 years, they have five grown children, four of whom live with a diagnosis of serious mental illness and three were diagnosed during childhood. Our nominees who knew Cathy very well and collaborated with her on training sessions, they are wonderful examples of what this award represents and I am thrilled to recognize them today. But, before I announce our recipients, I'd like to introduce Cathy's daughter, Stephanie Carter, Cathy's son, Steve Owens, and his son, and Cathy's grandson, Blaine Owens, they're down here in front. Wave, let everybody know where you are. Stephanie, can you please come up here and help me give the award? It's also important to note that this award comes with a $500 check and a stipulation that it must be spent on themselves. It is now my privilege, my real privilege, to introduce our 2017 Cathy Cunningham Mental Health Advocacy Award winners, Ed and Jackie Dickey. And I'd like to invite Ed, sorry, I'd like to invite Doug Beach, representing NAMI, who nominated them, to come up here. I'll let him say most of things, but I just want to tell you, advocacy is really important. Always speak up for yourself or your family. It will be remembered and it'll come back to you too. I definitely want to thank NAMI for the nomination. We appreciate that very much. And of course, thank Clarity Child Guidance Center for the opportunity to be recognized. It is nice. As Jackie said, advocacy is a very important aspect of family recovery within mental illness. And in order for our loved ones to find a fruitful and a very satisfying recovery within their diagnosis, it is extremely important for the entire family to embrace the mental health issues that our loved ones deal with and suffer with. It's important that we learn what they are living through so that we can be true supporters for them to enjoy the full and fruitful life that they so well deserve. I see so many familiar faces, so many happy, bright friends here in the room, so many people who are advocates, just like Jack and I, and we met many of you in this field. I want to also say that my memories of your mother are extremely happy memories. Kathy, Jackie, and I served on the NAMI San Antonio Board of Directors for many years where we became very, very close. Kathy was truly not just a professional inspiration for Jackie and I. Kathy was truly one of the people who touched our lives early in our journey on mental health wellness and she taught me a lot on how to persevere, how to never give up and never look at something from the negative perspective but that you can always find a positive perspective. We loved her so dearly and I'm happy to share that our memories are very, very pleasant and happy when it comes to Kathy Cunningham. So thank you all for this recognition and for the opportunity to continue our advocacy and I ask you all to continue to join us. Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie, Ed, and Jackie, and thank you for the nomination Doug. The Dickies truly exemplify the attributes of the Kathy Cunningham Mental Health Advocacy Award as I'm sure you can tell. We will award the 2018 recipient of Clarity Con next year. Details are in your syllabus if you know of someone who deserves this recognition. I would now like to invite Michelle Brown, our Director of Development, to share some information about One in Five Minds. Michelle? So this luncheon is a One in Five Minds event and important part of this conference to help educate the community on children's mental health. One in Five Minds was introduced in March 2013 to end the stigma associated with children's mental illness. And the name of the campaign is a descriptor. One in Five Children will have an emotional, behavioral, or mental disorder that needs our care. As part of the One in Five Minds initiative, we host school-based informational events called Strong Minds Happy Hearts. And at the end of each event, we invite participants to spend a few minutes and share something in writing. I'd like to read to you what one of these parents wrote last February because it truly summarizes what One in Five is all about. She writes, I'm a single mom and the mother of four children. Two live with mental illness. One of my children is bipolar with psychosis and another has oppositional defiant disorder and emotional disturbances. Every day is a roller coaster, but because I love my kids, I fight for them every single day. But I have lost friends and relationships with some family because there's only time for kids and not time for them. Also, the stigma is strong towards both of my kids' mental illness. I have hope after today's Strong Minds Happy Hearts that that stigma can start to be lifted and that my children and my parenting could soon be understood and respected without the just spank them more or send them to scared straight lines. Hope is now. I don't need to say more about why it's important for all of us to continue the work of awareness and education started with One in Five Minds. This quote says it all. As we've done in years past, we'd like to give you an opportunity to send a message of encouragement to parents like this mom in a few simple steps. As she said, hope is now. Are you ready? First, I need you to grab your cell phone. Seriously. Grab your cell phone. I saw you looking at it a minute ago. Grab your cell phone. Go to Facebook and log in and search for One in Five Minds. That's the number one. No spaces. The word in, the number five, no spaces and minds. You there? So once on the page, click like. Now when we post information about One in Five Minds, you'll see our updates in your Facebook feed. What you'll also notice is at the top