ways.

As I think about Christmas today, I find myself in a kind of a neutral zone trying to figure out what is left after all of the trimmings have been packed away.

There are no default answers. I do believe that it is important to work for peace on earth and goodwill to all. I like finding the perfect present and bringing a smile to the faces of the people I care about. (In the absence of a self-affirming answer, I will settle for affirming others.) I take comfort in making time to watch "White Christmas" and "Scrooge" (the 1951 version with Alastair Sim). But, unlike Scrooge, I don't think I have yet woken up from my dream. I think I am still working on the meaning of the season.

***

When I was growing up, one of the holiday staples was the annual Christmas show of local broadcaster Paul Reid.

Each year, he would devote one night of his show to stories of his childhood growing up in Peterborough, Ontario, as one of sixteen children, interspersed with holiday readings and Christmas music.

Reid had a magnificent voice for radio. It was warm, mellow, deep and tinged with a bit of sadness. He would guide his audience through the evening on a snowy Montreal night and make us think we were seated in front of a crackling fire listening to familiar tales.

Reid's fondness for the depression-era Christmases of his childhood was as undeniable as it was removed from his position as a big city radio host. It was almost as though he was telling these stories as a way of keeping them alive for himself.

I used to look forward to this show each year because it was something to look forward to. It was a fixture and a benchmark of the approaching holiday, like opening the doors on an advent calendar. I have been thinking about it recently because I recognize and connect to Reid's need to present it as a way of sustaining himself.

In the end, maybe that's all there is. Perhaps it is in the act of creating joy and obtaining some measure of satisfaction that we are really learning from the ghosts that haunt us.

Happy holidays.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Thinking About those who are Struggling, Especially Children!

2010-12-10T12:48:00.000-08:00

For 29 years, I have been writing about holiday stress and offered strategies on coping. There now are many sources of learning how to deal with life, some in the newspaper, some on the radio, some on television, and tons on the internet. Be sure to check out our website at www.mhalc.org to Live Your Life Well using our 10 tools which will help you to cope better. Let me offer my advice and referrals if you need it by calling me at 740-522-1341 or send me an email at Paddykutz@alink.com

All year long, not just during the holidays, it is appropriate to stretch beyond your own problems and issues and think of those less fortunate, especially children and youth. One way is to consider the poem by Ina J. Hughs who is often quoted, but not given credit. As you give thanks remember to:

Give thanks for children who

sneak popsicles before supper,

erase holes in math workbooks,

never find their shoes.

And offer love and hope to those who

stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,

can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,

are born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,

never go to the circus,

live in an X-rated world.

Give thanks for children who

bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,

hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And offer love and hope to those who

never get dessert,

have no safe blanket to drag behind them,

watch their parents watch them die,

can’t find any bread to steal,

don’t have any rooms to clean up,

whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser.

Give thanks for children who

spend all their allowance before Tuesday,

throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,

like ghost stories,

shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the tub,

get visits from the tooth fairy,

don’t like to get kissed in front of the carpool,

squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone,

whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And offer love and hope to those who

will eat anything,

have never seen a dentist,

aren’t spoiled by anybody,

go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,

live and move, but have no being,

whose nightmares come in the daytime.

Give thanks for and love and hope to children who

want to be carried and for those who must,

we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance,

we smother….and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer!

We are grateful for our volunteers, consumers, Board members and donors to help us keep on helping for 57 more years in Licking County. I also appreciate the author, Ina Hughs. Remember, there is no health without mental health so look after yours and when you need help let me know. I’ll be waiting for your calls and your checks. Thank you.

Mental Health America of Licking County is partially funded by United Way and the Community Mental Health & Recovery Board of Licking/Knox Co.

--by Paddy Kutz
Executive Director

Today, Father, is Father's Day

2010-11-16T08:37:00.000-08:00

I know what the calendar says, but for me today is Father's Day.

For more than 2 decades, mid-November can be counted on for two things: cold, biting rain and a flood of memories about the complicated man who was my father. Like the bracing sting of a cold rain that makes you put your head down and your collar up, memories of my father give me chills and remind me that I should have been better prepared.

Now before anyone jumps ahead and makes any assumptions, I use the word chills because his quick death from cancer abruptly punctuated our relationship and left me with lots of unresolved questions and feelings. I can't think of him without wondering how he would think about what's happened to me, my brother and sister and the world in general. I keep thinking that he and my wife's father would have liked one another and wish I could be certain. I want to ask his advice about all manner of things and I can't, I would like to take one more trip with him.

My father was a funny man. He liked to laugh. He liked to make people laugh. And yet my clearest memories were of a quiet man who seemed to be happiest in his workshop or in the woods with his chainsaw.

He had an astonishing social network in the days when that was measured by handshakes and first names and not numbers on a monitor. Whatever the issue, it seemed that he always knew who to call and if he didn't, he would find out.

One of the traits my father had in spades was that he was genuinely interested in people.

When I was in high school, my dad took me to England. After spending a few days in London, he rented a car and we drove south toward Brighton. We stopped for lunch at a place called the Ship Inn. I will never forget my father's advice upon entering this pub. He said you should always sit at the bar because then you'll really find out what's going on.

On this occasion, he broke that rule--I think it may have had something to do with me being under age--and we sat at a table next to the window. As we were eating our lunch, my father became distracted. There was something going on at the bar. As it would turn out, the previous Saturday, the pub had run out of lager and had had to borrow a keg from a pub down the street. We had arrived on their regular delivery day and now they were trying to figure out how to get the replacement keg delivered to the other establishment.

My father left me at the table to finish my sandwich and fizzy lemon and he went to the bar. In no time at all he had volunteered to wedge the keg into the back of our car and deliver it himself.

And like that, he had transformed himself from a tourist to a local. Suddenly he was a celebrated customer and surely he would have another glass to celebrate his new celebrity.

After the toasting, came the packing, or rather the repacking of the car. Suitcases had to be moved into the back seat so that the keg could be loaded into the trunk. A guide was assigned to ride with us to the other pub and see that the keg was safely delivered.

At the new pub--I don't remember the name, but I do recall it had something to do with birds--my father was again a celebrity: the great problem solver from Canada who had volunteered to deliver the beer. Such a noble act had to be toasted and so we spent another hour at another pub.

The barman took us on a tour and we were shown the owl that was the pub's mascot. It lived in a cage in the courtyard behind the building. I don't know much about owls, but to my eye it seemed like a pretty big bird.

While we were sitting there, celebrating the completion of our mission, my father's ears again perked up. A group of French schoolgirls had come into the bar and were engaged in an animated conversation. Always ready to be helpful, my father, in his absolutely fearless French, volunteered that there was an owl in the back of the bar.

Perhaps it was a question of cultural competency, perhaps it was because he had had one too many celebratory toasts, but whatever the reason, the schoolgirls were not at all interested in what my father was trying to tell them. There was a brief pause and then they went back to talking amongst themselves as though nothing had happened.

Like that story, there were episodes in my father's life that were he experienced tremendous success and others where communication was a barrier to understanding. But also like that story, which he told for a long time after we got home, the takeaway is the story. Dad loved to tell stories. He liked best the ones in which he was the hero, but so long as it was funny, that didn't always matter.

That's what I have are stories, many of which I was present for and some where I was not, but that have been elevated in the retelling to the level of myth. They are a comfort and a guide like the fractured fairy tales from the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show: they have a lesson, but perhaps not always a helpful one.

And then there is the story that began in the summer of 1989 when he learned he was sick and ended on November 16th at a pay phone in Toronto's Pearson Airport when I learned I had waited too long to make the trip home.

My father was not always an easy man to love, but, as I grow older, neither am I.

I miss him and have felt his loss more keenly as the years have passed.

Happy Fathers Day

Graham Campbell
--Associate Director

Self Care- An area so many of us neglect

2010-11-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

So many of us in the mental health field, whether it be prevention, education, advocacy, or treatment, spend so much time taking care of others that we forget about ourselves. We may rationalize that it would be selfish not to attend that meeting even though we haven’t gotten nearly enough sleep all week, or we may label ourselves lazy if we try to put a little more balance in our schedule instead of stretching it to the max. But these are just the kind of things we need in our lives, especially working in the field of helping others.

