This continues my last entry on how I have fortunately ridded myself of most of the feelings of shame and stigmas relating to my living with mental illness.  Writing and getting a book published about my mental health journey helped.  But there’s more.

Learning that other individuals whom I respect greatly have lived with mental illness has also helped.  A couple of examples:

Winston Churchill:  When I was in the seventh grade, a classmate initiated a petition to name the new junior high being completed in our growing Salt Lake suburb “Churchill.”  The school district had chosen the mundane name “Foothill.”  It was early 1965 and the great former British prime minister had just died.  My classmate was successful and I began attending Churchill Junior High School when it opened the next school year!  The name didn't mean much to me back then.  But now this great leader who was so key in leading the Allied forces to victory in World War II is a great inspiration to me.  If he could do great things living with the “black dog” as he referred to his bouts with depression, then perhaps I too could be worthwhile to the world in a smaller way.  He spoke of his depression to others.  So could I.

The book by Nassir Ghaemi, “A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness” tells of how Churchill and other leaders have been great because of their mental illness, not in spite of it.  His descriptions of Lincoln and Gandhi have also been especially inspiring to me.

Fred Frese:  I heard this great psychologist speak at a NAMI state conference a few years ago.  He became a director of the same Ohio state mental hospital that he had been committed to after being declared “insane” with schizophrenia years before.  He said that he views his disease as not a “deficit” but a “difference” from those who are “chronically normal.”  He said that among other good traits, people with schizophrenia usually have greater abilities in theoretical rationality.

Listening to Dr. Frese helped me feel like my experiences with depression and anxiety did not make me defective but rather imbued with special talents that I could use to help others.

The examples of these great men have genuinely helped me to eschew stigmas and feel good about myself and develop a zeal to be an effective and impactful mental health advocate.

At a weekly NAMI peer-to-peer class I teach for those of us who live with mental illness, a fortyish woman showed-up for the first time.  She was articulate and quite expressive of her feelings in a positive way.  She told us how scared and reluctant she was to come to a “mental illness support group.”  Her therapist had encouraged her.  She said that a family member had offered to accompany her for support, but she told him, "Absolutely not!" as that would make the situation even more embarrassing to her!

Incidents such as this remind me of just how strong the stigma about mental illness is in the minds of many people—both for those of us who know we have it and those who think they don’t.

We all know that the mental illness stigma is a big obstacle to people getting treatment.  I've been thinking recently about how it also prevents many from being more effective mental health advocates.  If we fear that others are going to judge us negatively if we reveal that we live with mental illness, then we are not going to tell anyone but our closest family members and friends with whom we feel very secure—if we share it with anyone at all.

These thoughts led me to ponder on how I got over most all of the stigma and shame I felt within myself when I was younger.  And I felt it a lot!  This was likely reinforced by my well-meaning parents who were trying to protect me when I was release from a psychiatric ward when I was eighteen after experiencing major depressive episodes.  Perhaps they were protecting themselves a bit also.  When visitors came to our home, my parents asked me to go to another room and remain unseen so the visitors would assume I was still away at college.  My parents didn’t want questions.  They told me not to go to church—really surprising as we never missed on Sundays even when away on vacations.

These feelings carried through my writing a book manuscript about my mental health journey.  I wrote it with all names of people and places changed.  I had dreamed up a scheme of getting it published incognito.  When I finally got the courage to share my writing with a few family members and close friends, a couple of them strongly encouraged me to put my own name of it.  They said I had an extremely important message to share, but that without a real author behind the book, it wouldn't sell.  I acquiesced.  I like to think that my altruistic side won-out over my stigma insecurities.  The feedback I've received about how it has helped individuals has been gratifying, and I've become a full-fledged, full-time mental health advocate.  This has been most satisfying for me.  But first before I could this, I had to overcome the feelings of stigma and shame within myself.

He was “a man of many words…”  (Mosiah 27:8)  That was the meant-to-be-unbecoming description of a wicked, idolatrous character who through flattery successfully led many people to lifestyles of unhappiness and misery. 

