My adventures "across the pond" ... (part two)

This is the continuation of my post on Tuesday. It's about what happened as a result of my early morning curiosity getting the better of me and my overwhelming desire to broaden my perspectives on mental health and wellness... beyond North America.

You'll recall that I've been feeling claustrophobic. Itching to go beyond North America and join up with other non-profit agencies in Britain challenging mental health discrimination and "Working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

Here, there are too many barriers to change, too many old stereotypes, too many unfounded fears. There is still too much discrimination and prejudice. It's time to start dismantling them in a way that's healthy and productive. To look beyond our own borders to other countries and learn from them. We can be a global community.

To be honest with you, I'm not convinced that turning mental illnesses and mental health issues into brain diseases is the way to go and that's the direction we're going here.  

You will remember, on Sunday morning, I awoke after a wonderful night's sleep. I typed "mental health recovery" in the BBC news search engine and found myself on BBC's Mental Health page.

I ended up on Skype, clad only in my pink nightie, talking to the renown social and business entrepreneur Robert Ashton. Let us say that when he appeared on my 24-inch iMac screen in full-colour, live and staring back at me, barely awake, and barely covered-up, my face blushed to matched the colour of my pink night gown. 

Here's Part two...

Robert Ashton and I had a good chat, despite my embarrassment. He smiled a lot, but he's going to help me to join Rethink, a 30-year-old charity dedicated to "working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

He's also linking me up to other British mental health charities that for decades have been fighting discrimination and prejudice, fear and ignorance while helping the one in four of us who live with mental health issues every day.

I discovered that Rethink – one of the largest of these charities – only allows Brits to join. So, I'm hoping Robert will help me join, as a Canadian. That will give me and you, too, a totally different perspective on Mental Health and Recovery. Robert has important connections with the British mental health community because he's involved in "spreading the word" – one of his social entrepreneurial passions. He also lives with depression.

Robert's definition of "entrepreneurship" is very enlightened:

"I'm a business writer, speaker, broadcaster with a passion for all that enterprise can deliver," he wrote to me in a Facebook exchange. "You don't have to start a business to be entrepreneurial, just get it into your head that you are in control of your life and stop letting others lead you where you don't want to go!"

One of his connections is British mental health activist Dawn Willis, Vice Chair, Regional Committee, at Rethink, Mental Health Services.

Robert arranged for us to meet on Facebook and we've already become "friends" – we have 13 mutual Facebook "friends", I discovered. The international community of activists and advocates is remarkably small. I'm hoping Dawn will help me and perhaps, I can help her. We can help each other. Communicate and collaborate. Share our ideas and learn from each other.

Synergy. 1 + 1 = 3. You know. Two heads are better than one. 

We have to do something, here, on this side of the Atlantic. Talking Therapies are big in Britain. There's more to mental health there than PILLS. I'm getting very bored and increasingly upset with the neuroscientific approach that's overpowering psychiatry here in North America. 

ENOUGH! We've got to make some changes. How to go about that process? We have to voice our concerns. And if not us, who will? We have to raise our voices. Collectively. We have to start agitating for changes. Healthy changes that include all approaches to mental health, including group therapy and peer support. 

Like a thoughtful and careful and prolonged period of diagnosis and a 60-minute hour psychotherapy session instead of 15 minutes – The McDonaldization of Psychiatry, according to my friend, Tufts University author, poet and clinical psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ron Pies. He's also Editor-in-Chief of Psychiatric Times, the world's largest online psychiatric journal with more than 41,000 readers worldwide.

Pies is sounding a call for the survival of his profession. In Great Britain, there's a strong post-psychiatry movement afoot with psychiatrist Philip Thomas at the helm. I attended several sessions with Dr. Thomas last June at a Toronto International Alternatives to Recovery Conference.

Even my York University "friend" Julie Gazzola is excited about this prospect of my linking up with the British Rethink movement and other British organizations committed to change through education and communication.

Here's her reaction via Facebook – "Good for you, that's great! I worked as a social worker on a children-with-disabilities team. I loved my time in England. And yes, talking therapies are much bigger there. It's an interesting place."

So, I await word of my pending membership in Rethink. In the meantime, let's move forward. Let's branch out and expand our community here at Coming Out Crazy. Let's see what's happening 'across the pond'. Let's go global. Isn't that what blogging is all about? Social Media for Social Change to benefit the greater good of society. Community.

We can learn so much from each other. It's about time. Don't you think? Let me know! Comment, please! 