We need balance, sleep, and a plan for not burning ourselves out. If we continually put ourselves last (because we think we’re invincible? I’m not sure…) there will be higher likelihood of us acquiring burnout.

Some symptoms of burnout include:

Every day is a bad day.
Caring about your work or home life seems like a total waste of energy.
You’re exhausted all the time.
The majority of your day is spent on tasks you find either mind-numbingly dull or overwhelming.
You feel like nothing you do makes a difference or is appreciated.

The negative effects of burnout spill over into every area of life – including your home and social life. Burnout can also cause long-term changes to your body that make you vulnerable to illnesses like colds and flu. Because of its many consequences, it’s important to deal with burnout right away.

(Symptoms from http://www.helpguide.org/mental/burnout_signs_symptoms.htm).

It’s important to remember that you can have these feelings not necessarily because what you are doing IS mind-numbing or a waste, but because you have neglected yourself to the point that this is just how everything FEELS.

Some ideas for self-care:

Learn to air your feelings. Don't keep them bottled up inside you. Share your sorrows and disappointments with someone you trust. Remember, expressed feelings are changed feelings.
Avoid comparing yourself with others by admiring their gifts and ignoring your gifts. This kind of envy causes self-disgust. Put no one's head higher than your own.
Form a small group of people you can call on for emotional support. Agree to "be there" for each other. Offer advice only when it is asked for. Listen without interrupting. Take turns talking and listening.
Take time to play. Remember that play is any activity that you do just because it feels good. Remind yourself that you deserve to take time to play.
Don't forget to laugh, especially at yourself. Look for the humor in things around you. Let your hair down more often. Do something silly and totally unexpected from time to time.
Learn to relax. You can find books, tapes, programs, classes, instructors and other materials to teach you how to relax. Relaxation improves the mind, helps the body heal, and feels so much better than stress and tension.
Protect your right to be human. Don't let others put you on a pedestal. When people put you on a pedestal, they expect you to be perfect and feel angry when you let them down.
Learn to say no. As you become comfortable saying no to the unreasonable expectations, requests or demands of others you will discover that you have more compassion. When you do say yes to others, you will feel better about yourself and the people you're responding to.
Change jobs if you are miserable at work. First, try to figure out if the job is wrong for you or if certain people are causing you to feel miserable at work. Try paying more attention to the things you enjoy about your job and less attention to the things that annoy you. Remember that all jobs have some unpleasant aspects.
Stretch your muscles. Break a sweat. Go for a walk. Ride a bike. Park farther from the door. Take the stairs. You don't need fancy clothes, club memberships or expensive equipment to add exercise to your daily life.
Practice being a positive, encouraging person. Each time you give others a word of encouragement you not only feel better, but you build up your best self.
Pay attention to your spiritual life. Slow down. Practice sitting quietly. Listen to your inner voice. Spend time thinking about the things which bring peace, beauty and serenity to your life. Find the courage to follow your own spiritual path if a traditional religion has not been helpful for you.

(12 suggestions from http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/article/take_care)

In addition to all of this, I would suggest looking up books on secondary trauma or how to prevent burnout. Please take time to think about yourself, even if just a little.

We are all in this field because we have a passion for helping others, and that is a good thing. But we must always help ourselves first, because if we don’t, we one day may not be able to help anyone else.

--Anna Hagley
PAVE Assistant Coordinator

Get Enough Sleep

2010-11-14T20:05:00.000-08:00

The next tool in the Live Your Life Well Toolkit, Get Enough Sleep, is timely as we hav just set our clocks back an hour and returned to Standard Time.
As the changeover date approached, radio and television were full of reminders and the promise that we could all enjoy an extra hour of sleep.

An extra hour of sleep: more than sufficient compensation for having to change all of the clocks in your house (and the batteries in your smoke detectors).

It is a compelling offer, no doubt.

I have spent most of my adult life in search of just a few more minutes of sleep. Every morning, as my world comes back into focus, I try to calculate what trade-offs I have to make for just a little longer in my nice warm bed.

I go through all of the stages of grief at the start of every day before my feet ever hit the floor.

Denial is immediate when the alarm goes off. I don't care who you are, as soon as you turn off that noise, the first thing you do is get visual confirmation that the clock went off at the time you set. Even though it went off at six-thirty every day this week, I will swear on a stack of TV Guides that I just turned out the light and it just can't be any later than one a.m.. Of course, the last thing I remember before going to sleep was the funny way that the cat was looking at me.

Could happen. I mean he's home all day with nothing better to do. He could have figured it out by now.

But no, a blurry-eyed visual confirms that it is six-thirty: time to get up.

The bed is warm, the room is still dark and the house cold. Surely another few minutes won't matter.

And then the alarm goes off again and I realize that, instead of permanently silencing this morning terrorist, I merely wounded it by stabbing its snooze bar.

(I just want to say for the record that there is nothing satisfying about a five minute snooze.)

Maybe it's just me, but alarms sound angrier the second time around. It's like when in the role of Jack Bauer, Keifer Sutherland is able to convey a measure of resentment toward the people who attack him and who he is then forced to kill. "Look what you made me do. I didn't want to wake you up, but you made me."

It does not bode well for the rest of the day when you start off being threatened by an inanimate object.

There is no bargaining with the clock, it must be silenced by any means necessary. (For those who think I might be overstating this conflict, I draw your attention to the Runaway Alarm Clock that is designed to sit on the floor and then when it goes off, it also takes off. It has wheels and can run under the bed, or even out of the room to simultaneously incur and avoid your wrath.)

The next stage is bargaining. I'm awake, but still reluctant to get out of bed. My mind begins trying to remember my schedule, how much time it takes to get to work. Next, I reflect on issues relating to personal hygiene. I had a shower yesterday, right? Can I get through all I have to do today with an extra coat of deodorant and a hat? My spouse describes her bargaining process as figuring out what she's going to wear and sometimes this process can take a long time.

There is an audible cue when you enter the depression stage. It could be a sigh, or a grunt, or a favorite epithet: whatever the noise, it is a sign of surrender. The battle of another night's rest has been lost. Once this point is reached it is not a question of if you are going to get up, but when.

The next and final stage--acceptance--comes pretty quickly. Another day will not be denied and so I pull myself to my feet and shuffle off to the bathroom.

But the mind deprived of sleep is like a daytrader on crank: it begins to plan on how quickly it can get back to bed and what compromises will need ot be made to make that happen. Do I really need that class to graduate? Will they miss me if I don't go to that meeting? I worked over last week, I should be able to take off early today.

So I lurch through my day trying to get everything done so that I can get back to bed, but when I finally do get to go home and can go to bed, I don't. I instead engage in a thousand different time wasters so that when I do go to bed I am so exhausted that I have these hallucinations about my cat.

We delude ourselves that sleep is something we can catch up on. Seven to eight hours per night is an average, isn't it? If I get three hours tonight and thirteen on Sunday then it will all balance out, right? We approach sleep like we approach planning for retirement: I will gladly sleep tomorrow for life lived today.

The sad truth of growing up is that while it seems like the days all run together, they are in fact closed sets. If you don't get enough sleep today then there is no making that up: sleep deferred is sleep lost and you know how cranky you can get.

Research documents the correlation between sleep and mood, something our mothers tried to teach us from the very beginning. Granted, nap time for toddlers is just as important, if not more so, for their sleep-deprived parents, but it always seemed like such an artificial interruption in the day.

Like so many lessons that parents try to pass along it, at the time, had no context. It was not until we have our own experience of sleep deprivation that we recognize the value of nappy time.

Other cultures have a much more practical relationship to sleep. Like my dog who insists on being outside just in case he might miss someone who had not had the opportunity to tell how beautiful he is, North Americans think we have to be awake all the time. We drug ourselves into being alert and then we drug ourselves to get some sleep. There are many countries that stop in the middle of the day for a national time out. It's the warmest part of the day, the world and its troubles will still be there in a couple of hours and, with a nap, we'll be better able to deal with them. Like the song says "only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun."

We teach ourselves that sleep is a luxury that we can't afford, that there is too much to do and not enough time. But, for a cultue, that prides itself on its capacity to innovate, our day and night sleep deprived society has deprived itself of an important fuel source to drive that capacity: dreams.

