Sickie

I'm running a temperature of 102.1F or 39.44C but I feel cold.

I have a cold. My body seems to be reacting to the stress of last weekend, so I'm not in a very bloggy mood, if you get my drift. My mind just isn't working all that well. Maybe I picked up something at the hospital.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I just want to go back to bed. 

At 6:23 a.m. on Tuesday morning, I sent my editor the following message, with the subject line – Posting for this week...

"We are back home. Marty is fine, now. He spent two days and nights in a room in North York General after spending 20 hours on a stretcher in the ER.

"I'm going to post on what fear – and exhaustion – did to me. They were testing him for stroke, which he did not have, thank goodness. There have been some interesting comments on my last post because I really made a mistake I shouldn't have made in my Friday post. They're not up yet, but should be sometime today.

"Also, the 'wholism' of health – mental and physical and spiritual health. That's my plan.

"Not sure when. Teaching at 8 a.m. and leaving here in about 30 minutes.

"Will be back and then writing. We're both going to Weight Watchers tonight at 5:30 p.m."

It all seemed so positive as a new day began.

Well, it didn't work out that way. At all. After I came home from my class, I wasn't feeling well and decided to take a nap. Awoke four hours later burning up. My temperature was soaring. 

We took a pass on Weight Watchers and I couldn't even think about writing this post. I guess all the stress of the weekend and lack of sleep was catching up with me. So much for writing about health.

I slept fitfully all night. Drinking what seemed like gallons of water and tea. My nose was running. Throat burning. Today, the same.

Please forgive me, but I'll be back when I feel like myself.

Take care.

sln

I'm not blogging today. Or so I thought! :)

Today, I'm keeping this very short. Very, very short. It's really a note to say I'm not really blogging today, except this non-blog has turned into a blog, hasn't it? 

You see, something has come up and I'm unable to be here to write to you.

Don't worry. Everything is going to be fine. Just a bit of a blip in my world order. We all have them. Something comes up out of nowhere and throws you a punch. Hits you in the head. You waver a bit. You may even fall down. But you get right back up or you manage to stay upright somehow. 

You're stronger than you think. This is a positive.

You manage to rearrange your life because you have no choice. For me, it's all about resilience. Just having to bend and sway with the ever changing vicissitudes of life. That's life. It's no straight line. It's bends in the road. Hills and Valleys.

Positive psychology is an important branch of psychology. It's the real deal. Martin Seligman is a brilliant man. He's the founder of Positive Psychology. You can watch him talk about it. Get a lovely little lesson from the master. Have a look. It's worth 23 minutes of your time. Trust me!

I refuse to be a victim! You can do that, too! Refuse to be a victim. Refuse to allow psychiatrists to victimize you. Just don't buy their pathology. Their world view. Don't believe it. Learn to believe in yourself. If not yourself, then consider believing in Martin Seligman and Positive Psychology.

Learn to celebrate your life. Whatever it is. I teach a course in community service and leadership. I created this course. I teach my students to "make a difference" for their communities. Any community they choose. For the "greater good. And I love it. 

Teaching this course is an enormous privilege. I love this course. I have a great life. I make my life great. I insist on living a pleasant life, a good life – and my teaching and my own community service give my life enormous meaning. Not to mention the relationships and the people I cultivate in my life. The way I have learned to engage. I work on it. It's glorious work.

It makes me happy. You make me feel happy, too. Knowing you're there, makes me feel my life has meaning. That's what "happy" means to me.

You can feel these things, too. You can learn that. Listen to this short TED.com talk of his. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. Have a look. And be sure to watch Martin Seligman's talk on positive psychology. Please. For me! Let me know what you think. How you react. I want to know. Share your comments and ideas here in the comments. That's meaningful, too. Let's talk about Positive Psychology, here!

You'll love Martin Seligman. He's a wonderful tonic for life. He's better than any pharmaceutical drug. Martin Seligman can teach you how to feel better about your life. Right now.

The point is, I do everything I can to stay positive. Really positive. In the psychologically positive way. And metaphorically, too. I start manufacturing Lemonade out of Lemons with great gusto. I believe that all will be well. No matter what, all will be well.

This positive energy is very powerful. It's an attitude thing and everything is attitude.

Here's a little exercise I do with my students.

Read this word OUT LOUD: OPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE

What do you see? What did you say?

Opportunity Is Nowhere?

Or...

Opportunity is Now Here?

There's no right or wrong answer. This is just a perceptual exercise. 

I'm a half glass full kind of gal and that's what drives me – this wildly predominant and quite natural "cockeyed optimism" – and I always qualify by stressing the word "cockeyed". ;)

So, let's try to have a positive weekend. Let's try to work on our attitudes, just for today. Just for an hour, if you're feeling low. Today is a new day and I'm sure the sun will rise tomorrow and it will be a new beginning. That's positive in itself. I love mornings. Fresh slates. A clean page with nothing yet written on it. 

I love all the possibility in that. The power of possibility! You can make it positive.

I tell my students that when they go into a job interview, no one will ever ask them for their Grade Point Average, but if they exude a positive attitude, they have a greater chance of success. 

Attitude is everything and I think attitude is something to work on. Go for a walk outside. Breathe the fresh air. Find a nice park with lots of trees and lots of oxygen and fresh air. And breathe. It's good for your head and your soul. And something else. Do something nice for someone else. Anything. 

That's going to make your day!

It's going to be a beautiful sunny day, here in Toronto. Do me a favour. No matter how you're feeling, do something for yourself by doing something for someone else.

Do something nice, for yourself, too.. Something that will make you feel sensational.

Because you know what? You are sensational. You really are, in your own unique and special way. You're you and there's no one else on the planet like you. Never has been. Never will be. Isn't that amazing? 

Celebrate your uniqueness. Engage with someone. Enter into their world. Listen to their story. Lose yourself in another human being. Be there for them!

You'll turn today into a "Be Good To Me Day" – you'll see! Feel positive and enjoy the moment.

Hugs,

(Hugs are very positive, too!)

Speak soon!

sln

From my inbox... about suicide

Many of you regularly write to me personally and I really value the stories you share, so much so that often I wish they were more available to everyone who drops by Coming Out Crazy. 