(In all honesty, I cannot answer all your personal emails, though I'm thrilled to receive them. I wish I could. That's what the comments on this blog are for. If you wish to remain anonymous – and I understand why – create a special email address, or a different username or identity. But, please, comment and keep on commenting.)

I want to hear your voices! Your ideas and perspectives. How else can we become a strong community and a force for change? That's what must happen. That's my vision for this blog! 

Change through the exchange of information, ideas, suggestions, experiences. All are valid when it comes to healthy recovery and healing. It's called "talking therapy"!

Thanks so much, in advance, for your support.

Speak soon!

sln

My adventures "across the pond" ... (part one)

This past Sunday morning, after a really good, long, healing night's sleep, I awoke, walked into my office and logged onto BBC News. I've just started to subscribe. 

I've been feeling a bit claustrophobic lately. All this neuroscience for mental health is beginning to get to me. I'm itching for new perspectives. Fresh ideas. The North American biomedical approach to mental health is beginning to seem oppressive to me.

Out of curiosity, I decided to explore, so I typed "mental health recovery" into the BBC search engine, where I easily found a link to its bright purple and white Mental Health page with a big picture of a dozen or so people of diverse ages and races, smiling, plus dozens the following (unsponsored) section and links:

1. Emotional health 
2. Disorders and conditions 
3. Coping Techniques 
4. Supporting and caring 
5. Therapy and therapists
6. Understanding drugs 
7. See also (This page is filled with all kinds Useful Contacts.)

(I tried this with CBC News and one unsponsored story appeared. Dated May 23, 2008. The headline? More education needed about schizophrenia in teens years: experts.) 

I clicked on every link and my mouth was watering. I knew Britain took a different, more enlightened stand on mental health, but I had no idea it was so dramatically different than what's going on here in North America. Neurosciences and drugs therapies are practically the only option available to people seeking help. No wonder 75% of Canadians who could be helped by some form of therapeutic treatment never seek it. That daunting statistic used to be 66% about 10 years ago. Now it's up 11%. Something is drastically wrong here.

But what really caught my eye on the main BBC.news Mental Health page, right at the top, was this main message. You couldn't miss it:

Maintaining a balance. 

One in four of us will have some sort of mental health problem in our life. This means there are millions of people in Britain who are either encountering problems themselves or know someone else who is experiencing them.

Here's what jumped out at me. The first five words. "One in four of us..." 

Not one in four people. One in four of us.

Now that's inclusive. I love inclusive – it's one of my guiding principles. This message was so humane and inviting. 

I started exploring this front page, clicking on all the links and eventually found myself at Rethink. This national British charity, founded 30 years ago, to give a voice to people affected with severe mental illnesses, now has more than 8,300 members and helps more than 48,000 people every year through a variety of services, support groups and the dissemination of helpful information. 

This enlightened initiative has this mission:

"Working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

(Rethink is only one of several large and longstanding Mental Health charities that are "challenging discrimination" and helping and celebrating people with mental health issues. Among them, Time to Change –  Let's End Mental Health Discrimination and Mind for Better Mental Health., which gives out an annual award for Journalist of the Year.

"For excellence in reporting mental health issues in the media... high quality, informed reporting on these issues goes a long way to increase public understanding about mental health. People with mental health problems consistently tell us that negative media coverage only adds to the challenges they face. We hope that this award paves the way to breaking down any remaning taboos around mental health reporting."

I was drooling. Wow, do we have a lot to learn from the Brits.

May I remind you that Canada is still the only G8 country without a national mental health strategy. That, finally, is in the works, thanks to the work of the Canadian Mental Health Commission.

But it's very slow. I'm impatient. My concern is that with several senior psychiatrists there, wedded to the traditional biomedical approaches to mental illnesses, there's an innate bias. I could be wrong.

Back to Rethink, which I first heard about from a British gent named Robert Ashton. He is a veritable "one-man industry" with his own blog, Robert Ashton Unlimited and he's all over YouTube. He accurately describes himself on his website as an established author, broadcaster, experienced social and business entrepreneur, and an engaging speaker. Somewhat unconventional. 

He lives with depression.

Let me scroll back for a moment...

Back on February 18, 2008, I received an email from a man named Robert Ashton. I didn't know him. Never heard of him. It was a few months before I had started blogging here for Healthzone.ca at The Toronto Star. I was teaching part-time at Seneca College. And I was dabbling in blogging and had just launched my own personal blog. Perhaps four people had found it. One of them was Robert Ashton. He had emailed me and said that his Google-Alert on "anti-stigma" had picked me up along with my Groucho Marx quote. That's how we met – through Groucho. 

