LOOKING FOR JOY by Dede Ranahan

I've been in Canada for twelve days. I departed from home on August 25th, the day before what would have been my son's forty-eighth birthday. Since Pat died, unexpectedly, on a psych ward two years ago, it's been difficult to maintain my equilibrium. In Canada, I wanted to be in nature. I hoped to find some solace, some connection to my deceased son. I seem to "see" him outside -- in sunsets, in moonlight, in trees and flowers. In the wind.

I miss Pat, of course. I'm still grieving. The part that concerns me about myself, however, is something else. My anger. Why did my son have to have such a difficult, shitty life? Why did he die when he wanted to live? Why did both of us try so hard for so long to fight a such a formidable foe? Why are loving moms and dads often considered the "enemy" by our mental health system? Why is mental illness and our understanding and treatment of it still in the dark ages?

In the support group I run for families, one of the mothers mentioned a quote that goes something like, "A mother is as happy as her unhappiest child."  When Pat was alive, my happiness was often impacted by his illness. When he was doing well, I was doing well. When he was suffering -- and let's be honest here, we really are talking about suffering -- I found keeping my own balance challenging. How could I be grateful for all the good things in my life -- my three wonderful daughters, my grandchildren, my friends, and every other blessing when one of my offspring was in serious trouble?

I know it's not just me. I see how other mothers and grandmothers in our support group suffer along with their ill children and grandchildren. If you haven't walked in our shoes, there's no way you can get this. It's like walking around with a hole in your heart. All the time. Everyday.

Pat's ashes are in my living room high on a shelf where he can watch family gatherings. He always wanted to be home and now he is. He loved his red electric guitar and his urn -- it's really a handsome black box -- has a three dimensional electric red guitar on it. The inscription reads, "Pat, You are the Music." When the time comes, my ashes will join his.

Meanwhile, I'm back. The Canadian lakes -- Moraine, Louise, Emerald, Peyto, and Bow -- and mountains I visited were varied and stunning. I walked on Athabasca Glacier at Columbia Ice Fields. I descended to underground hot springs and rode a gondola high above Banff. I saw my son everywhere. I hope he saw me. And Megan, Marisa, and Kerry I thought of you, too. I love you lots.

If you've discovered ways to keep joy in your life when you're in the thick of the battle with mental illness, please share your ideas and comment below.

Hope you're having a good week.

HOW LONG DOES CHANGE TAKE? PART THREE by Dede Ranahan

Continued from Parts One and Two and excerpted from a magazine article I wrote in 2001. It's too late for my son, but they were good ideas then. And they are good ideas now.

PART THREE

Since March 2000 the symposium steering committee has continued to meet monthly. Some of the ideas currently under discussion include the following:

• A Human Services Summit for high schools, community colleges, CSUH, and county and state departments of mental health to explore ways to attract, educate and retain a more qualified and diverse human services workforce.
• The introduction of the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) into the university curriculum.
• Seeking grants to create a university model of supported education.
• A CSUH faculty in-service training for working with students with mental disorders.
• A CSUH focus group/club for self-identified students with mental disorders.
• An on-campus drop-in center, peer-counseling training, literature in student health centers, information for students at orientation, coping classes, and parent orientation brochures.
• Workshops for junior and senior high school students about mental illness and wellness.
• Inclusion of some mental health training in teacher certification.
• Online courses with learning modalities specific to certain brain disorders.
• Online courses for prison and juvenile offender populations.
• Celebrity speakers on campus.

Some days I'm confident that support for these ideas will come. Other days, I wonder if I'm leading a charge that will result in a huge public falling on my face. It's a risk I have to take. The opportunity is too great. If I fail, it will still all have been worthwhile. The good that has already occurred because of the symposium cannot be erased. I've received dozens of notes of appreciation from symposium planners, participants, and attendees.

Meanwhile, some see the mental health system itself as not well if you use the definition of illness as fragmentation. Departments are siloed with little coordination between them. Communication between agencies needs improvement. Human service personnel are in a supply and demand crisis, and public awareness and education cries out for substantial increase.

Concerned mental health proponents -- and there are many within the pubic and private mental health community  -- are beginning to talk about the need for more unification of efforts, more wellness or integration. As it attempts to integrate itself, it's time for the mental health community to bring state educational systems into its fold.

On the home front, Merlin the Magician sits on my desk. Our family has begun to integrate mental illness into our familial system in a hard-fought battle to find wellness. My son, still seeking integration of illness and wellness, has fled to a foreign country.

Will I ever see him again? I don't know. I have to trust that Merlin's magic will keep him safe and, when he's ready, bring him home once more.

