Ashoka's Changemakers and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are teaming up and Rethinking Mental Health. Or more accurately, they are sponsoring an online competition and will give awards to organizations* (nonprofit or for-profit) that submit the best ideas AND plans to help them carry out their initiatives. Find out the guidelines and criteria and all that kind of important stuff here.
And you can start reading some of the ideas submitted here, but it is early yet. Also, to be quite honest, I have not yet entirely figured out how this forum works since there seems to be an awful lot of clicking involved.
However, I can't wait to see what comes of this. I am pretty optimistic since RWJF places a high priority on funding initiatives that will help bring about widescale change and Ashoka, well, how can you not like a social change organization founded by a guy who, on a summer break from college, drove from Munich to India to join one of Gandhi's followers in redistributing land to the untouchables?
*(So yes, unfortunately you cannot apply as an individual, but if you have an idea you would really like to put into action, why not reach out to a local (or national) organization in the mental health field that might be well-suited to partner with you or help bring it to fruition? This is not to say that any of this is easy and it certainly require that you do lots of homework and planning and all that, but you never know. On the other hand, if you work for or with an eligible organization.....get crackin'!)
Regardless of whether you're with an organization or not and whether you will be submitting anything to this particular competition, how do you propose that we, as a society, rethink mental health?
Showing posts with label resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resources. Show all posts
Monday, August 3, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Daughters of Madness
I just started reading Daughters of Madness: Growing Up and Older with a Mentally Ill Mother by Susan Nathiel, which I initially heard about through the Facebook group Adult Children of Parents with Schizoaffective and Other Mood Disorders. (Another new and helpful Facebook group is Children of Parents with Mental Illness. There are probably others, but these are the two in which I participate. But I digress.)
Basically the book follows the stories of numerous women who grew up with mentally ill mothers from infancy through adulthood, guided and explained in the context of the stages of human development by the author, a psychotherapist. Just 50 pages in and there is so much that resonates with my experiences as a child, that uncanny feeling that someone does in face know exactly what you're talking about. There are also a number of stories that reinforce how fortunate I was to have a stable dad and how much worse it could have been. But already, it brings a lot back, and I am very interested to see how the book progresses.
I have done quite a bit of thinking about how my mother has affected the kind of person I am today--from being hypercritical of myself and anxious about making mistakes to being very responsible and not wanting to have kids too young b/c I want more of a break from being responsible for anybody else (along with a whole host of other unrelated reasons as to why I am not yet ready to be a parent!). But I've never thought about it in the context of the stages of human development, even though I studied that a little in college. (I was a wannabe psych major, I'll admit it.) So I'll probably write another entry when I've actually finished the book, but if you have read this book or similar books or have any thoughts on this subject, please feel free to comment!
Basically the book follows the stories of numerous women who grew up with mentally ill mothers from infancy through adulthood, guided and explained in the context of the stages of human development by the author, a psychotherapist. Just 50 pages in and there is so much that resonates with my experiences as a child, that uncanny feeling that someone does in face know exactly what you're talking about. There are also a number of stories that reinforce how fortunate I was to have a stable dad and how much worse it could have been. But already, it brings a lot back, and I am very interested to see how the book progresses.
I have done quite a bit of thinking about how my mother has affected the kind of person I am today--from being hypercritical of myself and anxious about making mistakes to being very responsible and not wanting to have kids too young b/c I want more of a break from being responsible for anybody else (along with a whole host of other unrelated reasons as to why I am not yet ready to be a parent!). But I've never thought about it in the context of the stages of human development, even though I studied that a little in college. (I was a wannabe psych major, I'll admit it.) So I'll probably write another entry when I've actually finished the book, but if you have read this book or similar books or have any thoughts on this subject, please feel free to comment!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
second post that should've been my first post: or why this blog
My boyfriend repeatedly demonstrates how awful I am at remembering to introduce people, mostly because whenever we're in a situation where I should be introducing him, he ends up doing it himself.
And I realized the other night that I didn't really introduce this blog, just started off in media res (or whatever the correct term would be since it wasn't really mid-action so much as mid-years-of-thought-stew).
Why did I start this blog?
Growing up, I knew my mother was different from my friends' moms, from the neighbors, from the other adults I knew. I didn't know why or what it was called; it just was. Whenever I tried to explain it to my friends, it just never seemed to work. My friends made fun of me, and I never seemed able to convey the true extent and seriousness of the situation. I thought it was a word thing, that I lacked the language for it. But later I realized that it is because these are the things we never talk about, because we are ashamed of them. This is why my mother never received treatment until I was in high school, despite having shown symptoms before I was born. This is why, although it is estimated that about 20% of the U.S. adult population is struggling with a mental illness, most of us are hard-pressed to name more than one or two people we know with a mental illness. Growing up as an only child, I didn't know anyone who had a parent like mine. I knew of abusive parents, drunkard parents, and parents who couldn't care less. But I didn't know anyone who had a parent who thought the FBI was listening to our conversations.