The other day, Dorothyanne Brown, a nurse from Ottawa sent an extremely poignant and provocative note. Not only did she give me permission to publish it here, she said I could "bounce people to her blog" – which focuses on living with multiple sclerosis.

Here's what Dorothyanne said on Sunday, September 20, in response to my Friday post On Denial...

"I, like you, have been an advocate for those living silently with depression since I was diagnosed some years ago. I've since been diagnosed with MS and am working with the mood swings thought to be caused by the electrical warfare between the shredded neurons in my brain. Of course, as with depression, MS symptoms remain largely unexplained. Would that we could understand the brain just a wee bit better!

"I'm a nurse and former primary health care manager who had to quit work because of my cognitive lapses and moods – despite medication, everything remains uneven.

"But enough about me. What I wanted to mention to you was the denial other health care professionals show with regard to suicide. At several points in my first year with MS, I've felt suicidal. I made a plan, I gathered the necessaries, I plotted the time of day. Then I called in my helpers.

"No one listened to me. No one took me seriously. Even now, since I moved to a new community, when I reach out for help with these mood things, nothing helps.

"My MS doc listened to my plan and said, 'Well, yes, that'd work.'

"Fortunately, I stepped back from the brink, or have until now. But it does make me wonder how others, less articulate, less well-supported, might manage. It seems to me that unless you show up at the office with a gun or rope, people are not likely to take claims of suicidality seriously. No one seems interested in discussing it, even those at the MS society – despite the high rate of suicide in MS patients.

"What's your experience with this? Depression and depression medications and suicide are closely linked... and yet it still seems to be a hidden subject. Discussing it might help those with these feelings step back, reconsider. The feeling of aloneness in depression is such a high risk factor.

"Good on you to come out and be counted. I've always felt that is the best way to proceed.

"Best wishes – Dorothyanne."

When I responded, I had to confess that I have no personal experience with major depression or suicidal intent. Mania is my madness and I have lived with its psychotic features since my mid-teens. Since I found the right medication – for me – in 1988 at the age of 40, I've been reasonably fine, thanks to my twice-daily doses of Tegretol and especially the support, psychotherapy and constant emotional processing I've been doing with my psychiatrist Dr. Bob for close to 20 years and still counting.

Dorothyanne, you touched a real chord, however, when you stressed how medical professionals are reluctant and uncomfortable discussing suicide with suicidal people. 

Everyone is uncomfortable talking about suicide. It is a taboo subject for many complex reasons. I don't think this is because it is often thought to be caused by depression and too many people are uncomfortable talking about mental illnesses. It goes much deeper than that and I am no expert. I don't know if there really can be real expertise on suicide.

Last year, a neighbour of mine died by hanging himself in his garage on the Monday morning of the Victoria Day weekend. After a phalanx of police cars, fire trucks and paramedic vans pulled away from our dear little dead-end street in the suburbs, after his sheathed body was removed in a red van (not black or bearing any resemblance to a hearse) my neighbours quietly clustered together, whispering. 

Would they have whispered if this kind, gentle man who was suffering with the terminal side-effects of brain cancer treatments had died of his illness, rather than by his own hand? He was depressed because he couldn't envision life – he was divorced and living alone – in constant pain, a close friend of his told me. 

His funeral was in no way "traditional" and he was buried against a fence in the cemetery, separated, removed from other plots, alone in death as he no doubt felt in life. People still say "commit" suicide, though it is no longer considered a crime. So much mystery and mythology still cloaks suicide.

A month later, the New York Times published a cover story in its Sunday Magazine titled The Urge To End It – Understanding Suicide. Two survivors of highly lethal suicide attempts – one by firearms and another by jumping – were interviewed. They were happy to be alive, despite permanent injury and disfigurement. The article was one of the most compelling I've ever read and it certainly furthers the discourse on the impulsivity of suicide. But what of those who are less impulsive and suffer suicidal intent and thoughts, without this impulsivity to act? 

This story didn't really address that. 

It wouldn't really be helpful for you, Dorothyanne, if you want to talk about your suicidal feelings.

Nor would it empower health professionals in their ability to help you, I suspect.

For some personal perspectives on feeling suicidal, you can go through the short engaging videos on the excellent new and undeniably easy to navigate website Working Through It where several people talk candidly about their suicidal feelings. And how happy they are they got help and don't feel suicidal anymore.

That might help you to seek help, but what if you cannot find the help your really need? The right fit for you? Then what? 

A hug and an ear from one of your helpers perhaps can prove better. You were cogent enough to be able to reach out. Feeling loved and wanted and cared about and valued by other people is decidedly more useful. But what if you don't feel that love, even if it's there. Then, what?

In her extraordinary book, Night Falls Fast – Understanding Suicide, (Vintage Books, 1999) one of the only serious studies of the subject, clinical psychologist and Johns Hopkins Hospital psychiatry professor Kay Jamison writes eloquently, perceptively and passionately about suicide. She knows her subject. She was diagnosed with manic depression/bipolar disorder as a university student and years ago, in graduate school, struggling with an episode of depression, she overdosed on her Lithium and almost did kill herself. 

Yet, she, too, is frustrated. 

In her epilogue, Jamison writes: "Like many of my colleagues who study suicide, I have seen time and again the limitations of our science, been privileged to see how good some doctors are and appalled by the callousness and incompetence of others. Mostly, I have been impressed by how little value our society puts on saving the lives of those who are in such despair as to want to end them. It is a societal illusion that suicide is rare. It is not. Certainly the mental illnesses most closely tied to suicide are not rare. They are common conditions, and, unlike cancer and heart disease, they disproportionately affect and kill the young."

But if you're suicidal, reading that book would be impossible. You probably wouldn't be able to focus. 

Dorothyanne, I don't know why some doctors and health care professionals don't take their suicidal patients seriously. Or cannot. Lack the ability. Maybe it's that old and perhaps mythic rubric – "if someone talks about killing themselves, they'll never do it"?

More likely, part of the reason, as Jamison states in her book, is that doctors, themselves, are twice as likely to kill themselves than other people, especially psychiatrists and psychologists – women more than men. And doctors tend to carry their emotional burdens along with the burdens of their patients, working independently and not seeking help or even recognizing that they need it.

Pills are perceived as an easier solution.