I was recently forced to take some time off to recover from surgery and though I railed against the house arrest and the inactivity, I was struck by the fact that I was having vivid, cinematic dreams. On one occaision, the dream was so vivid that it woke me up and I cannot recall the last time that happened.

Provided the luxury of being able to ignore the alarm clock and forced to pull back from the stress of work, my mind was freed to take me places in my dreams that I had never been. (That so many of those places and situations seeemed to result in my being chased by one malefactor or another is perhaps a subject for another time.)

My personal psychology to one side, the act of dreaming enables the dreamer's subconscious to make connections and create images that can inform their waking life. Logic and due diligence will take you a long way, but sometimes to complete a journey you need a touch of the poet.

I'm back at work now and my dreams have been replaced by long days and short nights. I have returned to a routine that allows me to process the task in front of me, but blinds me to a broader vision. I get up because I have to and then stay up until I can't. The net effect of this self-perpetuating cycle is a sense of numbness. It's hard to feel much of anything except the depressed acceptance at the start of another day and the ache of exhaustion when it's over.

But, on the bright side, as least I get an extra hour of sleep once a year...unless of course the cat has other plans.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Comforting Routines

2010-11-10T06:48:00.000-08:00

Due to a family member's illness, I took showers for a while at a hospital fitness center. By the third shower, I had figured out to hang the towel over the shower door with one-third hanging on the inside of the door and the other two-thirds hanging outside the door. That way it was handy, reasonably sanitary, and mostly dry. I got better at remembering the dental floss and bringing a plastic bag for laundry. On the way to the gym, I stopped to get coffee at the cafeteria and I took the short-cut through the rear exit of the cafeteria.

Sometimes routine feels like a trap, a daily grind. But I am reminded how comforting it is to develop routines, even (or especially) in the midst of life's chaos. It reduces stress and exhaustion because you don't have to think about each little cotton-picking detail.

--Judith Allee

Parent Support Coordinator

Ah, Technology

2010-11-08T07:09:00.000-08:00

I remember when I got my first answering machine how exciting it was to see the little blinking red light and know that someone had tried to call . . . me! And had left a message! No more wondering and waiting if a potential employer had tried to call me. Or a potential date. The machine was a gift from my then just-a-friend (but husband-to-be), so occasionally the blinking light represented a message from him, as our relationship transitioned to the big Something More.

Now, to be honest, I have a small sigh of relief when the message light is off. It feels like one less "to do" on my long list. Except that I'm often rewarded by a message that totally makes my day. Sometimes it's from a parent who is excited about the change in his or her child's behavior. Or it could be a class member or graduate of our Getting Ahead classes (for low-income people who want a better life), or a volunteer who has found a rewarding niche. I have a confession: Sometimes I save an encouraging message for a week or so just so I can it hear again on a day when I need a little more glow. (Smart self care? Or pathetic? You decide.)

Ah, technology. I love-hate it!

--Judith Allee
Parent Support Coordinator

Scary Things

2010-10-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

Recently, there have been some scary things going on in Granville. I’m not talking about the Halloween festivities, or eerie costumes, or a plethora of “spider webbing” hanging all around. I mean the incidents where someone was approaching young children and possibly enticing them to enter his vehicle. This activity would be the nightmare of everyone on Elm Street, but also of any parent I know. Especially if the child actually listened to what that guy had to say and got in the car.

As Mental Health America of Licking County's Director of Prevention, I have spent many years helping teach children how they can prevent such a nightmare from happening. I am proud to say that when these events happened, Granville Elementary School counselor Dianne Ryan was very much on top of things. We generally provide the Child Abuse Prevention Program (CAPP) to them in the latter half of the school year. It’s great to say that we have presenters in that school this week and next. She wanted to share all this important information with their students immediately, with special emphasis on how to avoid “stranger danger” and keep their students safe.

Child safety is something we all should be aware of at this trick or treating time of year. As a parent, we may be sure that our children wear glow in the dark clothing or reflective strips on their costumes. We may tell our children that they can’t eat any candy until we have looked at every single piece of it and checked it all out. But, do we also tell them to be very careful of strangers who try to entice them into cars, vans, homes, or even bushes? Do we talk with our children about the possibility that those people who want to hurt them may hold up a big chocolate bar or empty dog leash and plead with them to come help? Do we encourage our children to yell loudly if someone makes them feel uncomfortable in any way and always tell an adult when that might happen? Do we assume that because our children are in middle school or high school, they can take care of themselves? As parents, when do we ever get permission to stop parenting?

A parent of a first grader at Granville sent me an email asking about CAPP and if the program, or curriculum, could be evaluated. I responded in great detail and have heard nothing more. I appreciate that parent taking time to ask about our program. That is an active parent. All parents are more than welcome to ask any of our program coordinators about their programs. I am so glad that there are people in our community who help care for and about our children. MHALC has several of them employed here. The Child Abuse Prevention Program is simply one way to help keep kids safe, whether it is from stranger danger, bullying, or known-assailant assault. But the very best resource we have to keeping our children safe is the first person they see, the first person who should talk to them about these issues before things happen – their parent.

For more information please send me an email by clicking here, or you can reach me by phone at 740-522-2277.

--Jan GreenRiver

Director of Prevention

The Meeting I Didn't Want to Go To

2010-10-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a meeting in Columbus to represent PAVE or Prevent Assault & Violence Education. The meeting was at the Columbus Public Library MLK branch on Long Street. It took a while to find it and it was in a part of town with boarded-up homes and businesses.

It was after a long day at work, a long drive, and a rushed lunch. The last thing I wanted to do was attend a meeting out of town, at night and where the library’s slow internet connection made the presentation drag on. I had even taken our PAVE President along to keep me company and I felt that it was important for her to hear about the changes being made in the Strategies Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE) Awards program.

Our group has been part of SAVE off and on since its inception in 1994. We have an amazing group of teens in our program this year and they still keep coming! Over 50 high school students from all over Licking County –from Heath, Newark, Utica, Licking Valley, Licking Heights, Johnstown, Granville Christian Academy and more! –have signed up to be part of PAVE. And they were so interested and dedicated to participating in SAVE this year that I felt obligated to attend and see if we would be able to continue with the program that culminates with limo rides and on-stage performances in April 2011. If we were going to do it, this meeting was mandatory.

I knew that there were changes coming to the SAVE program this year. Tracy Thornton who is the Awards Advisor with the SAVE program had told me that already. Normally our teens would have to spend a couple days in Columbus with mandatory conflict resolution and media literacy training, a Peace Camp and then auditions. This year however, we need to spend about 9 hours, or 1 session a week, with SAVE and Tracy could not travel to Licking County to provide those trainings. Once we worked out a plan for me to shadow her, I could teach our teens the new SAVE curriculum. There would be different levels of accomplishment that our group could achieve and that seemed very reasonable.

Someone we had been working with during the past year joined the meeting late. DingDing Ma from Asian American Community Services (AACS) was there and she works with their Healthy Asian Youth (HAY) program. We had been on their committee to prepare for the GenerAsian Next event held at OSU this past August.. That alone made the trip worthwhile. Tawnee, the PAVE President, and I both got hugs from her, along with the sad news of an AACS staff resignation. I told her that I would miss seeing that person at regional events, but hoped that meant I would see DingDing more often and I offered to help her in any way she needed me or PAVE. She immediately said that she knew that and that she would love to keep working with us. Not just me, but the teens in our program, too! We had already shown them so much!

During the meeting, I had the chance to share PAVE and SAVE’s history together with everyone who was there. It was great to see so many smiling faces when I talked about how empowering the work was for our group and the fact that one student had been with us since he was a high school freshman, had done the SAVE Awards, and the video of that performance was now a teaching tool that he uses as one of our contract staff in the high school classrooms. It was such a win-win-win situation!

Many other representatives who were there had never been involved with SAVE or ever heard of PAVE. It was so rewarding to leave that meeting – the one I thought I didn’t want to go to – with those thoughts of all the new youth who will be impacted by participating in this year’s SAVE. I could picture our teens enjoying their limo ride as they exit and are greeted by “hundreds of adoring fans” yelling their names while flash bulbs are popping! Tawnee talked about the possibilities that PAVE could do for our performance this year and what we had done in the past…and everything that we had to live up to after all those comments and stories.

