Faith Works: 2-1-1 and when things just don’t fit

Article found in The Newark Advocate September 9, 2015

               Depression is a funny thing.

Not funny ha-ha. But you can be depressed, deeply depressed, even clinically depressed, and still laugh. It rings hollow inside your own head, but it’s not that difficult to keep up the appearances.

It’s funny, it’s odd, it’s downright strange how depression can creep up on you, like a slowly developing storm cloud, going from a lovely day to gloom and darkness without you noticing until the rain starts to fall. Depression can come on like distant thunder, or a sudden clap of lightning out of a blue sky. It comes in like the tide, except when it’s a tidal wave that barely gives notice that the beach beneath your feet will disappear beneath you, the sky coming down with a roar. We all know a death, a loss, the end of a relationship or job can trigger it, but when your psyche is thrown off balance, you can be pitched into a serious depression by the cancellation of a TV show or the distant assassination of a foreign dictator.

Scientists and doctors keep investigating depression. It has a biochemical component, your internal chemistry and flow of hormones pulling you down one way, your sugar and sodium and potassium tugging in another, and somewhere in there are the key compounds that turn a mood into a crisis.

Head injuries can cause depression. Stroke. Surgery, even successful surgery. Addiction certainly doesn’t help, especially to substances that are themselves “depressants,” but any addictive behavior can dance the mournful gavotte of a depressive episode.

It’s not your fault any more than a broken hip is your fault; yes, you left that bowling ball bag out in the hallway and tripped over it, but who would say to you on the ground, or in the squad, or at the hospital, “Hey, that broken bone is your fault!”

Depression, when it becomes serious, when it gets severe, is isolating, disrupting and desolating. Hope that seems obvious to someone sitting right next to you is invisible to you. And solutions get twisted, warped, confused at best and suicidal at worst.

Maybe you’ve called 2-1-1 to get information about a social service, or to find a phone number for a program you or a friend needs. Pathways of Central Ohio has been known as the Crisis Center and the Suicide Hotline and a number of names they may never even have actually had, but they’re not only still at 740-345-HELP (4357), they and their Crisis Hotline and Information & Referral Services can be reached simply by calling 2-1-1.

If you have someone you’re worried about, you can call 2-1-1 for support and guidance. Clergy and professionals, that means you, too. We don’t know everything, and the folks at Pathways answering those 2-1-1 calls have access to pretty much everything, plus training that can come in handy when you’re feeling overwhelmed by someone’s need.

When there’s a weapon at hand, an active threat or you think someone’s taken something to hurt themselves, you still call 9-1-1. That’s basic. But if you need to talk, you need to talk to someone about how to talk to someone else, and as anyone is trying to figure out how to get help, 2-1-1 is ready and waiting.

In Licking County, this summer has been bracketed by two high-profile, much-discussed suicides. In late May, a pastor, and as August ended, a student leader in college. Both were people who gave help to others, who knew something about where to find help, and had gotten basic training in knowing when sadness was turning into depression, and what to do about it. Knowing that even those sorts of people were vulnerable to the worst depression can do to a person is shocking, even scary to the rest of us.

We have to keep saying to each other, over and over: it’s okay to need help. It’s fine to admit you’re at the end of your rope. There are resources that can help you…can I make the call for you? There is no single, lasting solution to this, anymore than we can guarantee an end to broken hips. It takes awareness, understanding, and the ongoing willingness to affirm treatment and celebrate recovery.

