Down in the Hole

Like many, if not most, of the people who work in non-profits, I wear many hats, not the least of which is managing our social media outreach through this blog, Facebook, Twitter and now Pinterest.

All of the so-called social media experts tell you that content is king and if you are not constantly updating your pages, your site is dead and users--"eyeballs"--are lost. 

We are dependent on the kindness of strangers to support our work.  And in an increasingly competitive environment where dollars are few and getting fewer, being seen to be current, up-to-date on trends and information in your field is key to getting those strangers to affiliate with an organization and support it financially.  So, in between promoting news and events originating with our Agency, I supplement the content for these outlets with posts I find elsewhere on the Internet. 

To make this easier, I have set up Google Alerts to bring me content relating to our programs and so each day I get emails about poverty, mental health, mental illness and suicide.

Every day.

And, by far, the leader in content generation terms is suicide.  Especially teen suicide.  8-9-10 posts every day.

To be honest, some of these posts are multiple sources reporting on the same event, but it does create the impression that teens are an endangered species in this country.

And it also creates the impression that our most experienced teens, the adults, have somehow managed to completely blot out that experience and therefore have no connection nor understanding of what teens go through.

The parental "survivors" of completed suicides--those who have lost a child--are always portrayed in shock, always seen as searching for the big why that took their child.

At the meta level, the narratives all begin to read the same; as though they conform to a predictable movie-of-the-week scenario where only the names have been changed.

In addition to the stories about completed suicides and searching parents, I also read about prevention efforts: efforts intended to educate students, parents, teachers, community leaders, clergy about the signs and symptoms of suicide.  The notion here is that if we know what behavior patterns to look for we can intervene and connect those at risk with resources and treatment.

I can only imagine that this makes the survivor parents feel that much worse.  The implicit suggestion is that it was some sort of deficit of vigilance that claimed their child.

Another common prevention strategy is one of affirmation.  Reminding at-risk teens that they are valued and loved will keep them from seeking a permanent end to a temporary problem.  This makes sense in that it enables those participating in these outreach efforts feel as though they are being proactive:  kind of like making cinnamon toast and hot tea for a loved one with a viral infection.

It is not my intent to mock or ridicule or in any way diminish the experience of those who have lost a loved one, or who are involved in suicide prevention efforts.  The losses are devastating and the interventions are few and palliative at best.

Based on my reading, which I freely admit is by no means comprehensive, it seems that ribbons and wrist bands, walk-a-thons and poster campaigns remind us that there is a problem.  Lectures and resource lists are precautionary by definition:  intended to inoculate.  Viral videos, like luxury car commercials, are promises of a possible future:  like personal jet packs and flying cars.

Missing from the conversation, it seems to me is an acknowledgement of the present, the painful now, the nowhere-to-run tense that dominates the landscape and occupies every waking minute. 

To be a teenager is to experience the collision between the eternal optimism of childhood and pessimism of the adult world; to move from a box of 128 Crayolas, through the binary world of black and white, to the endless shades gray--way more than 50, thank you very much--of the adult world.

And, as if navigating that transition were not difficult enough, we must also factor in the shifting allegiances that define the social networks of our young people.  Not only is impulse control hormonally impaired, but you have to factor in a social landscape that shifts faster than do alliances in "The Godfather."

What's the difference between a teen that is depressed and contemplates suicide and one that is depressed and completes a suicide is a question best left to researchers.  I know that when I was in the thick of my journey through those years, I had my share of teen-angst, paint-it-black, "deep" thoughts. 

I remember the fear and the anxiety and the desperation. 

I remember the rage, the desire to escape, to hide, to make it stop.

I remember the lack of control, the helplessness....  The hopelessness.

A lasting reminder of this period is a record collection that is full of soundtracks from escapist movies and the work of singer-songwriters specializing in expressions of sadness and depression.

Late one night, I remember watching a snowy broadcast of the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder.  He was interviewing James Taylor and Carly Simon--I think it was Tom Snyder.  (Might have been Dick Cavett)  Anyway, they were talking and would occasionally sing songs separately, or together. 

I had never been a big James Taylor fan.  (I was definitely a member of Team Carly.)  But on that broadcast, he sang "The Secret of Life" and I remember being struck by the disconnect between what he was saying, "The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time," and my experience which was definitely not enjoyable.

At that point in my Teen Trek, time was my enemy:  it could not pass fast enough and take me from my tormentors and to my personal jet pack world of the future.  People actually enjoyed time, appreciated it?  This was inaccessible to me.

But I was, as we say "time-curious" and decided to experiment.

I don't deny it, I dabbled in James Taylor records and tried to make sense of his perspective.  Drawn in by his optimistic "Secret of Life" I was blinded to the darker themes of "Fire and Rain" and had to have their mental health images pointed out to me.

I won't bore you with the rest of my journey, but a definite turning point of my teen years, was discovering Steve Martin.  His excellent book, "Born Standing Up" describes the thoughtful philosophical basis for his comedy, but I was absolutely taken by the absurdist quality of it.  His stand-up comic persona seemed to be defined by this "enjoying the passage of time" idea.  The pure joy that he projected when suddenly overcome by "happy feet" was admittedly a foreign language to me, but I knew it was a country that I wanted to visit.



Like most things in this life, there is no one answer to any question and, where emotions are involved, no one-size-fits-all strategies.  To impact teens who are at risk, who are drowning in conflict and hormones and weighed down by the secrets that are the common currency of those years we, the survivors, need to revisit our own experience and communicate with compassion and with honesty.

I am reminded of this wonderful scene from "The West Wing": 



You know how everyone says "Don't be that guy"?  We have all been that guy and now, when it comes to reaching out to teens who are at risk, we can all have a chance to be that friend who knows the way out.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

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

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