Spring Flu

If you live in California or Florida or any climate where the seasons don't change, then you may have a hard time understanding the misery of getting a case of Spring Flu.

Outside, the snow has melted after a long, cold, treacherous winter. You may have spotted a Robin Red Breast or two. Or better still, heard their chirping. The chipmunks, squirrels and even the odd rabbit dart about in our backyard so my Dandie Dinmont Terriers, Riley and Lucy, can play tag with them... and lose every time. Thank God.

A few tiny tentative tulip leaves are poking out of the garden, despite the crispy temperatures. Spring is about to spring. Just a minute away. You can smell it. Sense it. See it on the horizon. 

Then, suddenly, you're hit. 

Your temperature soars to 102 degrees Fahrenheit, but you have the chills. Your darling husband cranks up the heat and buries you under your thick, 10-pound yellow and black Hudson's Bay blanket. Your back aches, your head is splitting, you're nauseous and every time you get out of bed, the room starts playing dipsy-doodle like a huge yacht on a furious angry sea. 

Spring Flu.

Why don't flu shots work in the Spring? Can anyone tell me that?

I don't know if there is Spring Flu where the temperature is always warm, the sun is always shining and there is only one season. Boring. (But beautiful, I guess.) I doubt there's Spring Flu where it's always cold either. I believe it's the sudden changes of temperature that characterize our particular climate here enabling those little virus bugs to take over.

Maybe, in other more temperate climes, you have another name for this kind of flu or maybe it's just The Flu. 

I don't know and quite frankly, I haven't the energy to find out. I'm feeling queasy. The thought of "googling" makes me feel "green around the gills."

Spring Flu is unfair. You get it at that very moment when you want to be outside free of boots, gloves, hats, scarves and heavy coats. When you long to feel the fresh air against your skin without fear of frostbite. When you crave a whiff of that damp, green springtime smell of life beginning a new cycle. It only happens once a year. Here, in Toronto, this season is so short, you could sneeze and miss it. 

Or get Spring Flu.

It's this unfairness that makes Spring Flu "emotionally" the hardest flu of all. Who cares if you have the flu in the middle of Winter. It's nice to be inside, then. Cosy and warm. Sipping tea and watching the snow falling outside your window. 

Not so, in the Spring. Yet, life carries on. This morning, I had to go to school because our final class presentations began. I had to be there to mark them. Another colleague was also suffering with the identical symptoms. When you're a part-time teacher, you don't miss classes unless you're in surgery or you're dead or you have student presentations. 

Your students come first. 

So, until I can shake this, I'm taking it easy.

Speak soon!

A "hideous" week...

Why is it that so many people I know are having a "hideous" week, this last week of March 2009?

By the way, "hideous" is not my word. It belongs to a close friend and colleague, but it's the perfect descriptor.

Nonetheless, my "hideous" week ended well for me when I received an email this morning from Donna Kakonge. Like me, she is a part-time professor. Unlike me, she teaches journalism and media writing at Centennial College and at Seneca College, where I teach. But we teach at different campuses. 

Donna is a real polymath. A Renaissance woman. Entrepreneurial and creative. In March 2007, she began publishing her own magazine called Donna Magazine – an online portfolio for her work which includes her 10 books and other media projects. She's brilliant at prudent and tasteful self-promotion – one of many reasons why she's so successful.

Although we've never met, we've been online acquaintances for a long time – to support each other. The last time we connected was when she won a Quebecor Documentary Fellowship and I sent her a congratulatory note. 

That was in October 2008. It was a good month for both of us. I turned 60 – an age I absolutely adore, by the way.

On my birthday, as I was dashing to my semi-annual Kidney Transplant Clinic appointment and almost deleted a message that turned out to be the best of birthday gifts. The announcement of PsychCentral's Award for "Coming Out Crazy" – named Number Three of the Top Ten Bipolar Blogs 2008..

Anyway, it seems that Donna had a hideous week this week, too. Nevertheless, she thoughtfully sent me a note this morning regarding the magazine journalism course she's currently teaching at Centennial.

"We examined the piece you did with the Walrus that was published for the January/February edition. Well done. We were really impressed with your work," she wrote, signing off with, "Cheers and keep it up. You are a wonderwoman. Donna."

There is nothing, I mean nothing, that makes you feel good after a "hideous" week than receiving an accolade like that from a professional peer.

But the back story is what's interesting.

The story to which Donna is referring began as a newspaper story on Psychiatric Rehabilitation for another national publication in December 2007. I had to withdraw it. So, my friend Cheryl Hawkes, another brilliant journalist and very savvy friend, encouraged me to approach her friend, another polymath with a mile-high resume – journalist, teacher, editor, TV host and best selling author, Marni Jackson – a Canadian household name.

At that time, she was a senior editor of The Walrus – to me, the Mount Everest of magazines to break into, especially after a career of writing for the once great tabloid Toronto Sun. Despite my reasonably solid resume, I was insecure. 

But in a moment of madness, I wrote Marni a very funny letter, "adorable" is how Cheryl described it, and Marni wrote back.

Thus began my odyssey with The Walrus, which has published many great Canadian writers including Margaret Atwood and broadcaster, journalist, author Bill Cameron. His last story, a stunning exploration of his "journey into what he called 'Cancerland," titled Chasing the Crab, was finished shortly before he died of esophageal cancer in 2005. My friend Cheryl Hawkes is his widow.