For Seth, for Wendell, we keep reaching out to put our arms around each other, and to listen, and when necessary, to call for help.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he’s called 2-1-1 before and will again! Tell him where you think we can help each other in our community atknapsack77@gmail.com

From The Executive Director

By Penny Sitler, Executive Director

As we transition from summer to fall, there’s a definite change in the air. I welcome the cooler days and crisp nights and anticipate the fall harvest bounty that we’ll find at local farmer’s markets. Along with those transformations comes a new school year and holiday festivities will be upon us before we know it. Not everyone looks forward to these changes… One in four adults and one in three youth experience a mental health issue in any given year but on average it takes people ten years to seek the help they need to live their lives fully despite that challenge. MHA is encouraging everyone to act B4Stage4. We wouldn’t wait until Stage 4 to treat other medical conditions, so why do we wait when it comes to our mental health? National Depression Screening Day is October 8 – stop by our office to take a mental health screening or go to MHALC.org to do a screening online and encourage your friends and family to do the same. It’s so important for everyone to understand their mental health and to make it a priority in life. Mental Health America of Licking County is here to help find the resources you need.
 Speaking of change, MHALC’s Board of Trustees and staff have been working on a new strategic plan for the agency. With the help of a wonderful facilitator, Bobbi Noe, we have put lots of thought into the services we provide for Licking County and how they fulfill our updated mission which is to promote good mental health and wellness through education, prevention and advocacy, and to eliminate the stigma of mental health issues.
 I am so proud of all of the great work MHALC’s dedicated staff is doing to enhance the mental health of Licking County. Their jobs are not easy but they are so passionate about what they do, we routinely share laughter and tears over their successes. Here are just a few examples of recent changes they’ve been instrumental in achieving. Buses are taking Bridges Out of Poverty program graduates to jobs at the New Albany Beauty Park, thanks to coordinator Donna Gibson’s collaboration with United Way and Ohio Means Jobs. Since having Becky Lawrence, Licking Valley Middle School counselor as an extern through the Summer Teacher Externship Program at MHALC in June, the Girls In Progress program with coordinator Shari Johnston and the Suicide Prevention program with coordinator Justina Wade will have a presence at Licking Valley Middle School for the first time. YES Club has recently welcomed new director Bethanne Leffel-Ployhar, LISW and all of us at MHALC look forward to the fresh perspective and renewed energy she brings to the program. While change can sometimes be intimidating, it also signals growth. Here at MHALC, we embrace change as it means we can offer new ideas and programming to the community. We can always use your help to sustain these programs since we don’t charge anyone for the help we offer, so feel free to make a change in your giving. MHALC is a cause worthy of your time, talent and treasure!  Here’s to your good mental health! 


 

 

 

Parent Connection: Reduce Back to School Anxiety

Parent Connection: Reduce Back to School Anxiety

Article Found in Depression and Bipolar Alliance (DBSA) e-Update August 2015

It’s nearly time to go back to school! Like any change, a new school year can cause anxiety, particularly so for a child living with a mood disorder. Here are some tips on ways to reduce back to school anxiety:

• Get to know your child’s classmates. Plan a playdate, attend an activity center near their school, text, skype, or find other ways to socialize with the children they will be spending the school year with.
• Start your school schedule early. Gradually change bed and waking times to avoid a sudden, harsh change.
• Set daily expectations. Practice homework at a relaxed pace to prepare for the school year’s work load. 
• Plan a visit to school before it starts to introduce your child to their teacher, classrooms, and other areas of potential anxiety: locker assignments, the lunchroom, bathroom locations, etc.
• Talk to teachers regarding any specific supplies or requirements for their classroom.
• Create a memory book of summer activities as a fun way to close the summer and prepare for classroom sharing.
• Consider planning a fun activity for the first weekend after school starts to blend summer and school. Celebrate the first week back.
• Discuss past experiences and feelings about the upcoming year. Does your child remember being anxious last year? What helped calm those feelings?
• Prepare, but don’t over prepare. With some children, discussing the school year is helpful. For others it is not. It may be helpful to avoid counting down the days to the new school year or to have other conversations highlighting this big transition.
• Stay flexible. After a few days or week of school, organizational systems and other needs may change.

A special thank you to the parents from the Balanced Mind Parent Network (BMPN), a program of DBSA, for sharing their thoughts and ideas on reducing back to school anxiety. BMPN guides families raising children with mood disorders to the answers, support and stability they seek. Go to the BMPN website to learn more.

