Go Ahead. Call Me Crazy.

I am a middle class woman with a middle class job holding onto a middle class life. My money and my time are limited. I need to thoughtfully decide how to use those resources and be intentional about when and where I engage the larger community in a conversation about mental illness and stigma.

Stigma is definitely a problem, one that is well known among people with mental illnesses. We, meaning me, worry about the consequences of the wrong people finding out about our, meaning my, diagnosis. Whether it's fair or not is irrelevant when the job, custody, or respect of peers has been lost. The damage is done and it can't be undone.

Patsy Cline singing "Crazy" written by Willie Nelson

Stigma must be addressed. People must be educated. I get that and I agree whole-heartedly. How to address it, though, that's the million dollar question.

Recently, I've come across a number of blogs and facebook posts that focus on the use of the word "crazy" and, invariably, the writers are upset about it and are insisting that it should be removed entirely from our language. They are vehement about it, almost as if they were fighting against using words like "nigger" or "retard." I mean no disrespect by writing those words here. I would never use either of them to describe anyone. I'm only making the point that those two words are exponentially more offensive and hurtful than the word "crazy." "Crazy" isn't even in the same league.

Unlike the other two words, "crazy" has a lot of nuances, meanings, and connotations. The derogatory interpretation is just one of many. The word isn't the problem so much as the context. Who is saying it? And why? I don't care if my sister is calling me crazy as a synonym for being goofy or if my best friend says I'm crazy because I did something that she can't imagine doing herself. I see no harm in saying things like "I'm crazy in love" or "crazy about going to the concert." Patsy Cline does not offend me with her song titled "Crazy." It's actually one of my favorite songs of all time.

Just to be clear, certain uses of the word "crazy" cut to the bone. Those five little letters have been thrown at me a time or two (or more) by loved ones who were angry with me. It makes a great little jab when disagreements turn ugly. Saying I'm bleeping crazy as a synonym for demented, psychotic, or delusional can bring me to tears, especially if it comes from someone who knows about my mental health battle. Most of the time, though, it's just not a big deal. I'm actually more offended by being called "sweetie" or "hun" (short for "honey" in the south).

I'm sure it feels like I've gone off on a tangent in this post but I haven't. Returning to the fact that I'm middle class with limited resources, I must ask myself if I really want to spend my time fighting against the word "crazy."

Normal or Nuts? Or Angry!

Dr. Phil.
Then Brian Williams.
Now Dr. Oz.

I struggle against stigma. I fight it, one way or another, every day. These guys sure are making it difficult!

A Little Politics

U.S. Politics

The link to keep up with news from the White House

http://www.whitehouse.gov/

The link to keep up with news from the U.S. Senate

http://www.senate.gov/

The link to keep up with news from the U.S. House of Representatives

http://www.house.gov/

Texas Politics

The link to keep up with the Texas Legislature

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/

I hate politics. It's stressful and I hate the way stress feels in my body. Anxiety takes hold and doesn't let go for the longest time. In the meantime, I tremble, feel sick, can't quite think straight. In short, I feel like a bumbling idiot. I know I am smart, well-educated, usually well-spoken, but when stress starts to speak for me I come across as possessing everything except those characteristics.

Understanding the political process from an academic perspective is hard enough. Throw in the human element - all those people with their goals, values, and unique personalities - and voila! You have yourself a tangled pot of spaghetti akin to that found in Strega Nona.

Blog for Mental Health

I pledge my commitment to the Blog For Mental Health 2013 Project.

I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others.


By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health.


I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.

D.J. Haswell, blogging A Midlife Adventure, pledged me. It's a fantastic blog. Thoughtful. Honest. Touching. Most importantly perhaps, it's helpful. D.J. gives me one more reminder that I am not alone.

Hind sight is 20/20. I think the short version of my story is best told backwards. My first, almost brave steps, came when I met D (for the sake of anonymity). This was the first person I ever met that was bold and outspoken about having a mental illness. Honest and upfront about having bipolar disorder, D opened a small box of courage inside me. I felt like I could finally admit to myself that something was wrong inside me.

Even so, I didn't seek professional help. The risk was too great. If the wrong people found out, all the therapy and medication in the world wouldn't be able to put my life back together again.

Ultimately, someone near and dear to me hijacked me. Under the guise of meeting my new general physician, I was driven to the doctor to get help. I was angry at being set up like that. It was a short-lived emotion, though. Talking to my gp about what was going on and how I was feeling, a strange kind of relief washed over me. The air around me didn't press down on my shoulders and back quite so hard.

After ten years of manic anxiety that made my skin hurt when someone touched me... ten years of nothingness depression that made me sink to the floor in uncontrollable tears... elation... rage... desperation... and everything mixed together.

