Mental Health Stigma and Your Identity — I Am Not My Illness

Blog Post from Health Place America's Mental Health Channel on January 4, 2015 by Andrea Paquette 

I have a mental illness, but this does not make me any different than anybody else. It is stigmatizing for me to think otherwise. There are hidden stigmatized trenches in the way we perceive and think about our identity, and I also feel it is necessary to point out that just because you have a mental illness, you need not single yourself out as abnormal. You just plain have a mental illness and really it is not that big of a big deal.

Mental Health Stigma and My Identity

Eight years ago, I finally, and fully, understood that it was actually okay to have mental health challenges. I recall speaking in front of a very large crowd for the first time, and I shrugged my shoulders and simply said, “My name is Andrea and I have bipolar disorder, but I have learned that I am not bipolar disorder.” Some people from the audience stared at me in awe, others smiled and some winced, but I continued and said, “I have bipolar, so what?” That was my defining moment where I finally learned that bipolar disorder did not define me. It was actually not as big of a deal, as I had created it to be in my own mind. Before this realization, I often viewed myself as a victim of my illness and felt self-stigmatized, but I soon discovered that there are millions of mental health survivors, numerous success stories and countless human victories. I am just one of many.

Mental Health Stigma, Identity and Knowing I Am Not My Illness

I am fully aware that I have a lot to do with bipolar disorder. I created and lead the Bipolar Disorder Society of British Columbia, have a published piece on my personal story, deliver mental health presentations, facilitate support groups, write mental health blogs, my bipolar journey has been featured in the media and I deal with bipolar disorder every single day. Because I do all of this, does this mean I actually am bipolar? Definitely not, I simply have a brain illness; and just because I have chosen to surround myself with things that are indeed related to bipolar, these things will never be able to define who Andrea actually is.

It is impossible to be an embodiment of an any illness and I have, personally, chosen to shape my life and how I live it. I do not consider that anyone with a physical illness would define their worth and identify in their condition, so why should it be any different for someone who has a mental illness?

You can also connect with Andrea on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and at BipolarBabe.com.

A Message from The Licking County Health Department

Now is the best time to get children their back-to-school immunizations

07/21/15 LICKING COUNTY, OHIO – Back-to-school season is quickly approaching. Parents will be busy getting school clothes and school supplies for their children. Immunizing your child now will help avoid the last minute rush, and protect them against vaccine-preventable disease.

Parents should contact their health care provider or the Licking County Health Department to ensure all required immunizations have been provided to their child prior to the first day of school. Children who go to school without the required vaccinations risk being excluded from school until all requirements are met. They also risk becoming ill.

Incoming kindergarten students are required to have:
•           2 doses of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccination (MMR),
•           2 doses of the Varicella vaccination (chickenpox),
•           3 doses of the Hepatitis B vaccination,
•           3 - 4 doses of the Polio vaccination (IPV), and
•           4-5 doses of the DTaP vaccination (whooping cough).

Incoming seventh-grade students are required to have:
•           1 dose of the TDaP vaccination (whooping cough).

Whooping cough (pertussis) has made a comeback in recent years; vaccination will protect your child and family members. Additionally, the HPV vaccination (an anti-cancer vaccine) and the meningitis vaccination are recommended for seventh-grade students.

Don’t delay – call your health care provider or the Licking County Health Department today. The Health Department’s Immunization Clinic can be reached at (740) 349-6535 for an appointment.

The Health Department’s Immunization Clinic accepts most major insurance providers. When scheduling the appointment, ask the staff if you are unsure about insurance coverage. No child will be turned away for inability to pay.

For more information, visit the nursing page on www.lickingcohealth.org, or ask your health care provider.
   

Destigmatizing mental illness through sharing stories

By Seattle Times editorial board

The Seattle Times

Originally published June 12, 2015 at 4:29 pm

FOR Susan Fox, the social stigma of mental illness today recalls the collective silence around breast cancer in 1974. That was the year first lady Betty Ford and second lady Happy Rockefeller both disclosed their breast cancers and mastectomies. 

The disclosure emboldened millions of women to break their collective silence and spurred a revolution in cancer research.

That’s what’s needed today on mental illness. We need to talk more about it.

“You’re never going to get enough money going into that system until you have power brokers and rainmakers come out,” said Fox, a successful nonprofit executive who is open about her recovery from addiction, depression and anxiety.