This phrase about the number of words spoken jumped out at me during scripture reading in my personal devotional this morning.  I recalled vaguely someone once saying about my paternal grandfather after whom I was named, Marvin Owen Ashton, that he was “a man of few words.”  That was meant to be a compliment.  He left a legacy of seeking out and helping widows and other individuals struggling in their circumstances.  It was said of him that he not only checked their kitchen tables for food, but also the coal bins and the home mortgage balances—and he helped whenever he could.  It’s quite a heritage to try to live up to.  He died before I was born so unfortunately, I never met him.

A search for a quotation from him yielded this from an online biography:  “Measure your words and let them be few.”  This explanation followed:  “Good listeners are at a premium.  Don’t talk just to be talking or get attention.  When you speak, have something to say.”

My life’s experiences tell me that usually there is too much talking and not enough listening in the world.  The number of words spoken and written on talk radio, the internet, and other mediums seems to increase exponentially every year.   Yet, when I lead support groups and teach mental health classes to those who suffer from mental illness, a key cause for their hurt and suffering seems to be not enough listening—especially by family members and others who should have cared.  Too much talking and not enough listening.

As I was trained and worked for many years as an accountant, I like to quantify things in order to understand them better.  Perhaps someday I’ll do a study on the number of words spoken and try to compare it to the positive impact a person has on others.  I’d expect to find an inverse relationship.

Taking part in a suicide awareness and prevention walk with about 70 Native Americans and a few of us “Anglos” was truly a thrill for me.   Today adults and youth from the Piute and Navajo tribes convened in a park in Washington, Utah.  We didn’t just walk.  There were short speeches and Native American ceremonies, singing, and dancing.  Normally, three hours at a Saturday event would be too long because of everything else I want to get done.  But I savored every moment of this experience.  A local newspaper reported on the event.[i]

One Native American framed the gathering best.  He told how the Mountain States are described as the “suicide belt” of the U.S. and Indian reservations have even higher suicide rates.  So sobering.

Glenn Rogers, a council member of the nearby Shivwits Band of the Piute tribe, told how his 27 year old son died from suicide.  He showed the Shivwits Band staff that was about his height.  It contained eagle feathers, buffalo fur, and buckskin.  Among the other significances, he said the staff is a memorial to his son.

Benn Pikyavit of the Kaibab Band of Paiutes said he also lost a son to suicide.  I recall that a couple of years ago Ben was Becky and my tour guide through Pipe Springs National Monument that lies within his reservation.  At today’s event, he performed a smudge ceremonial prayer.  He burned sage in a small pot, walked slowing around the large circle of participants, and fanned each individual with smoke using eagle feathers.

We walked about a half-mile to a Washington City recreation center meeting room where there were more speeches along with Native American dances and songs.  I was especially impressed with the spoken words of Nicolette Parrish of the Dixie State University Native American Student Association.  She told how American Indians must constantly defend their identity.  They must balance two worlds.  They have to know George Washington and Crazy Horse, Abraham Lincoln and Geronimo.  They must speak English and their native language. 

Nicolette was good enough to share with me a copy of her prepared remarks so I can quote some of what she said:

 “Today we came together to celebrate our lives and to give thanks to our ancestors who have fought and thank those who continue to fight for us today.  As American Indians resiliency is in our blood.  As a people, we have dealt with genocide, social ostracism, and cultural persecution for 500 years.  That means for 500 years there have been multiple attempts to eradicate our culture, our tradition, and our spirits.  But as a people, we have prevailed.  We have been fighting for 500 years.  Why stop now?

“As I mentioned earlier, we live in a tough society.  Everything around us is set up for us to fail.  Coming from an underperforming reservation school, single parent household, an alcoholic father, I had the odds stacked and they were not in my favor.  I grew up on the Navajo Reservation.  I had never spent more than three weeks off the reservation.  When I stared college I had to adapt to a whole new world.  I would like to say my transition was an easy one, but it wasn’t.  The friends I had did not understand who I was or my values—therefore I could not make meaningful connections.