"It's not what you know. It's who you know."

Cheryl was my portal into The Walrus because she and Marni Jackson are friends. She flagged me to Marni one night at the theatre. That was all it took. That flag gave me the confidence to write Marni my mad little "adorable" note. The rest is history.

It took more than a year for my Walrus story to go from pitch-to-print. It evolved into a story about mental health recovery, and a Pathways to Recovery group that met for 14 weeks last spring at The Krasman Centre in Richmond Hill. It was supremely labour intensive, but it was also the first article about mental health recovery to be published in a mainstream Canadian magazine. It won't win any awards. It was a short "Field Note" and narrative. Extraordinarily challenging for me to write.

I liked the final draft, but when Getting It, Together – a path to mental health recovery – came out five months later, the first person to see it in print, before I did, is a dear friend who teaches English at Seneca. He mentored and taught me in 1969 when I was a student of his.

On the telephone, he told me he "hated it. It's not you."

I believed him. He was right. It wasn't written in my usual expository style. It was clinically narrative. 

I was devastated by his reaction. Destroyed. I told no one about my first big breakthrough story. And probably my last. I was deeply ashamed because I felt I had sacrificed my personal style to write a mental health recovery story for a mainstream magazine. For my cause as a mental health advocate. I tried to forget about it. And I did.

Until this morning. And Donna Kakonge's note. She validated that story and me. She turned my "hideous" week around and ended it on a blissful note. I posted my Walrus story on Facebook. Cheryl said, when I spoke to her a few minutes ago, that this is endemic for journalists – especially freelancers. We need external validation to believe in ourselves. She, by the way, also had a "hideous" week. Two weeks.

I've always known that "You're only as good as your last story."

For me, this feeling seems magnified by my mental health history. I started internalizing the idea that there was something wrong with my mind from the time I first started seeing a psychiatrist as a young adolescent. That's what labelling does to people. And it's wrong. 

Labels are for jars. Not people.

So, what if there's "something wrong with my mind." That's just an opinion. I've learned how to handle it with psychotherapy and a little medication.

The point is, it's my mind, and I like it just a little more today than I did yesterday.

Thanks to Donna Kakonge and her Centennial College magazine journalism students, my "hideous" week is history. 

I'm not God! You're not God! We all make mistakes!

We're human. Not perfect. We make mistakes. 

Even doctors aren't God. Though some think they are, or second to God. Take the infamous Dr. Joseph Biederman, the Massachusetts General Hospital child psychiatrist currently the focus of a congressional investigation into conflict of interest charges, known as the Godfather of the Bipolar Child Theory – for more on him and his "mistakes" read Furious Seasons. 

Philip Dawdy has been on Biederman's case for ages, scooping the mainstream press until quite recently, when Congress started its investigations. If you can believe it, this all-too-influential shrink recently went on the record as saying that if you're a full professor at Harvard, you rank above God! 

Yup. Medical doctors, some, can begin to believe they're God or close to it because they deal with life and death all the time. They don't yet create life – but they're working on it – and they can certainly save lives. They can also, however, make mistakes, errors in judgement, all kinds of mistakes, that can cost people their lives.

Psychiatrists are especially good at making mistakes. It's part of their stock-in-trade. How many psychiatric diagnoses have you been given? Count 'em. On the average most of us have at least four. Just because people don't admit to making mistakes, doesn't mean they don't make them. Or they don't exist. Or they didn't happen.

It's not like a mistake is "the tree that falls in the forest" when no one sees it fall or hears the crash. Does that mean the tree didn't fall? Does that mean the mistake didn't happen?

No way. Especially because mistakes usually ripple. Like a pond, when you throw a stone into it. Someone will hear the echo, feel the tremor, sense the backlash. Remember Newton's Third Law: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Doctors and lawyers and all "experts" and "super-specialists" and even "judges" make mistakes. They're human. We're all human.

Yesterday morning, my husband and I were talking about this over our 8 a.m. coffee. We were reading in print our two favourite Sunday New York Times columnists – Frank Rich is Marty's and Maureen Dowd is mine. 

They were both writing about Barack Obama and the political crisis of his presidency right now. We were talking about Obama and some of the mistakes he's made. 

That "Special Olympics" joke was a big one for me. Huge. It didn't bother Marty as much, but he doesn't have any kind of disability whatsoever. I wear hearing aids and I'm in recovery. I have a psychiatric diagnosis. In my world, people see what they believe instead of believing what they see. Many people are blinded by their beliefs. Blinkered. 

It's not always easy. So that joke really disturbed me. 

Yes, Obama was quick to apologize. 

As the late Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch said in his Last Lecture, apologies must have three parts:

"What I did was wrong. I feel badly that I hurt you. How do I make this better?" 

Obama learned an important lesson about his "slip of the tongue." Something we all do! They're thoughtless. And sometimes not so innocent. They can be cruel. They cut deep.

Tim Shriver, Chairman of the Special Olympics in his gracious televised reaction to Obama's "sincere" apology for the joke he made on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" at the expense of people with special needs said, "Words hurt. Words do matter... and this is a teachable moment." 

Let us all learn from the U.S. President's mistake.

