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.