Sylvania parents fight stigma tied to child mental illness

April 18--A worldwide stigma attached to mental health issues has made many potential patients reluctant to seek help from professionals or be saddled with unwarranted shame.

Some Sylvania parents are hoping to change that.

Cami Golding, Jill Kripke, Melanie Melfi, and Julie Turner organized the Talk is [NOT] Cheap event to educate parents and residents about mental illness, including symptoms, how to act on them, and to reinforce to everyone that there's no shame in seeking help.

The parent-to-parent discussion covers anxiety, body-image issues, depression, anger, stress, and isolation.

"We're dedicated to educating other parents, sharing our stories, [trying] to help you communicate with your children, and how you communicate with staff at school," said Mrs. Melfi, whose two children have been diagnosed with mental illnesses.

"It's important that you always try to listen [to your children]. I feel very passionate about the fact that I know there are many other families who have the same situation that I do. For so many years, we sat back and didn't talk about it because we felt ashamed. We need to own this and talk about it," she said.

In the last two years, Sylvania Schools did a districtwide behavioral threat assessment and educated teachers and district personnel on important factors in dealing with mental illness.

According to statistics from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 20 percent of school-aged children deal with depression.

Administrators at Sylvania grasped the seriousness of mental illness when they received the assessment results.

"[Director of disability services] Mikki [Sujartichan] said, 'These are just the ones we know about.' And it really hit everybody," Superintendent Scott Nelson said.

A mental health/education subcommittee was formed as part of the safety and security committee made up of staff, administrators, parents, and police and fire personnel. Mental health is one of many components that make up the Sylvania Schools safety and security planning efforts.

The goal of the Talk is [NOT] Cheap event was for parents to receive valuable information and to leave feeling empowered to advocate for their children. Representatives of area mental health organizations and resources were present to answer questions.

"I'll be perfectly honest," school board president Julie Hoffman said, "my daughter just got out of an inpatient eating disorder clinic. I've dealt with that for eight years. I see it in [my kids'] friends -- there is so much anxiety. Social media doesn't help. Everything is so immediate, and the pressure these kids put on themselves to achieve, it's unbelievable. It's a serious issue.

"We've always been public about everything. We're not ashamed. She went public on Facebook. I was proud of how open she was about her struggle. The amount of people who reached out to me from this community that are having these struggles -- it was people I see every day. You would never know. It was shocking."

Chief among the school and parents' concern is to rid the embarrassment attached to mental illness. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 24, and 50 percent of lifetime mental health cases begin by age 14.

"I think the biggest challenge we have is the stigma and removing the shame. People are still struggling with that," Mr. Nelson said.

Contact Kyle Rowland at: krowland@theblade.com, 419-724-6282, or on Twitter @KyleRowland.

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