Think about that much misinterpreted, misused, misunderstood word, stigma. You know I find it foul and confusing. Hurtful. Let this teachable moment be a wake-up call for all of us to be more respectful with the language we use when talking about people with psychiatric, mental and emotionally traumatic problems, conditions, disorders, difficulties, addictions and troubles.

Sadly, you cannot take back hurtful words once you've said them or they've slipped out. I detested that joke, but I still believe Obama is a brilliant man with enormous empathy, the potential to be a great president and to make positive changes for the greater good. Even to help repair a very badly broken economy. 

I also believe that the other half of mistake-making is to be forgiving. 

At 9 a.m., Marty turned on our favourite TV show – CBS Sunday Morning and guess what! 

Host Charles Osgood, the epitome of his name, announced "this week's cover story" – headlined "Ooops" – Make No Mistake: To Err IS Human" – all about the human bent for "getting it wrong," for "misconstruing and misinterpreting," for "misreading and confusing," for "mixing things up and miscalculating," for "assuming and blundering and omitting and miscalculating."

And why. Based on a new book, Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average by Joseph T. Hallinan, former writer for The Wall Street Journal, Pulitzer Prize winner and past Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

I take a different approach to mistakes. Hallinan can tell you why we all make them. A good night's sleep can help you avoid them, but we all know that sleep heals.

I'm going to muse on why we should celebrate them. 

Look up human in the dictionary. As an adjective, it means mortal, fallible, weak, frail, imperfect, vulnerable, susceptible, erring, error-prone as well as compassionate, kind, understanding, sympathetic and approachable.

Some coincidence, eh? I didn't even watch the whole segment. I'll catch it later. I just ran up here to my iMac and started writing. There is method to my madness for wanting to write about not being God and mistakes. I've made so many, lately.

At the same time, I love mistakes, even though I feel awful when I make them. I take them very seriously. I want to disappear off the face of the earth. They have enormous impact on me and on others. I try very hard to right my wrongs. I try even harder not to make the same mistake twice. 

They are the best learning tools we have. When I tell my students that, they think I'm crazy. (Of course, we know, they're right! ;-)

God doesn't make mistakes. God is perfect. That's why God is God. We cannot understand God, because that's what makes God, God. If we could understand God, we'd be God, too.

In our house, we view God in several ways. Among them, as "Good Old Dad" and as "DOG" spelled backwards.

Religion has nothing to do with it. Nada. I learned this from one of my students recently.

As for mistakes, as I mentioned, I'm an expert at mistake-making! A veritable genius at it. I have made so many mistakes, I could write an encyclopedia of mistakes.

 

Last year, I taught four classes in one day, pinch-hitting for a professor who was having surgery for cancer. I was teaching her classes – and a subject I had never taught. On the first day, I taught from 8 a.m. until after 5 p.m. My two classes and her two classes. Eight hours of teaching in one day. A first for me.

I was so exhausted at the end of the day I was a little wound up. That's my nature. I'm intense. I stormed into my Chair office. Paula Gouveia hired me – knowing all about my hypomanic "nature." I announced, "This is the worst teaching day of my entire life."

Without hesitation, she said, "No, this is the best teaching day of your entire life because you'll never forget this feeling and you've learned so much. You've learned that you can do it."

She was right. I've never forgotten that moment, that day and those feelings. Maybe I am a better teacher because of it. I'm still learning.

Paula is now Dean of Arts and Sciences at Humber College.

All I can say is, thank God for mistakes.

–––

P.S. I haven't forgotten my promise to review  Elyn R. Saks' best selling memoir The Center Cannot Hold, My Journey Through Madness (Hyperion, 2007) but as I am hardwired into news, I wanted to pick up on the timeliness of today's subject. I hope you don't think I've erred in so doing.

The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario is another great place for Peer Support. Thank you, Leslie, for Sharing the Health.

Have a great week. Speak soon!

The Family's Resident Nut Case

Last night, I was talking to one of my cousins. I'm the eldest of three girls. As far as I'm concerned, he's as close as any man I've ever known to being my brother. We're just a year or so apart – I'm older – and we grew up together every summer at The Family Cottage. He is one of only three people who gets away with calling me by my real name – Sandra Lee. The other two are my sister, Glorianne, and his sister, Linda Sue. Don't get me started.

Anyway, in the context of a conversation about our family, I told him that "I know I'm the family's resident nut case." He laughed and said, "The whole family's filled with nut cases." 

Very sweet and kind of him. But, in truth, it's quite true. This role belongs solely to me, and always will. I can't seem to stop that particular old record from playing. Currently, I lead the pack. Others may have preceded me. Others may come along. Right now, however, this is my starring role in my family. Nothing else I do ever seems to dull my glow in the family constellation. 

Later that evening, I sent him an email and signed it, "The Family's Resident Nut Case," and boy, did that feel good.

That's the power of "Coming Out Crazy" – as far as I'm concerned. I shared a little laugh with my closest cousin. I didn't take myself too seriously. (Rare, trust me.) In fact, I joked about myself. And guess what? It felt fantastic.

Try it sometime. You might like it.

*   *   *

Now, on to bigger and better things.

The print edition of The Toronto Star is to be congratulated for brilliantly deciding to enlist the genius, wisdom, knowledge, humour, medical expertise and humanity of Dr. Rob Buckman as a regular Friday Living section columnist.