I wasn't spending much time blogging back then – mostly developing and teaching my then-new Leadership in Society course. I knew how to do it – but hadn't a clue how to teach it. Also, I was far less cyber-savvy. I'm no great shakes, now, but I'm learning fast. So, I confess, I didn't do much homework on Robert. 

However, all that changed on Sunday morning, sitting here in my nightie, my blogging uniform, fresh out of bed at 6:15 a.m. That's when my Dandie Dinmont Terriers wake me up. After taking them out and feeding them, I decided to check out BBC news, re-discovered Rethink and tried to join.

But I couldn't. Only Brits allowed. 

I knew that mental health recovery, rarely discussed here in the North America mainstream media, is big in England. I could see, judging by the BBC Mental Health page, that Talking Therapies are big there, too. Much bigger than Drug Therapies. You know, I'm a strong advocate for "talking therapies" to mental health recovery and very concerned about the pervasive emphasis on drug treatments here in North America.

So, since I have Robert's Skype address, I decided to ring him up and ask him if he could help me join Rethink. 

I never, for a moment expected him to answer. Sometimes I forget about time zones. Timing is Everything, I know, but timing has never been my strong suit!

Anyway... rrrriiiinggggg... and there Robert was – live and in full colour! All dressed and respectable, in his charming brick-walled office, wearing his pale blue Rethink T-Shirt. It was about noon in England. It was 6:15 a.m. here. Oh, dear. He could see me, too, in my pink nightie, my hair unbrushed, barely awake. I forget that I have a camera on my iMac and I don't Skype very often, either.

Oops! I was caught, unawares. Oh, well. What the hell....

But I've gone on too long, so this is going to be a two-instalment post. I know, I'm leaving you here, hanging. I promise on Thursday, I'll continue my story of my conversation with Robert Ashton and my adventures "across the pond..." in Part Two. 

Thanks for your patience. Stay tuned.

Here's to us!

Last week – and I can't believe this – I completely forgot the first anniversary of healthzone.ca and Coming Out Crazy.

One year ago, we launched on April 9. It slipped my mind.

It was a crazy day. The day before Good Friday. The night of the second Passover Seder. A short week. I was buried under my Seneca students' assignments while my editor, Brandie Weikle, was doing what she normally does in five days – in four. 

Complete madness. 

So, in honour of this auspicious anniversary – a few reflections on the past year.

It all started with an email from Brandie asking if I'd consider writing a mental health blog for a new Toronto Star website. Why not? We met. Clicked. The name was a no-brainer, and we were off to the races.

Three weeks later, Coming Out Crazy launched on healthzone.ca, one of three new websites at The Toronto Star. The other two are parentcentral.ca and yourhome.ca. Brandie was running two of them; yourhome.ca is run by newlywed home-hunter Jennifer Wilson. 

A year later, all three websites are going strong. Brandie has her own blog about her adventures as a working mom with two very young, active, curious and amusingly mischievous boys.

As for me, blogging was virgin territory. I rarely, if ever, read blogs, didn't Facebook and had never heard of Twitter. What was the New Media? What was the Social Media? 

I hadn't a clue. What a difference a year makes.

Last April, we were not yet live, either. There were no comments. No links. No interactivity. Communication was limited to email. I responded, but there was no sense of spontaneity. At the same time, I was researching blogging – roaming the blogosphere, getting my feet wet commenting on and exploring millions of other mental health blogs all over the world. What an education. 

Then, in June, we went live and hit the big time. I began to experience first hand that a blog is really a virtual "community" – world's apart from "print" journalism. I had the privilege of "meeting" and engaging with you. 

And you're fascinating. Often brilliant. Insightful. Knowledgeable. Poetic. Humourous. Sometimes hurting. Angry. Confused. Always interesting. And you bravely opened up here. Through our sharing, we started coming together – our community was forming.

We were beginning to understand each other. Feel for each other. And feel connected. Perhaps healing each other, too. 

Meanwhile, I was linking to other fascinating sources, writers and thinkers, therapists and people with "lived experience of the mental health care system" – raising more issues, more questions, more concerns. In sharing your stories, you were teaching, encouraging, motivating and inspiring us. Making this a safe and "mad" little haven, and proud of it. The Coming Out Crazy cranny!

On my 60th birthday, Coming Out Crazy won an amazing award from psychologist John Grohol at PsychCentral. Several months ago, I started posting COC on Facebook and meeting a whole new world of people. I'm even Twittering, a little. Making more connections.

This community has come together because of you! 

And my editor, Brandie. 

She wanted a mental health blogger on healthzone.ca and chose me. She's taught me more about "the new media" and "the social media" than anyone else. She is the ideal editor, with a light touch and a discerning eye. Always happy to encourage me and brainstorm ideas. She has great instincts. 