“So whenever you go out and do something, remember you have all of Indian country and 500 years of history behind you.  And when you feel alone, please remember my brothers and sisters, I promise to fight for you and fight with you.  So let’s tighten our moccasins and continue to fight together.  We got this!”    

I feel overwhelmingly impressed with Nicolette’s sense of self, healthy pride in her great heritage, and her determination to help her people.

With great leaders like Nicolette and others that I met today, surely the Paiute and Navajo people will succeed—including reducing their rates of suicides.  I expect they will set the example for the rest including us “Anglos.”

[i] http://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/local/2014/11/23/native-americans-others-take-part-spirit-walk-raise-awareness-suicide/19435803/

Greetings from Sequoia National Park!  I write with my laptop upon a restaurant table in the park.  The nice server just presented me with a cup of hot chocolate topped with whip cream.  I awoke extra early leaving family asleep in tents in the nearby campground.  Not far away towers the largest living tree on earth named General Sherman.  It grows to a height of 275 feet—almost the length of a football field.  Its 1,400 tons of wood could build 120 medium-sized homes.

It started from a tiny seed a fraction of an inch long.  A park ranger told me these sequoia trees get so big because they produce a special chemical called tannic acid in their bark and wood that thwarts insects, decomposition, and fire.  So they can grow over 3,000 years and just keep getting bigger and bigger.

My mind likes think of metaphors about things that impress me.  So here I go.  To be good mental health advocates, we must have some tannic acid within ourselves.  Sometimes we get heat—even fire—in our efforts to overcome the stigmas and misinformation about mental illnesses.  We are fighting centuries of ugly stereotypes.  Unenlightened individuals sometimes make ignorant comments that can offend and discourage.  We must be strong enough to not allow these occasions to get us down.  Instead, we must use them to generate even more determination and enthusiasm within ourselves to carry on with courage.

I’ve wondered what it is exactly that that brings about this tannic acid in effective mental health advocates.  I’ve concluded that it’s primarily two things: 1) They have healthy self-esteem so they are not easily offended, and 2) They really care about helping other individuals—perhaps to assist them avoid the pain they’ve experienced with mental illness or that they witnesses in loved ones.

There is a man in my town who has a lot of this tannic acid.  His name is Lynn Bjorkman.  We work together in our local NAMI affiliate and on other mental health projects in our community.  He first got involved because he wanted to learn how he personally could aid family members who suffer from mental illness.  A couple of years ago he was recognized as the volunteer of the year for NAMI Utah—a well-deserved distinction.  Over the last year and a half, he’s created and grown a new organization I our county called “Reach 4 Hope” that fights suicide.  He’s built a network of leaders from several mental health related organizations in our community to coordinate suicide prevention efforts.  Schools, hospitals, mental health professionals, and other mental health promotion organizations are represented.  He’s spearheaded the training of hundreds of individuals in QPR on suicide prevention techniques.  His energy, organizational skills, creativity, and tenacity are remarkable.  Many lives have been positively impacted. 

I once helped Lynn with a booth on suicide prevention at a health fair in our city.  When I arrived he told me a woman noticed our signage and approach him to comment on it.  She said, “Our family doesn’t have those problems.  We are good people of faith.”  Lynn smiled as he related her words to me, being a bit taken back at her unenlightened boldness.  But I also saw in his eyes—and later through his actions—how he was even more determined to help educate people. 

I believe there have been suicide attempts in Lynn’s family.  Lynn and his wife are very good, religious people.  I’ve noted that they try to live their religion every day.   Nevertheless, Lynn could have found the woman’s words to be very hurtful.  But he didn’t appear to be offended at all…because Lynn has that tannic acid.  With it, he has grown into an effective and enormously impactful mental health advocate—as giant in this realm as the great sequoias are among trees.

Do you ever get so totally caught-up in reading about a topic at various sites on the Internet that you have trouble completely reading the article you were reading in the first place that launched you into your tangent?  That happened to me this morning. 