Last week, psychologist John M. Grohol on his PsychCentral blog World of Psychology mused about suicide rates in 2006 remaining virtually the same as in 2004 and 2005 – despite antidepressant use on the rise and a dramatic decline in talking therapies. Check it out. 

He also points out a new American National Drug Use and Health report on "Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviours among Adults". For the first time, all adults in this survey of 46,190 Americans 18 year of age and older were asked about suicidal thoughts. In the past, they were only asked about clinical depression. Check it out, too. 

Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons posted about this, too, and his take is well-worth reading. 

Check out the World Health Organization's global picture.

There's an important clue in all of this, I think. It's found in an August 2009 post by Grohol about the fact that pill use is up (antidepressants) and psychotherapy use is down. People are demanding quick-fix – pills as their primary avenue to mental health and well-being. Maybe because they just can't connect with the right psychotherapist for them. Or the waiting list is too long. Or it's too expensive.

But, as I've said again and again, the answer is not in pills alone. 

My friend, Dr. Ron Pies, Tufts University professor and clinical psychiatrist addressed the issue of medication use in effectively helping people with mental health issues recently, when I asked him about it. He wasn't referring specifically to suicide or even depression, but talking more generally. His remarks, however, are important:

"I think so much depends on what the 'issues' are; how serious and impairing the problems are; and how skilled the clinician is who prescribes the medication – and how closely he or she monitors the patient's response... medication alone is virtually never 'the answer' for those who experience serious emotional or behavioral problems. I continue to believe that, in carefully selected instances, it is often a part of the answer." 

That's vital. I wasn't kidding when I suggested a hug might be better. If not a hug, at least some kind of human engagement. Part of the answer lies outside the realm of strict medical science and in human and humane interaction and communication. 

Yesterday, I discovered this right here at Healthzone in a Toronto Star story recently written by Health Reporter Joseph Hall.

In this story, Hall quotes Karen Letofsky, the executive director of Toronto's Distress Centres, who says: "If you are concerned an individual is at risk (of suicide) then the first thing you would do ... is approach that individual...." and this approach "should be couched as an invitation for this person to share their feelings, while asking directly about thoughts of suicide."

Maybe you don't need a health care professional, Dorothyanne. This is such a crucial question.

Maybe you need a human being who knows how to listen to you. Who can feel with you and for you. Even a stranger on the other end of a Distress Centre phone line.

Or one of us, here, in this online community at Coming Out Crazy. Maybe we can harness the power of the internet to help out. Reach out to you. To each other. We've done it before. Why not with suicide?

I'm throwing this out to everyone reading this post. 

What are your thoughts? If you can talk about suicidal thinking, share your feelings about suicide here, where it's safe, then perhaps it won't seem so difficult, so frightening to face. Perhaps you'll be able to reach out when and if you need support – to the right people for you.

What do you think?

On Denial ...

Last week, I was in touch with my friend and mentor, Tufts University professor of psychiatry Dr. Ron Pies after the summer break. He mentioned that Elyn R. Saks had written a commentary called "Some Thoughts on Denial of Mental Illness" for the September 2009 issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry.

I can't download this journal article without paying a fee, so Ron kindly offered to mail me the piece, which arrived yesterday. As you may recall, I wrote a lengthy post about University of Southern California Associate Dean and Professor of Law, Psychology and Psychiatry Saks and her "memoir of madness" The Center Cannot Hold – back in April. 

What I didn't mention then was that I detested her use of language. It made me cringe. Saks is a fine writer, but her language screams with embarrassment, shame and for the most part, exposes her chronic denial of her florid psychoses and her lifelong battle with schizophrenia.

It took Saks years and years, far too many years, to be able to admit to herself that she had a mental illness. It was and is still clear in the way she writes that she's ill at ease and grappling with her diagnosis of schizophrenia. 

Her commentary is rational. Emotions are irrational. 

It seems to me that she is actually in recovery, but doesn't know it or doesn't want to know it – despite her extraordinary academic accomplishments and her meaningful and rich life. She's happily married and a highly respected academic.

Right now, I'm not going to challenge her rationale simply because I don't have time. Saks has degrees in literature and philosophy besides law. She is a brilliant woman, an excellent writer, and her "thoughts" are argued with the precision of a closing argument in a murder trial. 

It's Friday afternoon. I've just returned from teaching one of my classes. It's been a long week. My editor is leaving in an hour and a half, and I need to digest what Saks has written to challenge her ideas. But I will. 

For now, I will muse a bit about denial and mental illnesses on my own. This is a rich subject. I will leave my journalistic jousting with Ms. Saks for another day.

First, as you know, I am not in denial of my mental health issues or my mental illness – I always feel a little odd using the term "illness" when discussing the mind. I do not believe the much-hyped theory that mental illnesses are brain diseases caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. That's simply not been proven and it's too simplistic, as far as I'm concerned. 

I've never been in denial. I grew up believing, naively perhaps, that going to a psychiatrist to talk once a week was healthy and smart – like going to an allergist once a week to have allergy shots.

As an adolescent, I used to complain to my mother, "Why do I have to go to see Dr. McQuaid every week?" She would simply say, "If you had a broken leg, you'd go to a doctor who would put it in a cast to heal. Well, if there's something wrong with your mind, you go and talk to a psychiatrist every week and you feel better."

Coming from a predominantly medical family where everyone was either a doctor or a psychiatric social worker, I was socialized to believe that going to a psychiatrist was de rigueur even though I was the only kid I knew who did, back in the early 1960s.

I live my life out loud today because it never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with having a mental illness. I consider myself lucky. 

Over the years, people have always confided in me, but always in whispers. 

Several years ago, I was invited to speak to a group of women at the Ontario Ministry of Government Services. The event, which celebrates Women of Influence and Inspiration, took place during Mental Health Awareness Week in May. Linda Lane, the creator of the event who asked me to speak, selected me as one of that year's Women of Influence and Inspiration, but asked me to stay clear of anything that smacked of mental health. Instead, she wanted me to focus on my journalistic career and women's issues. 

When I arrived, there were more than 250 women seated in a large conference room. I started listening to the other speakers, all extremely successful, high-ranking women in government who had clearly broken through the glass ceiling. (I've always thought that glass ceiling was really a layer of men, but that's another story.)