HOW LONG DOES CHANGE TAKE? PART TWO by Dede Ranahan

Continued from Part One and excerpted from a magazine article I wrote in 2001. This describes a symposium for educators, "Mental Illness in the Classroom," held in March 2000.  Have we made progress since then?

PART TWO

It occurred to me that educational programs, such as those that NAMI provides for its members, would be beneficial to a wider public audience; that education about mental illness for teachers and the public in general could help reduce stigma. As a development director at Cal State Hayward, I thought that the university had a unique opportunity to provide this kind of public education. The CSU system trains approximately 70 percent of the state's teachers. I reasoned, if we were to train teachers about mental illness, we could expand our educational reach exponentially.  I began to explore the possibility of providing this kind of training.

As a result, on March 11, 2000, a symposium for educators entitled "Mental Illness in the Classroom - How To Recognize It and Who Can Help" was held at Cal State University, Hayward. The response to the symposium was overwhelming. It sold out a month in advance to a maximum capacity audience of 550 in the campus theater. More than 150 people asked to be put on a waiting list.

A planning committee of 60 members representing 25 collaborating organizations met for 11 months prior to the symposium. At its first meeting in April 1999, the committee broke into work groups and created a vision of what the symposium would look like and what it would accomplish. They envisioned everything about the symposium in living Technicolor. Because everyone took part in crafting the vision, everyone took ownership of the project. Enthusiasm was palpable.

The symposium program included 12 workshops that were divided by student age groups -- elementary school through university levels. Four plenary sessions covered the following topics: A Developmental and Cultural Perspective of Typical and Problematic Behavior; Mental Health Resources Available to Students; Hope and Recovery - What is Possible: A Consumer Panel; and Next Steps - Continuing the Dialogue.

The title of the symposium, "Mental Illness in the Classroom," was chosen deliberately. The committee believed that it was time to use the words "mental illness" without embarrassment or self-consciousness; that semantic dancing about how to talk about mental illness somehow contributes to its stigma.

Breast cancer, prostate cancer, AIDS, HIV, and homosexuality are now spoken about openly. The hope is that common, public usage of the term "mental illness" will help desensitize the issue. The time is way past due to point to the proverbial elephant in the midst of our societal living room. One in four or five will suffer a form of mental illness at some point. Family members will be affected. The community will be impacted. Eventually, the elephant stomps on everyone.

To be continued.

HOW LONG DOES CHANGE TAKE? PART ONE by Dede Ranahan

The following is from a magazine article I wrote in 2001. Mental health care is no better now than in 1993.

PART ONE

Some days impact our lives more than others. On March 16, 1993, at 9:15 in the morning, I was rummaging through a kitchen cupboard looking for St. Patrick's Day decorations. In the back of the cupboard, I found a statue of Merlin the Magician. With four children in the household, I discovered things all the time with no clue as to their origin. So too with Merlin.

As I studied this funny little man, my 25-year-old son, who'd graduated from college the previous year and was living at home, walked into the kitchen. I turned to him and asked him if he would like to have the statue.

"It's Merlin the Magician," I said.

He answered "Yes" and as the statue slipped from my hand to his, the last conversation I ever had with my son, as I had known him, ended.

With his next breath, he said, "Mom, I smell gas."

By midnight, my son had lost his ability to abstract meanings from fairy tales and parables and saw FBI men lurking in the shadows. He bolted out the front door and ran up the freeway toward Berkeley because "the revolution is starting." In the early hours of the morning, the California Highway patrol picked him up and 5150d him to a psych ward. He was experiencing an acute, psychotic, bipolar episode.

Since then, our family history has come to include hundreds of dramatic stories in our efforts to cope with mental illness. For the focus of this article, I'll refer to illness as "fragmentation" and wellness as "integration" or "wholeness."  Not only were we dealing with the fragmentation of my son's health -- the mental and physical aspects of his well-being were not aligned; we were also dealing with the fragmentation of our family system as my husband and I and our other children struggled to deal with mental illness as it affected each of us as family members.

For us, support systems failed. Health insurance remained unavailable. Professional guidance proved to be non-existent to ineffective to incorrect. Medication was, and still is, a guessing game.  Social Security created a bureaucratic nightmare that only made things worse. Disagreements about proper courses of action arose between husband and wife, parents and offspring, and between siblings. Ultimately, each member of our household experienced disequilibrium at some point.

Over the years, I turned into a mother bear fighting for her cub. I read everything I could get my hands on about bipolar disorder. I wrote letters to legislators and others asking for assistance. I trekked to Washington, D. C. and handed my son's file to President Clinton. I left no stone unturned.

In the process, I learned about the frustration and suffering (fragmentation) that so many families endure in their efforts to find help for their loved ones who are living with mental disorders. I decided I had two choices. I could either curl up in a fetal ball and die (as I sometimes wished to do) or I could try to effect some change about a terrible problem that affects so many people.