Bravo, Toronto Star! With this kind of decision, your print edition will last forever!

Rob and I are long time friends. We've known each other since 1986, when I profiled him for The Toronto Sun. He is a leading oncologist at Princess Margaret Hospital/University Hospital Network, with professorships at the department of medicine at the University of Toronto and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas. He has an ecclectic list if outstanding accomplishments and he authored a long list of books.

He is also my "spirit doctor" – but that's another story. 

Read him. I promise you that he will not disappoint you.

Today, his column is called Of bats and balls and baptisms and the first line is amazing, especially for me, as I teach a Community Service course at Seneca.

"Nothing provides a sense of community better than a community." 

That's Rob. Concise. A man for all seasons and reasons. A Humanist. A master of language. An original thinker. A true Renaissance man. We just spoke on the phone for about a half an hour and I am promoting him because I know how much integrity he has. I cannot recommend him highly enough. Aside from the fact that I absolutely adore him!

He's soul tonic.

• • •

I found an interesting blog, The Healthy Skeptic. 

I found it from my sweet, literary, New Jersey friend Susan Schechter, on her fine, often funny bipolar blog – If You're Going Through Hell Keep Going.

This blog is "published" – his word, not mine – by a fresh-faced and fascinating fellow named Chris Kresser. Right now, he's studying at the Acupuncture & Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley, California. 

I respect Kresser's goals for writing his blog and the way he expresses them. Particularly in terms of psychiatry, which needs to be held in check, I believe, for its unbalanced emphasis right now on the neurosciences. I find this is very problematic. 

"I launched The Healthy Skeptic last year to help others see through the common myths and misdirections peddled by the media and medical establishment. It is my sincere hope that the information on this blog will lead to greater health and well-being for you and those you love."

I love his last three words – "and those you love."

You should know where Kresser is coming from.

He is well-travelled, well-informed, well-read and passionate. Personal experience with a serious illness will do this every time. In his case, a mysterious tropical illness he contracted turned chronic. Twenty doctors around the world and thousands of dollars later, still sick, he decided to heal himself. Not by becoming a doctor, though he considered it, but by studying Chinese medicine, "which has been successfully used for over 2,000 years to promote health and longevity in addition to treating disease," he explains.

Our conventional, mainstream Western biomedical model cannot always make that claim.

This is a definition of Integrative Medicine. It's more than allopathic, alternative and complementary. Its synergistic. The whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. I attended a conference on Complementary and Integrative Medicine in Mental Health in Toronto last June. Every presenter had an M.D. from a leading university medical school – like Harvard – but sadly, few medical doctors touch these methods and I didn't meet any at that conference. Most tend stick with what they know. What they've learned and how they've been taught. More invasive treatments. Surgery. Radiation. Side-effect causing drugs and chemicals. Often good. But not always. Why not use every tool in the world's biggest international tool box?

(Again, Dr. Rob Buckman – a researcher and clinician – thinks outside the box. In 2005, he launched a low-dose chemotherapy with no side-effects that, in some cases extends the lives of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and vulva Squamous cell cancer patients. He is about to introduce it in melanoma patients. It's called DalCM-P.)

Here's one of my favourite Kresser posts, which starts with this quote: "A theory that is wrong is considered preferable to admitting our ignorance." – Elliot Vallenstein, Ph.D.

The "chemical imbalance" myth. 

By the way, Vallenstein is a professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan and the author of Blaming the Brain and about four or five other books on this subject. This is a man who knows of what he speaks. 

Kresser adds: "Even the most prestigious medical journals (dealing with mental health issues and psychiatric issues) have become nothing more than sales brochures for the pharmaceutical industry."  

Philip Dawdy on his award-winning, often-quoted-and-rarely-credited blog Furious Seasons, is consumed with posts supporting what Kresser goes on to observe: "I saw massive conflicts of interest between drug companies, doctors and researchers every I looked. I learned that errors in medical care are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. each year."

One more thing...

As you know, I'm a print journalist at heart. Can't help it. Old habits die hard. I love research. So, it seems, does Kresser. Sources are very important to me and to him. At the bottom of each post, he lists his recommended resources – not websites – books.

For The "chemical imbalance" myth, one book is by Vallenstein. Another – The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment by J. Mondrieff, a medical doctor herself, recently received rave reviews in the British press. I really wanted to add it to my library, but it costs $75.96  at Amazon – a little too rich for my blood. 

The point is, Kresser does his homework and I like that about him.

So, have a look. Let me know what you think. I may muse more on The Healthy Skeptic sometime myself, but now here, not now.

Though I am going to review a book. Another book. 

Believe it or not, for about two years, I reviewed books full-time for The Sunday Sun. It was the toughest beat of my entire journalistic career. No one knows how hard it is to review a book, until you are told you're expected to deliver a book review a week, at least, one ... in no more than 800 words and preferably less. It almost killed me, but I loved it because it was so challenging. And for the first time in 35 years, I put the English Literature half of my Queen's University B.A. to good use. (The other half is drama.)

Except I just did a word count, so I'm not going to review this book right now. But I'm going to tease you and recommend it now. Review it next time. By then, perhaps you'll have read about it and we can discuss it. Have a little "Coming Out Crazy" book club chat.

The book I was going to review is called The Center Does Not Hold – My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks. 

