Jersey Girl wrote:Tackle the mental illness issue? I think we begin with open discussion and public education. Go from there.
While I was cleaning (still not done) I decided that I wanted to build on this more. Probably to the point where people grow weary of it, but that's not really important.
I think that one of the first steps is for us to talk about it. Talk with friends, talk with therapists, and tell our stories. The only reason that I don't provide details about my own experience directly on the board is because it's not just my story to tell but I can tell parts of it from my own perspective.
I'll speak in terms of "we" right now, but the statements represent individual circumstances as well. I want to show how things can progress to impacting people outside of ourselves as we tell our stories. I'm hoping to show the rippling effect that can move out beyond our own experience and go on to impact and educate others in positive ways.
Everyone in the family was immediately impacted and wounded. I reached outside of the family
within minutes of the first phone calls we received and starting lining up support people right away. We talked about it to others in real time as events were unfolding, we talked about it during the aftermath to others, we talked to therapists, we talked to grief counselors, we talked to one therapist who specialized in treating PTSD patients, and we talked to each other. We talked to people who couldn't handle hearing it and those that could. I talked to myself and talked, swore and yelled at God. That's how I discharged my own feelings when they started to bottle up and overwhelm.
Finding a good therapist or team of therapists is kind of hit and miss. We eventually found the team (not all were professionals) for us and our circumstance and continued talking and telling our stories as events unfolded. Everyone contributed something to our experience and in many cases, we ended up contributing to theirs.
One family member found a therapist whose advice benefitted each of us. One family member found a therapist that prescribed an important and effective medication. I sometimes share both of those tools with folks on MDB or behind the scenes here. One family member joined a survivor therapy group at a local university. Telling their story gave others hope and gave psych students an opportunity to ask someone with a complicated story to serve as a focal point of their study. There were a whole group of psych students involved. Telling the story helped them earn degrees so that they could go on to help others with added insight and understanding from a very complicated in real life case.
I think that the inclination during and after an event such as suicide, our tendency is to hide it. Starting from the first phone call, we never chose to hide it from anyone.
Today when we tell our stories, we are often sharing facts and details in the hopes of encouraging others that
their stories can also be told without judgement on our part. We use social media to support the stories of others. We openly comment via social media and in face to face conversations about the importance of seeking assistance. We openly talk about PTSD. We openly and strongly support the comments of others who have opened up to the effect that they are struggling. We lend our voices in support of suicide prevention and publicize and contribute money to suicide prevention fund raising events.
What I am trying to say here is that there needs to be a public on-going dialogue conducted with empathy and fact sharing that never goes away, that encourages others to tell their stories, and that there is hope for their circumstance and hope for a future. And that much of this begins with us as individuals willing to tell our own stories.
Our sharing has impacted friends, family members, therapists, psych students, nurses, doctors, colleagues, all sorts of people many of whom have gone on to address the needs of others )even in their own families) with a bit more insight. People learn from us and we learn from them. It's a circle, where the benefit also contributes to our own healing.
No one survives suicide unbroken. I think and believe that you can either try to let those broken places scar over or you can allow yourself to remain vulnerable enough to put yourself out there and that it encourages others to put out there what they might have been trying to avoid or hide and seek help.
I think that solutions begin with the individual who survives an experience, tells it to others, finds as much healing as they can, and then goes on to continue to tell their ongoing story because it is in the telling of the stories where we supply information that may resonate with another person and will help move them towards the help that they need. And, I think that our collective voices and votes will help to improve access to mental health resources that we need.
I'm an Idealist. I think the individual begins the making of widespread change.