of the One in Five Minds page, you'll see that there's a short Facebook live video. It's a very special special message to our community from our guest speaker Cinda Johnson. And I'd like to invite you all to like it and more importantly, share it on your page because we have close to 400 people here today. And so if we all share it, that means more than 20,000 people will get this on their Facebook wall. So that's a pretty great impact if you think about it. So make sure you add a hashtag One in Five Minds in ClarityCon 2017 so we can track you and to post like we're showing on the screen. See, that's super easy. So now I'm happy to announce one more benefit of being a part of One in Five Minds. We've created a series of handbooks to help remove the stigma that we know is a barrier to treatment. And today we're thrilled to share the first in a series of guides with you as a gift, as a benefit of attending ClarityCon 2017. As mental health professionals and advocates, we consistently hear how difficult it is for parents of a child in crisis to find support among their own family and friends. So we decided to do something about it. And today we're releasing to you, How Can I Help? This handbook, which you'll see on your screen, was created by experiences and inside of a team of parents who've had negative and positive experiences with friends and family. We know their experiences would help inform others. So we're appreciative of this group of advocates who have been willing to help. In fact, they're here today and we'd like to ask them to stand. So please join me in a round of applause for our parent advocates who helped us create How Can I Help? Thank you. Later today, you'll all receive an email with a link to access the handbook. We ask you to please download it, read it, share it, and let us know what you think. We all know when we talk about children's mental illness, we start to peel back the stigma and let families know it's okay to ask for help. We're also so proud to be able to work with you all to facilitate that support. And now it's time for our special lunch and presentation. Our luncheon and speaker is sponsored by Community Bible Church. CBC has been deeply involved in our mission and we truly appreciate their support. And now I'd like to introduce Jeannie Postel. She has a master's degree in social work and is a pastor and a director of marriage and pastoral ministries at Community Bible Church. And Jeannie will introduce our speaker. Thank you, Michelle. Community Bible Church is so grateful for the opportunity we've had to support this important conference. For the past four years, we've been able to sponsor this very important event and have seen firsthand the impact that it's had on our community in the mental health care area. Thank you all for taking the time to be here and to invest in the lives of children and families in our area. And now I have the special pleasure of introducing to you our luncheon speaker. First of all, I want you to know we are so sorry to hear that LaMia could not be with us due to her illness. And I pray that she gets well very soon. But even though she's not here, I think we should know a little bit about this remarkable young woman. LaMia Johnson is a graduate of Brown University with an executive master's and healthcare leadership and also Seattle University with major in English and creative writing. Prior to transferring to Seattle University, LaMia completed three years at Columbia College Chicago in the musical performance program. Quite a talented young woman. LaMia worked as an intern at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, working in the mental health department. She's a national speaker and writer with a deep commitment to promoting positive mental health care and decreasing the stigma that mental illness carries. She's traveled the country presenting her story, advocating for understanding and support for people with mental illness. Together with her mother, Cinda Johnson, LaMia authored an honest and poignant book, which I hope you will all read, you will not regret that. It's called Perfect Chaos, A Daughter's Journey to Survive by Polar, A Mother's Struggle to Save Her. Cinda Johnson, our speaker today, is a professor and a director of the special education graduate program at Seattle University. She's also the principal investigator and director of the Center for Change in Transition Services. She's a national leader in this area of transition from high school to post high school settings for young people with disabilities. She's written articles and book chapters in this area of secondary special education and transition services for youth with emotional and behavioral disorders or mental illness. Cinda's on the board for Bring Change to Mind and Writes Blogs for the Balanced Mind. Her experience is writing, traveling, presenting with LaMia, continually teach her more about advocacy, human rights and mental illness. She loves to travel for pleasure as well, and she enjoys learning about other cultures, people and places. She likes to hike, entertain, learn about the brain, read, write, and spend time with her wonderful family. So now will you please join me in welcoming to the stage our distinguished guest, Cinda Johnson. I'm going to really miss my daughter because she's the one with technological astuteness. And I'll probably go backwards with all of this. So first thing I need to do is turn this off so there's no reverberation, right? Off. We'll see. I need her already. Okay. I think it's, it's okay, right? All right. See, I told you I needed her. Thank you so much for inviting me to be here. What an amazing