Every writer needs an editor, and Brandie is the best. 

Along with you. I want to thank you. Your comments brighten my day and challenge me. You prove what I've always sensed – that we have so much hope to share. Hope is contagious. Peer support is a powerful healing force for recovery when we listen, learn from each other – and feel free to be ourselves.

Together, we've created this enlightening and caring community for the world to see. 

So, Happy Anniversary! Here's to us!

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. 

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.

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!

Obamamania

No. That's not my diagnosis. It's not even an illness. 

But today, it perfectly describes the collective American psyche, the Canadian psyche and the psyche of many other countries around the world.

Despite all the problems he's facing – and they are daunting – today, when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th and first African American president of the United States, it feels like the whole world is madly celebrating this pivotal moment in history.

And wishing him, his wife, Michelle, and their two darling daughters, Malia and Sasha, well!

This is a perfectly appropriate madness. Far-reaching. Hopeful. Fine. 

About 4 million people have descended upon Washington to watch, to be there, to feel it. They'll wave their flags as tears trickle down their cheeks because this is no ordinary inauguration.

It's a first.

Nothing's insane or demented about this particular brand of "mania." 

Here, in Canada, we sensed a touch of it back in 1968 when a hip and sexy bachelor named Pierre Eliot Trudeau entered the public arena as leader of the Liberal party. Remember Trudeaumania? But it didn't carry the historical magnitude of what's happening in Washington right now. Nor should it. These are different times. 

These were different men. 

Trudeau was a refreshing change for us. 

Obama is dramatic change for the world in his style of leadership grounded in the values of community building.

There's no comparison.

The tidal wave of elation that's sweeping the nation, the continent, even the world, is nothing short of miraculous. It's global. Trudeau, I'm afraid, didn't have that reach, although he was spectacular in his day.

Just so you'll know... this all-out exuberance, joy, emotional buoyancy, euphoria, jubilation, sheer happiness, gaiety, wonder, awe, spirit of hope and promise, passion, intensity, and the feverish excitement that television newscasts have showcased since Sunday afternoon at the beginning of the star-studded concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington certainly looks like a form of mania.

If you were to ratchet it up a shade higher, you would sense the way some people "diagnosed with bipolar disorder" could feel when they're high, or manic. 

More accurately, it seems more hypomanic than manic. 

I suspect many Americans would qualify for that "diagnosis" right now. It's an exuberance that bubbles with creativity. You don't need or want much sleep. You have endless stores of energy. You're the Energizer Bunny. 

Hypomania feels glorious. As long as it lasts and it rarely lasts forever. Political commentators are predicting that this "honeymoon" as they call it with the new American President Barack Obama is going to last longer that usual.

Let's hope so. Hope being the operative word.

For a minute, let's not discuss his political campaign, his brilliance, his vision, his extraordinary oratory or the racial symbolism of his inauguration. 

Let's talk about the man. At heart, Obama has always rooted himself in community. For him, community in the monastic sense as well as the urban and political sense. He emanates community as brotherhood and sisterhood – family. It's in his blood and bones. Obama is all about community – caring for people. He feels for people. Perhaps that's one reason why so many feel so connected to him and are flocking to Washington today, as they never have for any other inauguration. 

He began his career as a community organizer in Chicago's inner city, even though, as a brilliant Harvard Law School graduate, he could have written his own ticket. He didn't. 

You know what Barack Obama did yesterday? On Martin Luther King Jr. Day? The day before his inauguration? 

This is the national U.S. holiday commemorating another remarkable leader and chief spokesman of the non-violent Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. A winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, who dared to "have a dream" – a dream that's coming true this week in Washington. Another brilliant orator. Another visionary, who was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee where he was to lead a protest march.

In his memory, yesterday, what did Obama do? He celebrated by calling for a national day of community service. In a release issued yesterday morning, Obama, on the eve of his inauguration, said, "Dr. Martin Luther King's was a life lived in loving service to others." 

So Obama spent the day doing just that – community service because he believes in his heart that when people come together to work for a cause they believe in, "amazing things can happen." 

Yesterday, after a surprise visit to Walter Reed Military Hospital to meet with as many veterans as time would allow, he and his wife Michelle spent the rest of the day working on the renovation of Sasha Bruce House, a 30-year-old Washington homeless shelter for youth. Obama picked up a paintbrush and started painting the walls of one of the rooms where the residents live – a glorious shade of blue.

If that isn't cause for celebration, what is?