I was going through my personal morning devotional routine to prepare for the day.  I was reading an article by a religious leader about self-awareness.  He said “Being able to see ourselves clearly is essential to our spiritual growth and well-being.”[i]  I found his words uplifting and inspiring—and it led to some healthy self-reflection.  It was the footnote references that really got me going, however.

I learned a new big word: Anosognosia.  It’s a medical term that Webster’s Dictionary defines as “An inability or refusal to recognize a defect or disorder that is clinically evident.”[ii]  It’s applied to people with brain damage from strokes that don’t recognize that part of their body is paralyzed.  I once saw this condition in a relative.  When she drew a picture of herself, she included only the right side of her body.  Where the left side should be was left blank.  The word is also applied to those with schizophrenia and bipolar disorders who don’t recognize their condition. More than 50 percent of those who suffer from schizophrenia are unaware of it.   I once had a neighbor with schizophrenia who was unaware.  She would say nonsense things to me.  This embarrassed her other family members until they recognized that I understood what was going on and I was sympathetic to their situation.  Since I’ve observed anosognosia multiple times I think I understand what it means—though I can’t pronounce the word!

Here’s another new thing I learned: the Dunning-Kruger effect.  It’s “A cognitive bias manifesting in unskilled individuals suffering from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their own ability much higher than is accurate.”[iii]  Studies show that college students often significantly overrate themselves in their abilities in logical reasoning, grammar, and humor.  Test scores put some in the 12th percentile, but they rated themselves to be in the 62nd.

I think this topic of self-awareness is very interesting to me because it has had such a big part of my recovery from chronic clinical depression and generalized anxiety.  For years I had anosognosia combined with the Dunning-Kruger effect about my condition.  Until I was able to see my condition more clearly, I was unable to address my problems to get to recovery.

A good friend of mine who, like me, has undergone years of counseling defines psychotherapy as “Getting to know one’s self.”  I agree with this definition.  Therapy helped me get confidence to look at myself and get comfortable with who I am.  My therapists helped me overcome the negative self-talk recordings that constantly ran through my brain that I was a nothing—that I was worthless.  I’ve grown to like and feel comfortable about who I am.  My book entitled “Rising Above Fog” describes this journey.  The “fog” is a lack of self-awareness.

I teach classes and lead support groups for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.  In my community, there are two weekly classes taught: one for those living with mental illness and one for their family members.  There are always many more individuals who attend the classes for family members than those who have mental illness.  I believe part of the reason for this disparity is that often family members more readily recognize the symptoms of mental illness than do those afflicted.

So this morning’s journey into tangential topics on the article I set out to read was poignant and enlightening—and gratefully I’m aware that I took a detour—at least this time.

 
[i] Uchtdorf, Dieter F., Lord, Is It I?; https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/10/lord-is-it-i?lang=eng
[ii] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anosognosia
[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

 

“Accountants are not boring people; they just get excited about boring things.”  That’s a joke about accountants like me that I’ve heard.  And since most jokes do seem to have some element of truth, it’s not surprising that I got excited about something that perhaps no one else did in the audience of a thousand at a big substance abuse and mental health conference last week here in my home town of St. George, Utah.  I was likely the only CPA in the group made up primarily of mental health therapists and program administrators.

Keynote speakers Richard Catalano and David Hawkins were summarizing their well-respected program “Communities That Care.”   They spoke of the net present value of cash flows.  My CPA ears perked up and I suddenly became even more interested in their topic.

I used net present value formulas extensively earlier in my career when I performed financial analysis for cellular telephone companies—something I really enjoyed.  The formulas were used to determine the projected profitability of different kinds of customers so that the marketing folks would focus on luring in profitable customers.  Cell phone companies make an investment in new customers through subsidizing expensive cell phones and smart phones, the payment of commissions, and other marketing costs.  They hope to recover these costs and make a profit through monthly service charges.  So all the cash flows in and out are totaled taking into account how long the customer will remain.  The analyses also factored in the time value of money: a dollar today is worth more than a dollar later so future cash flows are discounted to today’s value.  The result is the projected net present value of all the cash flows related to a customer.