So now it begins…working with the teens to decide yet again how to spread their messages of anti-violence at SAVE, teaching them more about conflict resolution and media literacy, raising awareness about so many issues that touch them, and giving them some alternatives and solutions that they can really use and live with. That’s what PAVE is about. That’s why so many students are involved this year – they heard us asking: do you want to help? Their answer was a resounding “YES!”

--Jan GreenRiver

Director of Prevention

PAVE: Advocating for Others, Healing the Self

2010-10-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

At MHALC, we are all about education, prevention and advocacy. But we are also about relationships and fostering ways to improve them all the time. One of the impactful programs that we offer is the Prevent Assault & Violence Education (PAVE) program that utilizes high school student volunteers who go into the middle schools to tech about bullying, media literacy, physical abuse and sexual assault.

The students who do this might know what they are talking about in far too personal ways. Many of the students who teach about these issues have already experienced some of them. So not only do the students reach younger children about very sensitive topics, but they also learn healthier ways of coping themselves and create their own PAVE family setting. PAVE members are empowered by learning about the underlying reasons that may cause some of these negative behaviors. Then they are able to gain asset building skills to help them maneuver this portion of their life and be better prepared for what their future may hold.

Two PAVE members have shared parts of their stories with our group. In this posting are the words they want everyone to hear. Not only do they want other teens to know how PAVE has helped them, but they want schools, educators, parents, peers, family and other students just like them to know how PAVE can change a life. They are cared for, utilized, empowered, strengthened, and valued as members of this afterschool family. What may be most important about their vital membership with the group is that they are not judged, they are free to be themselves, they are welcome to bring friends – or not. They are accepted just where and how they are. Isn’t that really what we all want?

PAVE was a life changing experience for me. I was having a lot of family problems & was always depressed. One day I was talking to my friend Dallas about my problems so he brought me to PAVE. I have learned many ways to deal with my problems. Being in PAVE has turned my life around. Everyone involved in PAVE is like family to me. I can trust everyone and openly talk about my problems and not worry about being judged. PAVE really helps when you have problems or even if you just want to help people.

- Miranda Nixon

This is my second year at P.A.V.E. and I am glad to be a part of this group. I feel like I have a family here. Our first day we come together as strangers, and at the end of the day we leave as friends.

Recently, I had a personal experience with sexual assault - last month. I felt like there was no one I could talk to. I came to P.A.V.E and we had 'circle time'. That is where we sit in a circle and each person gets the chance to say what they are thinking, whether it was on the topic we discussed that day, or a personal issue that is weighing on your mind. When it got to me, I started to shake, and my voice was choppy. I told my story to everyone that was there. I felt very relieved that I was able to talk about it. The part that touched me most was what happened afterword. I was sitting in my seat, shaking and crying...and Miranda comes running to me, hugs me and says, "I love you Caley!"
P.A.V.E is a great place to release your feelings. You can speak your mind and not worry about being judged, it is a safe place. Everyone there has touched me in some way. I will never forget the whole experience. I hope to come back after I graduate in the spring. P.A.V.E. Rocks!!
Caley
~Senior at Utica
--Jan GreenRiver
Director of Prevention

#4 Help Others

2010-10-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

The fourth tool in the Live Your Life Well toolkit is "Help Others."

The man in the picture is Doug Seus. He and his wife raise and train grizzly bears for work in film and television.

My wife and I had heard about their work and knew a little bit about Bart the Bear who had been in such movies as "Legends of the Fall", "The Bear" and "The Edge." At least initially, news coverage of the bear and his blossoming movie career was interesting, but incidental: like watching the Weather Channel.

What changed?

We met a dog named Dexter.

Dexter was a Newfoundland puppy, who came to live with us in 1995.

Anyone who has ever shared their life with a large breed dog will testify to the exquisite agony of that relationship. Big dogs come with big problems and short life spans. As it would turn out, Dexter would be with us for just under four years before succumbing to a host of genetic disorders. Nursing him through his many medical challenges brought us closer and made us feel his loss even more profoundly.

It was while we were feeling the loss of our own 180-pound black and white bear of a dog, that we saw a documentary called "Growing Up Grizzly" profiling Doug & Lynne Seus and Bart the Bear.

Hosted by Brad Pitt, the show profiled the unique relationship between the Seus family and their 1200-pound grizzly. What caught our attention immediately was the genuine respect that the humans and the bear had for one another. Central to that mutual respect was the close contact between species. I recall the importance that Doug Seus placed on making certain the bear knew the smell of his breath and how he would look for every opportunity to breathe into the bear's mouth.

Perhaps the most striking aspects of the documentary were the sequences where they showed Doug and Bart wrestling. By themselves, they might look like scenes from an episode of "When Animals Attack", but they were just two friends playing, rolling around in the dirt, splashing in the pond, and trying to pin one another to the ground.

It was in those moments that we lost our hearts to a man and his bear.

We could relate. Granted, the size differential between Dexter and me was substantially less, but I am here to tell you, that it is just as difficult to make a 180-pound dog do something he doesn't want to do. Our relationship was not so much master and obedient dog, as it was more of a negotiated settlement.

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of the Seus’ founding of Vital Ground, an organization dedicated to preserving the natural migration trails of the grizzly. Founded on the premise that where the grizzly can thrive so, too, can we humans, the organization seeks to accomplish its goal in much the same way that Seus was able to establish his unique relationships with his bears: through mutual respect. They raise money to buy land, but more often they seek conservation easements from landowners.

Mr. & Mrs. Seus established Vital Ground as a way of honoring their partnership with Bart who has since passed away. My wife and I have supported the organization as a way of honoring the memory of our little bear.

In early September, Vital Ground held an anniversary celebration in Park City, Utah, near where the Seus family and their bears, Little Bart and Honey Bump, live. An important part of the event, and the main reason that we went out there, was an opportunity to see Seus and Little Bart in person.

In an area the size of a tennis court, that was delineated with a shin-high electrified cattle guard, Seus and Little Bart wrestled, played and recreated his greatest hits from his many different film, television and commercial roles.

It was a remarkable experience to be separated by only the cattle guard, a strip of yellow caution tape and less than 40 feet from this magnificent animal and to feel no fear as he came lumbering from his trailer. As he came into view, the crowd of about 200 began to applaud and it seemed to us that this big bear got even bigger—as though he thrived on the audience approval.

Mrs. Seus would describe each of the scenes and what Bart had been asked to do, and then her husband would work with his Bear partner to recreate the moments. Along the way, we learned that Bart loves Sprite and whipped cream, but more than either of those, he loves to play with Doug Seus. Everything else is just foreplay to a good wrestle.

To watch them roll around on the ground is to understand what a trusting relationship is all about. You cannot scare or intimidate a 1200-pound animal and then let them pin you to the ground with your head in their mouth without any fear that they might “forget” what “off” means. You have to be certain; you have to trust. It was absolutely clear to each of us there that these two, the bear and his human, were equal partners and great friends.

At the end of their presentation, Navajo dancers presented a series of ceremonial dances, culminating in the rarely performed Bear Dance.

Throughout the dance, I was watching Mr. & Mrs. Seus and was struck by their reactions. I don’t know either of them, so this is pure speculation on my part, but they seemed to me that during this dance to honor the Bear spirit, they were engaged in a communication every bit as spiritual as were the dancers. So symbolic a moment was this, that it felt wrong to take this picture, like wearing a Hawaiian shirt to a funeral.

I decided to take the picture anyway, because of the pure honesty of their response to the Bear Dance. These were not mere animal trainers, like the whip and chair wielding Gunther Geble Williams: the Seus’ did not tame their bears, they built a relationship and in so doing came to understand—really understand—one another.

Helping others is transactional: each party gives and gets. Givers get just as much, if not more than getters get. Doug & Lynne Seus rescued their grizzlies—Bart, Tank, Little Bart and Honey Bump, but it is also true that the bears, beginning with the original Bart, gave the Seus’ much more.

Helping others is selfless and it is also selfish. Our decisions to give of our time and money are just as personal as the recipients we select. For my wife and me, we support the bears because it connects us to a football-sized ball of black and white hair that grew and grew until our lives finally had a purpose.

Helping others is a way to counteract the thumbs that are all too frequently on the scales of justice. Because of human settlement throughout the Grizzly's natural migration routes, they faced a real threat of extinction. Vital Ground makes it possible for the remaining populations coexist with humans and to survive in their natural habitat.