And last night? Obama celebrated his own imminent inauguration by dining with Colin Powell, his vice-president Joe Biden, and his political rival, John McCain.

Think about the mentality of this young man who's taking on the leadership of the world's most powerful nation in one of its most dire moments since WWII. Maybe I'm naive, but I think his spirit is worthy of comment.

If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you know I'm a cockeyed optimist. I believe in positive energy. I try not to dwell on negativity. I don't hold grudges. I try to resolve issues head on.

Many mental health issues are worsened by anger and rage. Deep-seated, unconscious, seething beneath the surface. That's why talk therapy is so powerful, so necessary, as well as or even instead of medication.

Here's "No Drama" Obama. Cool. Calm. Thoughtful. Pensive. Known as an active listener. A conciliator. Doing what he prescribes, talking the talk and then walking the walk. And honouring his political adversary. Uniting people, building bridges, strengthening bonds. Politically savvy and public-spirited, but also breathtakingly humanitarian. Generous. Unselfish. Magnanimous. Kind. 

This is a great day for humanity. Not only because the first African-American is being inaugurated and little children – children of all ages – who've been psychically or physically scarred by racial inequality can now quite rightfully dream of being "the President of the United States," but because a man who has all his roots in community is entering The White House and turning it into The White Home.

Community. Bringing people together.

At last night's "Kid's Inaugural: We Are The Future" concert attended by Michelle Obama and her two daughters, Malia and Sasha, actress and singer Queen Latifah said just that: "Any one of you can grow up to be the president."

Community is the key word here. Michelle urged the audience to pitch in to help people who are needy, homeless and elderly, adding, "We can all work to make this great nation one filled with faith, hope and prosperity for us all."

We're all part of this community. No matter where we live. No matter what colour our skin. No matter what physical or mental illness or disorder or disability we may have. 

Obama is inclusive, ethical and empowering. He relates to people – heart to heart and head to head. We're all invited to sit at his table. We can all listen and learn from him.

That's why the world is celebrating his inauguration. He's the right man for this moment. The only man. He embodies hope and change, the essence of leadership.

Yet he needs us as much as we need him. We all need to stand with him, follow his lead, and say, "Yes we can!"

Change.

Obama manifests community spirit for the world. 

Don't you agree?

An Unorthodox Proposition

With the New Year barely one week old and the snowflakes flying outside, I bet you can barely remember the gaiety and the relaxation of the holidays. Distant memories. Now, we face the long, hard winter with but one short holiday in Ontario to break the monotony and cold. Family Day on February 16.

I want to ask to you to consider a rather unorthodox proposition. Chances are you read "Coming Out Crazy" because you have personal experience with mental and emotional issues. Chances are, this is a place where, I hope, you feel comfortable and welcomed.

Perhaps this is the only place where you feel that. Perhaps your mental health issue is your secret.

What I propose – and I do not want you to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable or threatened – is simply to tell someone about it. Confide. Share. Open up. Speak out.

Here's why. Mental illnesses, disorders, problems, concerns, whatever euphemism you wish to use, would be far less problematic if more people simply accepted them as part of life. Like any other physical illness. The only difference is that with mental health issues, we may behave a little or sometimes a lot differently.

What if they were demythologized?

What if we could prick the bubble of secrecy that surrounds mental health issues and that creates such enormous problems? Mainly, people are so frightened they won't even seek help. And help doesn't necessarily mean taking medication or seeing a psychiatrist. Help can mean many things. But that help demands talking about how you're feeling.

So, back to my unorthodox proposition. Let's say you are getting help. Perhaps you have a diagnosis. Maybe you don't. You're getting help with some of your problems of living anyway. You may talk to your family doctor. You may see a psychiatrist. You may take medication. You may belong to a peer support group. You may be attending a WRAP group or a Pathways to Recovery group. You may be involved in art therapy or music therapy or any kind of endeavour that you find healing.

Tell someone about it. Someone who doesn't know. Someone who appears to be ignorant about these issues or problems. 

I'm not, for an instant, suggesting you tell your boss at work, unless you have a very solid and secure working relationship. But I am suggesting that perhaps you know someone who makes demeaning or offensive remarks about people perceived to have mental or emotional health issues, clearly out of ignorance. Instead of swallowing this codswallop, stand up and say something. 

This person may be a member of your family. Or a friend. Or the spouse of a friend. And every time he or she says something, you cringe or break into a sweat. You want to disappear. Why not say to this person, "You know, every time you make a comment like that, it upsets me because it's not really accurate. It's not the truth. And I know, because you're talking about me."