organization. And the people I've met and the commitment that you have is absolutely wonderful. So I'm going to start off. The first thing I'm going to do is get my computer up here. So I know what I'm talking about. I'm going to start off in Professor mode tells me my password's incorrect. So hold on. It's my grandmother's first and middle name. So now you all know what it is. Okay. So in Professor mode, these are the objectives. You will be tested when we're finished. Just make sure that you know them. And if I really want to get my evaluations up, I'll remind you what they are at the end, but we may run out of time. So we may not have to have a test. So I hope that you gain from this, that advocacy is important, and that families and teams that stick together can make a difference. So let's get started. Starting off with, yeah, next slide, please. Oh, I'm the one that's doing this. See, I'm just going to point to you, Gerard was like, next slide. My daughter never lets me hold this because I go backwards. There. All right. So I'm going to start off in Professor mode, absent minded professor actually, right? You guys all know this. Everyone is touched by mental illness. The thing that to me is most surprising is that 30% of our students and young people who have mental health conditions don't get treatment. And I think the reason they don't get treatment is because they don't know where to ask for it and who to talk to and who to trust. So all of you here talking about this makes a huge difference. So I'm a professor, I teach this stuff. I'm like, super transition queen, preparing people for life after high school, I know everything about mental illness. Stay tuned for part two. So these are my children when they were little. And because I had all this expertise, I kind of thought that I would raise them up to be reliable, healthy, great kids. And you know, we'd have some bumps and bruises. But otherwise, things would be okay. My older daughter Jordan is seven and a half years older than linear. Kind of a second mom for linear. And Jordan is very different with temperament than linear is. Jordan told me quote, I don't get sad, I get mad. She's a feisty one. So life, life was pretty good, you know, it we were moving along. Here's linear turning I think for and Jordan things were going very well. We spent a lot of time on the beach. We live in Seattle. We took great vacations together. It was the perfect family, right? Anybody in here had had the perfect family for a couple days. Yeah. So when when linear is with me, she always reminds people that this photo was actually at an 80s dance party. This was not how she dressed all the time. I think she looks fine. I don't see anything 80s about it. But you know, Oh, thank you. I didn't push the there we go. Thank you. This you're now my designated linear. She's like, mom, you're going the wrong way. In high school, linear was the overachiever. And in fact, she said that her perfectionism is almost worse on her than her bipolar. She did everything top notch. She was in every music group. She was she played sports. She was in advanced placement classes. She was taking some classes at a community college for college credit. There was one day that she put together a video to submit an application for college. And it started at six in the morning in rehearsals for a musical. After school, it ended with sports. That evening, she had a lesson with an opera coach from Seattle Opera. And then she came home and did homework. That would go and go and go. And then she would crash. And then she would have an anxiety attack. And she would be overwhelmed and not be able to keep up. And she says, I would put on my Oprah voice and bring out the white chart and say, let's fix your schedule. Let's get rid of some things. Let's get some things off your plate. If anyone had told me that this was beginning of an illness that would almost take her away from us, I don't know if I would have believed them at the time. But the message I was giving her was if you try hard enough, you can get through this. I didn't mean to give her that message, but I wasn't saying to her this could be in your brain rather than in your schedule. So this is a piece that she wrote in Perfect Chaos. It says, I think there's a point in everyone's life when it's hard to look up. When you feel you've fallen a million miles below the surface and you can't find a way to climb back out. I was teaching about depression. And this caught me in a way that none of the research did. She wrote another piece in the book later on that said, lady to the nurse in the hospital, you're going to have to give me mouth to mouth before you can pull me out of this hole that I'm in because I'm already dying. That is depression. And it was deep and dark and then it would go away. But again, I thought it was based on her experiences, her schedule, the things that she was trying to do. I'm not going to read this one to you. You have to buy the book or you can read it while I talk. But I hear all the time the question is, how did you know? How did you know if what was going on in high school was the beginning of bipolar disorder or if it was teenage angst? How did you know what was coming? And in fact, our editor asked me that so many times I was confused. Like, did I know? Did I miss something? Should I have known what was going on? But I realized it's sort of like an autoimmune disease that's starting with a few symptoms. My mother has multiple sclerosis. My sister has scleroderma. Both of it took five to 10 years to be diagnosed. It started in their late teens for both of them. But neither of them got diagnosed until 25 