As I listened, clearly, I knew I couldn't stick to my script. After all, I'm an advocate. Place me in front of an audience and I can't resist, especially during Mental Health Awareness Week. When my turn came, I started talking and slipping references to my mental illness into my speech. Funny references. Self-deprecating quips to show that having a mental illness doesn't mean you can't have a good life and a great career. It's all about having a positive attitude. 

The audience laughed in all the right places and seemed relieved that I wasn't talking about government business. Clearly, they were enjoying themselves. You could hear a pin drop.

After I finished to a resounding round of applause, there was a break. I had to leave and go right back to my office. As I slipped out of the room, a woman approached me. I'll never forget her. She was slightly hunched over. Her body language screamed out "Denial" – I knew what she was going to say. And I was right.

In a barely audible whisper, she said, "I have the same problem as you, but I would never tell anyone. I've had it for 16 years."

I listened to her as she told her story of loneliness and isolation. She spoke about how she kept it a secret. How she was afraid she would lose her job if anyone "knew"... and how hard it is not to be able to talk to anyone at work about it, especially when "I'm not feeling at my best."

You have no idea how many times I've heard this. And worse. Parents in denial for their children. Rather that seek the appropriate help, they take their troubled adolescents to every specialist in the world, except a psychiatrist or psychologist. In one case, when no "physical" problem could be found, a young boy of 15 was kept at home, out of school, far from friends, cloistered, and hidden away because his parents couldn't accept that perhaps he had an emotional or mental health issue.

That's one reason why the new website Working Through It so powerfully mitigates denial by showing that mental health issues are not only prevalent but treatable in a wide variety of ways and real people are doing the talking. 

Often, I'm told that I'm very open. This surprises people, this openness of mine. But I also find that when I'm open, others open up to me. They share the burden of their denial. And they feel better.

I'm convinced that there is no normal. That we're all "next to normal" and diagnoses can and often do more harm than good. Even in cases of psychosis and schizophrenia, there are so many people finding ways to recover.

And in recovery, they overcome their denial. 

Working Through It

Have I got a website for you!

Yesterday evening, an email arrived in my inbox from my longtime friend and mentor, Mary Ann Baynton – with this subject line: 

Finally! Here is the link to Working Through It. Please forward it to anyone who can use it or share it.

Mary Ann and I go back a long way, but that's another story.

For now, let me simply say that she has dedicated her life to changing the culture of Canadian workplaces – to help employees facing mental health issues and their employers. Most workplaces are pressure cookers of stress and anxiety, demands and deadlines. More so every day.

Some of us can be emotionally vulnerable to these tensions, triggers for our mental health problems. Some of us bring those issues with us, but secretly. Either way, the workplace can be daunting for everyone involved.

In Canada, that's been changing because of Mary Ann.

In 2001, she was developing an educational program to help equip employers with easy-to-learn skills and training strategies to appropriately accommodate their employees who may be facing mental health difficulties on the job. Touchy situations that Mary Ann, with her training and commitment knew could be successfully mediated. Especially if an employee can "coach up" and help a supervisor learn skills they've never been taught.

Through the Canadian Mental Health Association (Ontario) she launched Mental Health Works. Since then, this multi-faceted program has won awards and now is running in government, private companies and corporations in at least five provinces. It's a win-win-win. 

There is no question that healthier workplaces with mentally and emotionally healthier and more resilient employees improve a company's bottom line! This has been proven time and again. Education is the key and Mary Ann's Complex Issues. Clear Solutions training and tools enables management to function more effectively – to discuss sensitive issues, resolve conflicts, create accommodations and avoid discrimination and human rights violations in the workplace.

A few years ago, Mary Ann began branching out and consulting. Now, she's consulting with CMHA and Mental Health Works but she's moved on.

Her newest venture is far more ambitious and delves deeper into the collective consciousness of people living with and struggling with mental health issues. Last night, I managed to track Mary Ann down at her home, where she was busy entertaining her extended family. She explained that in 2003 or 2004, a woman named Mandi Luis approached her at her CHMA (Ontario) office. 

"She had to walk away from a 27-year banking career because of severe depression. No one was able to help her," and now she wanted to help prevent that happening for others who may find themselves in similar straits.

Mandi is now a peer support specialist – peer support could have helped her when she needed it most. 

Mary Ann suggested Mandi write an article for Mental Health Works, which she did, but there was a problem. 

"When I was really, really depressed, really sick, I wouldn't have been able to concentrate on an article like this. I couldn't focus," Mandi explained.

So what to do about Mandi's dilemma? How do you transmit information to people who are currently struggling and so mentally and emotionally stressed out they're not able to concentrate well enough to read? How do you reach them?

Mary Ann came up with a possible solution. How about short videos of people, real people, talking about their experiences? 

In collaboration with Mental Health Works and The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario (MDAO) with the funding of Great West Life, where Mary Ann is now consulting, a working group was formed and 10 people were carefully selected to share their experiences in front of a camera. 

That's how Working Through It came about. This is an encyclopedic resource. Amazing. In all 31 videos. Short, byte-sized, none are more than three or four minutes. Several are even shorter than that. You can come and go, visit for a few minutes and then come back. Easily digestible and extraordinarily engaging.

There are 15 major themes, featuring four or five different people comfortably sharing segments of their stories of how they have "reclaimed their well-being at work, off work and returning to work."

"We wanted to use broad language that was entirely inclusive," Mary Ann explained when I asked why the word "recovery" was not used.  

You'll meet and grow to know Gord Conley, Sean Miller, Phillipia Wright, Bonnie Pedota, Hazel Gabriel, Rose Pardham, Marvin Burr, Melonie Long, Donna Hardaker and Constantin Nastic as they open up their hearts and their hurts to you. Candidly, viscerally, they tell you about their lives with their mental health struggles and their triumphs.

Speaking out about tough stuff sometimes. But they are surprisingly comfortable in front of the camera. They talk about their deeply personal feelings, memories, insights and strategies. They share practical tidbits of life experience that they've developed in facing all kinds of challenges in getting well, staying well, and coping when they may not be well, all the time. Yes, they talk about what they do when things go wrong. 