Or, in the course of conversation, you could mention that you're dealing with depression or anxiety or whatever issue you have. 

This is why I'm asking you to make this rather unorthodox admission. It will help to educate people. It will make mental and emotional health issues more familiar and commonplace. If everyone told one person, soon, it would appear that these issues are as ordinary as any physical health issue – which they are. But no one talks about it.

Perhaps people wouldn't hesitate it seek some sort of help, without fear or hesitation. 

This is something everyone can do. Soon, words like "crazy" and "nuts" and "mental" won't have the bite they now do. Soon, perhaps, people will demand that an emotional or mental health issue be rightly considered part of our everyday life experience instead of exotic, odd and even, in some cases, scary.

It's one small, but unorthodox thing you can do to begin an open dialogue about mental health and wellness that is long overdue in our society, where too many people suffer in silence.

Here's another perspective. Just something to think about, while considering my unorthodox proposition.  

An unorthodox point of view.

Not all psychiatrists agree that mental illnesses have a basis in medicine. The most notorious, Thomas Szasz, in an article The Myth of Mental Illness, published in the journal American Psychologist in 1959, followed the following year by the publication of his book of the same name, argues that "psychiatry is conventionally defined as a medical speciality concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. I submit that this definition, which is still widely accepted, places psychiatry in the company with alchemy and astrology and commits it to the category of pseudoscience. Why so? The reason is plain. There is no such thing as 'mental illness.'"

In a short online biography of Szasz, I should add, who is a medical doctor and a psychoanalyst with a long and remarkable career of practice in many aspects of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, he is credited with starting the "anti-psychiatry" movement. He believes that "both our uses of the term 'mental illness' and the activities of the psychiatric profession are often scientifically untenable and morally and socially indefensible." He considers mental illnesses as opposed to organic illnesses to be "problems of living."

Roy Porter, in his book Madness, A Brief History, writes that for Szasz, a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Statue University of New York in Syracuse, "mental illness is not a disease, whose nature is being elucidated by science; it is rather a myth, fabricated by psychiatrists for reasons of professional advancement and endorsed by society because it sanctions easy solutions for problem people."

Mental Illness is a social construction created by doctors, a metaphor, Szasz has said. "Mental illness is a myth whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter ill of moral conflicts in human relations. In asserting that there is no such thing as mental illness, I do not deny that people have problems coping with life and each other... Classifying thoughts, feelings, and behaviours as diseases is a logical and semantic error like classifying the whale as a fish." 

So for 2009, I throw out these ideas to you. I am not suggesting that if you are under a doctor's care and on medication, you flush those pills down the toilet and stop seeing your therapist. Just that you begin to believe that whatever your "problems of living," you're also OK! You have every reason to feel a sense of dignity and pride in the human being that you are.

How do you react to this perspective? Do you agree? Disagree? What do you think? Let me know with your comments.

And in the meantime, feel free to question your doctors. Feel free to be skeptical. Feel free to trust in yourself.

After all, you are all you've got. You! 

And speak out!

About the words "mad" and "madness"

Recently, an anonymous person disagreed with an earlier post on my use of the words "mad" and "madness" and the fact that I do not like psychiatric diagnoses or labeling. And I don't.

Disorder: what a scary word that has become these days. Anyway, more on that later.

These diagnoses haven't done me any good, especially because they were schizophrenia, which was a misdiagnosis that stuck for 13 years, from the time I was 12 to 25. Then, manic depression — even though I have never been clinically depressed. Then bipolar disorder — though I am no in any way "bi," but "uni."

Diagnoses can and often are wrong. They were with me and they did me a great deal of harm.

Anonymous describes him/herself has having diagnoses of anxiety, social phobia, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and he/she is "currently" on medication and doing very well. I'm glad to hear it.

A few years ago, researching another story, I remember reading in a comprehensive Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health May 2007 report titled Mental Health Literacy in Canada: Phase One Report, Mental Health Literacy Project that according to its findings the words and conditions "anxiety" and "depression" are considered among the general populous to be within the realm of "normal" – a loaded word with many meanings.

This is a question of the history of language and usage. Etymology. Everyone experiences normal levels of "anxiety" and "depression." Those words are part of our lexicon. Some people cannot imagine what "clinical" anxiety or depression look or feel like.

Not true for the words, "schizophrenia" or "mania." These are not "everyday" words. "Maniac is an everyday word, but it's not pretty." It's "mania" as a noun. That's one reason why psychiatrists changed the term "manic depression," to bipolar, thinking it would "de-stigmatize" the implications of the term. It didn't work.