After my mother was hospitalized for the first time, I started doing some research. In the current literary trend of memoirs and creative nonfiction, there have been increasing numbers of people writing about mental illness and especially what it means to live mental illness. As the person with the mental illness. Not to say that there are not books out there written by relatives, but there are significantly fewer (or so it seems, this is based on my browsing of libraries and Amazon.com, not a scientific study by any means). There are more and more resources aimed at helping families deal with a family member's mental illness--but very few are for children. Doing searches for resources along the lines of "children of parents with mental illness" usually just turn up resources for parents who have children with a mental illness instead. That's great for them, but kind of the opposite of what I was trying to find.
And blogs. I have not done a whole lot of searching as to blogs on this topic, but thus far my searches have turned up lots of blogs on living with mental illness but not much of anything on living with someone who has a mental illness or what it means to be a relative. (One exception of which I know: Heather and Jon Armstrong are a husband and wife who are both bloggers and have both written about her depression and the impact this has had on their relationship, family, etc. Okay, well Jon has written one post about it that I know of, but Heather has written about mental illness in her case and generally multiple times. These blogs, dooce and blurbomat respectively, generally cover other topics, but enjoyable nonetheless. I actually find dooce really entertaining most of the time. She cracks me up...but this is completely off-topic.)
Again, all of this is good. I am glad that more and more people are being open about their struggles with mental illness and what it means. I am glad that more people are talking about it. But in all this hoopla, the children of mentally ill parents are not forgotten so much as it seems that people don't realize we exist because we are overshadowed. And so many of us aren't open about our experiences for multiple reasons: we are ashamed, we don't know how to, our parents are not open about having a mental illness, no one has ever asked, and so on.
I used to think I was completely alone, and now I realize I am not. Through this blog, I hope that I can help others share experiences, feel less alone, and connect with resources. I did find some resources and do have some books to recommend, but as I just realized that it is 12:27 and I have to get up at 6:30 for work tomorrow, this will come later. In the meantime...
Any books, websites, or other resources you have found helpful?
And I realized the other night that I didn't really introduce this blog, just started off in media res (or whatever the correct term would be since it wasn't really mid-action so much as mid-years-of-thought-stew).
Why did I start this blog?
Growing up, I knew my mother was different from my friends' moms, from the neighbors, from the other adults I knew. I didn't know why or what it was called; it just was. Whenever I tried to explain it to my friends, it just never seemed to work. My friends made fun of me, and I never seemed able to convey the true extent and seriousness of the situation. I thought it was a word thing, that I lacked the language for it. But later I realized that it is because these are the things we never talk about, because we are ashamed of them. This is why my mother never received treatment until I was in high school, despite having shown symptoms before I was born. This is why, although it is estimated that about 20% of the U.S. adult population is struggling with a mental illness, most of us are hard-pressed to name more than one or two people we know with a mental illness. Growing up as an only child, I didn't know anyone who had a parent like mine. I knew of abusive parents, drunkard parents, and parents who couldn't care less. But I didn't know anyone who had a parent who thought the FBI was listening to our conversations.
After my mother was hospitalized for the first time, I started doing some research. In the current literary trend of memoirs and creative nonfiction, there have been increasing numbers of people writing about mental illness and especially what it means to live mental illness. As the person with the mental illness. Not to say that there are not books out there written by relatives, but there are significantly fewer (or so it seems, this is based on my browsing of libraries and Amazon.com, not a scientific study by any means). There are more and more resources aimed at helping families deal with a family member's mental illness--but very few are for children. Doing searches for resources along the lines of "children of parents with mental illness" usually just turn up resources for parents who have children with a mental illness instead. That's great for them, but kind of the opposite of what I was trying to find.
And blogs. I have not done a whole lot of searching as to blogs on this topic, but thus far my searches have turned up lots of blogs on living with mental illness but not much of anything on living with someone who has a mental illness or what it means to be a relative. (One exception of which I know: Heather and Jon Armstrong are a husband and wife who are both bloggers and have both written about her depression and the impact this has had on their relationship, family, etc. Okay, well Jon has written one post about it that I know of, but Heather has written about mental illness in her case and generally multiple times. These blogs, dooce and blurbomat respectively, generally cover other topics, but enjoyable nonetheless. I actually find dooce really entertaining most of the time. She cracks me up...but this is completely off-topic.)
Again, all of this is good. I am glad that more and more people are being open about their struggles with mental illness and what it means. I am glad that more people are talking about it. But in all this hoopla, the children of mentally ill parents are not forgotten so much as it seems that people don't realize we exist because we are overshadowed. And so many of us aren't open about our experiences for multiple reasons: we are ashamed, we don't know how to, our parents are not open about having a mental illness, no one has ever asked, and so on.
I used to think I was completely alone, and now I realize I am not. Through this blog, I hope that I can help others share experiences, feel less alone, and connect with resources. I did find some resources and do have some books to recommend, but as I just realized that it is 12:27 and I have to get up at 6:30 for work tomorrow, this will come later. In the meantime...
Any books, websites, or other resources you have found helpful?
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