Breaking the Silence: Women with Mental Illness Speak Out

While watching the Today show this morning, I was excited to see a story on women with mental illness, where Kat Kinsman's forthcoming book about living with anxiety was featured.
http://www.today.com/health/hi-anxiety-women-hide-their-mental-illness-out-shame-says-t94606


Likewise, Women's Health Magazine, in honor of Mental Health Awareness month (May 2016), has a series of photographs and stories of women who are living with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, OCD, anxiety, PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Editor-in-chief Amy Keller Laird says that she her own public relations team was concerned about her disclosing her own struggles with OCD, saying,  "Our public relations folks also initially expressed concern that if I, as the head of this magazine, were to come out publicly about having OCD, I might be seen "differently" in the industry—or be judged by my peers—and that I would have to accept that risk if I moved forward."
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/amy-keller-laird-obsessive-compulsive-disorder


The stigma that these women talk about is one of the reasons I start our class with Lori Schiller's book, The Quiet Room.  Lori's choice to share her story about living with schizophrenia was one of great courage.


As I reread Lori's book this summer, I find myself thinking about her life today. Here is a blurb from Schiller (now Lori Jo Baach) in a 2013 newsletter:


"I now work full-time in the mental health field, do motivational speaking, teach CIT (Crisis Intervention Team) training to the police on how to treat the mentally ill, sit on the Board of Directors at South County Mental Health Center, sit on the Jansen Pharmaceutical Mental Health Advisory Board, won the Peer Specialist of the Year Award for the State of Florida in 2009, and have been ac-tively involved with NAMI Palm Beach County including being founder of the "Consumer Coun-cil" (now known as "Peer Council"), P2P mentor, P2P Mentor State Trainer, and Board member. Well known as Lori Schiller, I often hear "You’re the one who wrote that book (The Quiet Room)."  http://namipbc.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Newsletter-The-Voice-2013-June.pdf


Here's a picture of Lori from a 2013 "Breaking the Silence" symposium in Boynton Beach, Florida.

Good Books, Summer 2016 - Here We Go!

I'm excited to be teaching EN 110 Good Books again this summer. I kept the same format as I did last year because students' comments were very positive about the class.


This past winter term, we read Resilience: Two Sisters and a Story of Mental Illness by Jessie Close as our Diversity Common Reader book at NMU. I enjoyed reading the book, hosting a public discussion about mental illness and the book, and attending the talk by Jessie Close on March 21st. The book, and Jessie's talk, reminded me of the power of story - how sharing our stories with each other can help us to heal and to help others to better understand us and the world around us.


That is what Good Books is all about, really. Reading stories and developing a better understanding of ourselves and those we live with around the globe.


Jessie and her sister, Glenn Close, started a nonprofit organization called Bring Change 2 Mind. Their mission is to "end the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness."
http://bringchange2mind.org/


That's one of my goals as well: to use literature to help end the stigma of mental illness. In 2014, I published an article in the Language Arts Journal of Michigan about this issue: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/lajm/vol30/iss1/6/


Last summer, in New York, I presented on the issue at the International Federation of Teachers of English/Conference on English Education convention as well.
http://commons.nmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1126&context=facwork_conferencepresentations


I'm looking forward to a wonderful six weeks in Good Books this summer!

Kia Jane :)