Category: stigma

Maurice Bernard and Me

Grateful I was that a person paid for my costly ticket to a mental health non-profit’s Gala. Maurice Bernard was the keynote speaker and Courageous Voice award recipient. He is the actor who plays Sonny on General Hospital TV show.

Bernard told attendees that he had 3 mental breakdowns. That you recover by taking medication and using therapy. The actor hosts the podcast State of Mind. He wrote the best-selling book Nothing General About It.

Bernard said to us that fans would write letters to him telling him they not longer felt like they were alone in what they were going through. Being vocal about taking medication and achieving the pinnacle of success in show business gives peers ammunition for shooting for recovery.

The fact is not everyone who takes pills is going to become famous on TV. Even if you and I didn’t scale the heights in a career or otherwise in society this doesn’t matter. We are gorgeous simply because we exist.

Hearing Maurice Bernard talk about his recovery in honest detail inspired and encouraged me to keep championing recovery for everyone in whatever guise recovery comes to a person as.

Bake cakes. Sing in a choir. Ride a skateboard. It’s all good.

Our diagnosis does not define us. Nor should our job title salary or relationship status with a partner.

Traditional markers of success aren’t what counts. What matters more is that we can find one thing each day to do that gives us joy. That we can be happy and healthy living our lives.

And healthy doesn’t mean a fit illness-free 105 pound body. Healthy is having what I call “functional fitness”:

Being able to cope with whatever stress comes into our lives. The ability to function in the world. Reaching out for help when you can’t go it alone anymore.

It takes a Village. It really does.

The mental health world is the real world. The world outside I don’t know what that world is where people hate judge and stereotype each other.

In that world an ex-Marine ends the lift of a person like Jordan Neely who is not a subdued White person.

We cannot be afraid to live our lives going about our recovery. We’re doing the best we can with what we were given.

Bernard ended his acceptance speech with this: “Your suffering makes you interesting.”

Oh how society would be different if it were fashionable to be living in recovery.

Jordan Neely and Us

Daniel Penny walked out of the courtroom in New York City free of all charges after the chokehold he used against Jordan Neely ended the life of the homeless man.

Neely had schizophrenia and was famous as a Michael Jackson impersonator. Using Google Images and typing in Jordan Neely it’s uncanny the resemblance in the photos.

The New York Post newspaper on the front page claimed Penny shouldn’t have been arrested to begin with. That the case shouldn’t have been sent to trial.

You kill someone you should be arrested and receive a trial by jury to determine whether you’re guilty or innocent. There’s no subjectively NOT arresting whoever you don’t want to arrest as you think it’s OK that they killed someone.

Conservative Christians and others contributed a million dollars to the ex-Marine’s legal fund. Penny was hailed as a Hero for intervening when Neely was psychotic and threatened riders on a NYC subway train a year ago.

It begs the question as to Fear: what people going about their ordinary lives every day should fear and what we should not fear.

The prosecuting attorney’s argument was weak if you ask me. After the verdict of innocent protests took over in the streets in New York City.

The fact is in light of a person like Neely with untreated mental illness acting out in public there’s guilt by association. You and I might not be violent. Yet once we tell another person we have a mental illness they’ll think we could “snap” at any minute in the future.

We who are recovered and doing well must advocate for individuals like Jordan Neely who fall through the cracks. Those cracks are as wide as the Grand Canyon and easy to fall into.

The Mad crowd are against using medication at any time. They think psychiatry is a pseudo-science. In this realm the anti-psychiatry folk have pulled sway in society.

The choice to take medication is the right of the individual. For those of us who’ve discontinued our medication and had a severe relapse I would say the only choice is to pop those pills again.

How would Open Dialogue or any other “hold their hand in a quiet room to cure them” philosophy help a person like Neely who was severely ill to begin with.

Right. Right.

I will always talk about how taking pills allowed me to recover. It’s not my place to tell others what they should do or not do. My story is out there in my first book Left of the Dial. Pretty convincing that narrative was on its own.

Jordan Neely didn’t deserve to die. We don’t need people like Daniel Penny taking matters into their own hand like a vigilante.

My uncle was a Marine who served on Iwo Jima in World War II. He would be horrified that a former Marine took the life of a person with a mental illness.

Coming up I’m going to give a lighter look at how to fight stigma courtesy of a holiday event I attended.

Booting Stigma

In the December/January issue of Harper’s Bazaar fashion magazine was a feature showcasing jewelry. The models wearing the necklaces were not the traditional runway girls you see in photos. This was interesting to me as their identities were not given.

So beautiful it is to me to think that you can live and love [and laugh!] in society without making your gender the focus of everything you do. For others they want you to know.

The fashion spread got me thinking about how best to fight stigma. Likely there’s no one best method to do this. It depends on the person’s comfort level. In a coming blog entry I’ll talk about my stance in more detail.

In fact I’m no fan of working in a cubicle in a corporate office after my failed first insurance field career. My friend Robin had schizophrenia and rose up to be the CEO of a corporation. So I could not tell you flat-out to rule out an office job.

What I can say is that I think it’s still dice-y to disclose when you work in a business setting. This is up to you. It’s your choice wherever you work.

The link to the fashion article in Harper’s Bazaar is this: I dream of a day when disclosure isn’t necessary as there’s no stigma anymore. Yet even should this happen we can talk of intent versus impact: in the atmosphere where educating others has become unnecessary:

Hiding in a closet could cause emotional distress even when there’s an outside openness to talking about mental illness. Should the day come when there’s mainstream acceptance everywhere then disclosure would likely be okay.

It’s a question of do as I say not as I do as my recovery is an open secret. Since I’m no fan of tossing out details of your diagnosis to coworkers like candy corn on Halloween.

The issue is that stigma still exists in the hearts and minds of people interacting with a person who has a mental illness.

I and you and others might be on the lucky end of the luck of the draw: recovered and doing well. On the opposite side there are those of us who have “disclosed” simply because we’re acting bizarre out in public.

In the coming blog entry I will talk in detail about this as the fact is it’s a stereotype at work when it comes to stigma.

We each of us should be having compassion for others who are not doing well. We’re not in opposing camps.

In this holiday season gratitude is call for. And empathy along with eggnog.