She has "battled" – her word, not mine – schizophrenia all her life. And is in remarkable recovery. Primarily through psychoanalysis and medication, which she fought taking for years. Also, she is in recovery because of the love of her husband, which I completely understand. Her sheer will. And her beautiful mind.

My psychiatrist, Dr. Bob, recommended this book to me. Something he rarely does. I cannot recommend it enough. And you'll find out why. Here's a sneak preview and a riveting YouTube speech of University of Southern California Gould Law Professor Elyn R. Saks, talking and reading from her book.

Now, it's Spring and I'm going to take my dogs for a well-deserved walk.

This is the perfect day for Resident Nut Cases like me to be legitimately a little nutty! And that's how I feel. And I'm allowed. That's my role. One of them, anyway!

Enjoy your weekend.

A question of empathy...

The other day, I was talking to a woman who is a member of AA. What a joy. I felt instantly at ease with her and our relatively brief conversation was utterly invigorating.

She understood the concept of mental health recovery – rooted in the Alcoholics Anonymous model to a degree – without the anonymity.

There are many parallels between AA and mental health recovery. I've done a little Twelve-Step work with Overeaters Anonymous – meetings are a form of group therapy but facilitation is shared. Peer support is central to the model, especially with sponsors. It's a tried and true approach, though with food, I found it difficult because I couldn't abstain from eating. And it's the act of eating I'm addicted to, not just one type of food. I love to eat. Anything. It fills a void.

Anyway, that's another story.

"All it takes is two people to make a meeting," is a Twelve-Step saying. For those of us isolated by mental illnesses or mental health issues – and far too many of us are – just talking to one empathetic person, someone who's been there and can really listen with his or her eyes and ears and heart – is extraordinarily healing.

Part of that empathy involves "active listening" and that "active listener" doesn't have to be a medical doctor or a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a social worker or even someone with "training." 

I would venture to say the number of active listening psychiatrists are few and far between. The majority aren't trained that way. Too many, today, don't see the value of active listening to be very efficient when pharmaceuticals appear to ease the pain. 

You have to look elsewhere. My guess is, you can find someone who can listen with empathy and intellectually and emotionally participate in your experience very easily – if you look in the right places.

Community Health is the key. For example, at the Yale University School of Medicine, Mental Health Recovery is on the curriculum of its School of Community Health, the only such program on the continent. You would think you'd read more on mental health recovery, given the prestige of this school and Recovery's humanitarian and progressive approach to the journey of healing.

But you don't. Even though it's embedded in an Ivy League school of medicine, and was created by a man, himself in recovery from depression, Larry Davidson, Ph.D. As far as I'm concerned, Yale's program is a vestige of sanity in a world that's quietly going mad. 

I'm reminded of this because tomorrow, in my "Leadership in Society" class, my students will grapple with "The Morality Quiz" – a series of dilemmas used to study human morality. Neither multiple choice, True or False or Fill-in-the-Blanks, instead, they will be forced to empathize with people in situations they will probably never experience in their lives. They will have to face a series of dilemmas used to study human morality. It's impossible to measure empathy, according to TIME magazine writer Jeffrey Kluger who wrote this November 23, 2007 cover story titled What Makes Us Moral.

Here's how that story begins: 

"If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind–though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn't lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind–one so sublime, we fold it into a larger 'soul.' The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant."

Although the interactive quiz is no longer available online, here's one of the "scenarios" used to study human morality. 

Try it.

It's called The Life Boat:

You're in a lifeboat with several other people. The boat is overloaded and will capsize soon killing everyone aboard unless you lighten the load by one person. One of the passengers is grievously injured and is certain to die soon, but is fully alert and aware of everything that is going on. Could you throw that person overboard, knowing that that would save everyone else and that the person would know what you were doing while you were doing it?

I could not throw the grievously injured person overboard.

I could throw the grievously injured person overboard.

Think about that for a while. There is no right or wrong answer.

I've often said to people who remark on what I've endured during my life – "It's all relative." I never compare myself with others. We're all individuals. My story is my story. Yours is yours. I'm amazed at how resilient people are. And glad I've lived my life. Wouldn't change a thing. I feel I have a certain ability to walk in the shoes of some people. Not all. And this, I consider a gift.

The essence of emotional healing is listening. Empathizing. Sharing. But how do you find a place where you'll feel the "splendid" humanity Jeffrey Kruger suggests we all have within us. 

Let's think like a community. All of us. Here. Right now. 

As an advocate, I'm familiar with some sources of peer support – your local branches of the Canadian Mental Health Association. The Krasman Centre. The Family Outreach and Response Team. The Ontario Peer Development Initiative. These are just a few that come to mind in the realm of mental health. There are hundreds of others that serve so many "communities" of people who need a sense of connection. At times, we all do. Especially now. During these difficult days.

My public speaking has brought to light various ways in which we, as human beings, face our unique emotional issues. 

Now, here, at Coming Out Crazy, a safe and supportive arena, I invite you to identify the community health centres near you. Centres of any kind. These pockets of peer support can be anywhere. Perhaps at a local park, a library book club, a coffee shop, a church or mosque or synagogue or temple basement study group, an outreach centre. 

You name it, I'll print it. 

Let's share the wealth of well-being.

Ultimately, all it takes is two to make a peer support group.