for my mom and 32 for my sister. So maybe you don't know. But my editor also said something I found really interesting. One night at 12 o'clock, she's in New York City, 12 o'clock her time. I'm in Seattle. And we were going back and forth on this. And she said, it's kind of like a horror movie. When you're watching a movie, the people in the audience can see it coming. The people in the film don't know that the murderer with the big knife is in the other room. Because they've never had a murderer with a knife in the other room in their house. They don't know what's coming. But all of us looking on are like, Well, of course, we can see it. So we went forward. And linear went off to college. And she was excited to go to Chicago. She got a scholarship. Life was good. And I thought that's it. She's well. She made it. Things are good. And then we got the call about 12 months into the it was in September of her second year. We got the call from her boyfriend that she had broken up with previously, because she was too sad to love anyone. And he called and he said, linear is not safe. Those were the magic words that put us into a world that honestly, remember that professor that knew everything. Now all of a sudden I'm a mom who knows nothing. I did not know how difficult this was going to be. I did not know the impact on families. I did not know how hard it was to find treatment. I did not know how much courage it took to be a person living with a mental illness to live in recovery and stability. Welcome to the world that one in four families actually live. So she was, I say she was here, she'd say she was brought home. I say she came home back to Seattle. And we got her a psychiatrist, which was a full time job to find that while my husband flew to Chicago to bring her home. I man the phones. I know people. I know people and I could not find a psychiatrist within 12 hours when I wanted to find one. When I finally found a psychiatrist, he had an opening two weeks away. And I wasn't sure if she could make it for two weeks. But she did. She met the psychiatrist. They bonded. In fact, he's still her psychiatrist after all this time. And she became somewhat stable. She moved into an apartment because she wanted to go back to college three months after she came home. And her psychiatrist suggested she live independently so that she could go back to college. But unbeknownst to us, she was spiraling down further and further and further. She was the ever perfectionist to put a plan together to end her life. She had a CD. Everyone has a CD for their plan, right? So they can listen to the music. She had how she was going to do it. And somehow, through the grace of God, a friend on a phone and a call to us and her psychologist the next morning, she made it through that night. She was hospitalized at our critical care hospital Harborview. But we went in through the ER psych unit at our trauma hospital in Seattle. We did not know about clarity in Seattle, if there was one, we went through the ER. And she ended up in the lockdown psych unit with mostly older men who were homeless with drug and alcohol addiction. And I looked around and went, these are not our people. This is not like my daughter. And within 24 hours, I was like, yes, they are. The only difference is we have resources and they don't. The only difference is they have a family fighting for them. We have a family fighting for her and they don't. So she was in the hospital. She was moved across to another hospital for four days happened to be in the hospital that my husband worked in. Taken by ambulance. She was moved back to Harborview because that's where they have ECT, electroconfulsive therapy. It depends upon the audience. But we typically say that shocking, isn't it? And the NAMI audience laughs. The DBSA audience laughs. The brand new medical residents freeze. Humor has kept us going. So she had ECT. And at the same time she was having ECT, my dad was having his heart shocked because it was out of rhythm. And I thought, why not tell the truth? Why not tell the truth? So this is the note she wrote the day after she was moved from the lockdown unit with nothing. She was moved into a unit where she got a pencil and she said, remember, this is so weird because every once in a while something hits me that I haven't looked at in a while. And I get so emotional. This is it. I haven't read this in a while because she's not here. So I put this together last night. On Tuesday, you were happy. And she says, mom and dad, I want to put that beside my bed because I want to remember that no matter how bad it gets, I can be happy again. So I kept that note all these years. And it's in a little file with her medical bills because I never want to forget how much was covered by insurance, how often we fought to move beyond 10 days. This was before our friend Patrick Kennedy was pushing parody. We really have a file of this of this life. So she's well, right? We even had a reporter ask ask her one time. So once you were over bipolar, how did you deal with what you've been through? Now didn't happen. So she went back to Chicago. She went back as a 19 year old that has a new diagnosis of a mental illness. And this may be a surprise to some of the parents in here, but a lot of 19 year olds in college drink. And some do drugs. And she was at an arts college. Not that artists do more than other freshmen. But she went back to a college where there was a lot of partying going on. And she has this new illness. And even though she was better when she left, she got back and she had no one to talk to. She had no one that said this is normal. She knew no other 19 year old with