On Thursday, March 14, Mother Bear CAN launches its Family Hope Line, 855-IHOPE4U (855-446-7348), a free telephone support line for families experiencing mental health challenges

Family members can call during designated hours and talk to Mother Bear CAN’s Family Education Specialist to receive support, encouragement and help with identifying mental health recovery resources.

Full recovery

In response to their own frustrations navigating the mental health system with their teenage daughter, the couple founded the CooperRiis Healing Community in 2000. The local nonprofit runs two holistic, residential treatment centers for people with mental illness or emotional distress — one on a Polk County farm and the other in Montford — that take what the website (cooperriis.org) calls a “medication optimization” approach which “supports the judicious use or non-use of psychotropic medications, based on evidence from methodologically sound and responsibly interpreted research studies.” Options include balancing med use with other services and supports, postponing their use, combining medication with other approaches to minimize their use, or avoiding them altogether.

What Are We Recovering From? Making a Case for Recovery.

This Fall, we have had World Mental Health Day, Mental Illness Awareness Week, National Wellness Week and Recovery Month. Lots of ways to raise awareness about the same thing. But are we talking about the same thing? 

This is how a child gets into the mental health system. At age 3 he pitches a fit in the grocery store because he wants a candy displayed at the checkout aisle. Mother does not want him to have it so she says no. Her cart is loaded. He screams and kicks and everyone is watching her. Pressure is on for her to handle her toddler. Mother essentially has 3 options.

One of my parents has “had depression and anxiety” for many years. My understanding of it for as long as I can remember was such that I powerlessly looked on, all the while waiting for it to descend upon me one day. Would I make it through my twenties before the disease struck? Into my thirties? I could only hope not to wake the sleeping giant for as long as possible.

All people need to feel useful in this life.  The sense of belonging with others and being important to them is the primary need that we have as human beings.  Beginning with the preschool years, children need to be channeled and encouraged to participate with the family in the maintenance of the household and in thinking of the needs of others. Parents are effective with children when they adopt an attitude that conveys that they believe their children are capable of contributing and, in fact, want to.

Within the field of psychiatry, there is an exciting new approach being explored for understanding emotional distress called Narrative Psychiatry. Narratives, or stories, are a time-honored and universal approach for understanding all human experience. We humans recreate our world and guide our actions through the stories we tell each other and ourselves.

In my last blog, I shared my experiences with the power of storytelling and its importance in the recovery process, my own and the hundreds of families that I have been privileged to meet over the years.

Over the years, I have heard many powerful recovery stories. I’ve also had many opportunities to share our family’s struggle with mental health challenges and our recovery journey.

In the last year of high school, my daughter’s personality suddenly changed, almost overnight it seemed. Initially, I chalked it up to adolescence.

What had happened to my shining star? My bright, loving and outgoing daughter who was looking forward to college—where did she go? How could I get her back?

I was at a total loss, a single parent with three children and no idea where to go. We tried many things, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually my daughter ended up in a hospital.

The next ten years we spent navigating a fragmented and often difficult mental health system in several states. Those ten years were the loneliest and most difficult years of my life.