To be continued.

TERESA AND DANNY by Teresa Pasquini

My friend, Teresa Pasquini, gives me permission to share her recent Facebook post here. Teresa is a mom and a mental health advocate who's been fighting for years for her son's rights. Teresa in her own words:

Danny was transferred back to Napa County Jail last Friday. Atascadero State hospital has again deemed that he is competent to stand trial for charges that first occurred while a patient at Napa State Hospital beginning in August 2012, four years ago.

He was transferred without so much as a phone call from the hospital. The only reason we knew was because we didn't get our nightly call from him Friday night. He called us everyday, twice a day while at Atascadero, once in the a.m. and once in the p.m.  We could set our clocks on Danny's calls. He never missed one. I told my husband around 7:30pm on Friday night that he must have been transferred that day since he hadn't called us. It would have been considerate to have received a phone call from someone saying that our disabled son was being transported 6 hours across state. It took 24 hours to know he made it safely.

The Napa County Jail has been really good to Danny and we have no complaints about his care, but we hate it when he is incarcerated. We know that he is isolated, secluded. We know he takes his medications as prescribed but we know that he gets scared and sicker. We never know when he will call and we are no longer able to visit him in person due to new rules at the jail. No more touching through glass which was bitter sweet, yet more human than a computer screen.

Now we only have phone calls, video sessions, and glances in court. The video sessions have their advantages and we are grateful for the convenience. I quickly made a video appointment yesterday for 4:00pm today. I spent 2 hours yesterday fixing my computer to make sure the session would work. I got the green light and told Danny this morning when he called that we would be visiting him by video today at 4pm and we would introduce him to the new kittens, Cali and Lucca. He was so excited and happy.

Then I received this: VISITATION SESSION CANCELLED

No reason given, just a polite email from the company that sucks incarcerated families dry with excessive phone charges. Families are the "F" word in mental health, jail, and prison systems. Families are rarely considered when it comes to adult children with serious mental illnesses no matter where they are placed. We are shunned along with our disabled children.  It is wrong. It hurts. It is unacceptable.

I am the proud mom of an adult son with serious mental illness who will NOT be forgotten in discussions about rules, guidelines, laws and policies that affect my family. I am tired of being politely shunned and tolerated. I am tired of having no rights and tired of my son having no rights. I am tired of my son being tortured, slowly and cruelly while everyone chit chats about wellness and recovery.

I am no longer a "recovering angry mom." I am angry and I will drive change that matters for families like mine. It is beyond time to get real and shatter the status quo. We have waited long enough.

Please encourage your friends, families, churches, health care partners and law enforcement partners to help us stop the insanity and support MH Reform this congressional session.
 

Teresa

WHEN REAL LIFE INTERFERES by Dede Ranahan

Photo Credit: Adam Houlahan

I'm trying my best to get a blog off the ground that puts a face on mental illness. "Thousands of people impacted" is impossible to visualize.  We need individual stories. And my daughter, Kerry, who knows much more than I do about computer stuff,  is helping me figure out this blog/website construction so we don't have to spend money we don't have getting it set up.

We've been moving along pretty well, but this weekend I wanted to attend the 50th wedding celebration of a high school friend who happens to have 17 children - 12 adopted. More about their family later as it involves mental illness.

This weekend, I also hoped that we'd get a "Subscribe" email button set up so you would know when there's a new post -- I'm operating about five minutes ahead of myself. But my daughter, Marisa, is in town, moving from Seattle to San Diego, and I can't miss time with her and her family.

Now, some of you are sending newspaper clippings about mental illness situations in your state. Some of you are telling me you want to post your personal story but you are hesitant, afraid. Stigma is so big.

Anyway, this is not the post I hoped to make. It's filling in until Kerry and I can get the technical aspects of the website up to speed.

Believe me, I hear you and I'm not going away.

Hope you're having a good week.

Dede

DID MIKE LEHMKUHL HAVE TO DIE? by Dede Ranahan

"Did Mike Lehmkuhl Have to Die?" That's the cover story, written by Cynthia Hubert, in today's Sacramento Bee.

Mike Lehmkuhl

Mike was a Sacramento man who five or six years ago began to hear voices and developed severe mental illness. After living on the streets for seven months, he was shot and killed in January 2016. Cynthia's report is about sorrow for Mike.  It's also about the frustration, helplessness, anger, and exhaustion that Mike's family and friends experienced as they tried to get Mike into treatment and sought help from the police, the county, and the courts.

I give credit to our Sacramento newspaper for the articles and editorials it routinely publishes about mental illness and our broken mental health system. But some days, after reading, I ask, "Is there anyone out there who can fix this mess?"

