Minding your mental health

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to take stock of your mental well being. Since publishing Rambler: A Family Pushes Through the Fog of Mental Illness last year, I look for opportunities to share what I learned from living with my husband;s, Steve, mental illness.

Earlier this week, the Butler Eagle (our local paper) published a guest editorial I wrote on the importance of being aware of ups and downs of own mental health. I also talked about some of the strategies our family adopted in dealing with Steve’s illness. It’s posted below, or you can read it here:

Press through the fog of mental illness

“The odds aren’t that good,” my teenage son used to say when thinking about the possibility of his being diagnosed with bipolar disorder because his father had the illness. Statistics vary, but children who have one parent with the disorder have about a 10 to 30 percent chance of developing the disorder themselves.

My husband, Steve, was diagnosed with a late-onset mental disorder in the mid-1990s. At the time I was working as the features editor and a columnist for the Butler Eagle. Those were challenging years; I was trying to understand what it meant to have an illness that affects personality while raising three kids. I recently shared my experience in a memoir, Rambler: A Family Pushes Through the Fog of Mental Illness, released in September.

Fast forward 20-plus years and the odds my son worried about remain the same. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 5 adults in the United States is affected by a mental health condition each year and 1in 17 lives with a serious mental illness, like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Seventy years ago, in 1949, May was designated Mental Health Awareness Month, a time when Mental Health America (MHA) and other advocacy groups encourage all of us to take stock of our mental well-being. MHA affiliates are offering a number of health-related events this month, as well as free mental health screenings on the website www.mentalhealthamerica.net.

Like physical illnesses, mental illness can be treated more effectively in the early stages, before symptoms become acute. A screening is a quick and easy way to determine whether you’re experiencing symptoms that might indicate a mental health condition. 

Most of us know what we should do to maintain our physical health—like exercising and eating right.  But how do we maintain good mental health? As with physical health, there’s the obvious, exercise and a healthy diet. But there are also things we can do to relieve the stress that builds in our pressure-cooker lives.

Take for example my three children, who in my years at the Eagle often served as fodder when I was writing my biweekly column. In their 30s now, they work full time and live busy lives, unlike Steve and me, who work part time and enjoy a quieter lifestyle.

As I was nearing the end of writing Rambler, I asked if they would share their perspective about growing up during the acute stage of their father’s illness. Steve’s illness had been an integral part of their early years, and I wanted to share with readers how a child’s life might be different as a result being raised in a family where one parent has a serious mental illness.

They were all home for a long holiday weekend, and we sat together in the living room talking. For an hour their conversation rambled freely about their childhood experiences, from their embarrassment at our family’s financially strapped lifestyle because Steve could no longer work as an engineer to their learning how not to sweat the small stuff.

“I think I’m more tolerant of other people’s behaviors,” said the oldest, a son who works in manufacturing. “There are a lot of people in the shop where I work who have rough lives, but I don’t judge them. I’m willing to work around their problems to get a job done.”

My daughter, a physical therapist who works closely with people who have serious health issues, talked about her empathy for the homeless, many of whom have a mental illness. And my younger son, who as a child struggled most with understanding his father’s illness, commented on how he’s less quick to judge others. “I think I’m more open to things because of it. I was so wrong in my thinking about Pop’s illness. You really can’t know what another person is going through unless you experience it.”

They also talked about how as adults they may be more in tune with their own emotional and psychological needs and how they manage everyday stress.

“Playing hard is an important part of my adult life,” said one.

“I try not to let my life get too far out of balance,” said another.

“I feel validated to pull back and not participate in something if it feels too much for me,” said the youngest.

During the acute stage of Steve’s illness, when I was working full-time at the Eagle, raising children and managing a disorder that I didn’t really understand, I didn’t always manage the stressors well. Eventually, though, with the help of others, I developed strategies that helped our family push through a difficult medical diagnosis.

Mental Health Month is about being aware of our own mental health, a time for taking stock of how we live our lives, of asking what can we do to maintain our mental well-being. I encourage you to do this, not just for yourselves but also your families and for those around you.