Mental health advocate: Don't be afraid to seek help

Jan. 19--Traci Barr knows all about how people misunderstand mental illness.

An attempted suicide survivor, she's been told the devil is the root of her illness, and that she should pray her illness away.

Some have accused her of faking her problems, while others thought she might be violent when they learned she had a mental illness.

"It was like swallowing a little bit of poison every day," she said of the negative comments she heard.

Now she is living a full and productive life in recovery, with a balanced regimen of medications, therapy, healthy eating and physical activity that has helped her lead a normal life. She is a chef and teaches cooking classes.

"I'm batting .300, which in the majors is pretty damn good," she said of her recovery.

Barr, 53, of Greenville, recently addressed Mental Health America of Spartanburg County. She spoke from a podium that displayed pictures of her former dog Chopper, which she called her guardian angel.

She talked about the misperceptions of others that can cause a person with mental illness to feel shame, blame, hopelessness and a reluctance to seek help.

She found that seeking help, talking about her illness and helping to educate others has given her back much of the life she'd been missing when she first realized she had bipolar disorder and suffered from depression -- when she was 14 and in high school in southern New Jersey.

That started a routine of shuttling between doctors and therapists and taking combinations of medications to treat her anxiety, seizures and insomnia.

After graduating from the University of Indiana in 1985, where she studied English and history, she worked at several different places through the 1990s. She began her career in marketing, advertising and design production, and that took her to New York and San Francisco. She would later train to become a chef.

Many of the larger firms had their own psychologists to help sales staff "exploit desires and fears" of consumers, she said.

Some of the same skills she acquired then can be applied now to change people's attitudes about mental health, she said.

"I'm really sick and tired of it -- so many suffering the effects of shame that's as bad as the illness itself," she said.

Regaining control

In 2010 she moved from San Francisco to Greenville to live near her parents, who had retired to the Upstate from New Jersey.

Adjusting to the move and without a job, she still had addiction problems that eventually put her in Carolina Behavioral Health Center in Greenville.

In January 2012 she attempted to take her life by overdosing on powerful medications. She was in a haze for five days, ended up behind the wheel of her car, and wrecked it, she said. She apparently had been trying to drive to her parents' house.

She was arrested for driving under the influence, taken to jail and then moved to a hospital. She was unable to attend her parents' 50th wedding anniversary on Feb. 3, where she had planned to cook for her family.

"When the haze cleared, I realized I had to stop fighting it and start managing it," she said.

"The key was waking up at a psychiatric facility and thinking I've got no more fight left in me," she said. "Then I decided to manage it. It thought of it as a medical problem, and I had to manage it. I did everything the doctors and nurses told me to do."

Since then, she has devoted time to speaking out on being bipolar and the benefits of mental health treatment.

"Public attitudes have not changed in the past 40 years," she said. "In 2017 we're still talking about stigma."

Changing attitudes

She recalled how she was once invited to talk about her illness at a Greenville church.

"What was concerning to me was a licensed psychotherapist there was also a member of the church and really did evoke the word devil and Satan in the same context we were discussing my mental illness," she said. "While I respect them having a meeting, it represents thinking that confuses the illness with a spiritual or religious problem."

Many mental health experts agree that mental illness should be treated as a physical problem, much the way heart disease and cancer are -- but even more complex because it involves the brain.

Ron Robinson, professor of religion at Wofford College, did not attend Barr's talk, but said her accounts of the misconceptions she's faced are common.

"Addressing issues of mental health has often been hampered by lack of knowledge, fear and misunderstanding," he said. "Churches have often been perpetrators of this."

He said some churches have embraced advancements in treating mental illness and have stepped up efforts to help families confronting the issue.

"Unfortunately, other communities of faith exacerbate the challenges of mental health by perpetuating stigmatization, isolation and even incarceration for those dealing with these difficult issues," Robinson said. "They inappropriately apply the concepts of sin and forgiveness and they reject the findings of science. Rather than being helpful, they heighten mental illness."

Nancy Holland, executive director of Mental Health America of Spartanburg County, said she hoped Barr's speech would help inspire others to talk about their experiences.

"One of the reasons for removing the still-existing stigma is to encourage people to get help," Holland said. "Why it still exists is beyond my understanding.

"My personal feeling is that quite often stigma keeps the person from seeking help -- the embarrassment to them is stronger than the hope they may have."

Tom Barnet, co-chair of the Spartanburg Behavioral Health Taskforce and who attended Barr's talk, agreed that many are reluctant to seek help out of fear or concern about what others may think.

"Mental health is a part of the human health spectrum, and like physical health issues it can be diagnosed and treated," he said. "And while law, science and insurance are coming to recognize that, we, as a society, have not.

"To admit that one has sought assistance for anxiety or depression, say, is seen as a weakness when it should be seen as a health care and healthful condition," Barnet said. "Today, the full range of behavioral health issues from mild to profound -- including bipolar disorder -- are within the skill set of medicine to address. But first we must overcome the stigma of seeking help."

Follow Bob Montgomery on Twitter@bmontgomeryshj

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