PTSD

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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…

Read all Irked posts tagged “mental illness”

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Quoting UPI.com:

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Two U.S. researchers say dogs appear to be helpful to soldiers and former soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Craig Love, a research psychologist, and Joan Esnayra, founder of the Psychiatric Service Dog Society, discussed their work Thursday during a conference on military health research in Kansas City, The Kansas City Star reported. They are about to begin a $300,000 study, funded by the Defense Department, at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. Love and Esnayra surveyed 39 people with PTSD who were given service dogs and found 82 percent reported a reduction in symptoms. There are now about 10,000 psychiatric service dogs in the United States. What they do depends partly on the symptoms experienced by the people with whom they are paired. In the case of people with PTSD, the dogs can be trained to nudge them when they show signs of panic attacks. They can also help calm PTSD patients down by reacting calmly or not reacting at all to something the person perceives as a threat.

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Filed under: Campaign Watch, Irked Videos

“This is my way of doing something for Tema. Although I was unable to help her in any way, this award will ensure her memory lives on.” —Vince Savoia

Excerpted from Tema.ca:

The first people to arrive on the scene, emergency services personnel witness traumatic events with every shift. Yet they continue to perform their essential duty of saving lives—often in the face of unspeakable tragedy. So unspeakable, in fact, that many of these heroic individuals struggle quietly with the physical, psychological and emotional effects of their jobs. The Tema Conter Memorial Trust was established to end the silence and ease the suffering. The charity was founded by Mr. Vince Savoia, an attending paramedic at the murder scene of Ms. Tema Conter in 1988. Upon coping with post-traumatic stress as a result of this horrible episode, Mr. Savoia created the Tema Conter Memorial Trust.

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