Celebrating a New Year with Gratitude!

There were so many New Year's in my past that I celebrated with friends the promise of champagne for a New Year's celebration.  The truth is it always seemed rather dull.  I found myself wishing for things I didn't have and hoping for more from life.  Since I no longer drink, I have to meet life on life's terms. That means facing each moment as myself and not as someone made to feel someway-else with the assistance of a substance.  I appreciate the sharpness of my focus in each moment.  I appreciate my enhanced alertness and creativity.  And appreciation is where I would like to turn my focus on this New Year's Eve!  I am simply grateful for the small things.  It's 2° and I appreciate that our house is so tiny because it is absolutely toasty.  I appreciate that my son husband and myself are healthy.  Having lost my health in psychiatric hospitalizations, I know what it's like not to feel the ground under your feet.  Health is huge in feeling grounded.  I had to take small steps in gaining my health.  Walking down the path of health is a daily challenge.  A mere shower can feel overwhelming.  Cleaning the house can feel impossible.  Sometimes eating is not what I want to do.  Taking medication can feel like a juggling act.  Getting to the gym can feel good, once you get over the anxiety of all people.  It's not easy to suit up and show up to work always.  There are little steps that I push forward each day to carve out my health.  Sometimes I feel like taking those steps and sometimes I don't.  I push forward regardless, because I realize that if I can do the small things that feel like climbing a mountain on certain days- I will have health.  I am grateful that I've been able to take this journey this year.  And I am grateful for the opportunity to challenge myself on taking these steps into 2015!

Crisis Response

Crisis response is an important topic in recovery. It's the intersection between wellness and needing assistance many times. I think recognizing the need for assistance is especially challenging with behavioral health conditions. I recently assisted a woman whose daughter was having trouble breathing, we called 911 together. What was so striking to me was that the mother wasn't sure what to do even though her daughter was having trouble breathing. She wasn't sure whether or not she should call 911. Her comment was I simply don't know what's going on. Imagine if this had been a psychological crisis. Would the mother know what to do?  Would responders even know how to respond even?  And in my experience this has been an extremely questionable. I've got an appropriate responses maybe one out of five times. And by appropriate I mean someone responded with care, even poor care is better than ignoring and not responding in my humble opinion. Crisis services need to grow in the United States to where we have adequate responses for people in crisis with behavioral health conditions. We need more crisis respites that are peer run with access to ERs. We need to interact with the clinical community in these peer run facilities when medical responses are appropriate. We need to be talking to our communities about our supports so that people aren't blindsided with what do I do in a crisis.

How education changed my world...

In the 6th grade I learned the abuse my maternal grandfather subjected me to had a name in class.  I was a quiet student that cried at night because I thought I wasn't pretty.  As boys became interested in me in high school, I lost interest in books.  It took me 3 years to figure out what I was doing in college.  I had outer body experiences of just being numb.  Cutting relieved my anxiety, but the act scared me.  I went to the counseling department and they got me into drawing my feelings.  After an abusive relationship ended and I was suicidal, I found a psychotherapist.  I learned to overcome my deep fears and sadness with the assistance of psychotherapy and medication.  Icing on the cake came when I moved away from my hometown to get a graduate degree.  The change of environment and friends gave me the greatest sense of security.  While my fears returned after getting my masters, my education was always there to open a new door with a new job invariably.  I learned to live with deep fears and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder that I always felt was really PTSD.  I was flooded by fears and memories of all I did to survive in my college years. The diagnosis felt like a sock in my mouth to cover up my experience as a crime victim.  I felt sub-human with this label and alienated from humanity, as my friends abandoned me one by one.  As I recovered I found peer support education.  Peer support was my key in returning to humanity.  I found support and friends, then ultimately a career I love.  The more I learn about trauma, the more in my skin I become.    My education in peer support and psychology were life changing.  