a mental illness. And she had been on 14 medications by then. And decided that you know what, these aren't working. But alcohol makes me feel better. Marijuana makes me feel better. Cocaine makes me feel better. And I'm not saying anything that she wouldn't say. I flew home on a plane one day. And I was thinking about this after this incident in Chicago. And I thought, I don't want anybody to know this. But then I started to cry on the plane with two people next to me wondering what was wrong with me. And I thought this is all about my pride. We need to talk about self medicating for people who have mental illnesses. We need to talk about self medicating for young people that haven't got a diagnosis yet. We need to get that out and talk about it. I went, wait a minute, I am not ashamed. My daughter was so ill. In fact, she was so ill and felt so badly that she overdosed on her anxiety meds. Took the entire bottle. But the girl that she is before she as she walked to the music building, she was a music major voice and piano to hand in her papers and her homework. She kept taking the meds all the way. Turned her paperwork into her professor and said, I'm ill. I'm not going to come to class today. And that professor never even said a word except thank you. And then she found Charlie, ex-boyfriend Charlie and she said you need to take me to the hospital. She went to the hospital in Chicago. We got the phone call. She had overdosed. And I'm parroting her and I'm also telling you I see your faces. It gets better. You're going to see her at the end because she's going to Skype in with us. She says after that point in time, and this doesn't happen to everyone, but after that point in time the light came on. Not because she was well, because she wanted to live. Quote, Linnea. I've heard her said this many times. I was like, oh, alcohol makes you slow down and it doesn't work very well if you have bipolar disorder. Oh, light bulb. Cocaine doesn't make you better when you have bipolar disorder or any other illness or even wellness. And she said, if I want to live, I have to start taking care of myself. And she did. At 20 years old, she quit drinking. She started living a healthy lifestyle. And she was well, right? No, she wasn't. But life went on and I'll tell you about the rest here in a minute. Oh, that's awesome. There's a clock back there. So you don't have to remember and I don't have to look. I can see it. So I'm going to skip this one. You can read it. But I think the last part what I truly needed was a comforting voice outside of my loving family that tell me that it was okay if I failed or even broke a few rules. She had a hard time forgiving herself. She thought that it was her problem to not get well. And she she moved to this other side. And we found our voice. All the writing in perfect chaos is from her journals. She didn't have nearly as much editing as I did because it was all journals from the time she was in high school on. She chose to share her deepest darkest thoughts through these illnesses, these ups and these downs through her journal writings. I went back and wrote my part. And we had a pretty amazing experience getting this published by our editors in New York at St. Martin's Press. We have an amazing agent. But before we did that, our agent said to us, do what you want to do. Whether the perfect cast is ever published or not. And what we wanted to do was share a story to say this happens to every family. Every family has someone in their family they know who's gone through this. We should not be ashamed. We should not hide it. And we should also share stories of both hope and recovery, as well as stories of people who are struggling and wrap them with our care. So before the book was published, we got a call from Glenn Close and she said, I'm starting an organization called Bring Change to Mind and I've seen your work and I'd like you to join us. We're like, what? So Linnea flew off to New York exactly one year from when she was hospitalized and sat at a table with Rosalind Carter and Glenn Close and Patrick Kennedy at an event in New York. And I'm not name dropping. I'm saying she came back to me and she said, Mom, I sat at a table with people who were talking in public about mental illness, who were talking about their own family's mental illness. This is what we need to do is change people's minds and thoughts. And remember that guy in the ER that was there for two days because there was no bed for him. Remember him. We need to talk about him too. So we begin to talk. We begin to speak. We begin to write. We begin to share our story. And then Perfect Chaos was, uh oh, what happened here? You can still hear me? Okay, I must have just turned my head because I was gone all of a sudden. Perfect Chaos was published. And we went to New York and we had a book launch party and we were thinking how special all of this was. We found NAMI. I'm sorry, NAMI for some of you, NAMI for us in Seattle. We found them. We've been walking with them and talking with them and presenting at their national conferences and listening to them. And when I get calls and emails from people all over the country with the most horrific stories and they're so alone and lost, I get online. I find their nearest NAMI office and I tell them, here's where you go. And a couple of times they've been too ill themselves to make that call. So I ask them, it's okay if I call and then they can call them and they will do that. I know a tiny little office somewhere in rural Georgia that now has one of the people they've connected with volunteering and running family to family. So we found this group of people. We found