Parent Connection appears each month in the DBSA eUpdate. Here, parents and guardians can expect to find up-to-date information and resources about parenting children and adolescents with depression and bipolar disorder. We also feature news about Balanced Mind Parent Network online support communities, theFamily Helpline and other family-focused programming.

10 Tips For Raising Resilient Kids

10 Tips For Raising Resilient Kids

Article Found in Psych Central

By Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S.

While adulthood is filled with serious responsibilities, childhood isn’t exactly stress-free. Kids take tests, learn new information, change schools, change neighborhoods, get sick, get braces, encounter bullies, make new friends and occasionally get hurt by those friends.

What helps kids in navigating these kinds of challenges is resilience. Resilient kids are problem solvers. They face unfamiliar or tough situations and strive to find good solutions.

“When they step into a situation, [resilient kids] have a sense they can figure out what they need to do and can handle what is thrown at them with a sense of confidence,” said Lynn Lyons, LICSW, a psychotherapist who specializes in treating anxious families and co-author of the book Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous and Independent Children with anxiety expert Reid Wilson, Ph.D.

This doesn’t mean that kids have to do everything on their own, she said. Rather, they know how to ask for help and are able to problem-solve their next steps.

Resilience isn’t birthright. It can be taught. Lyons encouraged parents to equip their kids with the skills to handle the unexpected, which actually contrasts our cultural approach.

“We have become a culture of trying to make sure our kids are comfortable. We as parents are trying to stay one step ahead of everything our kids are going to run into.” The problem? “Life doesn’t work that way.”

Anxious people have an especially hard time helping their kids tolerate uncertainty, simply because they have a hard time tolerating it themselves. “The idea of putting your child through the same pain that you went through is intolerable,” Lyons said. So anxious parents try to protect their kids and shield them from worst-case scenarios.

However, a parent’s job isn’t to be there all the time for their kids, she said. It’s to teach them to handle uncertainty and to problem-solve. Below, Lyons shared her valuable suggestions for raising resilient kids.

1. Don’t accommodate every need.

According to Lyons, “whenever we try to provide certainty and comfort, we are getting in the way of children being able to develop their own problem-solving and mastery.” (Overprotecting kids only fuels their anxiety.)

She gave a “dramatic but not uncommon example.” A child gets out of school at 3:15. But they worry about their parent picking them up on time. So the parent arrives an hour earlier and parks by their child’s classroom so they can see the parent is there.

In another example, parents let their 7-year-old sleep on a mattress on the floor in their bedroom because they’re too uncomfortable to sleep in their own room.

2. Avoid eliminating all risk.

Naturally, parents want to keep their kids safe. But eliminating all risk robs kids of learning resiliency. In one family Lyons knows, the kids aren’t allowed to eat when the parents are not home, because there’s a risk they might choke on their food. (If the kids are old enough to stay home alone, they’re old enough to eat, she said.)

The key is to allow appropriate risks and teach your kids essential skills. “Start young. The child who’s going to get his driver’s license is going to have started when he’s 5 [years old] learning how to ride his bike and look both ways [slow down and pay attention].”

Giving kids age-appropriate freedom helps them learn their own limits, she said.

3. Teach them to problem-solve.

Let’s say your child wants to go to sleep-away camp, but they’re nervous about being away from home. An anxious parent, Lyons said, might say, “Well, then there’s no reason for you to go.”

But a better approach is to normalize your child’s nervousness, and help them figure out how to navigate being homesick. So you might ask your child how they can practice getting used to being away from home.

When Lyons’s son was anxious about his first final exam, they brainstormed strategies, including how he’d manage his time and schedule in order to study for the exam.

In other words, engage your child in figuring out how they can handle challenges. Give them the opportunity, over and over, “to figure out what works and what doesn’t.”