Freedom in Education

My mother told me I would come home in a body bag.  My uncle told me I wouldn't make it back.  I couldn't hear them, all I could hear was the promise I would become wealthly.  The first realization I was not with ordinary people came when I stepped on Chinese soil and they were relaying a story of eating the brain of a live monkey in a restaurant.  We were there to be Los Vegas style entertainers.  I had practiced with a choreographer for a month and just saw the New York chorus line in my head.  It wasn't easy being away from home, but I just knew I had become famous the way strangers were so eager to greet me with 'nihow' or hello as I would pass the shops and markets.  I was so very alone, even next to the 15 women that had traveled with me.  I realized it was all falling apart when I heard her voice.  I can't see her face in my head anymore, but I can hear her telling me the management had called a meeting and collected everyone's ticket home and passport.  I felt suffocated by everything around me and asked the casino operator that had spoke to me on occasion to buy me a ferry ticket.  No one saw me slip out of the hotel into a taxi.  I left behind two large suitcases of belongings.  It was all about survival.  I tried to fight back by talking to an attorney, but his response left me afraid and quiet.  I survived, but to this day the fate of the other women is a mystery to me.  I wasn't a hero.  I quietly struggled with my fears and sadness.  I managed to get my degree and find meaning in work.  I can't turn away and be quiet anymore.  Twenty years have past and all is beyond the reach of justice.  I will talk through my art and find a way to create educational opportunities for others in my shoes.  My education freed me.

I Can Stand (End Human Trafficking)

What she told me, her words, alerted me that the house was about to burn down around me.  I immediately took in all that was happening in that moment and knew I must escape.  I shut down into silence that has lasted for years.  I didn't know how to break the silence, even after I was free.  I will not claim to be a hero.  I only found my own freedom or the courage to write this after watching Malala, the girl that would not be silent- I realized I can speak.  I will be starting a mission that I am just beginning  to learn about.  I will be selling my art to raise funds for a scholarship opportunity for human trafficking survivors.  It was education that led to my ultimate escape.  A friend of mine recently witnessed human trafficking, keep this handy- national hotline (888.373.7888) for reporting human trafficking.   The signs to look for are on this website link-http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/recognizing-the-signs

27 million men, women, and childen are enslaved worldwide and only 40,000 enslaved people were identified in the past year according to a June 2013 report from the State Department.  This is a link to the comprehensive report- http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/210737.pdf

It is my belief that we all have a role to fill in breaking the silence and ending modern day slavery.

Fighting to Reach Out (Suicide)

I think it is important to talk about suicide among those of us with mental health diagnoses.  If we remain silent, those around us will too.  Feeling suicidal is quite common.  One person dies by suicide every 15 minutes and it is the 11^th leading cause of death in the US, according to the American Psychological Association (1).  Of those of us with mental health conditions, we are particularly at risk.  Multiple studies have found that 90% or more of people that die by suicide had a mental disorder at the time of their death, the most common one being depression (2). 

I remember that in college, while earning my master’s degree that one sign of depression was being slowed down that the feeling was like ‘walking through pea soup’.  Well, as a survivor of depression, I had found the experience to be much more painful.  It is like an open wound that stings loudly inside that you would do anything to silence.  The worst part is that it can’t be seen.  I remember in my college years, I would go to school and do my best to learn.  When I came home and put my books down, I would cry endlessly.  It was a cry that would erupt every evening for months.  I wondered if everyone was so unhappy with life.  Nothing about life seemed good.  Food and activities seemed like there was a big gray film drawn over them.  I would just cry at home alone.  The sadness was like a pool that didn’t end.  I began to devalue myself and got hooked up with people that devalued me.  I numbed my pain with alcohol.   Finally, I began to consider suicide as an opportunity to end it all.  I had one thread left and that was reaching out to the therapist that I had been avoiding calling, because my father said that he would be fired from his job if I used his insurance to access mental health benefits.