our tribe. And I better hurry up because we got some more story to tell. So everything's going great. And Linnea decides that she's going to do an internship at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Fantastic. Until I help her pack four months worth of medication. And it hits me again, this is a lifelong illness. She has to go to a foreign country and do this awesome internship, dragging this baggage along with her of a diagnosed illness that takes a lot of care. And a little bit of that mom fear came back. Well, I admit it, quite a bit of mom fear. But she went. It was fantastic. And it set her pathway to wanting to work in mental health policy in the world of disability. And she came back ready to go on and work and get her masters. I talked about Patrick Kennedy. She look at I love this picture and I put this up because there's a point to this picture. It's not the fact that she's sitting by Patrick Kennedy and a senator and some really powerful people. But she's not there. Oh, but she's online. There you go. Thank you. I hope she's not watching this on live cam right now. She'll be like, Oh, mom. So anybody tell me what's unique and interesting about that photo. One young woman. We need to have voices. And she's also the only person living with a mental illness. Well, no, I'm sorry. Patrick Kennedy is she is the voice that we need to have at every table. We need to have young people on our boards on our in our work groups. We need to have them representing we need to have them out talking and speaking and joining us. We've got a young group of students and adolescents and young adults coming forward that can really move the needle on eliminating stigma. So that's that's one message to take away today. So everything is great. Here's the part that moms particularly in some fathers will relate to although my husband thought I had gone completely off the deep end. She decides she's going to go now to India by herself with a mental health team into Kerala. I thought that I was had it together. I thought my fear was over. I thought my PTSD had subsided. But it had been hidden in the back of the closet with the shoes I don't wear. And it came out and it bit me in the ass hard. Is it okay to say that in Texas? Okay, you got to be culturally sensitive. I was terrified. I was terrified. Because if anybody knew two years ago and we're reading the paper or a year and a half ago or whenever, Americans were being abducted. Foreigners and visitors and travelers were being raped. And if I missed one single article my dad would call and show me where to find it or send me the link. I know that jet lag plays havoc with mood disorders. So she was going to get off that plane in India. And she was going to be manic. And she was going to run away. And I would never see her again because there's only five psychiatrists in India, right? This is my brain. There's very few psychiatrists, but there's more than five. So I was terrified. I knew that this was the worst thing possible. I was going to Sweden at the same time to take a teacher class that I teach every two years. She says I bribed her. I offered to take her with me to Sweden if she didn't want to go to India. Bribed her. I could not sleep. I was so frightened about this illness that we had come we had made peace with that I could not sleep. And then I had my wake up call. And my wake up call was she can get hit by a bus in Seattle tomorrow. And I'm not going to be there to save her. The title of the book originally was the mother who saved her. And Linnea said mom, you can't save me. That was what our editors wanted. And we put in the word struggled to because moms think they can dads think they can but we cannot. We cannot. And what changed my mind and my thought was first of all, I couldn't keep up that level of intense fear and worry. I couldn't do it. But secondly, I thought, you know what, I have all this energy. Why not really put it into what I need to do to increase my ability to speak and help and support and teach and do all those things that do make a difference and give up some of that energy and worrying about my daughter. She went to India. She says I went to India thinking I could help and I came back learning a lot more. In fact, I thought of this table. She went out with a mental health team that were all lay people who went out into rural areas where patients that weren't patients yet were actually tied up by their parents because there was no treatment. They were completely psychotic. And if they were let loose for a minute, they would likely never see them again. So this team went out and worked directly with the family. It's called MHAT, M-H-A-T if any of you are interested. And they got treatment, support, built roofs, helped them find jobs. It was an amazing experience for her. So she went on to graduate school and she became very much able to take care of herself. And I share this because she was at Brown University and she did a hybrid program where she was there for three or four weeks and then would come back or she'd be there for two weeks and come back, stayed at the same hotel every time. And she was very on the edge for a while, trying hard to get through. And these are the, this is the note that she made herself and posted it in her hotel room. Run four times a week, watch a fun video three times a week, bed by 1030, up by seven, one drink a week, no caffeine, vitamin every day, 30 minutes of extracurricular reading and TV. Snack at 3pm. This is how hard she works to stay well. Her housekeeper, the person that changed her sheets and came into her room, who gotten to know her, stuck a note there and said, take five