Whatever your passion, helping others is good for you and it is, quite simply, the right thing to do.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

PAVE Orientation 2010

2010-09-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, Anna here-

America

of Licking County as the PAVE Assistant Coordinator. That means I am having lots of fun working with Jan, and we have been planning to start this school year with a bang!

More specifically…PAVE, as you might already know, is a program to teach middle and high school students about preventing assault and violence, and we also do a club for teens on Mondays after school. This year so far PAVE has already been in 4 different schools and the students are showing a big interest in coming to PAVE orientation.

What is PAVE orientation, you ask? Well, the orientation is for any student in grades 9-12 who would like to know more about PAVE and eat free food! The orientation will allow the kids to get to know other PAVE club members, learn about different aspects of PAVE, and get an idea of what the typical Monday meetings would be like.

Orientation is Saturday, September 18^th from 10am-3pm. Any interested students can register by calling 740-522-2277 or email pave@mhalc.org before 9/17/10.

I’m so excited to be working with PAVE. It’s looking like this will be a great year!

PEACE always,

Anna

P.S. We need to know how much pizza or chicken to get for lunch! So call now.

"I was a nobody. Now, I am a member of OEC."

2010-09-07T07:08:00.000-07:00

The Ohio Empowerment Coalition, a statewide consumer advocacy and recovery organization, held its first annual conference at Embassy Suites in Dublin, Ohio, on August 13 and 14, 2010. Over 150 coalition members attended the two-day event, which included advocacy and educational workshops and keynote speaker, noted consumer rights advocate, Peter Ashenden.

Three representatives of the Mental Health

America

of Licking County’s Compeer program attended the conference, along with members and staff of The Main Place Recovery Center. Susan, a Compeer volunteer from Newark, was awarded a full-scholarship to the conference.

William Butcher, of Newark, also attended the two-day event, whose theme was “Honoring Our Past, Building Our Future.” Mr. Butcher, an active volunteer for both The Main Place and Mental Health America of Licking County, spoke of his experience in attending the event and the impact it had on his life. “People have told me that I was nothing. I was a nobody. Now, I am a member of OEC.”

The Ohio Empowerment Coalition, Inc. is a consumer-operated organization that consists of members statewide who are united to provide a platform for the voice of people with mental illness; to support persons and groups working to transform systems, and to promote wellness, mental health recovery, and resilience.

The organization elected their first permanent board of trustees representing individuals from across the state. Kristen Frame, Compeer Coordinator of Mental Health America of Licking County was elected to her first term as trustee representing Licking County.

GUEST BLOG: The Evolution of the Concept of Recovery

2010-08-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

Recently I overheard two senior mental health officials discussing recovery. One said, “I think recovery is a very important concept.” The other replied, “I agree,” and then he whispered, “But what is it?”

Indeed, we have a field and a society that have been highlighting the importance of recovery—and that have had little agreement about its meaning.

The New Freedom Commission stated: “We see a future when everyone with a mental illness will recover.” This vision has inspired many to advocate for recovery at the state and national levels. In 2006, SAMHSA published the 10 Components of Recovery. The Recovery to Practice initiative represents the next step in implementing recovery.

In this new era of healthcare reform, however, we need a broader concept of recovery. We need a concept that gives hope to those of us labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis—and that at the same time can be understood by the rest of society.

Most persons with a variety of other disabilities cannot relate to the concept of recovery. Many think our concept of recovery means that people in wheelchairs will walk or that people with autism will be able to relate socially the way most everyone else does. These are not the primary goals of the independent living movement.

To frame recovery more broadly, we need to go beyond a narrow medical definition of mental health issues. For many years, professionals and researchers have described mental illness as a severe form of mental disorder, characterized by a permanent biological defect and a chemical imbalance from which recovery rarely occurs. In the eyes of this group, recovery would occur only if there were a cure. Countless studies have been carried out to define the supposed biological basis of mental illness. No consistent deficit has been found. It was believed that at best the illness could go into remission, during which the symptoms are managed. This is the maintenance model, which leaves persons who experience distress feeling hopeless.

Recently, through a dialog by the Steering Committee of the Recovery to Practice initiative, we have drafted a broader description of recovery:

[T]he recovery paradigm views mental health issues as challenges that a person can grow beyond through the assistance of culturally appropriate, trauma-informed services and natural supports in the process of the person building a full and gratifying life in the community of his or her choice.

This description fits with the goals mapped out for persons with all disabilities in the Americans with Disabilities Act signed into law 20 years ago:

Equality of opportunity
Full participation [in the community]
Independent living [consumer control and consumer choice of services and supports]
Economic self-sufficiency

This broader definition of recovery can also span the fields of mental health and substance use. In the substance use field, these elements are vital aspects of recovery.

- Daniel Fisher, M.D., Ph.D.,

Executive Director,

National Empowerment Center

Remembering Henry Mardis

2010-08-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

Henry Mardis has been a dear friend and volunteer for the MHA Compeer program for many years. He and his partner Jan are a constant fixture at Compeer events and the MHA Annual Dinner. This past year, they received the Compeer Volunteer of the Year Award.

This weekend we were saddened to learn of his passing. Henry has been fighting cancer for over a year. He will be greatly missed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife, Jan and their children.

Henry and Jan are probably the most loved members of Compeer. The room lights up when they arrive. Whether it is spending special time with their dear friend, Becky, or in attending an event and making new friends, they are a great source of warmth and hope. Henry, a quiet man, shared his life with each member of Compeer. His wife Jan, more gregarious, is a perfect companion for this loving and gentle man.

Henry’s birthday was at the beginning of August, and he kindly celebrated with the Compeer family at a Hawaiian Party. Several members brought gifts and the happy crowd ate cupcakes with their dear friend. Even when he was very ill and limited in his social time, he always welcomed friends into his home and shared his enthusiasm for life. He is a role model for all a friend should be: compassionate, caring, funny, accepting and supportive.

He has taught us all a great lesson about how to truly live our lives with joy and compassion. We will miss him at our events, but he is always with us in our hearts.

Let us remember our friend as he lived-full of life and love.

--Kristen Frame

Compeer Coordinator

Never stop learning life lessons by Harvey MacKay

2010-08-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

The link will take you to a column by Harvey MacKay that appeared in August 20th edition of Columbus Business First.

Never stop learning life lessons - Business First of Columbus

Harvey MacKay is author of Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive

#3 Get Physically Active

2010-08-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

As my silhouette increasingly resembles that of a lower case b, it would seem that I am not at all qualified to write about this tool in the Live Your Life Well tool box.

I never liked gym class. In the same way that the math-challenged question the applicability of algebra to the real world, I have always wondered when in life I will be called upon to perform a flexed arm hang.

Mastering physical challenges is supposed to provide children with all sorts of teachable moments and opportunities for improved self-esteem. For me, physical challenges were the consequences part of life's game show.

To be fair, gym was also the consolation prize for classmates who struggled in their other classes. For a certain faction of the class, gym was their opportunity to express their creativity in ways that were not available to them anywhere else in the school day. This is the only way I can explain the many innovative ways that the more physically capable found to torture me. I have this very clear memory of walking to school wearing my gym uniform under my street clothes so that I would have to change in front of my classmates. To drop trou was to invite the opportunity to get stuffed into your locker.

And just to keep my opponents guessing, I buttressed my "secret identity" defense with a second, even more clever strategem where I would actually change inside the locker. No one was going to stuff me inside the locker when I could just as easily do it to myself. This is the biggest reason that I don't have a gym membership today: they don't make plus size lockers.

There are no baby pictures of me on a bear skin rug. Like most parents of the Dr. Spock cusp, mine taught me a more than healthy dislike for my body.

Upon this foundation were laid the bricks and mortar of a lifetime of disappointment. It never seemed to matter how much I applied myself, I was always going to look more like the Pillsbury Doughboy than Robin the Boy Wonder. One year, while still in primary school, I was invited by my teacher to lie down on a sheet of kraft paper so that the class could trace my body for use as the outline for that year's Santa Claus.

