Filed under: Campaign Watch

Hey PoolTablesDirect.com…quit being assholes! It took the members of the Mental Health Association in Jefferson County nearly three years to raise the funds for their new 8-foot pool table. You cashed their $2,297 check July 11 and never sent them their table.

Your new slogan should be:

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“PoolTablesDirect.com
We put the ‘liar’ in billiards!”

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Filed under: Themes, The UpDown Report, Irked Videos

Glenn Close is an Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Award winning actress. Over the last year, she has worked with some visionary groups to start BringChange2Mind.org, an organization that strives to inspire people to start talking openly about mental illness.

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Mental illness and I are no strangers.

From Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction to Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire to Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Sunset Boulevard, I’ve had the challenge — and the privilege — of playing characters who have deep psychological wounds. Some people think that Alex is a borderline personality. I think Blanche suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and everyone knows that Norma is delusional.

I also have the challenge of confronting the far less entertaining reality of mental illness in my own family. As I’ve written and spoken about before, my sister suffers from a bipolar disorder and my nephew from schizoaffective disorder. There has, in fact, been a lot of depression and alcoholism in my family and, traditionally, no one ever spoke about it. It just wasn’t done. The stigma is toxic. And, like millions of others who live with mental illness in their families, I’ve seen what they endure: the struggle of just getting through the day, and the hurt caused every time someone casually describes someone as “crazy,” “nuts,” or “psycho”.

Even as the medicine and therapy for mental health disorders have made remarkable progress, the ancient social stigma of psychological illness remains largely intact. Families are loath to talk about it and, in movies and the media, stereotypes about the mentally ill still reign. [Continue reading Glenn's beautiful thoughts...]

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Watch this full-of-love-and-life video of Glenn and Jessie Close. They embody the term “sisterhood”:

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Visit BringChange2Mind.org

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Watch BringChange2Mind’s YouTube channel

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Watch Glenn & Jessie on Good Morning America

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Jessie’s son Calen Pick, a brilliant painter, has schizo-affective disorder

Then…

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Filed under: Themes, Wheelchairman of the Board, Campaign Watch

Quoting Tiffiny’s October 5th column for disaboomlive.com:

I love hearing stories about sex doing more for humans [than] just helping them procreate. When sex is literally, as silly as this sounds, doing God’s work from making women feel beautiful again to helping men maintain healthy cardio health, I smile inside. When naughty “bad” things are actually good for you? Yeah, that makes life worth living. So when I read about a disabled man in a group home, paralyzed from the neck down and unable to talk, who was running over nurses and spilling trays, basically earning the title of “Official Group Home A**hole,” who was cured of his asshattery after getting some much needed manual stimulation (from one of the nurses no less) I thought, “Wow what a great nurse!” Obviously, it isn’t too surprising that after this 22 year old got some much needed release he was more pleasant to be around, but going from “belligerent” to “serene,” now that’s a big change. It exemplifies just how important sex is to the human psyche (and to overall mental health). But it makes you wonder how priests and nuns, and all the other celibates of the world, do it. Is it unnatural to abstain? A lot of people with disabilities are NOT getting laid. They’re not finding partners and for millions of them, it’s a frustrating daily predicament that never goes away. Try and finagle as they might, whether all they want is to masturbate, or find something even crazier like actual sex, it’s a disappointingly illusive endeavor. Can you imagine being shot down time and time again? This is why Belgium pays for it’s disabled citizens (if they want it) to have a sex worker visit on a monthly basis. The sad part about this story is that someone walked in on the nurse one day, she was swiftly fired, and the guy went back to being an insufferable a**hole. Life isn’t fair. It’s really too bad they weren’t more smart about it and did it off-site. What’s your opinion on all of this? As long as both adults are consenting (despite what the laws say), do you think it’s morally sound for a professional to provide sexual release for a person with a disability, in a group home environment?