I decided in that moment that my life was more important that my father’s job and I picked up the phone called the insurance company and accessed a therapist.  She over time changed the way I looked at the world, the way I thought, and even the activities and friendships that seemed to be leading me further into the abyss.  It took time and an antidepressant helped, along with knowing I wasn’t walking alone.

I am finding myself really angry about Robin Williams’s death.  Whatever is keeping you from reaching out and finding some assistance, please fight for your life. Today there is a national hotline: 800-273-TALK that folks can call, making it even easier to break down barriers to getting assistance in that moment of desperation.

I have created a beautiful life around me, I wouldn’t have known this was possible then, but it just takes time.  I have a son and a husband that keep me laughing during the painful times and remind me that life can be fun.  There are many people out there to connect with and create times of joy.  One other great way to connect with others I have found is peer support.  There are other people with behavioral health conditions that reach out and support each other.  We share wellness resources, stories, and even design conferences, like Alternatives.   

It’s not that I live a pristine life free from all suffering, but I have some amazing tools to deal with the challenges.  Some I have designed, some fellow peers have designed, and some come from professionals.  Reach out and don’t sit in silence.

1.  http://www.apa.org/education/ce/suicide.pdf

2. www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/key-research-findings

Finding Sanctuary

I realized this paper says all I need to for now, stay tuned, you can copy and paste to your browser...

www.dsgonline.com/rtp/wh/2013/2013_01_10/WH_2013_01_10.html

Surviving in Secret

She said it wasn't a near miss, she said I was part of it.  Other people had told me I was nearly a victim, so her confirmation meant a lot to me.  I had so many feelings that she understood that I can't describe.  She understood the risk.  She also described the risk of what my silence might mean for others as well.  It's not fair that living your whole story might create diving lines.  I live with discrimination today, but if I were to share my whole trauma story what discrimination would I face as a woman.  As I confronted all these questions she reflected in the manner that gave me peace that- 'you are a quiet stream shaping the rocks underneath you.' And I am sitting on the edge of great truths today, because of peer support from a fellow survivor.  There is more to say. But I don't have to till I'm ready that is part of what surviving is about.

Humanity & Labels

What is in a name, when it comes to diagnoses?  There are all kinds of experiences a person can have in life that run out of the ordinary.  Some of have more of these experiences and with greater intensity than others.  The placing of a label on a set of behaviors may be very useful for a doctor, but not so great for people who are trying to live life on human terms.  Labels are names that shorten conversations emensely and can create great distance from what we want to experience in connecting with life itself.   We can even forget we have a story and the label becomes our story.  It's like when a child first sees a beautiful and magical creature fluttering through the air and we label that magic- bird.  The child never sees a bird again with the same mystery and begins to label all birds- bird.  I'm not saying we are children, but that labels can be a distraction from getting at the essence of life.  I don't take medication today because someone gave me a label, I take medication because it helps me to feel safe in a world that can be quite frightening.  As a woman and victim of crimes, I see the label as a distraction from deeper truths about our culture.  They really assist medical professionals that provide me with care, but they don't do much for me.

Designing Places of Inclusion

Some of the most thrilling moments of my life have been co-designing places and programs of inclusion.  It takes to research and involvement to create quality environments of inclusion- it's not merely as bureaucratic stroke of the pen.

I will never forget the legendary moment in Georgia when my colleagues included me in a discussion on how to spend budget dollars on innovative projects.  Gwen Skinner didn't have to invite the Office of Consumer Relations and Recovery Section to that table, but she knew the value of inclusion.  What would happen next with a discussion with the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network turned out to bloom into something beautiful.  I had a friend that had great success with visiting friends homes during times of crisis to mitigate crisis; and that success turned into discussion of how that could be replicated.  This discussion followed with a call to Sherry Jenkins Tucker and she suggested something better.  She suggested we seek out Shery Mead and learn more about respite programs in the United States. 

