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<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'><o:p>You
might wonder what this has to do with blindness. I’m sure we have people among
us for whom this is relevant.</o:p></DIV>
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<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Times New Roman",serif'>Stigma of mental
illness still exists, and it costs lives. Thirteen years ago, I wrote an
obituary for my older sister, who at age 70 committed suicide. It was a long
article, for I somehow had to make some sense of the bright, funny woman
becoming obsessed with taking her own life. It was the fourth time that year she
had attempted to end her life, to escape the shame she felt about her mental
illness, to leave the swirling mania that left her exhausted and in fear that
people would know what she had done and where she had been during the
hospitalizations. More than an attempt to accept what had seemed inevitable for
more than 40 years, despite medication, therapy, hospitalizations and a
supportive family, that article sought to do what we are still trying to do:
Make people aware of the damage that the stigma of mental illness does to those
suffering from a chronic mental illness or situational depression. As is so
often the case, my sister's bipolar illness manifested during adolescence. To my
parents' credit, they did what few parents did in the late 1940s; they sought
psychiatric help for their daughter. She had productive adolescent years:
developed close friendships, won a scholarship to a good college and then a
fellowship to study for a master's degree. She was the only teenager in the
history of the Charlotte Opera Society to be a paid member of the company. She
was pretty, smart and funny. And she was suffering from a mental illness that
went undiagnosed until the mid-1970s. It was only in retrospect that we knew she
had suffered from bipolar disorder those many years ago and that it had not been
properly diagnosed and treated. She was many things: a talented vocalist,
scholar, gardener, counselor and good friend. She was also a woman whose bipolar
illness she tried to hide while being terrified people would guess the truth.
She was courageous in her effort to function fully in a world that does not
understand how to deal with mental illness within the context of normal social
interactions. Finally, she could no longer sustain the tension of presenting to
the world a face of normalcy while fighting the illness that sucked out enormous
energy and spawned the excesses of mania only to resolve itself in obsession
with suicide. We talked often of the obsession, and I was her partner in trying
to find the right therapist, medications and structure that could manage the
illness and banish the obsession, a process that exhausted us both over the
years. The question we must all ask is why we make people afraid to acknowledge
their depression, anxiety, chronic mental illness. We do not require that people
hide their cancer, though there was a time when it, too, was considered an
illness not to be discussed, as though the devil himself had planted it. The
fear of exposure exacerbates the anxiety of dealing with mental illness, and in
many instances results in isolation or suicide. What if someone could say
without fear of stigma, I have bipolar disorder just as he could say I have
diabetes? That is the point we must reach if we are to be truly supportive of
people. I am not certain things have changed very much in the ensuing years; we
talk about mental illness openly and quote statistics that acknowledge the
number of people it directly affects and the increase in the number of people
suffering from anxiety and depression and the increase in drug abuse and
suicide, but are we asking the right questions? What is real awareness? It must
go beyond recognition of the problem to acknowledge the conditions we are
creating in our own communities that contribute to that increase in mental
illness and suicide, of drug abuse we discuss. Statistics tell us only that we
have a problem. How is our individual and collective behavior impacting the
increase in mental illness? How do we learn how to stay mentally healthy
ourselves and help others stay mentally healthy? It is not enough to be aware;
we must be involved and create personal relationships, institutional
relationships that actively support mental health. This month that is coming to
a close is Mental Health Awareness Month; the Talbot County Council issued a
proclamation acknowledging the importance of removing the stigma of mental
illness and the importance of providing adequate education and treatment of
mental illness. As the president of the board of directors of the Mental Health
Association of the Eastern Shore, I was grateful for their action, and I urge
more training of parents, teachers, clergy, employers and others in how to
recognize the signs of mental health problems and how to respond to them. We
must also have the courage to realize that sometimes there is nothing we can do
to change another person's journey. We must acknowledge that sometimes we have
to come to terms, as I did, with the fact that the only peace my much loved
sister would ever find was in God's love. But if we are more accepting of people
whose perceptions are different, whose brains are wired a different way, there
will be less isolation, fewer escapes into drugs or death. Carolyn Ewing is
president of the Board of Directors of the Mental Health Association of the
Eastern Shore.
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