Because of my size combined with a heady mix of the lack of interest and no apparent naturally ability, I was never anyone's first choice for games--unless we are talking about Monopoly. Floor hockey, dodge ball, soccer: it didn't matter what the sport was, the captains would pick the student whose leg was in a cast and arm in a sling before they would pick me.

To her credit, my mother kept trying to find a sport for me. She enrolled me in Judo class which, quite frankly, felt too much like school. Not that it was academically rigorous, but that I was forever being tossed and pinned by my fellow students. Plus, it provided yet another locker room and yet another time to change my clothes. So, while my fellow students were learning the quiet confidence that comes from mastering one of the martial arts, I was developing chronic childhood anxiety.

One of the things that we did as a family for many years that was physically active was downhill skiing. Every Saturday morning during the cold weather months, we would pile into the family station wagon and head north of town for ski lessons.

People are drawn to skiing for a number of reasons. For some, it is the thrill of the downhill slalom; for others it is the opportunity to try the different levels of trails offered by the ski hill; still others are motivated by the society of apres ski. I was inspired by the movies.

Skiing, like so many sports, always looks better on film. Lone figures on a remote hillside high above the tree line cutting graceful arcs into the virgin snow pack and accompanied by a full orchestra: what's not inspiring about that? Warren Miller has made 59 feature length documentaries crammed full of just such images.

The reality of skiing is just a little bit different. Ski hills, at least the ones that I have been to, are generally full of people and there's never an orchestra to be found.

Ski hill operators make every effort to provide a variety of experiences for their guests. They cut trails to meet the needs of all skill levels, but the guests get to pick their own routes to the bottom so it is not uncommon to have highly experienced skiers on the bunny hill and totally inexperienced ones on the intermediate, or even the expert trails. And then there are the fearless children--anywhere from about 8 to 14 years--who are not so much concerned about trail selection as they are about pointing their skis toward the bottom and trying to see how fast they can get there.

For those who are not familiar with the sport and may have only seen the movies that I have seen, skiing is surprisingly noisy. There is the sound of skis as they slide across snow and ice accompanied by the muttering and inevitable cursing when simple turns go wrong. That sound is then multiplied by all of the other lost souls hoping to live to see the hot chocolate stand at the bottom of the hill. So you don't always notice the sound of a Thinsulate covered bullet whizzing down the hill until it's right on top of you. If you're lucky, you'll turn just in time to see a goggle-wearing blur streak across some part of your skis before you find yourself in a tangled pile of skis, poles and flop sweat.

Ski school is designed to provide students with a basic skill set and the tools necessary to survive such situations. It is for this reason that the first lesson is not about how to ski, but about how to fall. They acclimate you to this, because for the novice skier, it is an all too common occurrence.

Later classes deal with learning how to control your weight. It is by shifting weight from one leg to the other that students learn basic turns and how to control their rate of descent. The instructors, who I now recognize must, as a job requirement, have the patience of saints, start you off learning how to make long traverses across the face of the hill, short turns and then long traverses back. At this point on the learning curve, turning is very challenging because until you master the shift of weight to your downhill ski, you are going to fall. As you progress, the length of the traverse gets shorter until, like the subjects of the Miller films, all you are doing is turning; more accurately, you are constantly shifting your weight from one ski to the other. And once this technique is mastered, a student can graduate to downhill racing.

I was never interested in racing, but it seemed as though each season of ski lessons would end with a downhill course. The only difference from one year to the next was the distance between the gates.

One year--I think I was 7--I showed up for the final class and the inevitable race. This was a very long time ago and so I am no longer confident in the details although I seem to recall it was a bright sunny March day. I think at the time I had a bright yellow ski jacket with green stripes. I don't recall the run through the course, but I do recall the award ceremony later that day.

Many a Saturday, the highlight of all of this physical activity was a trip to the local bakery and the fresh-from-the-oven sticky buns that we would enjoy on the long drive home. I was thinking about that and how long it was taking to award all of the trophies. There would be a crowd at Page's and no sticky buns.

And then they called my name.

Nobody who has ever met me would imagine that I had ever earned a trophy in a sporting event, let alone skiing. But I do. More than 4 decades later, I still have my trophy and, like most athletes, I keep it in my sock drawer.

It's about the size of a double-wide doorstop. A wedge of, let's say mahogany, with a brass disk featuring the screen printed image of a skier, and a second plate containing my title as "Most Improved Male" for my age class.

Never a household to indulge in prolonged basking, I think it may have been at some point during the drive home that it was pointed out that I was the only male in that particular age group.

The point of promoting physical activity is that it can change your brain chemistry, alleviate stress, impact physical health and alter your perspective. I may not always practice what I preach, but I know this is true. You don't have to be the best at whatever your activity of choice might be. It doesn't matter what you take up, there's always going to be some 8 year-old who is better, or faster at it, but it matters that you do something.

After my big win, I elected to give up competitive skiing. Nowadays I focus on getting out to walk my dog. After spending most of the day in the house, these walks, whether they are around the block, or around campus, are the highlight of his day. You can see it in his eyes. He doesn't know or care what kind of a day I might have had, he just wants to go for a walk. Once we are outside he is thrilled and overcome by all of the different smells. Like my long-ago trophy, I win everyday with him just by showing up.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

GUEST BLOG: Getting Ahead Grad Joins the Y

2010-08-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

My family and I took part in the tour of the YMCA facilities to find out more information about it and the scholarships that the YMCA offers lower income people.

I had already been quite aware of the YMCA scholarship and how to apply, however, I was not aware of ALL the great benefits of a YMCA membership--until I attended the tour that was organized by Mental Health America for graduates of the Getting Ahead class for low income parents. My family and I were VERY impressed with the YMCA facilities and extras--such as free child care while you are working out and the fact that a membership covers all parts of the facility, including the outdoor and indoor pools! I was very excited to learn about the Zumba fitness class and my daughters were about indoor soccer and gymnastics and my husband thought the weight room looked GREAT!

Attending this tour was JUST the thing I needed to motivate me to apply for a YMCA scholarship and I was approved! Now thanks to the YMCA and Mental Health America---my family will be happier and healthier! Thank you!

Peggy Wachenschwanz

GUEST BLOG: PARENTS…A Perfect Response to Substance Use Among Youth

2010-08-04T07:39:00.000-07:00

Remember when June Cleaver was the perfect mom? How about Carol Brady? Think back to how Cliff and Clair Huxtable were the ideal parents. What made them all great? What made us tune in every night to watch their families live life? Well, beyond the fact that they lived in “TV land” and that they always solved major family catastrophes in sixty minutes or less, they were present in their children’s lives. They interacted with their kids, they had regular sit-down dinners and they were involved in their children’s daily experiences. Most importantly, they listened to their children and parented them.

Today, in the age of technology, parents are often a second thought in their children’s lives. We allow laptops, DVRs, Ipods, PS2s and Facebook to parent our children and then wonder why they make the choices they do. We no longer talk to our kids because they have repeatedly uttered the ever so over used line “stay out of my business,” and we have been obedient parents and heeded that request. Being a parent today isn’t an easy job. We have to juggle work, family, finances, laundry, grocery shopping, sports, extra-curricular activities, parent-teacher conferences, doctor’s appointments and birthdays, not to mention being “green” cooking with organic products and protecting our children from bullies, broken hearts and bad guys. It’s TOO MUCH! and most of us do it as single parents. We listen to the “stay out of my business” line when in reality it’s the “you don’t understand, you don’t know me or what I go through” line that is more important and truer!

According to the 2009 PRIDE survey; Licking County youth reported that they use alcohol, tobacco and other drugs at home or at a friend’s house; that alcohol is the most widely used substance and, compared to national statistics, Licking County youth have easier access to alcohol, tobacco and marijuana and less parental disapproval of use…,but here’s the good news.

Young people today crave guidance. They (secretly) want rules and they (secretly) want you to ask all those questions that publicly they are unwilling to answer. They want you to be involved in their lives and they want you to hold them accountable for their actions and behaviors. They want you to show interest in the person they are and the person they are becoming. In short…they want you to be their parent, not their friend! The best part of it all, thanks to June Clever, Carol Brady the Huxtables and even our own parents, you already knew that! Think back to those classic TV sitcoms, they always ate dinner together as a family, the parents were always asking their kids “how was your day honey” and their children’s friends, always talked with mom and dad when coming over to the house.

