My Mental Health Journey: Stand Up Against Stigma!

By Jacquese Armstrong
I Educate the Next Generation by Disclosing My “Mental Illness”

I’ve lived most of my life literally walking through the valley of the shadow of death. And yet, hope and resilience follow me as if I know the way out. But the one thing I have no hope of changing or getting over is being considered a throw-away person in this society.

These are the words I choose to start the introductory essay in a memoir of essays I call Informed Naivete. One could think that my assertion is a bit skewed or harsh, but these are my thoughts associated with the aftermath of the dreaded “s” word.

Often, I’ve thought that if everyone who has, or cared about someone with, a mental illness stood up against stigma, we would outnumber the rest. Where would the stigma be then? And stigma is real. It can not only make your social life uncomfortable, but it can greatly affect your ability to earn a decent living.

So, why do I choose to disclose my mental health challenges? Why would I publish articles under my birth name, publish a poetry chapbook on my mental health challenges and welcome the chance to speak on mental health challenges and stigma and why am I so adamant about it, knowing what I know?

Although I am a psychiatric survivor of 35 years, I have only disclosed since 2006 when I agreed to be interviewed for a documentary on mental illness and minorities. Now, I have many projects that would be all but impossible to do without disclosing. Of course, it was a journey.

Before 2006, my “mental illness” was my most well-guarded secret. I lost a lot of friends in those first couple of years in the 80s and there were whispers and stares, but then I moved more than once. Because I was still in and out of the hospital, I developed lies and kept them going. 

The lies were used to patch the holes in my resume, explain the eight years it took me to finish college, the many colleges I attended, the disappearances, and the work absences. The world definitely doesn’t make it easy for you to resume the race and the charade becomes a job within itself. It also led to undue stress and anxiety. It fueled my paranoid symptoms, which at the time, were not under control at all. I was always in a state of flux, wondering who knew.

I came to realize that I was stigmatizing myself by living in fear and shame, playing into the stigma game. I asked myself, “How can I call for an end to stigma and discrimination if I am ashamed myself.”

It’s almost like making the decision to go natural with your hair. When I did, it wasn’t popular and it’s still not aesthetically pleasing to some employers. I looked at myself in the mirror one day as I blow-dried my hair and curled it with a curling iron and asked, “What’s wrong with my hair?” This was the day of a huge self-embrace. The 2006 documentary I participated in was another. Looking back, that decision was the beginning of my making sense of this mess.

Self-disclosure provided me with the freedom to come out of the shadows into the sun and be the person my Maker intended me to be; who I am. It was a tremendous boost to my self-esteem.
Years ago, at the age of 34, my grandparents had a discussion with me about my illness. They said, “Jacquese, this is God’s Will for you…you have to accept it.” Then, I thought they were “crazier” than I was, but now I see the wisdom in what they told me.
First of all, you can’t heal from something you don’t accept and you must try to heal. You can fight against it, but in the end, you’re fighting against yourself.

Second, most people want to find purpose and meaning in life. Why am I here? Why am I suffering? For me, if I have to suffer (and I have), then let me help someone else to rejoin society without missing too many steps. Let me enable them to embrace the opportunities I lost because of my challenges.

I started Project Onset, still in its infancy, which is a part of the African-American Outreach program of NAMI-NJ (National Alliance on Mental Illness-New Jersey). Through testimonies from a person with mental illness whose onset happened in college (me), a parent of a college-age student and a mental health professional, young adults and their families receive an education on how mental illness can occur in those crucial years.

In the end, I just want to be able to make some sense of my pain and helping people is the best way I know to do that. So, I educate, motivate and inspire on a grassroots level because I know it’s needed. It is a purpose-filled life, driven by the desire to help eradicate stigma for the next generation of survivors. That is why I make the decision to disclose my psychiatric illness. It helps me to take control of my destiny. I know that only I can control whether I feel ashamed or not. Stigma feeds on shame.

So, imagine if everyone with, or who cared about someone with, a “mental illness” stood. Then, we could all just get back to the business of living. 