"I don't know what to call this..."

A week after Reading Week and it's a blur. How reality bites back. And so fast. My Queen's University keynote is now a memory, though I must admit I worry about the way young doctors are trained and how their future patients will fare. Especially in psychiatry.

But that's another story.

On the train to and from Kingston, once again, I discovered what for me is a truism.

It never fails.

I'm sitting in this Via Rail car – it could be a plane. The point is, I'll be stuck in a seat with a stranger beside me for at least two hours. There's no place to go so eventually we start chatting.

Inevitably, the question comes up.

"Why are you going to Kingston?"

"To give a speech," I say.

"About what?"

"Mental illnesses. Mental health issues. Mental health recovery. I'm a mental health advocate," I say.

Pause.

Then, this person starts telling me his story. Perhaps his daughter had postpartum depression. Perhaps a friend died by suicide. "Without any warning. He was the life of the party. We went to him to be cheered up."

It never fails. Everybody has a story. I don't know anyone either directly or indirectly not touched by some psychiatric issue or mental disorder or addiction. But very few people talk openly about it. No one has ever initiated a conversation with me about his or her mental illness. It's not easily discussed. Or even whispered. So sad. Such a huge, heavy albatross to bear on one's own, silently. Hiding. Masked.

This doesn't seem to be changing, judging by the stunning statistic that 75 per cent of people who could be treated or helped by treatment of some kind never ask for it. Deny needing it. For any number of reasons.

Following all my presentations, people, often strangers, share their stories. Somehow, me telling my story gives them the licence to talk about theirs. It's liberating.

Having "health" problems is part of the human condition. It's life. I don't separate mental and physical and emotional and spiritual and social. They all contribute to our state of well being – or lack thereof.

My Kingston trip to speak at Queen's to the first year medical students was good. All round. Now it's history. Old news.

My friend, Tufts University psychiatrist Ron Pies said, in an email: "I suspect the students got a great deal out of hearing you, and that it will help them take a more humanistic and humane approach to their work."

Being the cockeyed optimist I am, I'll focus on that. Hope for the best. Chalk it up to experience.

On to the next!

I'm anticipating today. I may be able to return to my regular drug regime and my calm, tranquil, phlegmatic self. (Ha, ha. Were it only true.) You see, I've been overreacting a little lately. I certainly hope people who've been at the other end of my histrionics will understand.

I've learned a very important lesson with all this oral surgery and fiddling around with my medications. Next time it's necessary, I'll postpone the procedure, if I can, until I'm not working. Otherwise, strange things happen.

I've gotten through it. At last, the stitches in my mouth will come out today – maybe. And I cannot wait to be able to brush all of my teeth. It's amazing how one craves what one cannot have – like the luxury of wildly flossing and bandying my electric toothbrush all over my whole mouth.

I guess that's my message today.

Everything is relative. I have a totally idyllic life because I know where I've been and today, let's just say I'm in heaven. My smile has almost returned. I haven't gained a ton weight on a diet that denies me the joy of eating a raw carrot.

I feed them to my two Dandie Dinmont Terriers, Riley and Lucy, and get vicarious pleasure watching them merrily crunching away. I haven't been able to crunch on anything since Tuesday, Feb. 10. Not even a crust of bread.

And there's tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Another a new day. I love mornings. No matter what the weather. They're new beginnings. I am looking forward to a weekend of learning – finishing a course on teaching that I began last fall. Self-indulgence – a manicure. Work – marking, but there's always marking. And an exclusive party to celebrate my brother-in-law's 60th birthday. My mother is in town and she seems in good spirits. And two of my nieces who are studying in the U.S.

A nice relative mix. Family, friends, learning and a little pampering.

What a lovely, charming, engaging miscellany of activities. Best of all, I'll be sharing most of them with my luscious husband. If there is one antidote to my mental illness, my daunting psychiatric diagnosis – "psychosis linked to mania" – it's Marty. My rock. He calms me faster than any drug known to man. With just his touch. It's magical. I felt it the instant I laid eyes on him almost 10 years ago.

So you see. I live a wonderful life.

Peace of mind.

No secrets. No lies.

Educating the Educators...

Last week, for the first time ever, I went to Kingston to speak to about 100 Queen's University first year medical students, the Class of 2012, during their Mental Health Awareness Week.

I was invited because of a question one of these students posed here about my ongoing campaign against the use of the word stigma. As I'm a Queen's alumna, Class of '74, she asked me to speak and I was happy to accept.

I was pretty nervous. I've never spoken to medical students before. I'm no scientist nor was I prepared to lecture. I wanted to initiate a dialogue. Engage these students. Challenge them. Get them asking questions.

After all, they're the next generation of doctors, perhaps psychiatrists. I was told that they hadn't heard one word in their classes about mental health/illnesses/psychiatry until the four 50-minute lunch time presentations last week. Mine was the last. 

It went very well. I had a full house and 95 per cent of them were medical students, along with a few psychology and occupational therapy students.

My introductory remarks were short – a quick overview of my mental health history, all my different diagnoses, my subsequent kidney problems caused by 16-years of badly monitored Lithium and the fact that despite "overcoming every psychiatric indignity short of a lobotomy, I'm still here."