Shery Mead is an amazing woman that understands the meaning of the word inclusion.  Power becomes equalized in the process of creating a crisis respite because people share in the responsibility of the innovation.  Like a potluck everybody brings some kind of expertise to the table.  Some crisis respites and include people from the community and may or may not be living with a condition. 

This element of not really knowing who is and who isn't the person living with a disability is a piece of true inclusion.  Environments of true inclusion also invites the stories of the people.  Those stories are equally valued.  One simply doesn't have to hide their struggle because their struggle is excepted and honored.  The challenge lies in programs get designed based on funding isolated to serve a specific group of people with a specific condition.  Programs can easily get sidetracked in designing real inclusive environments that speak to innovation , if they get wrapped up around this fact of life.  Designing places and programs of inclusion isn't easy, but is one of the most fulfilling challenges of our time.

To learn more about crisis respite style programs, visit www.gmhcn.org/wellnesscenter .

Behind the Veil of a Diagnosis

Many of us live our lives behind the veil of a diagnosis. It's an easy place to be in in a society that is so quick to describe us as 'the mentally ill, the bipolar, or the manic'.  But when you lift the veil, you find a real stories and real people often impacted by great trauma. When you realize the prevalence of trauma among people with mental health diagnoses, you may quickly uncover the reason so many people are unsettled with the care that they receive.

I have been escorted to the hospital in handcuffs and leg shackles, and to treat a woman that has been traumatized and victimized in our culture in this manner does not seem to make sense to me.  I gave a lecture recently on my art while telling my story, and it's interesting that this treatment still does not make sense to me after so many years. I've only had seven hospitalizations but these moments wound me.

It's like in these moments when I am handcuffed that I'm no longer a mother and a wife, I've become this entity that must be moved and cannot be allowed to move- and that's what is so triggering about it. It painfully reminds me of the moments in my life I have not been able to escape situations of abuse and harm- times when I've been objectified as a person and had my humanity dismissed. We would never handcuff the person with a heart condition or with diabetes to take them to the hospital.
 

 To me it is as if the presence of a mental health diagnosis is license to treat people differently in our culture. As advanced as we are as a culture, I believe we can do better. 

Pushing Forward Despite Yourself

There are times in my life that I have believed that certain rites of passage wouldn't come into my life.  I stood with this belief and then pretended that more would come my way, just simply walking in two directions at the same time.  Its not an easy dance, but its become a way of not only surviving- but also achieving. 

I never believed that I would find a marriage partner.  I simply thought I had too much baggage for anyone to put up with me for longer than temporarily.  I pressed forward and hoped against all hope.  I wrote an online ad and went on a ridiculous number of dinners in public places.  If you do advertise online, its good to be very cautious.  This wasn't the way I ended up meeting my husband, but I think stating my intention of defying the past helped.  I ended up meeting him by accident at a salsa club, doing something I love.  So, I am a firm believer in meeting people based on activities that you have in common, that just makes sense.

I never believed my relatives would come to my wedding.  I thought that with all the years I had lived with a mental health condition that this would be too much for them to consider me as an equal.  I didn't let it stop me from inviting them and throwing a big wedding party.  To my surprise almost everyone was there.  It was an awesome moment and I will never forget the beauty of that moment.

I never believed that I could find a job that fit me.  I didn't think I held the skills to work as the Director of Consumer Relations and Recovery Section in Georgia, but I just pretended my skills were good enough.  I ended up interviewing and my supervisor said it was the 'best interview' she ever had.   I was honored to be selected for the position, which became a whole new career direction.

I never believed I would get the opportunity to have my own child.  I mentored other people's kids with love, but thought the moment would never come for me.  I still believed against all hope and searched diligently for the right psychiatrist to assist me with preparing to have a child.  It took lots of research and hope.  I never got an opportunity to thank my psychiatrist for changing my medication regiment, because he his practice closed after his ethics were called into question.  I was lucky that I transferred the clinical supervision of my condition to a clinical social worker during that time.  My son today is a beautiful, precious light in my life. 

