Ending the stigma: Advocate and governor share mental health journeys

WORLAND - The message was short, simple but serious - to remove the stigma attached to those who receive help for mental health issues and illnesses, as well as to raise awareness for mental health, to start the conversation and be available as community members for those who might need help.

That message from Cloud Peak Counseling Director Mary Johnson started off the first Mental Health Event Friday morning.

The hope for the event was to begin to rid society of the stigma attached to those who receive assistance for their mental health. Johnson said on average a person waits 11 years from the onset of symptoms of a mental health illness to the time they seek treatment.

"That's 11 years too long. So we at Cloud Peak Counseling and in Worland are working to end that stigma. Today join with me to make the new cowboy tough and that is seeking help and asking for what you need when you need it."

The event featured two speakers who shared their mental health journeys, mental health advocate Shayna Florian of Powell and Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.

Florian is a student at Northwest College and a certified peer specialist and a proponent for ending the stigma.

Johnson said, "Shayna is a great advocate for mental health and one of the bravest people that I have the pleasure to know."

Florian told those gathered at the Worland Community Center Complex that she wanted to leave people with a message of hope and a message about the great resources available in Washakie County.

"Mental health awareness is something I have always held near and dear to me. I live with depression, anxiety, PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] and suicidal ideation every day which can make my day-to-day life completely unpredictable," Florian said.

She has volunteered with several local, state and national mental health organizations for the past 10 years here in Wyoming, Montana and Oregon.

"I believe suicide ideation should be recognized as its own diagnoses as well as a symptom of overall mental health issues. I know what it is like to live with it."

Florian added, "This is one of the reasons I'm going back to school, so I can help study and research mental health in order to help others like me who live with mental illnesses including suicidal ideation."

According to verywellmind.com, "Strictly speaking, suicidal ideation means wanting to take your own life or thinking about suicide. However, there are two kinds of suicidal ideation: passive and active. Passive suicidal ideation occurs when you wish you were dead or that you could die, but you don't actually have any plans to commit suicide. Active suicidal ideation, on the other hand, is not only thinking about it but having the intent to commit suicide, including planning how to do it."

Florian said that her last suicide attempt in 2018 led her to ask for help, "which is something not easily done I think for a lot of people for whatever reason. For me I didn't know how to explain why I needed help or that the thing I needed help with was myself, my mind, my brain chemistry."

She said she is thankful that she has a mother who is QPR (Question, Persuade and Refer, a suicide prevention program) trained. "She is also an extremely loving and strong person so she took me to get help and that's how I ended up at the Lighthouse right here in Worland."

Florian said, "That was September 12, 2018. Due to the strength I inherited from both my loving parents, the staff at the Lighthouse and my amazing therapist Mary [Johnson] I now celebrate Oct. 1 as my life date. My birth date is the day I was born but my life date is the day that I chose to start living."

RESOURCES

Florian said the help she found in Worland is something that she was not able to find anywhere else in Wyoming, Montana or Oregon.

"I found a therapist who was able to put me at ease because of her knowledge, understanding and willingness to grow in her profession, not only for me but for all of her clients and staff. I am an example of how the Lighthouse is saving lives and how Cloud Peak Counseling is supporting and uplifting lives. I am envious of Worland because you have such quality mental health care right here in your own backyard and I am thankful that Wyoming has a crisis center for adults like the Lighthouse.

"I am so excited that they are putting on this "End the Stigma" event on because part of healing and learning to live with mental illnesses is acknowledging the stigma, facing it and ending it both internalizing the stigma and the stigma we face as consumers from our peers."

One of the ways to end the stigma, Florian said, is using the appropriate language.

She said often she has heard people say that "we" need to help "them" with "their" mental health.

"The problem with all these well-meaning statement is first and foremost is that we all have mental health. We all have physical health so why does it seem to be so hard to say the same for mental health. We should all be mental health consumers," she said.

Florian said that there a few things people can do to help end the stigma of mental health and seeking professional help:

•Be mindful of a person's first language. "If you are someone who has a mental health diagnosis you are more than that diagnosis. You are a person first. This is a simple way of maintaining dignity and a sense of help when discussing mental health.

"Don't be afraid to acknowledge that you seek mental health professional help either. I never told anybody when I was younger that I saw a therapist. I always covered it up by saying I heard this somewhere or someone told me, Now I proudly say 'my therapist told me' or 'when I was talking to my therapist.'"

She said talking like this has brought her a sense of relief and that she has found that others are more willing to seek professional help when they know someone close who does it.

"I challenge you to help hold your community accountable to ending the stigma around something that we all share," she said.

Florian said people need to change how they define people with mental health illness. Instead of saying someone is a schizophrenic, it is a person with schizophrenia.

As for hope, Florian said, "healing is not a linear process. A quote my therapist shared with me once is 'No person ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and they are not the same person.' Be aware of what is going on outside of you, inside of you, acknowledge these things and only give your precious energy to what needs to be dealt with in the moment."

She ended with a quote from a Brene Brown podcast, "Judgment demands punishment, when judging others we punish them and ourselves psychologically. Mental illnesses do not discriminate so why do we."

GOVERNOR GORDON

Governor Gordon also shared his person story with mental health assistance.

He said his first wife Sally was hit by a driver and he was left to care for their two daughters age 4 and 2. "I was really struggling with what to do."

He said at first he thought he needed to be tough. "It soon became quite clear that I could reach out to my community and Northern Wyoming Mental Health and ask for help. It wasn't the wrong thing to do; it was exactly the right thing to do. It helped all of us through a really difficult time."

As Wyoming's governor he said it was "really sad to know that this was our worst year in our history for suicides. I don't need to tell anyone in the [Big Horn] Basin that this is an epidemic. It is a challenge that we have to meet and we need to have the resources to be able to meet that.

"That means not only having great counselors like Mary that can be an asset, but it is also being able as a community to understand that this is all of our problem. It is not that person's problem, it is all of our problem."

Gordon said, "We can encourage people to seek help and to recognize that having the opportunity to seek help and to get the counseling that is necessary is so critical. It helps, it helped in my daughter's case and it helped her work through these issues, which she continues to work through over time."

He ended comments with a quote from Mark Twain, "Every day do the right thing. That will astonish some and it will make everyone else happy." So do the right thing and let's be an astonishing state for the rest of the world."