Coming to Terms, fighting the #stigma of #mentalillness
In an effort to fight the #stigma, I will step forward and share that I grew up in the house of a woman that lived with #mentalillness, Bipolar Disorder to be exact. The first conscious memory I have of knowing this was when I was 10 years old.My oldest sister was pregnant with her second child. My Mom was acting peculiar, talking incessantly about things I had never heard her talk. Her emotions were up one moment, down the next as she would cry. She shared intimacies of her and my father which I cared not to know.
I witnessed her struggle desperately with something. It scared her, me and left my father, who thought psychiatrists were quacks, at wit's end.
After consultation with this psychiatrist, she was hospitalized at North Kansas City Hospital, because that's what we do in our family, send people away from the neighborhood when they act disrespectfully so that the neighbors don't know. I remember this hospitalization because when we went to see her, I spent my time on the swing set. I really just wanted my mom to come home and there was no promise that she would at that time. They tinkered with medications and landed on Lithium, the least synthetic of the choices and good success for people with Manic-Depression, now know as Bipolar Disorder. Lithium brought her home.
There would be other "episodes" when my brother got married, when her mom died and a few times when she decided to stop taking her medication. As I aged, I went from feeling very sorry fo her and as if she was fragile, to being pissed at her irresponsibility. This experience growing up is likely responsible for me deciding to major in Psychology and work in psychiatric hospitals and become a therapist.
A year before she died, her behavior started to show the tell tale signs of problems with her Lithium. It was not problems with her medication, it was Dementia and as grace would have it, she shed this mortal coil after only a short stint in a memory care facility. I was grateful this time in care was limited because her initial hospitalization in a psychiatric care unit in 1978 was not the heyday of psychiatric care.
In the year after her death, I began to find myself in a struggle of my own, that involved me engaging in behavior that scared me, my wife and my children. What I thought was just grief, took on a form that could not be the result of grief alone. In an effort to protect those I loved, I too visited a psychiatrist and over the course of a month, as I fought my own internal #stigma about living with mental illness, I got on Lithium. It has made my life better and I assure you I am the last person that would want to #showmyweaknessandaskforhelp. There are many of us that are #livingwithmentalillness and we are no different than any of you that are taking medication to manage high blood pressure, or diabetes or......fill in the blank. My mental illness is genetic in nature, rooted in my neurochemistry and has my brain functioning in a different way. This path to understanding this illness has been humbling, scary, and required me to trust those around me in ways I could not have fathomed. Initially, i was more sensitive to the way we as a culture marginalize and devalue #peoplelivingwithmentalillness. I did it, I unwittingly held my mom in a less than role, you know because of her "crazy" behavior, and did not realize it until I was fully in her shoes. As a family we would joke #ismomoffhermedicationagain....now that is the family question about me.
So I ask you, please look closely at your words. Be kind to others because you have no idea what they are going through internally. I lost a dear friend to the very mental illness with which I am living. She was the brightest star with the most amazing children and appeared to have every reason to live. Somehow in a very difficult time in her life, she chose to stop taking her medication without the guidance of a psychiatrist and took her own life in the days after she had made this decision. So please be compassionate, open your heart, your mind and make the first step by changing your words from stigmatized reference to acceptance and understanding of mental illness and mental health in your community.
I witnessed her struggle desperately with something. It scared her, me and left my father, who thought psychiatrists were quacks, at wit's end.
After consultation with this psychiatrist, she was hospitalized at North Kansas City Hospital, because that's what we do in our family, send people away from the neighborhood when they act disrespectfully so that the neighbors don't know. I remember this hospitalization because when we went to see her, I spent my time on the swing set. I really just wanted my mom to come home and there was no promise that she would at that time. They tinkered with medications and landed on Lithium, the least synthetic of the choices and good success for people with Manic-Depression, now know as Bipolar Disorder. Lithium brought her home.
There would be other "episodes" when my brother got married, when her mom died and a few times when she decided to stop taking her medication. As I aged, I went from feeling very sorry fo her and as if she was fragile, to being pissed at her irresponsibility. This experience growing up is likely responsible for me deciding to major in Psychology and work in psychiatric hospitals and become a therapist.
A year before she died, her behavior started to show the tell tale signs of problems with her Lithium. It was not problems with her medication, it was Dementia and as grace would have it, she shed this mortal coil after only a short stint in a memory care facility. I was grateful this time in care was limited because her initial hospitalization in a psychiatric care unit in 1978 was not the heyday of psychiatric care.
In the year after her death, I began to find myself in a struggle of my own, that involved me engaging in behavior that scared me, my wife and my children. What I thought was just grief, took on a form that could not be the result of grief alone. In an effort to protect those I loved, I too visited a psychiatrist and over the course of a month, as I fought my own internal #stigma about living with mental illness, I got on Lithium. It has made my life better and I assure you I am the last person that would want to #showmyweaknessandaskforhelp. There are many of us that are #livingwithmentalillness and we are no different than any of you that are taking medication to manage high blood pressure, or diabetes or......fill in the blank. My mental illness is genetic in nature, rooted in my neurochemistry and has my brain functioning in a different way. This path to understanding this illness has been humbling, scary, and required me to trust those around me in ways I could not have fathomed. Initially, i was more sensitive to the way we as a culture marginalize and devalue #peoplelivingwithmentalillness. I did it, I unwittingly held my mom in a less than role, you know because of her "crazy" behavior, and did not realize it until I was fully in her shoes. As a family we would joke #ismomoffhermedicationagain....now that is the family question about me.
So I ask you, please look closely at your words. Be kind to others because you have no idea what they are going through internally. I lost a dear friend to the very mental illness with which I am living. She was the brightest star with the most amazing children and appeared to have every reason to live. Somehow in a very difficult time in her life, she chose to stop taking her medication without the guidance of a psychiatrist and took her own life in the days after she had made this decision. So please be compassionate, open your heart, your mind and make the first step by changing your words from stigmatized reference to acceptance and understanding of mental illness and mental health in your community.
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