Mental Health is Health

Throughout my adult life, it is now clear that I suffered from what experts call "chronic ambivalence." I wrestled with decisions well beyond the point of clarity and wound up stuck with harmful consequences. In careers, chronic ambivalence may involve things like wanting desperately to remove ourselves from jobs or occupations that are incompatible with our stress-tolerance; confronting or leaving toxic supervisors, associates, clients, or even organizations; or failing (not for the lack of trying) to achieve healthier lifestyles. We want all these things, but just don't get them done. The longer this goes on, the more difficult it gets, and we wind up blaming ourselves. For years, I "shot arrows" at myself for not taking action and talked myself into believing that the stressors were self-imposed or a result of my inability to navigate the corporate machine -- even as a leader in the machine. Ultimately, I fell into a deep depression and wound up hospitalized....

As a boy growing up in the Christian church, I remember learning and exploring our “lasting” virtues: faith, hope, and love. But I also remember never quite getting my head or my heart around one of the three. I think faith made sense to me just because it was kind of the reason we were there. Love resonated because I could feel it in my family, and I was starting to notice girls in that way.  But hope back then was just a word. I “hoped” for a bike at Christmas, but that was about it.   I was well into adulthood before I began to reckon with what hope really means. It probably began when everyone started speculating that the lack of it caused my big brother to take his own life. And it really kicked in as I started dealing with tough depressive symptoms of my own.   Recently, I found myself frustrated over my inability to help someone close to me recognize the very existence of hope in his ci...

Taken from the quarterly newsletter of the  National Alliance on Mental Illness Jacksonville -- December 2023 Those of us  who live with mental illnesses often have “aha moments.”  It may be  something we discovered in therapy. Or something someone said in a support group. Perhaps it jumped out of a book or movie, or hit us when we were just walking down the street.  Aha moments give us insights into our own journeys or offer something practical we can do differently to get better. In my long recovery from disabling depression symptoms, the aha moment that made the biggest difference for me was the simple realization that mental health is health. It involves the brain and body chemistry.  It involves our genes.  It involves the central nervous system. It involves the gut, and more. It may or may not involve a lifelong battle with symptoms that can be constant, come and go, or change. The symptoms can be serious, mild, and everything in between. They ca...

Guest Column, Florida Times-Union, 11/26/23 NAMI Jacksonville exec: What the U.S. is missing on mass shootings and mental illness On Oct. 26, Americans woke up to the details of  yet another mass shooting , and media experts were predictably ready to remind us of  the link between mental illness and murder . For those who pay attention to such things, what generally follows is a steady drumbeat of the same commentary for about three weeks. Then it subsides ― until the next tragic slaying. Sadly, few experts go on to explain that more than one in five adults in this country lives with mental illness ( roughly 50 million people ). In addition,  1 in 25 adults have been diagnosed with severe mental illnesses  like schizophrenia, severe depression or bipolar disorder. There is also an alarming and growing number of young people who also experience very difficult symptoms. Worst of all, most fail to emphasize the reality that very, very few people with mental illness kill...