They talk about how they wish they could turn the clock back. How they wish they had sought help sooner. How facing the reality of their issues earlier may have saved them years of emotional anguish. Implicit is a sense that they want to help you to be more open to yourself, more honest. To refrain from denial and speak out. Open up. Don't go it alone.  

"This can happen to anybody and it's very treatable if you recognize it," says Gord Conley. 

We're all changing all the time. Life happens. Nothing stays the same. We all have set backs and they talk about theirs, too. And how they cope. What they do to prevent serious setbacks from reoccurring. All their support systems and strategies, from exercise and watching what you eat to taking your medication or going to regular 12-step program meetings. Whatever it takes. It's up to you.  

They're tremendous likable people and I was overwhelmed by their generosity, bravery, sincerity and courage.

Why? Because they've been through it. They tell you about how they've worked through it, how painful at times this process it. 

Most of all, they tell you and show you how you can feel better. How there is help out there. 

They are the faces of hope. There are lots of different ways to get help and stay healthy. And most of all, they show you that you're not alone.

To be honest, when I first entered the sight, I didn't know where to begin. It's so comprehensive. Initially, you see a selection of titles including What is happening? Why is it such a struggle? and What should I say? and How can I manage financially? and How do I stay well? and more.

I've never been one to begin at the beginning of anything. Being perpetually backward, I chose to bypass the Introduction and instead, headed to the end, to the penultimate section called Never Give Up. That title spoke to me.

I pressed the little orange arrow. A screen popped up and a lovely, pleasant-looking gentleman started talking, followed by another, and then two women. They weren't edited. They were extraordinarily comfortable and easy to listen to as they talked their mental health problems. They looked and sounded liberated. Alive. Free. 

I urge you to click onto Working Through It to see for yourself. No matter how you're feeling. There's so much information for you. Not only from these exceptional people, but specialists. Psychiatrists, leaders in the community who work to provide access to all kinds of support systems.

There's something for everybody here. Whether you are experiencing a mental health problem right now or you know or work with someone who is. University of Toronto Professor of Psychiatry Dr. Anthony Levitt talks about some startling statistics about how many people find the "right" help.

If you take 100 people with depression or anxiety, only 50 of them will recognize that they need help. Only 25 of them will look for that help. They may be prescribed one of 22 different medications or perhaps be offered one of five or six different kinds of talking therapy. That's 25%.

But here's what shocked me. Of that 25%, only 10% will follow through and receive the right treatment. 

You have to work through it. And it's not always easy.

These videos are powerful gems of hope and inspiration. Melonie Long talking about how she cannot believe what would have happened "had I been successful in my suicide attempt..." and now "knowing what joy feels like," brought tears to my eyes.   

You will be able to identify with these people. And there are loads of other resources embedded in this website. It's extremely user-friendly. One of the most exciting online mental health initiatives I've ever seen and experienced, anywhere.

This is another beginning for Mary Ann. "Next, we want to find out how we can help people get the right treatment, the help and support they really need, the first time – whatever it is." 

Think of how revolutionary that will be. And how much needless suffering will come to an end.

Think of how healthy our society as a whole could be. Negative stereotypes will be smashed. Workplaces with thrive. More people will live meaningful productive lives.  

Because we'll all feel more safe and secure Working Through It ourselves, with our families, our friends, our colleagues, our doctors. Everywhere. We'll be more comfortable with ourselves. 

Bravo! Let's spread the word. 

Say "Yes" to Mental Health Recovery...

Yesterday a gentleman named Stephen Batson sent me an email. 

The subject line? "another country heard from" ...

It turns out that Mr. Batson is the Project Coordinator of the Michigan Recovery Center of Excellence, where "Recovery is the foundation of service delivery in the Michigan community mental health system," it states under Welcome to Michigan Recovery" on this website.

"The Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) has charged mental health providers, consumer leaders and other community stakeholders to work together to promote recovery-based service delivery models."

Stephen wrote to me because he liked my last post on – Coming Out In Class. 

(By the way, I'm happy to report that 15 students showed up in my class this morning. Earlier this week, I had seven students attend with nine registered. This morning, I had 15 attend with 20 registered. This, after I shared with them the fact that my community service is mental health advocacy and I have a long history of mental health problems. I even told them about this blog. Things are looking up.)

Stephen told me in his note that he found me on a blog that's been running since 2006 called The Recovering Life with the tagline – Observations on a Cultural Phenomenon – written by his friend Norm DeLisle.

Norman G. DeLisle runs a small, non-profit organization called the Michigan Disability Rights Coalition and blogs like a house on fire, posting five or six times a day. He's worked in disability advocacy for 37 years, has background in education, Montessori, and psychology. He seems to me to be a powerhouse who works tirelessly to raise awareness and make a difference. He doesn't miss a trick and his blog is well worth investigating.

It seems he posted my Wednesday entry on his blog and that's where Stephen Batson comes in. "Every story makes us feel good about our decision to live real and open ourselves to others," he wrote, inviting me to check out his site. I did. It's amazing.

Then he invited me to a Recovery Conference in Detroit on October 6, sponsored by the Detroit-Wayne County Community Mental Health Agency, a real going-concern when it comes to recovery judging by its publication, The Advocate News, which is devoted entirely to mental health recovery and hope. 

Stephen asked me if I knew Dr. Daniel Fisher of the National Empowerment Center, which he founded in Lawrence, Massachusetts, near Boston. "Talk about leadership," Stephen said. 

As a matter of fact, I do. Though I've never met him. I know Dr. Fisher's remarkable recovery story and his spiritual and healing approach to severe emotional trauma, often the root cause of mental disorders. Having hope is crucial.

I've read several of his books including "One Vision of Recovery" – his personal story – and "A PACE/Recovery Reader" – an excellent historical anthology of writings about psychiatry, mental illnesses and recovery. 

My psychiatrist, Dr. Bob, was the first person to enlighten me years ago about the bogus claims that mental illnesses are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain – a theory that has never been proven. Fisher elaborates in his writings. I'm reading stories from substantial sources that corroborate this all the time, but still, especially here in Canada, the biomedical model which is grounded on this theory seems to stand firm. Psychiatrists prescribe cocktails of drugs and insist on diagnoses that rarely fit the individual. And people are getting sicker all the time, when they could, indeed, recover and live meaningful lives. 

