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Minnesota dad biking Mississippi to raise mental health awareness

La Crosse Tribune (WI) - 8/5/2015

Aug. 05--Mental illness hits close to home for Tom Mork, a banker from Lakeville, Minn.

Five years ago, his daughter Christine Mork was hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Mork wanted to be at his daughter's side but struggled with his reaction to her mental illness.

The result of that struggle is Tom's Big Ride, a summer bike ride from Venice, La., to Lake Itasca in Minnesota, with a stop Tuesday morning in La Crosse. Along the way, Tom and his fellow bike riders are fighting the stigma around mental illness and raising funds for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. During Tuesday's stop at Pettibone Park, the group met with supporters from the Family & Children's Center.

"Mental health issues are just like other medical issues," said Kathy Rohr, the center's coordinator of community support programs and a La Crosse NAMI board member. "Treatment is possible. Recovery is possible."

Tom came face to face with his own prejudices and notions about mental illness in 2010. Christine was a senior in college in California when a tense family argument and a breakdown led to her being hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

He said the signs had been there before the diagnosis but the family had never really faced them openly. When Christine had emotional problems, he told her to buck up, and he wasn't as sympathetic or empathetic as he needed to be as a father. When things came to a head, Tom flew out to California to be with his daughter and had to to come to terms with her mental illness.

"I didn't really know anything about mental illness," he said. "I didn't want to admit anyone in my family was struggling."

Tom said as he learned more about his daughter's struggle with bipolar disorder he came to understand that managing mental health is just like physical health -- he struggles with bad cholesterol which requires monitoring and treatment.

On a follow-up visit with his daughter a year later, Tom said, he decided to take a bike ride and ended up on the Pacific Coast Highway, which inspired him. Mork will turn 60 on Friday, and he decided to merge a longer bike trip with mental health advocacy to celebrate.

Tom's Big Ride started its journey up the Mississippi River Trail on July 6 in Venice and has averaged 75 miles a day on the 2,100-mile trip, with about 400 miles to go to Lake Itasca. They hope to finish before the end of next week. Along the way, the ride has been raising funds for NAMI, surpassing an original goal of $100,000, and the group now hopes to raise $125,000 for the mental health organization.

Many of the riders who have joined legs of the journey have friends or family with mental illness. During the bike ride, Tom said some of the most powerful conversations have been when people talk openly and honestly about the issue. The very first morning at their hotel in Venice, the group learned the manager's son suffers from schizophrenia, and the group dedicated the first day of their ride to the family.

Tom's Big Ride participants were greeted by Family & Children's Center staff and a snack of fresh fruit. Tom dedicated the day's ride to the organization, which offers mental health programming for children and their families. Two staff members, Vanessa Southworth and Suzie Howe, joined the ride on its leg from La Crosse to Winona.

Southworth, the center's director of Wisconsin services, said mental illness advocacy is just as important as awareness campaigns for cancer or heart disease. Because of the stigma, mental illness is often a hidden illness, she said, and is still something people don't talk about and something you can't identify by looking at a person.

"For our organization, being involved in fighting that stigma is really important," she said. "One of the many reasons people don't seek treatment is because of the stigma around mental illness."

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(c)2015 the La Crosse Tribune (La Crosse, Wis.)

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