But back to what the conference speakers had to say.  They described how using net present value calculations they’ve proved that certain prevention programs are a good investment for communities.  The programs realize big savings from the prevention of crime and other societal costs in future years that are many times greater that the costs.  The net present value of savings was about four dollars for every dollar of costs.  What a great return!

I find their work really, really cool!  Psychology meets financial analysis!

It is so wonderful that the application of science by bright, enlightened men and women has brought to us better techniques for the prevention of drug abuse and mental illness.  This application has also brought us better treatments.  And this has all happened in my lifetime—a short period in all of human history. 

A few months ago I visited the museum at the Utah State Hospital in Provo.  Among the artifacts were handcuffs, cell bars, and a wooden cage with a bed pan.  As I understand it, these were thought to be the best tools available into the 1950s—the decade in which I was born.

But now psychologists—perhaps with the aid of accountants—use net present value techniques to help optimize program effectiveness.   Other scientists develop treatment techniques that include psychotherapy and psychotropic medications.  What a blessing!  We would be wise to take advantage ourselves and to encourage others to take advantage of these advancements when mental illness strikes.   Such an approach will make accountants that live with depression like me to feel really good!

The world was without any deep emotion and bland without color.  Earlier this week, Becky and I along with my sister and brother-in-law watched the movie The Giver at a local theater.   We went at Becky’s urging as she enjoyed the book of the same name by Lois Lowry.

The plot is about a community that is controlled by “the elders” who seek a utopian society by eliminating all pain and strife through making everyone live and function the same.  The movie is in black and white.  The elders select an eleven-year-old Jonas, the main character, to be the one “receiver of memory.”   His role is to receive vicariously recollections of the pre-utopian experiences as passed down from the character of “the giver.”  The elders perpetuated the role so they have the benefit of this wisdom to make their collective decisions.  When Jonas is vicariously allowed to experience true happiness and love, the movie screen explodes into color, kind of like what Dorothy’s experience in The Wizard of Oz.  Jonas then yearns that he and his family and friends escape the controlled “utopian” environment so they can experience this higher level of living—even if it means occasionally feeling pain, too.

The movie was extremely moving to me.  It portrayed something similar to my before-and-after of being treated for chronic depression, generalized anxiety, and low self-esteem.  My life before was like being on a constant treadmill—just trying to keep up with everyone’s expectations and completing all of life’s many tasks.  There was little joy in it all.  In my early years, I was taught to suppress my feelings.  This along with a series of painful experiences led me to bury deep inside most of what I felt.  It was “emotional constipation” as one of my cousins describes it.  Further, I was always trying to prove to everyone—and myself—that I was worthwhile through trying to be constantly productive.  But through psychotherapy, I learned to get in touch with myself, to feel, and to enjoy life.

In my book, Rising Above Fog, I liken this before-and-after experience to hiking up a mountain out of the fog of a winter temperature inversion in the Salt Lake Valley.   The Giver movie portrayal may be even better.

Last week I was speaking with a friend about what each of us would consider the best times of his life.  He had just taken his son to college in another state and he reminisced about how great his own college years were.  I told him that my life has become so much richer and more fulfilling since I got help that I’d probably never consider times before as highlights.

A few months ago, one of my sisters shared with me a newspaper article reporting on a speech on mental health at Brigham Young University[i].  Rebecca H. Jackson stated that those suffering from depression and other forms of mental illness often feel disconnect from God and His love.  While I’ve always had the practice of praying and have felt connected to God, I struggled to feel His love until after getting help.  Now I often “feast upon his love[ii],” as one of my favorite scriptures suggests.

This higher way of living and feeling is very delicious to me.  Having lived a large part of my life without it, I often ponder on the contrast the two.  And like Jonas, I seek to help others who are stuck in a less attractive place because of mental illness.  As I was for years, they may be unaware of their situation.  My mantra is to help others live more satisfying and fruitful lives by getting help for mental health challenges.

I join Jonas, the fictional character in the movie The Giver, in exclaiming that moving beyond a world without emotion and color is truly exhilarating!



[i] Deseret News, May 3, 2014, B1


[ii] Jacob 3:2