Ward Stories: Poetry from the Mental Health community

Ward StoriesOrganized by Dan Frey, Editor in ChiefSix poets are featured in this Winter 2017 edition of Ward Stories: Carolyn Sanzenbacher, Debra Faes-Dudden, Carl Blumenthal, Susin Postovoit, and Matty Guerrero. Some poems are seasonally-themed, some upbeat, some clever, some positive, some raw, but all have something to offer as you sip your hot spiced wine by the roaring fire with our publication in hand (or on screen). Be well and have a safe and satisfying autumn and winter.

Autumn Pilgrimage

By Carolyn Sanzenbacher

It was not from disrespect that we smelled of musty earth when the pawpaw trees  felled fruits that oozed into engraver's cuts, rendering the headstones nameless and mute.Here is grandmother, we would say to one another,and there is aunt Vivian who died blind before sixteen, and there is Connard who didn't die from the fever like Vivian did. Others too, stared up from the stones weuncovered each autumn.The unrotted fruits were sweet like mangobut bitter near the peel. Seeking the edge between the two would twist our mouths in joy and throw us back on feather-veined leaves burying the stones we came to revive.Of those amber colored seasons when the acrid was so freely tasted and the dead so simply resurrected, little remains now but for the stones we used as pillows.Long silenced by passages of untasted fallings,iced by slow coming winters, then dried to burnt sienna before the next autumns came.

Living with Mental Illness

By Debra Faes-Dudden

How pretty a picture I would like to paint

Oh, to taste the meringue atop a lemon pie

Or the chocolate chip cookie just so warm from the oven

Mental illness is none of these

Not pretty, not melt-in-your-mouth, sweet and warm

It’s an isolated desert where many of us are lost

Our pockets are empty, our shoes weighted with sand

Our eyes tear out of grief and frustration

Panic makes our legs weak and some of us fall

Confusion is a constant itch when the pace of life gyrates too fast or too slow

And when we awake in the morning,

sometimes we don’t know where we are

Criticism is a cruel response from people

They see our struggle then turn a blind eye

Our voice ripples against seemingly deaf ears

They fear what they do not understand

This awareness does not decrease painful rejections we feel

Mental illness is chronic physical illnessDepression, anxiety, schizophrenia stand besidediabetes, fibromyalgia, asthma, and heart disease

All require patience, understanding, and ongoing treatment

We are all God’s childrenPlease treat us with respect

Here’s What Mood Swings Feel Like…

By Carl Blumenthal

Little Red Riding Hood devouring the Wolf.

Hansel and Gretel stuffing the Witch with bread crumbs.

The Three Bears ordering Goldilocks to bed without porridge.

Tom Thumb bulking up for the Olympics.

The Hare’s Adderall pooping out before the finish line.

Rumpelstiltskin forgetting his name due to Alzheimer’s.

The Giant grinding Jack’s bones for bread flour.

Snow White awakening by her Stepmother’s kiss.

The Wolf’s asthma saving The Three Little Pigs’ homes.

Pinocchio sticking his nose in one too many lives.

The Fisherman catching the Fish with his wife as bait.

Beauty turning into a Beast after the marriage.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf becoming a zookeeper.

Cinderella growing too fat for the glass slipper.

The naked Emperor being mistaken for a porn star.

Rapunzel losing her hair during chemotherapy.

The Goose Who Laid the Golden Egg getting constipated.

Humpty Dumpty rebounding from the fall of the king.

Flights of Fancy

By Susin Postovoit

Oh yes! 

Life's a mess,

I must now confess,

Instant highs caress --

They’re escapes, a mess.

Lies bound with tresses,

In plaits, then pressed.

Naughty! I should stress.

Knotty! to digress.

Lies naughty, useless.

Lies press and harass,

Lies that I suppress --

Ah! Not a success.

I'm flying, oh yes?

Still, nevertheless,

I dress for success --

A liar’s useless.

I'm a liar, I'd guess…

States the choir: Oh yes!