The answer is no. There's no one person who can fix things. It will take many of us to fix things. Our broken mental health system is a complex problem with many parts --  from recalcitrant bureaucracy, to wrongly implemented privacy laws, to shame and stigma,  to lack of political will. Somehow, at the end of the day, mental illness always falls to the bottom of the proverbial heap of societal needs.

So, what can we do? We can write to the Bee and thank them and writer Cynthia Hubert for their ongoing championing of mental health issues. We can write and call our political representatives and insist that they fight to make reformed mental health care a priority. We can join advocacy groups and support groups. And we can tell our stories, too. We can press for urgent mental health care reform if lots of us speak up and tell our stories.

Back to the question, "Did Mike Lehmkuhl Have to Die?" The answer is, "No. Mike didn't have to die." Thinking of you, Mike, and your family and friends...

Dede

THANK YOU DEMI LOVATO by Dede Ranahan

Demi Lovato, performing at this week's Democratic National Convention, spoke about living with mental illness. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Demi has said, "Four out of ten people with mental illness get help." This fact is motivating her to be an outspoken mental health advocate.

Demi is speaking out about her mental illness. And I'm encouraging those of us who are supportive family members to speak out about our experiences also. Mental illness impacts entire families. In trying to help our loved ones, we need help ourselves.

Right now, I'm waiting for one of you to submit the first story to this blog. I know once your stories start coming, we'll find strength and power in our collective anecdotes, comments, and reflections. Go to the Support page on this site and write your story in the box provided.

Thank you, Demi Lovato, for your courage and example.

Hope you're having a good week.

Dede

DID YOU KNOW YOU'D BE LEAVING US WAY TOO SOON? by Dede Ranahan

Pat, my son, left us two years ago today. Pat was a poet. What better way to remember him than in his own words?

TAKING A BATH
by Patrick Ranahan

An intricate hand manipulates the roar
until the spout ceases, providing
only drips, a minuscule rhythm,
and steaming ripples that are interrupted
by toes, feet, and then, an entire beast.

Inspiration, expiration: the level
of water shifts with the lungs
and soon sleep overtakes the creature.
Ripples, steam, drip: all continue.
Our man and the window perspire.

Salt-filled beads push through tight tunnels
and emerge from a taut face to soft light.
Released from epidemic passages
they scatter a mandibular stretch to the chin,
dangle, then leap with a microscopic yelp.

They hit the abdominal runway,
and sometimes split
before wiggling off to waterline.
It is here that they become something
other than alone.
Once submerged, molecular dialogue occurs,
rumors regarding pending demise, lost friends,

and hints of a nexus beyond this container.

Published in Latitude on 2nd
Cool Waters Media, Inc. 2012

I wonder, Pat, as I reread your poem, did you have a premonition? Did you know you'd be leaving us way too soon? Did you know?

If you've lost someone you love to mental illness, you can remember them here.  Click on Comment below or write a longer comment/short story about them in the box provided on the Support page.

Hope you're having a good week.

Dede

WHAT ABOUT ME? WHAT ABOUT DADS? by Dede Ranahan

My blog's barely out there on the internet and already I'm getting questions. "You're emphasis seems to be on mothers and grandmothers. What about me?"

A man asks, "What about Dads?" A woman asks, "What about sisters and daughters who help their siblings or parents cope with mental illness? Can we be included in  your discussions?"

The answer is "Of Course." Configurations we call family are infinite -- mother/father/children, single mother/children, single father/children, mother/mother/children, father/father/children, step-moms/step-dads/step-children, foster moms/foster dads/foster children, grandmothers/grandfathers/grandchildren, etc. Dedicated family and friends who love and support someone with a serious mental illness can be described as a universe.

The key word here, for me, is "dedicated." I'm not including folks who might be abusive and a contributing factor in someone's mental illness. We know not all parents/caregivers are perfect, good, or even close. But there are many of us, in spite of our own weaknesses and faults, who hang in there for the long haul. We try the best we can to support someone we love who has bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia or OCD or borderline personality disorder or anxiety disorder. And on and on...

I can work only from my own experience which is being a single mother of a son with bipolar disorder. I'm not a dad or sister or daughter. I can't write those stories but I hope others of you will. We have to talk openly about mental illness until it's part of our common discourse and is more understood, accepted, and supported.

So, back to your questions, "What about me?" "What about Dads?" My blog's welcome mat is out. It's tall and wide. I don't care if you're a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater. If you have a story to tell about mental illness and you're trying to support someone you love, or if you have a mental illness yourself, then please step up and share your story here. Either click on Comments below. Or go to the Support page and send longer comments/stories in the box provided.

The power of this site will be in our collective stories, not just in my story.

Hope you're having a good week.

Dede