--Bobby Persinger, CIRS, OCPS II,

Prevention Coordinator, Pathways of Central Ohio

Our guest blogger, Bobby Persinger was a founding member of our PAVE club (Prevent Assault & Violence Education) in 1997 as a 15 year old freshman at Newark High School. Today, an OSU graduate with a degree in counseling psychology, he works with youth as Prevention Coordinator
at Pathways of Central Ohio and he credits his PAVE experience for his rewarding career choice. Bobby is a certified prevention specialist and crisis response specialist.

GUEST BLOG: Do Labels Hurt or Help Our Children? You Be the Judge

2010-07-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

Parents of children with invisible, or hidden, disabilities often struggle with many aspects of parenting. Not only do they have to maneuver through medical, educational and family situations (usually with no prior experience), but they also ponder the question of whether to label or not to label. If the disability is severe enough, a label seems like the kind thing to do. A title explains why Johnny can't read, can't sit still, can't do math and so on. It affords children the help that they need to succeed.

These words can open the doors to rights through the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and Civil Rights Section 504. A diagnostic code, or category, allows insurance agencies to authorize (or not) payment for treatment. One is often backed into the corner and rendered helpless without all of these things.

One worries whether labeling Johnny as bipolar, ADHD or schizophrenic will create more stigma. They wonder if someday Johnny will outgrow this.

In an ideal world, people would recognize that Johnny might not be able to read, but he can work circles around kids in the math class, dance and sing and paint masterpieces.

Teachers would be able to teach to small groups of children with all kind of skill levels; grandparents would love every grandchild the same; parents would have a magic wand to wave over their child and make him or her absolutely capable in every category, doctors would have a magic solution to every mental health problem.

Until we get our magic wands, my wish is for parents to feel confident that they are doing the best that they can, using the tools that are available in hopes that tomorrow will be a better day. Our best is all we have to give.

Guest blogger today is Rebecca Randall, a family member who volunteers as facilitator for the Epilepsy Support Group that meets, 6:30 p.m., on the 4th Thursday of the month at the OSU/COTC Warner Library. Becky is the mother of two adult daughters, and was a longtime volunteer with MHA, facilitating a CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder) support group that met for 11 years in Newark. Becky is also former Coordinator of the Pathways Crisis Hotline and Information Center and a former Crisis Response Specialist.

The 20th Anniversary of ADA

2010-07-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

This week, we celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).The ADA is a broad civil rights law designed to provide a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities. Like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, and gender, the ADA seeks to ensure equal opportunity for people with disabilities. It does not guarantee equal results, establish quotas, or require preferences favoring individuals with disabilities over those without disabilities.

When people think about the ADA, they think about removal of physical barriers with ramps and curb cuts. In its first twenty years, the ADA has made advances in starting to remove these physical obstacles. After twenty years, we have still not achieved even the federally mandated physical accommodations. Now, as we face the future, we need to eliminate other, more pervasive barriers-the stigma and discrimination that prevent social integration.

Has the ADA eliminated discrimination against individuals with disabilities? No. It has provided a valuable tool for responding to some forms of discrimination. There are many who opposed the ADA, just as there are still those who oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I have a “non-visible” disability, which makes it possible for me to “pass” in many situations, but, despite the passage of the ADA, in these last two decades, I have experienced discrimination in employment, healthcare and other areas of my life.

I am a person who experiences severe and persistent mental illness. I will not be cured. Although I am an advocate for recovery, I am not “in recovery” from my brain. I cannot abstain from “being bipolar“, as one abstains from substance addiction behaviors. I am not defined by my illness, but it is a prism, through which I experience the world. This is a fundamental part of who I am, as much as my ethnic heritage. It is a biologically-based disease, like diabetes. I did not survive it, as some survive breast cancer. If I had breast cancer, I would receive substantially better health care and support services.

Most people who experience mental illness are afraid to publicly disclose their illness. Stigma keeps them “closeted” for fear of rejection by family and friends, isolation or firing at their workplace, and discrimination in participating in politics, recreation, housing, religion or in self-determination. Despite civil rights legislation and the public disclosures of many famous people who experience mental illness, this discrimination is commonplace.

Today, we celebrate the civil rights landmark of the ADA, but it is only the first step in achieving true equality. For more information, go to http://www.ada.gov/ for the most comprehensive referral site for information on all aspects of the ADA.

--Kristen Frame
Compeer Coordinator

PORTION DISTORTION, part 3

2010-07-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed antique dishware and the like at flea markets? And how tiny they are compared to today's dishware? Those itty bitty juice glasses represent portions of the past.

Our cultural perception of what a "portion" is has become a, um, big problem. A study of 52 famous paintings of the Last Supper shows that plate size--and portion size--has gradually grown over the last 1000 years. They measured how big the plates were compared to the average head size in the painting. Here's the article.

On-line I found (but didn't buy) a portion control plate designed by the "Portion Doctor." It's cute: half the plate is mapped out for veggies, a quarter (a serving about the size of a deck of cards) is designated for meat, beans, tofu, cheese, or other protein source, and the other quarter is for carbs. But grandma's plates, which were closer to the size of what's now a dessert plate, work fine.

Reality check: I'm talking about my grandma's plates. I'm a grandma myself now, but my plates are *way* bigger than my head. OK, that's disturbing.

--Judith Allee
Parent Support Coordinator

PORTION DISTORTION, part 2

2010-07-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have to work at eating 5 to 8 servings of fruit and veggies a day. Some days I get 1 or 2. Occasionally, none. However, due to portion distortion, 5 to 8 servings isn't as much as it sounds. A couple of pieces of fresh fruit in the morning. (Or one large banana, which counts as 2 servings.) I generally pile half my lunch plate with veggies; that's about 3 servings right there. Add eight ounces of V-8 with dinner: bingo, I'm up to 7 servings (4 oz. per V-8 serving).

It doesn't happen, though, unless I plan for it. And it won't happen at all on a dollar drive-through menu or at the snack machine. I'm finding, though, that veggies cost less than fast food, and, believe it or not, I've come to enjoy them more. Honest!

Focusing on eating *enough* fruit and veggies keeps me from awakening my rebellious inner-adolescent, who wants to feed my face with both hands if I focus too much on *not* eating too much junk food. Heaven forbid if I even whisper the word d-i-e-t. Shhh.

--Judith Allee
Parent Support Coordinator

PORTION DISTORTION, part 1

2010-07-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a fun, surprising and quiz in pictures about the portion distortion that has given Americans the dubious distinction of being the fattest country in the world.

I have the goal of eating 5 to 8 servings of fruit and veggies every day. The hidden camera in the office microwave can attest to the fact that I'm the only one here nuking peas and broccoli and the like for lunch. Today I put a whole baby squash (from the Friday afternoon Farmers' Market in downtown Newark) in there for two or three minutes and ate it with salsa and hummus. It was lovely.

But whenever anyone wrinkles his or her nose and says, "What's that smell?" they always seem to ask me first. It's a small price to pay for a healthier me.

--Judith Allee
Parent Support Coordinator

Stay Positive

2010-07-12T14:37:00.000-07:00

I set myself the challenge of writing about each of the 10 Tools on the LiveYourLifeWell.org site. These are research-based strategies for maintaining and improving your mental health and they seemed like something we should be talking about.

The first one "Connect with Others" is pretty straightforward and something I have written about several times on this blog, but Number Two, "Stay Positive" is a real challenge.

Anyone who knows me would laugh at the idea of me taking on this topic. In a world of glass-half-full and glass-half-empty people, I am left looking for the glass.

It's no use my pretending to be a positive person, but I can write about someone who was.

But first, a joke:

This Anglican minister was on vacation in Ireland. It was a foggy day and he was driving one one of the twisty-turny country roads that inspire poetry and accidents when he felt a bump. He stopped the car and got out to discover that he had struck a rabbit. The minister was beside himself for killing one of God's creatures when this priest came walking by.

"Father," said the minister. "What's to be done, I've killed this poor, defenseless animal."

"Oh have you know," said the priest. "Let's have a look."

The priest bends down over the body and after a careful look, pulls a small vial from inside his coat and sprinkles a few drops over the bunny. A few seconds later, the animal leaps to its feat and scampers away.