I'm Ready

By Matty Guerrero

I walked in,

Everyone expects me to be nervous,

But it looks like I've been doing this my whole life...

I have the talk,

And I have the walk.

Of course,

I'm scared to death in my head,

Not knowing what's going to happen.

But, oddly, that's not the right word for it...

I'm not scared.

I'm ready...

To face everything you throw my way.

I'm going to fight,

Until it comes out right.

So thank you,

For challenging me.

Healing Voices Film Event

Healing Voices Film Event
By Lisa Roma, Reginald Coleman and Dan Frey
Informed Decisions to be Made by The Individual
Note: The film here reviewed deals in part with the subject of coming off of psychiatric medications. This is a controversial subject as, on the one hand, psych meds can do harm to the body. On the other, being without them can lead to poor judgment, psychological pain and dangerous situations. The staff and volunteers at City Voices strongly encourage you to do the research, talk to your doctors, your family and friends before deciding about whether to stay on meds. Do not attempt to get off meds on your own. This action requires a strong support system to buffer you in case of crisis. You have the human right to choose what goes into your body. However, we do not live in a supportive and understanding society. In the U.S. people who have shown signs of mental illness have been marginalized, feared, incarcerated and basic human rights have been taken away. If you do decide to ween off of medications, do it slowly under careful supervision even if it takes years. Maybe you will find that remaining on the medication is best, perhaps at a more comfortable dose.
On April 29, 2016 we viewed Healing Voices, a documentary about people who experience extreme states of consciousness usually labeled as “psychosis” or “mental illness” by the medical establishment and the effort to preserve their human rights and dignity.
For many people hearing voices is a part of their life experience. The film offers a fresh perspective, exploring how to accept and love people who experience extreme states, rather than stigmatize, label, and medicate them, which can do more harm than good. Hearing voices is a normal human experience, a “dangerous gift” that many of history's movers and shakers experienced. It is how people respond to the voices that brings them into contact with services and not the fact that they hear voices.
“Mad in America” author Robert Whitaker chronicled society's shifts in perspective of people diagnosed as mentally ill. Each shift led to a different type of treatment. In the colonial days of the late 1700s, the Age of Reason, those who lost their reason were seen as less than human, abused, and treated like animals. Then came reforms in treatment led by the Quakers who viewed the mentally ill as brethren and were compassionate with their care-giving. In the late 1800s there were eugenic attitudes, forced sterilization, marriage prevention and long-term hospital stays. In 1950, Thorazine was introduced, which was essentially a straight-jacket in pill form. Today, pharmaceutical drugs dominate treatment. Mr. Whitaker said, “What we are really treating is our own desire to be safe. Madness is a mystery. If you conceive of people as brethren, that's a great starting point.”
The film follows three subjects over a five-year period—Oryx, Jen and Dan—each of whom are learning to live with extreme states of consciousness, hearing voices, etc. without psychiatric medications. They all belong to loving families and have steadfast friends in their support systems. Oryx and Jen are both married with children and have been there for one another through times of crisis. Dan's mother and friends have been his constant support. Dan said he feels more alive and vibrant without psych meds.
In 2013, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Thomas Insel, M.D., concluded that people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses are a diverse group who need diverse approaches. Dr. Insel acknowledged in his Director's Blog, “For some people, remaining on medication long-term might impede a full return to wellness.”
Healing Voices declares that psychiatric survivors have the right to choose what is best for themselves in their own recovery, encourages people to share their stories and support one another. Judi Chamberlin, mental health advocate and activist, says, “People have a story to tell. Support each other by listening to these stories. Trauma exists. People should have a choice in their recovery.”
There are significant cultural factors that influence one's decision to stop taking psychiatric medications (and society's response to this decision) that are not adequately explored in the film. However, projects like Healing Voices are needed to push boundaries  and create opportunities for ongoing dialogues.
DVDs or streaming video can be purchased at healingvoicesmovie.com/store. Other online resources include www.facebook.com/alternativesconference, www.mindfreedom.org, and to find a hearing voices group: www.hearingvoicesusa.org/find-a-group.