We have universal health care here in Canada, but we're in the dark ages when it comes to mental health recovery. We're the only country in the G8 with no national mental health strategy.

Dr. Fisher subscribes to "recovery at your own pace." When I interviewed him several years ago, he stressed that medications can be helpful but only as tools, in the short term. There are other tools. Toolboxes full of them. He stated that he has not taken any psychoactive medication for more than 30 years. Community, inclusiveness, helping people to feel that they are not alone, that there is hope are among his prescriptions for recovery.

His story is recovery story remarkable. 

Years ago, as a PhD student, Fisher became delusional, ironically while researching the biochemistry of the brain in schizophrenia. He was hospitalized several times, treated like an animal, shut away and ignored. His psychiatric diagnosis? Schizophrenia.

So demoralized, appalled and angry at how he was treated as a psychiatric patient, Fisher vowed, then, that if he ever recovered, he would become a psychiatrist to ensure that people with psychiatric diagnoses would be treated with dignity and humanity. 

He finished his PhD, went on to complete his MD at Georgetown University and his psychiatry residency at Harvard. He has become a leading Recovery advocate, as well as a clinical psychiatrist – one of a tiny handful of psychiatrists who "are out" and openly discuss their psychiatric histories.

His interview on January 20, 2005 in Medscape is fascinating. Fisher is the featured keynote speaker at the Detroit conference, called Redefining Our Roles in Recovery: It's Everybody's Business. Sadly, my teaching schedule prevents me from attending, though I'd do anything if I could, I told Stephen.

But I'm following the activities of the Michigan Recovery Center for Excellence and Norm DeLisle's blog.

Then, this morning, when I came home after my class, there was another email from Stephen Batson.

"Hi again. I was thinking, on the way home last night, that we have recovery stories on this site. In fact, I will be spending the next seven days in Michigan's upper peninsula visiting drop-in and Clubhouses. While up there I will be video recording more stories to post on the site.

"I'm writing to you today because your article IS a recovery story. Perhaps not like the life stories many others have told, but yours talks about an important aspect of a person's recovery ... relationships' socially valued roles. So, I'm asking for your permission to include your story among the collection we have gathered."

Of course, Stephen. It would be an honour. My story is yours. As I tell my students, I have a mantra, one of several. "I live my life out loud. No secrets. No lies."

It's one way to find peace of mind.

Have a great weekend. I wish you the best, always.

Speak soon.

Coming Out In Class...

It may surprise you to learn that I've never "come out" in any of my classes, and certainly not at the beginning of a new school term.

But yesterday, the first day of school, I did. I've never done it before. Here's what happened.

My class began at 8 a.m. It's a double-period class. I arrived at the Newnham campus of  Seneca College more than an hour early, at about 6:55 a.m. I knew had a tiny class – with only nine students registered. If I was lucky, maybe six would show up. 

8 a.m. classes are loathed and shunned by students. They're never awake at 8 a.m. If they take an 8 a.m. class, usually it's because they need it and it's the only one that fits into their timetables. 

Naturally, I was nervous. I always am on the first day – and tomorrow, I'll have another "first day" at another campus. So I'm nervous again, right now.

Yesterday, I was wondering exactly what I going to do with such a tiny group. I was anxious, too. I wanted to make a good first impression. So, I was up until close to 1 a.m. on Monday morning preparing and twigging my lesson plan. Then the alarm went off at 5 a.m. yesterday morning. I was running on raw energy. No gas.

My husband teaches at Humber and was dropping me off en route to his Lakeshore Campus a full 50 kilometres from where we live.

Was I tired? Not until the class ended. I was too excited at the prospect of meeting the students who will be my top priority for the next 13 weeks. I treat my classroom as a community and my job is to do everything I can to ensure the members of this community are successful and leave my course with invaluable Leadership skills and an understanding of the process of leadership -- grounded in communication, teamwork, self-awareness. If all goes well, this course can be life-changing through the Community Service they are required to complete over the term. 

I teach an elective, a Gen Ed in the School of English and Liberal Studies. It can be a little precarious at the beginning of term. Students often shop around during the first two weeks of classes before deciding which course they want to commit to. It's a bit of a popularity contest, though I've learned not to take it personally. Yesterday, with only nine students registered, I was especially worried. I didn't want to lose them especially because my class is action-oriented, filled with activities. The more students, the better.

The course I teach is called "Leadership in Society" -- subtitled "for college students who want to make a difference."

Leadership is a process. Leaders are not born, they're made. Leadership is all about relationships. I didn't want to lose any of the few students I had. (At Markham Campus, where I also teach this course, I have about 31 students registered. I'm over the moon – but who knows how many will stay with me.)

I was asked to develop this course which combines leadership training through community service and experiential learning because of my lifelong history of volunteer work in the community and my mental health advocacy. It's a tall order, but since I started to develop it during the Fall of 2007, it's been an extraordinary and steep learning curve for me. 

Towards the end of the class, we were sitting around in a sharing circle, and I asked the seven students who made it to class why they decided to enroll in this course. "If you took it because it fit into your timetable, that's okay. You can tell us," I said. "You can be honest." 

I explained that "Leadership is all about relationships and honesty is vital. Along with integrity and ethics, both part of the Relational Model of Leadership we're going to learn along with the Social Change Model."

Surprisingly, for the first time in three terms, after teaching six different classes of this course, no one took it because it fit their schedules, they said. These are amazing students. Several of them already do community service on a regular basis. Others want to learn leadership for the right reasons – not so they can boss people around. That has been a motivating reason in the past. This term, my students want to take a more active role in their communities through leadership training.

I was over the moon. Teaching a Gen Ed course means you draw students from the entire college, so in this class I have students studying Accounting, Accounting and Finance, International Transportation and Customs, Human Resources and Early Childhood Education. They're also from all over the world, multicultural, delightfully diverse. You have no idea how fascinating this is for all of us because throughout the term we learn to understand each other's cultures. It's such a rich learning experience. At the same time, you never know how these cultures traditionally view people with mental health difficulties, like me.