Saturday, a new Seattle-based advocacy group, called The Stability Network, is trying to do just that with a storytelling event, cheekily titled “Not Dead Yet!” Katherine Switz founded the group last year with simple principles: Participants had to be successful professionals and industry leaders willing to publicly share their recovery from mental illness.

Switz has bipolar disorder, as well as a Harvard MBA and a résumé that includes her current job as a senior adviser at the Gates Foundation. She’s lived the stigma. When she needed psychiatric hospitalization while working as an executive at General Electric, she told her boss that she had a thyroid problem.

She’s open today, but said the launch of The Stability Network hasn’t received the response she expected. “It’s not because we’re not tapping into a nerve,” she said.

Untreated mental illness is one of the nation’s challenges. Stigma discourages people from seeking needed treatment for fear of professional or social consequences, even though their neighbors or colleagues might also be keeping the same secret.

Wayne Lynch, news director of Northwest Cable News, has used his personal experience to influence his profession. His brother’s suicide “sharpened all the sharp edges” of his psyche prone to depression and anxiety. Now, he pushes his newsroom to more sophisticated explanations of mental illness.

“We would like people in power positions in community businesses or agencies to say, ‘I’ve struggled with this and have had a good career,’ ” said Lynch.

Editorial board members are editorial page editor Kate Riley, Frank A. Blethen, Ryan Blethen, Brier Dudley, Mark Higgins, Jonathan Martin, Thanh Tan, Blanca Torres, William K. Blethen (emeritus) and Robert C. Blethen (emeritus).

Training geared toward helping kids with mental issues

Story by Anna Jeffries at The Newark Advocate July 1, 2015

NEWARK – Experts estimate that 1 in every 3 young people will experience a mental health issue every year.

That’s a lot of local children and teens in need of assistance — but many of them don’t know how to ask for help, said Penny Sitler, executive director of Mental Health America of Licking County.

MHA has teamed up with Mental Health and Recovery of Licking and Knox Counties to give adults who work with young people the knowledge they need to help kids cope with a mental health crisis.

The two organizations are looking for people interested in completing an eight-hour mental health first aid training geared toward ages 11 to 22.

“We want to give them the tools so they know how to respond,” Sitler said.

Using funds from the area’s Mental Health and Recovery levy, MHA and Mental Health and Recovery launched the mental health first aid program in September by offering training on how to help adults experiencing a mental health crisis.

Just like first aid training sessions that deal with physical illnesses, such as a bleeding wound or a heart attack, mental health first aid teaches participants to access a situation and react appropriately.

“It’s not clinical training,” said Kay Spergel, executive director of Mental Health and Recovery. “What we want to do is identify issues as early as possible.”

Spergel and Sitler have taught 10 adult first aid training classes in Licking and Knox counties in the last nine months. When they found out funding was available for the youth version of the program, they decided to start offering it as well. To learn more, they attended a training session with several other local volunteers that was sponsored by the Ohio Association of County Behavioral Health Authorities and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction.

Now at least five local people are certified to teach the class in Licking and Knox counties, creating more opportunities for outreach, Sitler said.

Although the program has the same goal as the adult mental health first aid course, the method is different, Spergel said.

The adult program gives participants information about symptoms of specific illnesses, such as depression or schizophrenia. But the youth program explains that many children experiencing mental illnesses are responding to emotional upsets or trauma, she said.

“A lot of research suggests if they are going into their first episode and if we can intervene at the beginning, they tend to recover faster, stay in recovery and be healthier adults,” Spergel said.

Children and teens are more likely to express their emotions with actions instead of words, she said. The training takes participants through several scenarios that help them identify early warning signs.

“Kids tend to isolate themselves or demonstrate risky behaviors,” Spergel said. “If we can empower adults to identify this in kids, we might be able to keep them from engaging in risky behavior.”

Licking County has multiple resources to help parents. Pathways of Central Ohio and MHA offer parenting support programs, and the Mobile Urgent Treatment Team responds to youth in crisis in their homes.

But the program is an option for other groups who deal with youth, including guidance counselors, school custodians, librarians, Scout leaders or camp counselors.

Spergel and Sitler are hoping to organize a community training for Licking and Knox counties sometime in July in Utica. They also are reaching out to local school districts and other organizations.