4. Teach your kids concrete skills.

When Lyons works with kids, she focuses on the specific skills they’ll need to learn in order to handle certain situations. She asks herself, “Where are we going with this [situation]? What skill do they need to get there?” For instance, she might teach a shy child how to greet someone and start a conversation.

5. Avoid “why” questions.

“Why” questions aren’t helpful in promoting problem-solving. If your child left their bike in the rain, and you ask “why?” “what will they say? I was careless. I’m an 8-year-old,” Lyons said.

Ask “how” questions instead. “You left your bike out in the rain, and your chain rusted. How will you fix that?” For instance, they might go online to see how to fix the chain or contribute money to a new chain, she said.

Lyons uses “how” questions to teach her clients different skills. “How do you get yourself out of bed when it’s warm and cozy? How do you handle the noisy boys on the bus that bug you?”

6. Don’t provide all the answers.

Rather than providing your kids with every answer, start using the phrase “I don’t know,” “followed by promoting problem-solving,” Lyons said. Using this phrase helps kids learn to tolerate uncertainty and think about ways to deal with potential challenges.

Also, starting with small situations when they’re young helps prepare kids to handle bigger trials. They won’t like it, but they’ll get used to it, she said.

For instance, if your child asks if they’re getting a shot at the doctor’s office, instead of placating them, say, “I don’t know. You might be due for a shot. Let’s figure out how you’re doing to get through it.”

Similarly, if your child asks, “Am I going to get sick today?” instead of saying, “No, you won’t,” respond with, “You might, so how might you handle that?”

If your child worries they’ll hate their college, instead of saying, “You’ll love it,” you might explain that some freshmen don’t like their school, and help them figure out what to do if they feel the same way, she said.

7. Avoid talking in catastrophic terms.

Pay attention to what you say to your kids and around them. Anxious parents, in particular, tend to “talk very catastrophically around their children,” Lyons said. For instance, instead of saying “It’s really important for you to learn how to swim,” they say, “It’s really important for you to learn how to swim because it’d be devastating to me if you drowned.”

8. Let your kids make mistakes.

“Failure is not the end of the world. [It’s the] place you get to when you figure out what to do next,” Lyons said. Letting kids mess up is tough and painful for parents. But it helps kids learn how to fix slip-ups and make better decisions next time.

According to Lyons, if a child has an assignment, anxious or overprotective parents typically want to make sure the project is perfect, even if their child has no interest in doing it in the first place. But let your kids see the consequences of their actions.

Similarly, if your child doesn’t want to go to football practice, let them stay home, Lyons said. Next time they’ll sit on the bench and probably feel uncomfortable.

9. Help them manage their emotions.

Emotional management is key in resilience. Teach your kids that all emotions are OK, Lyons said. It’s OK to feel angry that you lost the game or someone else finished your ice cream. Also, teach them that after feeling their feelings, they need to think through what they’re doing next, she said.

“Kids learn very quickly which powerful emotions get them what they want. Parents have to learn how to ride the emotions, too.” You might tell your child, “I understand that you feel that way. I’d feel the same way if I were in your shoes, but now you have to figure out what the appropriate next step is.”

If your child throws a tantrum, she said, be clear about what behavior is appropriate (and inappropriate). You might say, “I’m sorry we’re not going to get ice cream, but this behavior is unacceptable.”

10. Model resiliency.

Of course, kids also learn from observing their parents’ behavior. Try to be calm and consistent, Lyons said. “You cannot say to a child you want them to control their emotions, while you yourself are flipping out.”

“Parenting takes a lot of practice and we all screw up.” When you do make a mistake, admit it. “I really screwed up. I’m sorry I handled that poorly. Let’s talk about a different way to handle that in the future,” Lyons said.

Resiliency helps kids navigate the inevitable trials, triumphs and tribulations of childhood and adolescence. Resilient kids also become resilient adults, able to survive and thrive in the face of life’s unavoidable stressors.

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.