Like so many others, my story is much longer than this. The point right now is not to write an autobiography or memoir. The point is, while my fears were real and I was taking a genuine risk, the improvements in my life are almost surreal. I have a shot at a real life. Finally.

I could not have done this on my own. It sounds cliche, but its true. D stepped up. I must respect that and step up, too. How many countless others only need to see someone, like D, like me, stand up?

I am pledging five of my fellow bloggers who have stood with me, and have proven their mettle in my eyes as mental health bloggers.

1. Hope for Life
2. Aaron's Journey For Mental Health
3. Anxiety in General
4. Laugh Now, Cry Later
5. Haru Haru
6. If you happen upon this without being pledged, I pledge you, too.  Feel free to take the pledge!  Promote awareness!

If you take the pledge please take the following steps....

1.) Take the pledge by copying and pasting the following into a post featuring “Blog for Mental Health 2013″.

I pledge my commitment to the Blog For Mental Health 2013 Project.  I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others.  By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health.  I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.

2.) Link back to the person who pledged you.

That's me.

3.) Write a short biography of your mental health, and what this means to you.

4.) Pledge five others, and be sure to let them know!

5.) And, as something novel for 2013, Lulu and I [at Canvas] ask one more thing of you.

To introduce Blog For Mental Health 2013, and really build a sense of community — and show everyone how many of us there are, and how strong we are, coming together — we are launching a Blog For Mental Health 2013 Official Blogroll!  So, in addition to linking back to the person who pledged you, please include the link to this original post in your piece.  As this gets passed along, click here and leave a comment containing the link to your pledge, and we will put you on our Blog For Mental Health 2013 Official Blogroll page!

Show the world our

strength,

show them our

solidarity,

show them

what we are made of.

Take the Blog for Mental Health pledge and

proudly display the badge on your blog!

And may we all have a happy, healthy 2013!

"Drops of Jupiter" Describes Mania?

If you've never heard the song "Drops of Rain" by Train there's a video here for you. It's an absolutely beautiful song. I promise it's related to this post.

People ask me what mania was like and it's so utterly hard to describe. I don't think you can really have any sense of it if you've never experienced it. When trying to answer that question for people, I can almost always tell if they understand me on an intellectual level or an experiential level. Their eyes shine differently. Sometimes I see laughter in them revealing the wonderful experiences that can and do happen during a manic phase. Sometimes it's sorrow and shame. Sometimes it's relief and the weight of silent loneliness falls away.

Trying to describe it to the people that nod their heads politely, "Uh huh, yea, uh huh. I see" is a challenge to say the least. This is where that song by Train comes in.

It's not about mental illness but most of that song does a good job of describing mania. I certainly related to a lot of it when I was falling back to Earth, through normal, and headlong into depressed. Being out there so high that I twirled along Jupiter's atmosphere describes me at that time rather well. Feeling so bright and energized that the Milky Way and heaven are dim and uneventful does too. Yes, the wind swept me off my feet and in the best kind of way. Yes, I did get to dance along the light of day. Line after line of this song resonates with me and I think the poetry of it offers people a way to grab hold of the idea of mania so they can begin to understand.

I Love Photoshop.

I think the title says it all. Well, most of it. The picture below says the rest of it.
Please support me and NAMI by making a donation at http://namiwalks.nami.org/Jennifer.

Jennifer Clark (c) April 28, 2013

Y is for You

The photo was taken by my cousin Amy. I made the modifications by playing with Photoshop.

NAMIWalks take place all over the country. To find one near you go to http://namiwalks.org/

W is for Walk... NAMIWalk that is!

Time for the Walk.... the Austin NAMIWalk that is.

Shamelessly, I ask you to support me and NAMI by making a donation at http://namiwalks.nami.org/Jennifer.

The Austin NAMIWalk is a 5K walk that starts at West Riverside Drive at South 1st Street, Austin, Texas. It takes place on September 28, 2013 and people start walking at 9:00am (check-in is at 7:30am).

The walk taking place in Austin is only 1 of many taking place around the country at different times of the year. It's held annually for two big reasons:

1. to increase public awareness of mental illness
2. to raise money so NAMI Austin can fund the support, education, and advocacy programs offered (for free) in our community.

The view from the starting location of the Austin NAMIWalk

T is for "To This Day"

This TEDTalks video says it all.




For more information about the 2013 Blogging from A to Z Challenge see the website of the same name.

S is for Save the Date

Directly from the NAMI Austin NAMIWalks Website:

SAVE THE DATE for the 2013 NAMI Austin Walk:

Saturday, September 28, 2013

The Austin Walk is part of a nationwide program sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) that has two primary goals:

1. To increase public awareness about mental illness and the devastating effects that it has on the lives of millions of Americans – one in five families – every year.
2. To raise much needed dollars to help fund the wide array of NAMI support, education, and advocacy programs here in our community.