Its so easy to have self-defeating beliefs, when you face the serious challenges with a behavioral health condition.  My best advice, is to not let your own thoughts stop you.  Continue to reach out and push forward.  Sometimes the outcomes we desire don't happen on our own clock, but with hope dreams are an absolute possibility in my experience.     

Places of Isolation

Somedays its hard for me to believe that the best and most innovative way we have come up with to address the most serious mental health crises in many places in America is to isolate people from communities in hospitals.  I have voluntarily gone to a hospital to access medication and get it together, but the truth is if a person has a safe environment, like a house, hotel, or respite available- why can't the hospital come to the person. 

Segregating people in hospitals away from thier families sets us up for failure at times.  During 2011, I was released with a discharge plan that I created.  When I went home to the community, the plan didn't work and I went right back to another hospital.  I was so upset, I called the police on myself (a point that I had not remembered until my husband and I started talking about the 60 minutes Gus Deeds Family tragedy). 

On the one hand I understand that hospitals are needed to keep people safe at times and on the other hand I don't understand why hospitals are so heavily used for so many situations in our country.  If you hospitalize an adult, like myself, in the US against thier will- usually this is a very painful experience.  Don't get me wrong, some people love the hospital.  Others of us hate to see our civil rights taken away to get access to medication.  I guess I need to tell part of my story to get to the point.

Its 2011, I am in the hospital, voluntarily.  I thought that my coworkers were trying to poison me with nuclear waste and I had escaped.  I was terrified and so I welcomed the opportunity to get help.  In fact I drove straight to the ER at Children's Hospital in Decatur. My son, they assured me, didn't have radiation damage and they were so kind as to even demonstrate this.  They had him peel stickers from a paper and told me that this skill indicated that he didn't have any nerve damage.  The hospital discharged my son to my husband.  We didn't live nearby, so my husband drove 4 hours away to be with my family.  He would drive for 4 hours to visit me in the weeks following. 

In the isolation of the hospital, I always insist on independent planning of my care.  So, my discharge plan was written by me alone.  I named the doctor I would see, the place I would go, and that I would move to Atlanta.  Well, all this didn't work in real life at discharge.  In fact, the hospital discharged me to a friend's care.  Something that was shocking to my family to find out, as they thought the hospital would just hold me till my family arrived.

But the fact that my discharge plan didn't include a stable place to live caused my plan to fail and I landed right back in the hospital.  I finally ended up 4 hours away from all the resources named in my discharge plan with my husband and family.  After another hospitalization, I just gave up on the whole healing process among my closest friends idea and went home to Nebraska.  At least there I had a therapist, a home, and a job.  What a waste of time, resource, and money came from the near month I spend in isolation in the hospitals.

What if:
The Hospital wrote a discharge plan and that that wasn't the end of thier responsibility.

What if:
The Hospital wrote a discharge plan that included input from people you can trust, like close family allies.  What if connections were encouraged.  Then the independent types, like myself, might be  motivated to add another person's perspective to understanding if the discharge plan will fit.

What if:
There were a nurse that can prescribe and peer specialist to follow up on the fit of the discharge plan at 6 hours, 12 hours, and 24 hours after a crisis or discharge.  And then a peer could follow up with you every 3 days.
This type of home care or simple availability at a center might even replacethe necessity for a hospital in so many situations in our country with a dramatic reduction in costs.

What if:
Discharge plans incorporated notions like, you won't be able to drive on your medication until such and such time.  Then real world accomodations could be worked out.

What if:
Now this may sound unrealistic, but its in my heart.  What if the hospital was more like a spa.  What if there was a celebration of giving you access to life saving medications versus a struggle to lock you inside a building and force you to take them by taking away your civil rights indefinitely?  Wouldn't everyone feel better?