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Read more of Tiffiny’s risqué columns

Read Tiffiny’s official bio

Visit disaboom.com and disaboomlive.com

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Filed under: Regular Contributors, Stuart Baker-Brown, Irked Videos, Campaign Watch

A movie trailer spoofing horror films, being shown in theaters in Britain and online, was launched a couple months ago to challenge the stigma surrounding schizophrenia. The segment is part of the “Time to Change” campaign run by British mental health charities Mind and Rethink, and funded by the Big Lottery Fund and Comic Relief.

The films have been launched nationwide to coincide with a poll by research firm YouGov, which reveals more than a third of people believe schizophrenics are violent.

Oh yes, did we forget to mention that the campaign stars none other than…MR. STUART BAKER-BROWN!!!

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Filed under: Campaign Watch

Quoting author, filmmaker and co-founder of the Asperger’s Resource Group Larry Welkowitz, Ph.D.:

Special thanks to Anisha who sent me a notice about a real cool idea arising from a partnership between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Ashoka (the promoter of social entrepreneurship): A competition for new ideas about improving mental health, community by community (I might pass on an entry myself). The deadline is October 14 so hit their website and get going.

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Learn more about this extraordinary competition

Then…

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Filed under: Themes, The UpDown Report, Interviews

Part of Tom Wootton’s standard opening to his talks on mental illness is to pause, scan the audience and call for a show of hands. ”How many of you have a condition such as bipolar, schizophrenia or depression?” he’ll ask and then do a quick count. “Quite a few. That’s wonderful.” Wonderful? Personality disorders, often debilitating and source of much heartache, are rarely spoken of in such glowing terms. Yet, Wootton, 53, is not your average advocate for the mentally ill. Diagnosed with all three conditions in 2002, the former Silicon Valley high-tech executive has made it his calling to point out the positives that come with the illness. As he wrote in his 2005 memoir, “The Bipolar Advantage,” controlled episodes of manic behavior and hallucinations, and even the flip side, depression, can be harnessed to one’s betterment. His new book, “Bipolar in Order,” is slated to be published in late September. The Sacramento Bee talked recently to Wootton. Here are the highlights:

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Filed under: Themes, The UpDown Report, Campaign Watch

Quoting BBC News:

Sea Sanctuary, a charity based in Falmouth, will offer placements on a 43ft (13m) yacht. Sessions led by mental health professionals are aimed at helping young people address their illness and gain sailing qualifications. The scheme has won funding from the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Primary Care Trust. Sea Sanctuary said the stimulation of sailing the charity’s yacht increased people’s wellbeing and made therapeutic change more likely.

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Quoting Sea Sanctuary’s official website:

We will provide comprehensive mental health care onboard a 43ft classic yacht. The support will be through therapy, education/training and respite care and will be available to individuals principally within Cornwall, but also the wider UK. Sea Sanctuary will seek to address the very real issue of mental health well-being for those who most need it.

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Filed under: Themes, The UpDown Report

There are probably not that many jobs for which disclosing a diagnosis of bipolar disorder is a qualification rather than a drawback. But Debbie Mayes, who works at Lancaster University’s Spectrum centre for mental health research, has one of them. The stigma attached to mental illness in a high-achieving university setting, where reliability, consistency and accuracy are prioritised, has often meant that academics with a mental illness choose never to disclose their diagnosis. But in what Mayes says is an emerging trend in university recruitment, she was specifically appointed to her research position because of her experiences as a user of mental-health services, as well as her academic credentials.

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Filed under: Themes, Bum Deal, Campaign Watch

After we published info on July 1st about Headlines Theatre’s fantastic AFTER HOMELESSNESS… project, we received a very gracious thank you note from Artistic/Managing Director David Diamond. A few days later, we received another email, this one from Headlines’ official publicist Gabriela De Lucca:

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Filed under: Campaign Watch, Irked Videos

Never has the world seen a pony quite like Molly…

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