Under Construction...

While the foundation for FACEing Mental Illness is laid, a brief hiatus

The positive response from so many of you following my last post – which announced a new name and direction for this newsletter – was welcome and deeply re-affirming. I am not alone in recognizing that, particularly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, our individual and collective mental health demands more attention, understanding and support than it has ever been given in this country.

I’ve been reaching out to advocates from coast to coast to connect with my network and establish new contacts. These are people who are leading the way in the mental health arena, working on everything from prevention to recovery, legislation to rehabilitation. They will help inform everything I’m able to present here and soon I will settle into a more regular rhythm of posts, sharing the work of these trailblazers with you.

While mainstream journalism has traditionally focused on what’s wrong with our mental health system – and goodness knows, that’s plenty – my aspiration will be to focus on the people, programs and proposals that are succeeding in fostering healthier minds and communities by reducing trauma, eliminating discrimination and breaking new ground in treatment and services.

I will always be, first and foremost, a storyteller; after all, my own “lived experience” – as the mother of an adult child with a mental illness and as a person who has experienced bouts of anxiety and depression throughout her life – is what brought me to this work in the first place. So this will be a platform to share the real stories of real people, empowering them as they educate us.

The subtitle to my original FACEing Mental Illness project -- “The Art of Acceptance” – was a reference to the self-portraits the participants created to visually demonstrate their feelings about their mental health challenges.  But it came to have a much broader interpretation, one that continues to influence my intentions today.

It’s about encouraging anyone with any mental health condition to accept and address it, without sense of shame or fear of reprisal. It’s about accepting that we all reside somewhere on the mental health spectrum and that monitoring our mental health is inseparable from caring for our physical health. And it is accepting that we will only achieve our greatest potential when we are willing to share the responsibility for our collective mental well being.

I’ll be back with you soon.