Including Yourself in a Breath

It’s easy to buy into the pace of our culture and feel that you have been reduced to another automated system.  It’s harder to remember that we are not here simply do as others would like that we have a purpose- claiming that purpose can be as simple as claiming a breath.  We can lose our purpose in intense conversations or just going through the ordinary activities of living.  My preferred style of work for years was to come to my desk and sit till the job was finished no matter what.  Some of us tune out, everyday, in front of TV’s and sit in front of the TV until it’s time to sleep.  Remembering that we have a place in the ebb and flow of life is harder. 

There is so much negativity in the media and in even the expressions people use in popular culture, it’s easy to feel defeated before we even claim the first word of a sentence.  Language that demeans us to certain roles and ways of being can really get a person down or lead to unexpressed anger and outrage.  We can take that anger out on ourselves by feeling powerless and like there is nothing that we can do.  Of course buying into that feeling of powerless is just another way that we reduce ourselves to another automated system.

Breathing isn’t easy as trauma survivors or people living with behavioral health conditions, the breath gets stifled when we tune out.  Breathing can be a tremendous ally, particularly when working with challenging situations.  A simple good breath, while you tell others how you feel can assist you in staying calm and centered as you stake a claim in the world of humanity.  Remembering to get a good breath in, can be a tipping point not only for new conversations with others about who you are, but also a tipping point into remembering the relationship that you have with yourself.

We can ask our body to tune out the simplest messages.  Messages like, I have a headache forming or I need to go the restroom or I am getting upset.  In a breath we can accept and love our body for having needs and take can of them.  We can listen and give ourselves the things that we need.  In claiming a breath, we might find the power to tell a person we feel judged by them and how.  We can write into news media and share with them a better way to converse.  We can remember what it means to live a life of purpose versus automating ourselves to the demands of the TV or work.

Of course there are lots of wellness skills we can practice, but I think the simplest is just to remember to breathe into claiming our lives as human.  Try it -  just straighten you posture a bit or raise your hands over your head so you can get a slow full breath that expands your belly. 

Inclusion Begins at Home

In my own experience of family, power and the sharing of power has been a major issue.  We don't always communicate well, we spent so much of our lives on silent mode- hiding shameful acts of abuse that happened to me as a child.  All the hiding made me an angry person in my youth, because who I was was not accepted and loved by my family for who I was.  This was an imbalance of power and a shunning of sorts. I found acceptance and love from other individuals who were angry with thier families also.  This only multiplied the power issues around me, because we didn't not understand that we were carrying forward abuse from our families to the relationships.

Our family went through lots of therapy, but that doesn't mean that we learned to share power better.  We learned to communicate better.  Still today, I find that when I am ill my parents want to rush me to the hospital in hopes what will pop out is a healthier child.  I have found that the hospital has been a great place to access medication, but nothing really substantive happens there for me.  Medication can be accessed in the community and a hospital isn't really required for people that are not a harm to themselves or others.  I have learned when they hospitalize me that I have to forgive them for turning to the only problem solving they understand. 

Internally, I have felt very wronged by my hospitalizations that have occured while I have been working with a medical team.  The only one that made some sense for me was the first one, because I was so very confused, afraid of everyone on the planet, and driving to anywhere and nowhere. The times hospitalization has been used to resolve my parents discomfort with my condition is an imbalance of power.  Its like saying we can't accept and love you as you are, so we are going to hospitalize you.  It is a knee jerk reaction that has been ingrained in many families for years.  This is apparent in the old  saying in Georgia, "If you don't behave, I'm going to send you to Milledgeville."

When we include people in our families that have differences and learn to sit with discomfort, we can allow our children to work with medical teams in the community and remain in the community.  Digging up hidden family secrets can feel like the rug of life has been pulled out from under a parent, but to really stay focused on love and acceptance is not easy.  If more families can understand that discomfort is a natural part of relationships, then we can move towards a more inclusive culture.