minutes every morning, visualize your fabulous day. Your best accessory is your smile. Don't forget to use it to wear it. That was from the hotel maid that stuck it on her desk. So Linnea's treatment plan, I know you're all interested in this. I think the first thing is acceptance. And she would say she not hide this illness. And she I say, it's also been herself determination or advocacy skills that's been critical to her recovery. She does self care, as you could see from that note. She also has a support team. She looks for people that she can hang out with and be with that help her have a healthy life. And after her overdose and hospitalization in Chicago, she found friends that would go to a movie, rather than wanted to party. She's found friends that wanted to run and exercise and read and have a book club instead of go out and stay out late at night. She also has an amazing medical team. She has a doctor who has a great sense of humor. First time that we took her back to the doctor after she'd had a second hospitalization with ECT. His first words to her was, Hey, you remember me? Because her memory was affected for a couple of weeks afterwards. He made what he made what could be very frightening, normal. He normalized it. He made it funny. It's like, he would not be joking about this if he were concerned that it would never go away. And she laughed and she said yes. She went back a week later and he says, Hey, do you remember me? And she said, Yeah, and I remember you asked me that a week ago. She has a counselor that she works with on things like perfectionism, things like to take care of yourself when you're an advocate, how to deal with this world. She talks about all kinds of things with her. And she also uses hospitalization when needed. I'm sharing this part of her story because she will say the last time I was hospitalized, I won. I won at being hospitalized. I knew I needed to be hospitalized. I got my advanced self directive psychiatric self directive updated. I met with my family. I told them what I needed to do. I called Marty my doctor and said, I need to see you right away. He helped me get a bed in the hospital. We waited till it was open and I drove her there and she was hospitalized. And she went in knowing what she wanted and the kind of treatment she wanted very, very different than the first time. And what she would say and what I also know as a family is this illness, this bipolar monster does not come out of the bushes and attack us anymore. We know it's coming. So one last thing before we get her in. Don't forget your treatment plan, caregivers, family members. I do these things like exercise and find fun because when you're in the midst of this, you don't find fun. And people that you reach out to sometimes it's like when you're pregnant and use I'm not pregnant. But I remember this. I remember this someone says to you. Oh, let me tell you what happened to me. The worst possible story ever of delivery. You are so terrified you don't even want to have a baby. This is like mental illness. You tell someone and they do they either go, Oh, I have a friend who killed themselves, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you're like, thank you for that. Or they say, Oh, it'll be fine. Or they change the subject because they don't know what to say. So finding that team that understands and can be there for you and staying away from those that are not your casserole brigade therapy. I realized that I was a could be a good therapist for other people, but not for myself. I needed one. And then being an advocate that has been hugely important for me. I am only going to show you these last few things because whoops, going the wrong way. Sorry, sorry. She's probably on right now. I'm really going the wrong way. Alright, I'm not going to go through the can have this PowerPoint. And these are the back to the professor. These are the points of self determination and self advocacy that we need to teach anyone who wants to manage their own life with a mental illness. It will be I'm sure posted or email us. So shall we bring linear in? Yes, they're saying please please bring her. We're going to we're going to Skype ring. She's been home ill with a flu thing. She feels better today but still tired. So hopefully we can bring her up here and ask a few questions. Am I supposed to cover for a minute for tap dance? Am I on? You are on. Hey, linear. Hi, everyone. I'm really sorry that I can't be here today. I'm sorry I can't be here today. I ended up getting sick the last minute right before I was going to get on the plane the next morning. So thank you for having me over Skype. And we have some questions for you. We're going to do questions right now. Correct. So there's a question. Yes, here comes a question linear. Oh, no questions. Don't go away. I have one. How do you feel now that you don't have bipolar anymore? I don't know if she even heard that. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, I have a question for you about going to college with a mental illness and recommendations that you would have for someone who has beaten the disease, so to speak, meaning of course they'll live with it always but is doing well and wants to head there. Probably will be out of state and you know as a family recognize the challenges that one may face. So any recommendations for someone embarking on that down the road? Right. Can you repeat a little bit of that? Sure. So the question really is suggestions that you would have for someone going to college away from home who's also dealing with a mental health issue or condition. Okay. Yeah, I think that it's really important to make sure you set up a treatment plan before you get there. I think for me going when I went back to college after my hospitalization, we had a counselor and a psychiatrist already set up. And that really helped knowing that I had that treatment team. Then also having kind of the check-ins that you have available to be able to have your parents check in. They can't reach you. Who can they reach? So I think that's also important. And I would add to check with the Disability Student Services Office and get an accommodation plan already in place so that if it's needed, you can tap into that. