Bethany Yeiser, BS, President of the CURESZ Foundation
Mental Illness and Mental Health
By Bethany Yeiser
As this year has progressed, I have seen many exciting updates, brilliant stories of recovery, and earnest requests for funding. I get it – we all want to have mental health. But there’s a big difference between mental health and mental illness.
Mental health is like your overall physical fitness: sleep, nutrition, stress level, relationships, coping skills. Everyone has it, and it moves up and down over time. You can work on it, and you can be in “good” or “poor” shape without having a disease.
Mental illness is like having a specific condition such as diabetes or heart disease: a diagnosable problem with biological, psychological, and social factors that requires treatment, not just “trying harder” at self-care.
I often see an emphasis on programs and initiatives that help those with their mental health but may not have been very helpful to me during my difficult journey to recovery from severe schizophrenia.
Typical calls for funding for “mental health” may include yoga classes, an emphasis on mindfulness, a challenge to keep a daily diary, and other useful ideas. But I see fewer programs focusing on the most severe mental illnesses in our society.
I live with schizophrenia in full remission, but I first began to show signs of the illness when I began my university studies at the University of Southern California in 1999 at age 17. I started out as an honor student and was thriving in my biochemistry major. But my healthy competitiveness soon morphed into total social withdrawal. My grades began to drop in classes that formerly would have been easy for me, and I eventually dropped out, rejecting all help, and became homeless in Los Angeles for four years. I lived outside the last 13 months.
At this time in my life, what I needed most was an understanding of my severe mental illness—that I had it, and that it was a physical and treatable condition. But instead, during this time in my life, not only was I unaware of my illness, but ironically, I truly believed I was mentally healthy.
At that time, a yoga class or journal would not have helped. I didn’t understand what I was going through, as I knew very little about mental illness.
During my childhood, I never learned about severe mental illness. In high school physical education classes, we did learn about mental health, focusing on healthy sleep, diet and exercise. But there was nothing on conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This lack of education contributes to the stigma of serious mental illness and leaves people even more unprepared should the illness appear.
One of the most important initiatives, in my opinion, is this education. First, I would like to see high school and college students educated about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Clearly education for the general public would be helpful but starting this in high schools when the illness may often begin to show itself would prove most timely.
When I was growing up, I had heard of the “crazy pills” people joked about. When I was first hospitalized, this stigmatizing language was my only impression of antipsychotics. I associated antipsychotics with people sitting in a rocking chair, staring into space for hours at a time. I thought they were nothing but sedatives.
My first medication was greatly helpful to me. The delusions, paranoia and visual hallucinations all went away quickly, and I stopped hitting myself, screaming, and doing whatever else the voices ordered me to do. But I was entirely unaware that anything had changed. What I needed was to sit down with a medical professional and talk through the changes they had seen as my mental illness responded to the medication, because these changes were invisible to me. But unfortunately, I left with no understanding or directions, beyond being told to take a medication I believed I did not need. I left the hospital without knowing the difference between mental health and mental illness, and continued to be unaware I had a mental illness (a brain disorder).
I was also unaware that if I stopped my antipsychotic and restarted it, it could be less effective, leading to a disability that could follow me throughout my entire life.
Those who are hospitalized are in great need of an explanation about what their illness is and how medication can lead to recovery. Caregivers are desperate to understand what is happening to their loved one. It is a prime opportunity to get people the support they need from the beginning.
Once I had come to a point of realization that I had schizophrenia and needed medicine for the rest of my life, it became important to work on my mental health. I needed to carefully get enough sleep. Diet and exercise are important for everyone, including a person struggling with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. I swim twice a week and take long walks. I also keep a journal.
Today, my healthy lifestyle involves seeing plenty of friends often, and being busy with a full time job I love, which enriches my life.
Let’s offer programs on mental health and keep our society well and thriving. But first, let’s take care of the sickest among us, and let’s educate our kids on serious mental illness. Many will be genetically predisposed to developing severe mental illness later in life, or will have a loved one who does. This education will serve as a foundation which will give many of our young people their best chance for a rewarding future.
I thank Nicole Gillen for helpful suggestions on this article.