We were sitting in close together. It was very intimate. Finally, at the end, when my turn came, I explained how this course came into being. I said I developed it because I'm a mental health advocate – that's part of my community service. I told them I have a mental health difficulty and speaking out is the best way for people to learn, understand and be more enlightened about people, like me, with mental health issues. More accepting. More empathetic. (I always show my students my coloured hearing aids, too. A little hearing loss advocacy never hurts, especially because so many young people are permanently damaging their hearing by listening to loud music.)

They listened intensely. Several nodded their heads in agreement. No one seemed shocked or upset. No one ran screaming from the room.

Telling them had felt like a natural thing for me to do. I told them briefly about my life since attending Seneca in 1969 and graduating in 1971 with The Seneca Cup, my education at Queen's University and at Ryerson, my 30 years at The Toronto Sun and coming back to Seneca – full-circle. I mentioned my work as a member of Seneca's Alumni Board. I explained that when they graduated, they would automatically be Alumni. Then, I told them about this blog, Coming Out Crazy at The Star.

I couldn't believe how receptive they were.

And guess what? I just checked my class list. They're all still with me and I now have 15 students registered instead of nine.

Will I disclose in the same way tomorrow, with 31 students in my class? I don't know. It all depends on how I feel and how receptive they seem. Every class has its own culture. 

But if someone asks me why I teach this course, I'll be as honest as I feel I can be.

The healing power of friendship...

As I said in yesterday's post about Mainstay Housing, "Everyone needs a home. A job. A friend." 

In the avalanche of personal email this blog seems to generate, you have no idea how many people have told me that when they become troubled, emotionally and mentally, when they begin to act out or when they've confessed to their friends that they "have a mental illness" – these so-called friends ostracize them. They disappear. Drop off the face of the earth. 

I am always astounded by these disclosures. Stunned. I believe them. Why would anyone fabricate something like that? But, they are profoundly disturbing to me.

Social isolation is not a symptom of a mental health problem. It is the problem, I believe.

No one deserves to be shut away. Ever. Under any circumstances. When a friend deserts you, nothing is more hurtful. So what happens? You shut off. Shut yourself away. Shut people out. Retreat. How can you heal when you can't be reached? Or if you are afraid to reach out? Or you won't allow anyone to reach you?

Years ago. Years and years and years ago, I remember learning that in order to heal emotionally, to heal when you're in difficulty, mentally, you don't need a psychiatrist. A good friend. A good listener. A wise friend with an empathetic heart can be just as helpful.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon visiting, laughing, sharing and simply adoring a longtime friend I consider my wise woman – Helen Lucas. Artist. Mentor. Inspiration. 

Helen's giclee print above of her glorious sunflowers, titled Trio III, hangs in my home where it infuses me with warmth, energy and joy every time I see it, and that's most of the time. 

Helen is one of the most spirited, gifted, brilliant, honest, and endlessly generous women I've have ever known. She is surrounded with extraordinary people. Her life and her personal journey is the subject of an award winning documentary film that inspires and provokes my women's studies students at Seneca College every time I screen it for them. Her most recent collection of spiritual Dove paintings are being installed permanently in a community centre in Kigali, Rwanda for 20,000 widows and orphans later this month.

Her paintings are in private and public collections all over the world and she has been honoured numerous times. In 1991, she received an honourary doctorate from York University and most recently she was named Ontario's Senior Citizen of the Year 2009. 

But when we're together, all her honours, distinctions, accomplishments and accolades seem to slip into the background, and we're just two women who simply love each other and can listen to each other with our ears, eyes and souls. Without a shred of pretense, Helen shares her wisdom because she knows me so well and I trust her with my life.

This is healing.

Then, last evening, I celebrated my goddaughter Alexandra's 21st birthday with her mother, my bosom buddy and longtime girlfriend Peggy Weir and her family and friends. And yes, Peggy is every inch my "girlfriend" in the truest sense of the word. She has always be "there" for me. It goes both ways.

My wise woman in the afternoon and my closest girlfriend at night.

This was healing, too.  

I met Helen and Peggy at about the same time – around 1978. Both because I interviewed them for features I was writing for The Toronto Sun. These interviews developed into treasured friendships. I don't see Helen and Peggy every day or even speak with them every day. But the moment we connect, it's like yesterday. We pick up where we left off.

Our relationships, in their own ways, are as healing and therapeutic as any relationship I've ever had with a psychiatrist or psychotherapist. Even more so, perhaps, but in an entirely different way. As human beings, our hearts are not like balloons. They will not burst with too much love or because they're filled with too many people we adore. And I guess that's part of it, too. 

Being willing to give ourselves over to our friendships. To be open to loving people which means being brave and courageous and vulnerable to potential pain or even rejection, makes us exquisitely human. 

And isn't it worth it? I would rather risk friendship and bringing people into my life than put up walls to keep them out. I love being open. Wide open. 

Perhaps, that's what Mainstay Housing is really all about, too. Perhaps the power and the success of Mainstay is that the buildings that give people who've fallen into homelessness a place to call home, an apartment with a door that can be locked to ensure their safety and protection, also allows these people to begin to build friendships. To open themselves up. To be brave and courage. To take risks and yes, even to love one another in friendship.

Ironic, isn't it.

This morning, a letter arrived in my mailbox from a longtime resident of a Mainstay apartment. 

She wrote, "We need to get the word out that there are housing providers that want more than just your money... they want you to recover, spread your wings, and fly. Mainstay wants you to thrive and enjoy your life and realize that you are more than your "label" or illness. You are a person first at Mainstay... and I have been given many opportunities to learn, teach, explore, volunteer, and thrive."

She went on to talk about her friends and fellow tenants at Mainstay and ended by saying that Mainstay "builds more than you could ever know. Community, self-esteem, self-reliance, confidence, support and lives. Which for some, may be the first time that they've ever felt 'at home'."

This has been a wondrous week for me. My only holiday this summer. Next week, it's back to school and a new year begins. New students to meet. It's very exciting.

Thank you for sharing with me, for being open with me, for trusting in me and for being with me.

I send you all my love.

Speak soon.

"The good life"...

I've been thinking about what it must be like to live on the street or beneath a bridge or in a shelter. About being homeless. 

I've written about people who have fallen into homelessness before. But not often enough. I guess because deep down I know that I could fall into homelessness. Anyone can. It frightens me, so I stay away. 