To quote Anonymous: "I have called myself 'mad' and 'mental' on plenty of occasions, to break the tension or make myself feel better, but I would never want to define myself by my mental illness. I've always been anxious, but my anxiety got much worse in my first year of university; I've partially recovered though. I don't consider my 'madness' to be a part of me; I consider that there is a difference between my natural tendencies towards worrying and shyness, and my anxiety disorder. I don't understand why some people are so opposed to diagnoses. I found that getting an official diagnosis of social phobia actually helped me, because then I realized that I wasn't just 'stupid' or 'socially retarded' as people used to call me, I actually did have a problem, one that had been untreated for 15 years."

It's all a question of degree. And your inner vision. How you "see" and "perceive" yourself. We often conceptualize our feelings, verbally. That's why language is so powerful. Words define our feelings outwardly, to others, and inwardly, in our self conscious, to ourselves. That's why I've always said, "It's not seeing is believing, but believing is seeing."

I think, however, that the words "mad" and "madness" are a whole lot better, worlds better, and more accurate, than "mental" – especially when it's used as a noun.

This is delicate stuff and I don't want to force you into a dictionary, especially as dictionaries are not bibles, but social documents that reflect the times in which they were written.

Words also resonate with one's personal experience.

Let me give you an example, and maybe you'll see what I mean.

On November 12, in the print edition of The Globe and Mail, John Doyle, my all time favourite TV writer, was writing about political humour.

Let me quote you the first two paragraphs of his story:

"'Now the real story begins.' That's the slogan Fox News is using to promote its coverage of the Barack Obama presidency. It's going to be "fair and balanced," of course. "No spin," that kind of stuff," Doyle wrote.

"People, fear not. There are four glorious years of U.S. all-news coverage and TV comedy shows coming. It is going to be mental."

I stopped reading and saw red.

He was not writing about mental illnesses. He was writing about something entirely different, completely unrelated. No remote connection to mental health issues. Nothing. Nada.

He could have said, "It's going to be crazy."

He could have said, "It's going to be nuts."

He could have said, "It's going to be madness."

I wouldn't have blinked an eye.

But he said, "It's going to be mental."

I wanted to write him a letter to tell him how offensive his use of the word "mental" was for me, but I got busy and it slipped my mind. I was so upset I didn't finish reading his column, though. And I haven't read him all week.

I am very comfortable with who I am. I like myself with all my idiosyncrasies, my faults and foibles, my quirks and crazinesses. But, when I was a kid, I was called "mental," among other things because I never dreamed that going to a psychiatrist was any big deal, any different than going to an allergist. No one in my family ever gave me any sense whatsoever that going to a psychiatrist was different than going to any other kind of medical specialist.

Wow, what an innocent, was I.

But so much is language.

Once, years ago, I remember interviewing a UCLA English professor who explained a 16th Century condition in women known as "Lovesickness," which sounded a lot like me. Their mania was caused by falling in love with men who were in no way available to them. Men who were married to other women. People sometimes treated these mentally vulnerable, volatile women with compassion. More often, people treated them as witches, stuffing their pockets with stones and tossing them in ponds.

They were considered mad. They were probably delusional. They had lost touch with reality.

Today, they may be considered to have a psychiatric or psychological condition of sorts.

But when the word "mental" is used as a noun, as far as I'm concerned, it's ethically wrong because it colours the whole person or whole situation as having some form of psychiatric condition. No one and no situation are totally "mentally ill." You are not born with a mental illness. Or conceived with a mental illness.

We're all "mental." We all think. No one and no situation is monolithic. I am many things other than my so-called mental illness. A woman, a writer, a teacher, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a stepmother, a dog owner. You want labels? I've got lots of 'em.

But one I will not accept as me, is "mental." You will never hear me say, "I'm mental."

I'm mad! Sure. It's a word that diffuses the whole notion of having a mental illness in our society. A society, I'm might add, that is still ignorant, fearful, prejudiced and discriminates against people diagnosed with mental illnesses or perceived to behave in ways that are a little too different.

It's so subjective.

Like psychiatric diagnoses.

But as a noun, the word "mental" turns my stomach.

I've often said here before, "we all can be crazy, sometimes... we're human, after all." We think. We have minds. We have brains and souls and experiences upon which we base our thinking.

This harkens back to the dark ages of my youth when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and you never saw stories about "psychiatry" and "mental illnesses" in the newspapers, or any of the media. It was a dark age for the medical specialty of psychiatry.

Mental illnesses were completely misunderstood.

When the word "mental" is used as a noun, it is really insidious. It's a dirty word, a slur. "You're mental." It hurts.

We're all mental beings and as an adjective, "mental" is fine.