2012′s Austin Walk was a huge success with more than 2,000 walkers participating and a record-setting $258,000 raised for NAMI’s programs. Get ready for 2013 to:

• Recruit your family and friends.
• Rally your co-workers.
• Call on your communities.
• We can all help raise community awareness … one step at a time.

---

For more information about NAMIWalks Austin, please contact:
NAMI Austin Office: 512-420-9810
Email: namiwalks@namiaustin.org

To make a donation to NAMI Austin through me, go to the following website ...

http://namiwalks.nami.org/Jennifer

Let's made stigma disappear!

Lines for a Fortune Cookie for NaPoWriMo Day 21

The next time you feel down, someone will tell you to pick yourself back up and get over it.

You will "like" a Facebook page dedicated to mental illness advocacy and education.

Choose your words carefully. Stigma bites and it might come back and bite you.

An important message is waiting for you at http://www.bringchange2mind.org/

Someone close to you has a mental illness. They're just not saying so.

Stress is wearing you down. Slow down before you hurt yourself.

Talk to someone. You need to share and they need to hear.

Are you really OCD? Or do you just like saying that?

You will soon meet someone with depression.

Participate in your local NAMIWalk.

Sing. It's good for you.

Recovery is possible.

Are you crazy?

Meditate.

Just breathe.

Take one step at a time.

Your insurance will cover it.

Imagine your world if she wasn't sick.

Try listening to understand rather than to respond.

Good things will come to you if you follow this blog. ;)

You are the 1 in the 1 in 10 that will experience depression.

Your bad attitude is the reason people with mental illnesses don't seek help.

Every criminal is not mentally ill and every mentally ill person is not a criminal.

Suicide is not funny. Tell that to the next person you hear make a joke about it.

Remember to tell them you love them. Every day.

L is for Love those Pets

I can't help myself. The pets that walked with us in last year's NAMIWalk were fantastic. Besides, it's a good excuse for me to work on my tech-savvy skills.

J is for Jams

Photos taken by my cousin Amy (c) 2012

Before the NAMIWalk started last year, NAMI Austin pulled together a lot of wonderful things to entertain us in the morning while everyone was checking in and getting ready.

The morning was amazing! In addition to live music, we had a warm-up station where an instructor was leading people through stretches in preparation for the walk.

The 4-H Club put together a little pet place with water bowls arranged in a circle for all the furry walkers. They placed it too close to the stage, though. The loud volume scared some of the pets. I'm guessing they will put the pet station in a different location this year.

Scattered across the gathering place were beverage stations - coffee, orange juice, water. Other stations were providing small snacks, like granola bars, and bottled water. People were even doing face painting! NAMI Austin knows what it's doing.

Me? Not so much. It was my first year as team captain and I fumbled quite a few things. My team, for example, didn't have matching shirts like most of the other teams. The team captain before me provided everyone with bright, colorful leis and I forgot to do that. My team members asked for them, expecting them, and I didn't have any. Getting leis is on my to do list this year. Matching t-shirts is on my list, too.

I'm really excited about this. Can you tell?

I is for Incensed

I cannot tell you how appalled I am at this ad. Mocking people in the throes of desperation? Formatted to look like a hotline service announcement, the ad company even included a 1-800 number. This is cruel. Can you imagine if someone actually used that number in a cry for help?

Source: http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2013/04/11/McDonalds-Mental-Health-Ad-041113.aspx

C is for Crazy

Wordle is just too much fun. You enter a bunch of text into the box on their website and then they create an instant picture with all the words. All sorts of formatting options are available - format, font, color, etc. The smallest words show up least frequently and the largest words show up most frequently. I went to thesaurus dot com and looked up crazy and then posted all the antonyms into the Wordle program. My choice of words was motivated by an attempt to figure out some language to use when talking about mental illness. Rather than indicating what we don't what people to say, I wanted to get some ideas for what we do want people to say. I'm not sure what I expected to see. Here's the image it created....

I'm rather irritated by the results. Are people without mental illnesses the only ones that can be sensible? or reasonable? People with mental illnesses cannot be rational or balanced or smart? Really?

Changing the language that we use is important. I think it's time that we advocates change our choice of words, too. Nature abhors a vacuum. Taking words out of people's concept of mental illness leaves a gap that must be filled. What are we going to fill that space with?

For more information about the 2013 Blogging from A to Z Challenge see the website of the same name.

B is for Bring Change 2 Mind

If you're looking for a way to make the world a better place for people with mental illness, check out Bring Change 2 Mind. Personally, I have not worked with them - at least not yet. I'm involved in my local NAMI group and time available for advocacy activities is limited. As I've learned more about mental illnesses and the resources available to educate the world, Bring Change 2 Mind keeps surfacing. I guess it's time I look seriously at it.