When I was reporting for The Toronto Sun, I spent several Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings at The Scott Mission where about 400 men and women and young people lined up for a warm Turkey dinner at 10:30 in the morning. I listened to their stories, those who would talk to me. Stories of lay-offs, family break-up, isolation, tough times, the dangers of the street. Often, mental illness, too.

But then I could walk away, go back to my office, write my story and go home. 

So you're probably wondering why I'm sleepless over homelessness now. As with many subjects I discuss here, it's pure chance.

Last week, I had a cup of coffee with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time and she mentioned that she's passionate about Mainstay Housing and active on its board. I had never heard of Mainstay and started asking questions about Ontario's largest provider of safe, secure, affordable supportive housing for people with serious mental health challenges. 

That was the beginning.

My friend suggested I call Brigitte Witkowski, executive director of Mainstay. I did. On Tuesday, I went down to meet with her. She's a petite firecracker bristling with energy, spark and excitement about Mainstay and the communities it's created and the people now "living the good life" because they have a safe place to call home. It's affordable. Rent geared to income. "If they have no income, we help them get an income – either through Ontario Works or ODSP (the Ontario Disability Support Program)," Brigitte said.

The first thing she did was show me, with obvious pride, a series of framed black and white photographs hanging on the walls of the Mainstay offices. Each picture showed a neat, nicely landscaped, pristine house or low-rise apartment building in Toronto. Mainstay has 867 apartment units housing and supporting about 1,000 people in single or family-sized units in about 40 locations across the city.

Within five minutes, as we walked to a charming new Queen Street West cafe, I discovered that Mainstay isn't about buildings. 

It's about people. With a staff of 13 supportive housing workers and a housing access coordinator – all highly skilled social workers trained to engage tenants in "narrative story-telling to determine what a person needs to access and maintain their housing. We ask tenants what will work for them." 

"Our ideal tenant is poor and living with a mental illness," Brigitte explained. "If they have an addiction or a physical disability or a developmental delay or they're socially isolated, this is a bonus for us."

The scope and potential for recovery becomes even greater in such cases.

In short, being members of a community and breaking out of patterns of social isolation so they can "create the good life for themselves" as Brigitte calls it.

She used a phrase I've heard before through The Clubhouse movement – Everyone needs "A home. A job. A friend." 

This is the first step toward mental health recovery.

For Brigitte, Mainstay is a hub, a cluster of bright possibilities for people. It's all about adult education, responsible living and community development, where tenants can reach their goals for a good life.

Then, something clicked. About seven or eight years ago, at a Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH)  Courage to Come Back Awards dinner, I heard a woman, an award recipient, speak about her life. 

Abandoned as a child and forced fend for herself, she had fallen into homelessness. For years, she was forced to fight the elements, barely surviving in Toronto's parks and streets. For years. Unable to read or write, she couldn't hold a job though she tried repeatedly. Eventually, struggling with a mental illness and a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the only homes she ever knew were either boarding houses or more often hospital rooms in psychiatric wards.

"If homeless people don't have mental illness when they start, they certainly do once they get out on the street," she said in her acceptance speech and I've never forgotten it. 

In preparing for my meeting with Brigitte, I came across Linda Chamberlain's story on the Mainstay website. Though we have never met, indirectly, our paths were crossing again.

Through one person, a caring psychiatrist who reached out to her and helped her connect with Toronto's Clubhouse called Progress Place, Linda was able to find a home in one of Mainstay's apartments where she still lives, has two part-time jobs, served on its Board of Directors for six years and helped start The Dream Team.

Mainstay changed her life.

That's how a person becomes a Mainstay tenant – through any of 23 different agencies in Toronto, including CAMH and the Canadian Mental Health Association.

What intrigued me most about Mainstay is its rights-based approach. The vacancy rate is low.

During Mainstay's last fiscal year – April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009, there were a total of 5 evictions and 199 evictions prevented. "When one of our tenants is evicted, we track where they go and reconnect them back to mental health agencies.

"That means that 204 notices of eviction were given to our tenants based on failing to meet tenant responsibilities defined in the Residential Tenancies Act," Brigitte said. "Most of the failures were paying rent. We also give notices of evictions for interfering with your neighbours' rights or the landlord's rights. We believe we house citizens and adults, not patients. We believe in our tenants' abilities to solve problems. Things happen and people with support and knowledge can find solutions that work.

"We're ruthless about missed rent payments. We live by the Landlord Tenancy Act and serve our tenants with eviction notices immediately," Brigitte said. 

At Mainstay, a notice of eviction is an opportunity for follow-up and eviction-prevention, she explained. "We don't want our tenants to feel hopeless and helpless. We know how desperately they want their apartments, so we show them how to connect with their responsibilities and solve problems. We show them there are multiple opportunities and it's often a revelation to them that they can solve their problems, like setting up payment plans if they've missed a rent payment.

Many Mainstay tenants (not "patients" or "clients") may never have rented an apartment before and through respectful, dignified support they learn the responsibilities of tenancy and begin to build self-confidence and self-esteem through their "membership" in their building's communities. 

"I believe in adult education, knowledge transfer and community development," Brigitte said. "Everyone deserves access to the good life and if a rent payment is missed, we ask if this is a problem and then come up with a solution. Each tenant signs a housing contract. It's all about choices – and people."

Opportunities. Learning. Recognizing the enormous potential, skills and productivity of our tenants, she says. "We're taking it to the next level and supporting our tenants on their individual journeys of recovery and in their relationship with the mental health world and the social service world."

There are gardening clubs at 21 buildings engaging 112 members. Each club sets its own membership rules and decides what they grow – vegetables, flowers or both. Some share among themselves or with everyone in the buildings. Each club decides. In four buildings, there are food security groups involving 93 members who work with the Daily Food Bank. Some now volunteer there. As well, they volunteer at the Learning and Resource Centre in the Mainstay headquarters.

We ran out of time. I had to leave. But I did, knowing that this won't be my first experience with Mainstay. I'll be back. I want to learn more. 

I rushed off to my 3:30 p.m. appointment with Dr. Bob. He had never heard of Mainstay. It's too easy to dismiss homelessness. To close our doors on it. To lock it away. Not me. Not anymore. Mainstay's approach to giving people who have been homeless access to the good life is too good to stay so overlooked, so unsung.

I'll be back.