But not as a noun. It stinks of centuries of abuse, misuse, ignorance, stereotyping, brutality, prejudice, torture and isolation.

We've come a long way.

We have a long way to go.

Thanks, Anonymous, for sharing your story so honestly and openly. Not all psychiatry is bad and I am in no way anti-psychiatry. I go to a wonderful psychiatrist and I take medication for my mania twice a day. It helps me and I'm glad it helps you, too.

But, I am not bipolar. I have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, from which I am in recovery.

I am many people. We all are. As for mad? Sure, I'm mad. Also capable of being angry. That's me and anyone who knows me, knows it.

And it's a fine madness!

Making Friends With Your Mental Illness

We had a lively, intimate gathering at Branson Hospital last evening.

My husband Marty and I were greeted by the amazing Theresa Claxton, the coordinator of the Central LHIN Consumer/Survivor Network, who planned this event. She had placed dozens of bright blue “Coming Out Crazy – an evening with Sandy Naiman” signs along the circuitous halls of Branson to ensure no one got lost.

Tanya Shute, the electrifying executive director of Richmond Hill’s Krasman Centre for Community Mental Health was buzzing about, too. Tanya never stops. We’ve become friends because I’m putting the finishing touches on a Field Note for The Walrus magazine about one of her programs.

The Branson Hospital auditorium seats about 250, but it was more like a private party. About 30 people chose to forgo the third televised presidential debate to attend. Quite the sacrifice, I thought.

A few minutes before we began, I asked everyone to move close to the front. I wasn’t planning a formal talk, but more of a “Phil Donahue.” I moseyed around, chatting “up close and personal,” introducing myself, shaking hands, thanking people for coming and trying desperately to remember their names.

The first person to approach me was Sonia – a familiar name to you. Sonia responds often, eloquently, and with exquisite insight, sharing snapshots of her life here at Coming Out Crazy. For me, sitting here in the quiet isolation of my little study as I write these posts, Sonia has become a cherished confidante. We share some of our innermost secrets without ever hearing each other’s voices or looking into each other’s eyes. If a reader’s comment is in the least disagreeable, she always bolsters me with her calm, comforting, encouraging wisdom.

Sonia, meeting you last night was thrilling for me. Thank you for trudging up from downtown Toronto to attend this gathering and for giving me a copy of your book. I will cherish it and can't wait to read it.

Another reader, Brandon, attended. He was one of the first to respond to Coming Out Crazy, long before we were interactive. He emailed me from Europe while travelling and studying. What a kick to meet you now that you’re home, safe, continuing your studies here.

After Tanya’s gracious introduction, the evening began, with a question from me.

“What would you like to hear?”

One lovely gentleman asked, “How can I become friends with my mental illness?”

What a great question! It set the tone for the evening. I think we should all become friends with our so-called mental illnesses. Then we become friends with ourselves. And we can begin our recovery.

My knee jerk reaction was to say, forget the mental illness and start loving yourself exactly as you are. After all, who says you have a mental illness? It turns out he has an obsessive-compulsive nature. He refers to it as a disorder. That’s who he is.

Believing is seeing, I suggested. It’s what you believe that you see. Perhaps you can change your belief system around this “disorder.” See yourself differently

He said he has overcome about 80% of this "disorder," but it’s that 20% that’s still nagging at him. He wants to be rid of it all. Why can’t he accept that’s who is? Now? He has a fraction of the obsessive-compulsiveness that he used to have – 20% of what it used to be. Why can’t he become friends with himself, accept himself and that 20%? Why cling to the idea that something’s wrong with him, when so much is right. When 80% is right? Nobody’s perfect.

He was a darling. Lovely. And at 80%, he’s an “A,” I told him.

Another woman wanted to know how to better treat patients on an in-treatment unit.

“Start thinking of them as people, not patients. We’re all people first. Human beings.”

Oh, how I hate those diagnostic labels. Trying to fit individuals – unique – into the a set of categories. The fit is never right.

Another lively young woman bravely confessed she’s finally learned to accept herself exactly as she is, despite the expectations of her family, who have always seen her as “different,” as “mentally ill,” and never accepted her just the way she is. It was thrilling to hear her celebrate her natural “exuberance.”

We’re all unique. Special. Different.

There were many questions. The discussion was lively. Finally, after 90 minutes, we adjourned for coffee, fresh fruit, cheese and pastries. Everyone continued talking, sharing with each other, mixing and having a great time.

What was billed as a public forum turned into a celebration of all our uniquenesses.

We were all Coming Out Crazy together. Free to be exactly who we are.