The training can be presented free of charge to any group of 10 to 30 people and can be done in one eight-hour session or two four-hour sessions.

Based on the feedback they received from the adult mental health first aid program, Spergel and Sitler said they are confident there will be a good response to the youth version of the training.

“People are looking for answers on ways they can help the community, particularly with children,” Spergel said. “They want to do something to help if they can and this helps them develop the tools they would need.”

ajeffries@newarkadvocate.com

740-328-8544

Twitter: @amsjeffries

Learn more

For more information on Mental Health First Aid for youth or adults, contact Mental Health and Recovery of Licking and Knox Counties at 740-522-1234 or mhrlk.org or Mental Health America of Licking County at 740-522-1341 or mhalc.org.

People who need immediate assistance for themselves or a child should call 211 or 800-544-1601.

Gill column: Treatment works, Recovery happens

In this space some years back, I mentioned that I’ve had a few colonoscopies.

Yeah, I’m sure you were waiting for me to get back to that subject.

No details, right? Right. But it was a necessary subject because, among other things, my doctor conducting the colonoscopy (is that right? do they conduct them? perform doesn’t sound quite correct…) had read the column, and afterward asked me if I would write about the experience. That it wasn’t so bad, very tolerable, and oh yeah – they save lives, so go get them when your doctor calls for one, please?

Happy to oblige. A colonoscopy is a basic procedure, a minor inconvenience, and a lifesaving part of staying healthy, especially when you have a family history of colon cancer. Why not share that I’ve had more than one, and they’re just not a big deal? People have assumptions and concerns and fears that make them put off colonoscopies, so anything I can do to reduce fears and encourage use of them when needed is a public service.

Well.

Folks seem to have some of the same issues around mental health care; fears and misconceptions around behavioral health services keep people from making use of the services that are available, or to give up when they’re waiting for the ones that take some time to access. They see mental health issues as being a label you wear forever, because the problem sticks around and the treatment is either pills that make you dopey or you’re spending decades laying for a 50-minute hour on a sofa telling a shrink about your childhood. In other words, people have some assumptions and anxieties that are largely based in stereotypes and confusions and frankly outdated images of what behavioral health care is, and does.

So may I note that I’ve made use of behavioral health in my life? Details aren’t important; if you really have to know, get ahold of me, and we can talk, but I may tell you about my colonoscopy first.

But I have, both in college and after, made use of mental health resources to help deal with life and circumstances that were leaving me out of step and turning in circles in my life. I needed a solid, dispassionate listener who also could make practical, evidence-based suggestions about practices I could engage in and new patterns I could follow that would change how I responded to difficulties.

Or as the phrase in behavioral health goes: Treatment works, recovery happens. The biggest barrier I’ve noticed as a pastor is that even very smart people are somewhat stupid about what counseling and psychology and treatment or recovery are. They really do get stuck in movie stereotypes and old cartoon pictures of therapy.

If you think that mental health is just a life sentence of “crazy” and that treatment is no more than oppressive medications or mysterious conversations with someone sitting out of sight as you lie there answering questions, it makes sense to avoid pursuing treatment. But today, mental health care is complex and flexible and adaptive. It’s very similar to talking about chemotherapy, which used to be largely one kind of awful experience, but now is many, many approaches with much more going on to make it tolerable — and successful! — than once was the case.

Starting with our community’s invaluable 211 hotline, you have access to behavioral health supports in this community that can address a variety of issues, from depression to anxiety to addiction to major mental health problems. And pretty much all of them have effective, proven treatment strategies that work. You can talk to your family doctor, you can call Mental Health America, you can call 211 even if you’re just wondering how to help a loved one, a family member, a friend, and say “help!”

And help is out there.

Odds are, that help won’t be something you’ll need for a lifetime. But if you do, keep in mind that an illness of the mind is really no different than any other chronic medical condition: if you walk with a limp, you walk with a limp. Get your physical therapy, and life goes on. The same goes for mental health hiccups that we all, at one point or another, can have.

For men who won’t see a doctor about anything, that’s an entirely different column! But if you need mental health care, make the call. Accept the support. It’s there for you, and it works. Bless you.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he’s used mental health care services and doesn’t care who knows it. Tell him what you don’t care who knows at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Article by Jeff Gill Found in The Newark Advocate May 29, 2015