The pledge.

Participating in Bring Change 2 Mind starts with a simple promise. It's appropriate whether you have a mental illness or not, whether you know someone with a mental illness or not. Ignorance abounds. I'm not saying that to be ugly. A lot of people simply do not know any better, nobody ever told them any different. Misinformation is all around us and, unfortunately, even the media perpetuates the myths. Who is going to set the record straight? Who is going to share and defend the truth? How do we do it?

The Bring Change to Mind website has a page dedicated to videos. I included one of them at the end of this post. Maybe I'll share an anti-stigma video every time I see a stigma-feeding video.

To share.

Of course you can share your money, but you can also share your story. I think the story is more important than the money. All the money in the world is useless unless people are talking and our stories are great ways to get honest conversations about mental illness started. It's much more than that, though. Talking helps us deal with the difficult things in our lives. I've been on the phone for hours sharing tough feelings and choices with my best friend and she with me. Neither of us are looking for advice, just some company, someone to lovingly listen. We always feel better.

During some of the lowest points in my life, I must have told my story a thousand times. I'm sure people got tired of hearing how he did this and she did that and I was hurt. Who knows, maybe I'll get around to telling some of the story on my blog. I need to muster up the courage first and that's really the heart of the issue here. People are afraid to share their stories.





For more information about the 2013 Blogging from A to Z Challenge see the website of the same name.

Synonyms

I looked "insane" up in a couple resources, fed the synonyms into Wordle, and here's what I got. The larger words appear more often and smaller words less often.

Now how do you feel about the language used to describe people living with mental illness?

Is This Fair? Maps of Mental Healthcare Availability

Here in Austin, I-35 is a great dividing line carved through our city and the differences between communities east of the highway and those west of the highway are, to use a tired analogy, like night and day.  I took a peek at some of those differences, focusing on the availability of mental healthcare services.  My exploration gives only a glimpse of a truth but the observations are substantial enough to warrant a more serious look at the accessibility gap.

I entered "psychiatrists austin texas" in the Google Maps search bar to start with and the picture below was the result.  The red dots and bubbles mark the locations Google Maps identified as matching my search criteria.  The number of dots is significantly higher west of I-35 and disconcertingly low east of I-35.  If the population density dropped sharply the difference wouldn't be so worrisome, but it doesn't.

Psychiatrists in Austin, Texas

One picture is hardly conclusive and I changed the search criteria to something a bit broader - "counselors austin texas."  As shown below, Google Maps doesn't identify many counselors on the east side, either.  More to the point, the imbalance in the number of counselors resembles that of psychiatrists.

Counselors in Austin, Texas

Hoping for something better, something more equitable, I created yet another map with even more expansive search criteria.  I typed "mental health services austin texas" in the search bar, hit enter, and saw the following:

Mental Health Services in Austin, Texas

The density of dots increases across the map, both east and west of the highway.  Unfortunately, the disparity between east and west is reiterated.


I know this research isn't thorough enough to support firm conclusions; I'm not suggesting that it is.  Let's be clear on that point.  It does, however, testify to a pattern of inequity and one that is worth delving into.

Facebook Find

This week I found a great page on Facebook.

Advocates for Those with Mental Illness

It's only two weeks old and so far it has about 250 members. It's shaping up to be an active group of people from all over the place... United States. Canada. I think I've even seen people from Europe there. Personally, I'm enjoying the posts and conversations that are taking place. I think I've been introduced to more resources in the last week that I've been a member than I have in quite a long time. It gets a big thumbs up from me.

It Matters

Mental health is a big deal.  Lack of mental health impacts everything in life and more than just the life of the person who has the mental illness.  Everyone's mental health impacts everyone's life - good, bad, or indifferent.

When a severe mental illness is left untreated, struggles follow.  For the younger people in our society, children and teens, success in the classroom may be sacrificed.  Our young adults may lose out on the opportunities successfully earning a college degree will offer them.  Job performance may suffer when someone tries to manage his illness by himself.  Left to figure it out on their own, some mentally ill people reek havoc in their own lives -- ruining relationships and finances, for example.  Sometimes they loose their homes and live on the streets, other times they are caught in the criminal justice system, and then there's suicide.

These things don't need to happen.  They are not the predetermined fates of people who live with mental illnesses.  Recovery from a mental illness is possible.  Very possible.  Recovery is not a cure, though.  It is a process of managing the illness to allow for a happy, healthy, successful life.  Society needs to understand that or at least acknowledge it.  Recovery does not happen on accident and it does not happen in isolation.  It is a choice and it requires help and support.  Peers, friends, family, psychiatrists, councilors, and the healthcare system itself play into successfully supporting a person with a mental illness and facilitating their recovery.