I was hoping they'd be open to thinking about mental health outside the medical model. Consider the recovery model. I assured them that I was not anti-psychiatry but I wanted them to hear about the possibility of change. Desperately needed change in the way medical doctors are trained. So I chose to speak briefly about recovery, the power of language and mental health and why I detest the word "stigma" – and then open the floor up to them. They asked a steady stream of good, intelligent questions, especially about labelling.

"Isn't calling yourself crazy a label?"

Sure, but I asked, "What do you think crazy means?"

"Being out of control."

Don't you get out of control sometimes?

"Yes."

So, we're all capable of being crazy sometimes. That's one word I think we all use. I happen to like it. In the same way the many people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered like to call themselves queer.

I told them that I also love the word "mad" – because madness has always been part of the human condition. Long before it was pathologized into the sphere of medical/mental illnesses. Since biblical times, people who behaved irrationally or too differently were seen to have what are today considered mental or psychiatric problems.

Invariably, though, people perceived as mad were, and still are, dismissed and disregarded. Marginalized. Perceived as less than human. With no voice. And because we have no voice, change is slow to happen. No one wants to listen to us or take us seriously.

I cannot remember many other specifics about my talk – I don't use a script – my presentations are spontaneous. The students were very attentive and according to the feedback I received they found me refreshing. They were very surprised that I was so open about my psychiatric history.

This always amazes me. I have no reason to feel anything but proud of my life. With all its ups and downs.

Before my presentation, I met with Heather Stuart, a Queen's professor of community health and epidemiology. She gave a very informative and thoughtful lecture a few days before mine on "Mental Health Stigma and Health Care Delivery."

Stuart is a world leader in the field of "stigma" as it is associated with mental illnesses. She told me that only three medical students attended her talk, which is too bad because they would have benefitted enormously from her research and experience, her empathetic approach and her wisdom. She is a scientist, yet she is as passionate as I am about changing the public perception of people with mental health difficulties, their treatment and maltreatment 

One statement shocked me. She said that people are afraid to come to seek treatment for their mental health problems, because of the negative stereotyping of and discrimination against people with mental illnesses.

"Three quarters of people in Canada and worldwide who meet criteria for mental health diagnoses do not receive care," she said.

In 1998, when I first started publicly presenting my story, putting these issues of stereotyping and discrimination out in the open, that figure was 66 per cent. Now, it's 75 per cent. What's happened?

That's the subject for another post.

Stuart was very receptive to my ideas about problematic use of the word stigma. As I see it, that word is part of the problem.

As well, she said that in terms of change, "We know contact counts. When we put people with mental health problems with those that don’t and allow positive interaction, we can see the difference that it makes. We need to do that. More contact. And we need to focus. We shouldn’t be going about spraying the public population. We need to target groups. Here are some groups that can be targeted ... worthy of targeting. Understanding what they need is the important way to proceed: School, police, health care workers."

I say, start with the health care workers, especially the doctors.

Especially the doctors who are training doctors in medical schools.

Medical school curricula must be revamped so that health is considered. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social. Holistically. Surely health is more than absence of disease. Yet, healing and doctoring by today's standards are very different.

Today, we are a series of body parts and systems. Medicine is so specialized and technological that the essence of the person seems lost. That's where complementary medicine, and other schools and approaches to health have so much to share.

Not in today's medical schools, where one model is taught. The biomedical model. Not the recovery model. Doctors are scientists. Psychiatrists are neuroscientists.

What about our minds?

Nothing in medicine is purely objective – writes psychiatrist Ron Pies in his fascinating essay "Psychiatry Clearly Meets the 'Objectivity' Test." According to Dr. Emmanuel Persad, psychiatry can be an intellectually vigorous and rich specialty if talking therapies are a mainstay of its practice. If they aren't, I would think psychiatry must be boring as hell.

How can the neurosciences – biochemistry, pharmacology of the brain and nervous system – help people with issues that relate to their life experiences? Their traumas? Their minds?

Brain disease? No way.

Drugging people is a quick fix that doesn't always work well. It can help, but pharmaceuticals can also have serious side effects. Without the insight that can only come, in tandem, with psychotherapy, the neurosciences are only a partial fix. They're only one set of tools in a therapeutic tool box filled with many other potentially more effective tools. Certainly, handing out drugs without any human, therapeutic support isn't the only answer.

You need to have an open mind. That was my parting shot to these future medical doctors.

An open mind.

My Queen's University keynote – a preview

Yesterday, during their first-ever Mental Health Awareness Week, I gave a keynote to approximately 100 Queen's University first-year medical students, plus several psychology and occupational therapy students.

And it all started right here with a comment one of my posts at "Coming Out Crazy"...

I plan to tell you all about it – but not today. I'm exhausted.

Next week, I promise to fill you in:

* On the fascinating discussion that followed my talk – titled "Coming Out Crazy" – what else?
* On the warm reception I received from these doctors and educators of the future and their reaction to what I had to say – which challenged what they're learning about "health", which seems to neglect the synergy between the mind, the body and the spirit.
* On spending a fascinating hour prior to my talk with Queen's epidemiologist Dr. Heather Stuart, a world renowned researcher in community-based mental health care. She's also co-founder and co-chair of the scientific section on Stigma and Mental Disorders for the World Psychiatric Association. On Tuesday, she delivered a talk, as part of this series, on "Mental Health Stigma and Health Care Delivery." Dr. Stuart is currently scientific adviser to the Mental Health Commission of Canada's Anti-stigma: Campaign.