"Oh father," said the minister. "I had always heard about the miraculous properties of the Holy Water, but I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself."

"It's not Holy Water," said the priest. "It's hare restorer."

It's appropriate to open with a joke because that's what he would have done. He lived to tell his stories and he told them with the practiced skill of a life-long performer. It's many years since I last heard Bobby tell this story and I can still hear his delicate Scottish accent ("scotch is liquid") and the rhythm of his razor-sharp timing.

For five decades, Bobby worked in the retail food business. When he started, selling provisions was a much different trade than it is today. When he began as an apprentice, customers came to the counter with a list and the grocer would pull their order from the shelves. In a set-up like that, the grocer really got to know his customers. He would know what they liked and didn't like and could recommend new items. This was knowledge gained not from a print-out based on barcode scanning, but from real conversations.

After emigrating to Canada following his WW I service, Bobby again took up the food business and was eventually able to open his own shop where he specialized in cheese and other gourmet items. The Cheese Shoppe was the place to go for lemon squash concentrate, real orange marmelade and Toblerone chocolate. And for the more adventuresome there were tinned oysters, jars of capers and chocolate covered ants.

Over the years Bobby built a loyal customer base. People came from all over to give him their business and he always seemed to know each of them by name. And if you were a first time customer, Bobby had a way of making you feel, by the time you left, as if you had known him your whole life.

He was justifiably proud of the many packages he sent overseas during World War II.

There is a story, and I'm no longer certain I remember the details correctly, of Bobby sending a package to my Uncle George who was a POW in Germany. The package was alleged to have contained some whiskey, although I am not certain how it would have escaped notice. In any event, it was sent by a Mr. J.B. Corn, as in John Barleycorn. Bobby always talked about getting a thank-you note from my Uncle addressed to Mr. Corn.

They did a thriving business in gift packages for many, many years. One of my clearest memories is of the walls of the store being piled high with stacks of their rich burgundy colored boxes waiting patiently to be filled. These stacks rose from the tops of every shelf right up to the ceiling. (I was never clear how they could get even one down without setting off a Jenga-like chain reaction.)

Once filled with an assortment of cheeses and crackers, bacon and jams, those packages would end up in some pretty remarkable places. Bobby was proud of serving people like President Nixon, the Kennedys of Massachusetts and even the great Broadway impresario Flo Ziegfeld.

And like Ziegfeld, Bobby knew a thing or two about putting on a good show. He was the absolute master of his domain and six days a week he would put that show for anyone and everyone who walked through his doors.

With his white butcher's apron, he would buzz back and forth from the counter to the cheese cooler, from the cash to the front door. He would welcome each of his customers, help them with their selections, offer them some samples of this, or that cheese, tally up their bill by hand on the edge of a sheet of butcher paper that he would then use to wrap their purchases. And all the while, he was either telling one of his stories, or whistling, or humming, or trading remarks with other customers, or staff, or both.

To really appreciate what a positive force Bobby was, you have to understand that being an immigrant business owner in Montreal during the 20th century meant that you primarily did business with your own people. The French with the French, the Greeks with the Greeks and the Scottish with the English. Though founded by the French, Montreal's commercial pulse was controlled for more than a hundred years by the English.

Though never a comfortable relationship, beginning about WW II, the French speaking majority in Quebec began to agitate for greater self-determination and an increased importance was placed on French as the language of the majority. Against this backdrop of increasing cultural sovereignty, Bobby greeted everyone who came through his door the same way--as a friend he hadn't yet met.

He would often tell the story of a French-speaking couple who came into the store and asked him, "Parlez-vous francais? (Do you speak French?)" To which he responded, "Non, parlez-vous ecossais? (Do you speak Scottish?)" Everyone had a laugh and then they transacted their business in English.

Having a laugh was important. After he retired, which took a couple of attempts before it actually stuck, Bobby would love nothing more than to go to the neighborhood bank dressed as he always was in his shirt and tie and grey flannel slacks and pass his bank book to the teller. She would open it and see it contained a larger than life plastic cockroach, or ant, or whatever he happened to have on him at the time. The teller's expression of surprise meant everything to him. It would start a conversation and before you knew it, other tellers who had also been "bugged" by Bobby would come over and they would all have a laugh.

As I think I have mentioned elsewhere, he would do the same sort of thing at restaurants where he would try and get a new waiter in trouble by "discovering" a fly in his soup. (The old jokes never go out of style.)

I can remember him telling me about meeting other seniors in his apartment building and he commented on their sour expressions. He said, "They must have been business men, because they looked so unhappy."

It was Confucius who said, "Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life."

It's true, Bobby was the most positive, happiest unemployed business man I ever knew.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Always Learning

2010-07-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

Twice yesterday I toured the Licking County Family YMCA with parents who graduated over the last few years from our Getting Ahead classes (for parents in or near poverty). We had a little reunion and the tour was part of it.

I've been a Y member for a couple of years and didn't expect to learn anything. However, between all the new construction at the Y, the things I had forgotten, and the things I never knew to begin with, the tour was surprisingly informative even for me. For example, if you are a Y member, did you know you could borrow not only basketballs but also rackets for racquetball or wallyball while you are there?

I already knew that you could get free childcare for 90 minutes so you can work out or take a class--my grandson has a blast in the Rainbow Room. But I didn't know you could make reservations up to 2 weeks ahead of time. How about that?

To apply for a scholarship, you simply fill out a form and bring in proof of income--two most-recent pay stubs, tax return and verification of any other income. (Bring copies, not originals, because the Y can't make copies for you.)

So why would the MHA Parent Support Coordinator (me) take families on a tour of the YMCA? As part of a Community Impact grant from United Way, I encourage families to eat healthier and become more active, so the Y tour was one way to encourage families to consider applying for a scholarship.

We also had a short program about adding more fruit and veggies to your family's diet--and how to get your kids to eat them. Kayla Hughes, who teaches nutrition for the OSU Cooperative Extension Office, explained that it can take up to 15 times of trying a new food for the taste to become familiar to the child. Until it tastes familiar, kids don't really know if they like it or not. So Kayla says not to give up just because kids (or adults for that matter) don't find love at first taste. In the beginning, you might just get them to touch the food with their tongue, and then gradually work up to eating it over a period of time.

That's one thing I love about my job--always learning!

--Judith Allee

Parent Support Coordinator

Your Good Mental Health

Business Can Lead the Way on Addressing Mental Health

Wavelength

How Would You Feel If You Were in Poverty?

Thanksgiving

More Questions Than Answers

Voices from the Poverty Simulation

Meanwhile, Over on Facebook

More People Using Free Preventative Benefits Provided by Affordable Care Act

Losing

World Mental Health Day 2011

Suicide and Social Media

Why We Care

Glob

To the End of Love

Tool No. 10: Get Professional Help If You Need It

9 Steps to Take When Your Recovering Teen Comes Home from Treatment

Tool No. 9: Deal Better with Hard Times

Dear Me

Mental Health America of Licking County: The Case for Funding

Take Care of Your Spirit

Eat Well

I have a mysterious kind of depression - Mental Illness - Salon.com

wawa-news.com - What is Stigma?

Everybody Needs Somebody

Using Your Voice

Richard's Story

First Person

Quality of Life

MHA thanks the 20th Century Club, Kiwanis, & Licking Memorial Hospital

The Ghosts That Haunt Me

Thinking About those who are Struggling, Especially Children!

Today, Father, is Father's Day

Self Care- An area so many of us neglect

Get Enough Sleep

Comforting Routines

Ah, Technology

Scary Things

The Meeting I Didn't Want to Go To

PAVE: Advocating for Others, Healing the Self

#4 Help Others

PAVE Orientation 2010

"I was a nobody. Now, I am a member of OEC."

GUEST BLOG: The Evolution of the Concept of Recovery

Remembering Henry Mardis

Never stop learning life lessons by Harvey MacKay

#3 Get Physically Active

GUEST BLOG: Getting Ahead Grad Joins the Y

GUEST BLOG: PARENTS…A Perfect Response to Substance Use Among Youth

GUEST BLOG: Do Labels Hurt or Help Our Children? You Be the Judge

The 20th Anniversary of ADA

PORTION DISTORTION, part 3

PORTION DISTORTION, part 2

PORTION DISTORTION, part 1

Stay Positive

Always Learning