This focus on love an acceptance is a major skill in attachment building.  Attachment is the bond between a child and caregivers.  The Dalai Lama is an expert on Compassion and he says that he gained this skill from the love of his mother.  I've had to learn to love and accept my own son's differences from other children.  Just loving your children at all times, is an amazing process.  Next time your child is angry, try saying this, "I know you are angry and I love you."



  

Pushing Past Stereotypes...

Pushing past stereotypes is what I do everyday in my work, I speak out about my experience in many places and hope for the best.  Most times, I am pleasantly surprised, but not always.  I was in the DC Airport about a year ago or more and my medication fell out of my open bag.  I was at the end of the line, placing my shoes on and starting to relax.  The security woman saw the bright yellow box and quickly fired off to her colleagues, "That girl is on psych meds!".  I looked around embarrassed a bit and wondered if they would start questioning me.  Everyone seemed to ignore her, it was busy, and I went on with my life.  After starting this blog, I have been confronted with two of my own mind's stereotypes:
1) Movie Theatres are not always Dangerous...
So I was a bit anxious about taking my son to his friend's birthday at a movie theatre, because I had just read an article on mass killings and it was sticking with me.  As I approached the theatre, I thought about retreating home and disappointing my son, because police were blocking off the road in front of the theatre.  Immediately, I wondered if something unusual was happening and with some misgivings, we moved closer.  As we approached children and families outside the theatre, I learned that the police were concerned some scaffolding would collapse in the 40 mile per hour winds.  All my fear buttons had been pushed already, so learning this only mildly helped.  We pushed forward inside, because I don't believe in allowing my son's childhood to suffer all my fears.  He had a blast and I had to really let go and breathe into the experience. 
2) Girls with physical challenges are NOT Fragile...
So my son was playing soccer, leaping and jumping around like he always does.  Then two girls came rolling onto the field after the game had starting and I found my body posture not saying what I wanted it to.  My hand was covering my mouth and I was watching my son's every move praying he didn't leap too close and rip out the oxygen tube from his team mate.   Again, I breathed and relaxed.  As the game went on I realized it was me that was fragile and not the new players.  I told the coach I was inspired and she said, well every parent wants to feel proud that their child is engaged in a sport.  Don't you feel proud?

So if you meet me in a crowd and its one of those times that I am blurting out about my lived experience with a behavioral health condition and you find your mind wandering to the latest news bashing of people with mental health challenges, just breathe, relax, and remember at the end of the day we all just want to belong.

Lastly, thank-you to news sources that take the time to get the story right! 

Prevalence of Behavioral Health Conditions in Our Culture

According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 18.6 percent of all adults in the US have had an experience of a mental health challenge in the past year.  Illicit drug use is more likely among this group of people.  Suicidal thoughts were higher among people that use illicit drugs.  Also the 2012 NSDUH found 3.9% of all people, 18 years of age and older, had had suicidal thoughts. 

All these numbers, represent real people that are out there struggling and a person represented by these numbers may be working right next to you day in and day out.  Statistics indicate that people make presumptions about people living with behavioral health conditions in our culture every day.   Presumptions like that people that live with mental health conditions may be more dangerous than others.  When one looks at the real numbers, one quickly realizes such presumptions are false.  Chances are that our workplace and our extended families are not immune to the fact that real people with real challenges are among us.  So, what can we do as a culture to go against the grain of stereotypes and real discrimination that takes place everyday?

* If you see a coworker in distress take the time to talk to them.
* Remember that your casual interactions with people may impact them in ways you can't imagine.
* Make accomodations for people in the workforce that allow people to work side by side and do the same work.
* Be there for people when they share challenges whether they are a family member or coworker.
* Take time to make real connections that can assist a person in distress.
* Remember the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-TALK)

 http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

 http://www.samhsa.gov/data/NSDUH/2k12MH_FindingsandDetTables/2K12MHF/NSDUHmhfr2012.htm#ch5