It was a whirlwind trip. I was in Kingston for 25 hours.

It was also a trip down memory lane. I attended Queen's from 1971-1974, where I graduated with a BA in English and Drama, was the entertainment editor of the Queen's Journal and was a stringer, writing theatre and film reviews for the Kingston Whig-Standard, then a fine old Canadian newspaper, founded in 1834 as The British Whig.

When I worked there, the family of Robertson Davies owned the Kingston Whig-Standard.

By the way, my psychiatric diagnosis during this time was schizophrenia. Just thought I'd throw that in. I did not have one psychotic episode during my Queen's years.

But I digress. Next week, you'll hear all about my Queen's and Kingston adventure.

Have a great weekend.

Holding out a hand of hope...

My dear Ladies and Gents,

Today, I'm going to address mental wellness – and an intriguing discovery I've made during my two and half terms teaching a course called Leadership in Society at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology.

The unwritten subtitle of this course and the actual subtitle of the text is For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference.

You may be wondering – what is going on here? What has this to do with "Coming Out Crazy"?

Please suspend your willingness to disbelieve for a minute while I stretch William Taylor Coleridge's theory a bit. You'll get my drift. Trust me.

This weekend, I was immersed in marking the online journals my 42 students write, based on questions I pose. This is a private blog. They don't see or comment on each others' posts. It's their opportunity to have a private dialogue with me.

Many of my questions are reflective, yet reference the text either directly or obliquely. (That way, I know they're reading it.)

Many of these students chose this elective thinking they would learn how to boss people around.

Not.

If they do the work. Follow the course mantra – Woody Allen's: "Ninety percent of success is showing up." They have a good chance of getting excellent marks – which matters enormously to them. 

They also learn something entirely new in an academic setting. Self-awareness. Teamwork. Empowerment. The power of Listening. The difference between ethics and morals, values and beliefs. And how good it feels to help others.

They develop, evolve and walk away from this course with a sense of "community" and the personal gratification that comes from the work they do in and outside the classroom – which matters enormously to me.

They're required to do 20-hours of volunteer work (for 30% of their final mark) – outside all their curricular activities – with any agency or organization they choose, as long as those agencies or organizations are not for profit.

The majority – about 95% – are either International students or from vast, delightfully diverse backgrounds. It's amazing how much I learn from them.

This is a Community Service course – and I love Barack Obama's take on it. After all, he's first and foremost, a community organizer.

The classroom is a community. The college is a community. Out there, in the real world, many of these students belong to other communities – ethnic, religious, political, neighbourhood, familial, friendship, sports, hobbies – the list is endless.

Leadership in this course is for Social Change – a process everyone can learn and participate in.

Three major skill sets are stressed – teamwork, communications and self-awareness.

I noticed some amazing insights reading my students' journals. The question that sparked these insights concerned their personal strengths and weaknesses – self-awareness.

Many of my students – ages 18 and 20 – wrote so thoughtfully about what they perceived to be their personal strengths and weaknesses. They opened up about feeling excluded when they first moved here from their native countries, knowing no English. They wrote about the personal pain they felt when kids in school treated them like outcasts, because they seemd so "different."

I also asked them to reflect on how they overcame those feelings.

Invariably, they wrote about one person reaching out. Perhaps a very sensitive teacher, or another kid who had similar experiences. Always, it was someone who listened and held out a hand of hope.

This was universal. Even for Canadian-born kids in new schools. Most interesting was how they all found ways to overcome those painful feelings, which relate to being perceived as "different."

We're all different.

I think mental illnesses are all about "difference" – being perceived as a little too different. 

And mental health is about feeling included.

Generally, as a society, "being different," or perhaps a little "too different," is difficult to accept. It's easier to alienate, isolate, shut away, turn a blind eye, ignore, stay ignorant, or even fearful.

The history of "madness" – the term "mental illness" is relatively new – goes back to the beginning of time. It's about powerful perceived difference. French philosopher, historian and sociologist Michel Foucault described "mental illness" as the "Leprosy of the 20th Century."

We're all feeling the stresses of the Recession. Exhaustion. Longer hours. Heavier workloads. Uncertainty. Now is the time for community service – a great tonic for these stresses. Pressures. Gloom and doom.

I don't just preach this stuff. Seneca asked me to develop this course because of my history of community service, particularly my mental health advocacy. I'm giving a keynote at Queen's University this week and writing an article for a scholarly journal inspired by this blog!

It feels great.

Want to get over depression? Anxiety? Consider committing to a good cause.

Drive for the Canadian Cancer Society or deliver Meals on Wheels. You'll discover it's not the "driving" that feels so good, but the relationships you develop with the people you drive and deliver meals to – and the people administering these essential services.

Community.

You get much more than you give by involvement with community organizations dedicated to making positive, meaningful differences for the Greater Good.

Like Habitat for Humanity – a favourite among my students.

This "work" lifts your spirits. Gives you a sense of belonging. Inclusiveness. Empowerment. Purpose. 

A natural high. You feel connected. Less alone.

It's mentally healthy. For you. Everyone.

Thought I'd share that with you on this beautiful, bright, sunny, soon-to-be Spring March day.

Take good care!