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? I'm Patty Durra. Hi. Excuse me. You had talked about advocacy and youth voice, which is absolutely critical. And so one of the things I wanted to know is have y'all connected with Youth Move National or some of the youth activities and leadership out of Georgia with Sue Smith or Sherry Valines or all of my friends that are in Georgia. And I know that through Georgia Parent Support Network, they have a very, very active youth leadership activities. And so I was wondering if you had connected with Georgia or if you connected with Youth Move or National Federation of Families, because we need to be on every board of directors. If there's a decision made about us, then we should have input into that planning, regardless if it's budget, if it's governmental, if it's administrative, if it's business, if it's hospital. We need to have our voices there and we need to have the voices of the youth, because they don't think like I do. You know, I've got a daughter who says, man, you're way off. You know, I think I'm right on. We just don't have the we're not embracing the youth. I don't feel near and we've known to do that since the Federation started in 89. We've been working with Gary Blau. He's been supporting us, but we still don't have that presence. We are doing as much as possible to connect youth and Linnea actually Linnea, can you hear me? I don't think Linnea can hear me. I can hear you. I can only hear that question at all. Yeah, I was Linnea did some work with DBSA and she's done a lot of work with National Youth Organization. So the question was your involvement with trying to make sure of youth voices at the table. So next question. How do you I think it's really important to make sure that when you have, for instance, with national things, if you have councils, if you have stakeholder boards to make sure that you have a youth at the table, I think that that's really necessary. DBSA did a great job. They had a young adult council, but I actually think they should have gone a step further and had a young adult on their adult board. So I think that making sure you have at least one youth voice at the table, I think is important. It froze. Okay, next question. When you first went to Chicago for college. Why is it that you think your boyfriend at the time realized that you need it help before your family did? Have we lost her to our I can hear you joy. When I first went to Chicago, what this will be the last question I think or one more. Oh, no, I can't hear you at all. Oh, I could actually answer that question for her. She she hid out and lit in her dorm room and didn't tell anyone and didn't go to class and eventually, Charlie just forced her to say what was wrong. He knew something was wrong and he said what is wrong. And she said, I can't stop seeing blood. I can't stop wanting to hurt myself. And he immediately went into action wouldn't leave her took her home with him to his mother's house who was who was a nurse and called us. So you know, he noticed and he asked the questions and I tell my students this, ask questions, say what's going on in your head, and be prepared for the answer. Because an answer like that would scare a lot of people off. But he was not scared off. So I think we've lost her. So another question, one more question, then we're going to end because we're at the end of our time. Cindy, I was going to ask if, you know, when she went to college, and obviously, now she's very comfortable with, you know, sharing that she has mental illness. At a time, I'm sure that that was not easy. And so what were some of the things that she did? Or how or some of her strategies with her friends? And did she have to change friendships, based on you know, any sort of stigma? Yeah, does that question make sense? Yes, yes. Okay. And you know, she's say that one of the first really helpful for her is she read Kate Redfield Jamison's book. And it and she's a PhD psychologist that does research in bipolar disorder at Johns Hopkins. And she has and lives with bipolar disorder. And when I was like, here's someone who my life isn't over, here's someone, the role model for me. So that was a start. But didn't know anyone in college that had a mental illness. And in fact, she heard people at parties say, Oh, my God, they're so bipolar, and was afraid to say anything, but then slowly found this group of people who were not afraid. And it was role models before she started to relate to students and young adults her own age. It's for Kay Redfield Jamison's book. All of them wrote the Bible on bipolar disorder. And when they also has a number of she just I wish I knew I think it's on our Facebook page. She just wrote an article recently on best books to read that were helpful for her. So there's that piece as well. But I think finding advocates and role models and mentors is very helpful. So thank you all. I'm sorry, that was a little twitchy there at the end. But I think you at least got to see her. And thank you for your time. It was wonderful. So before you leave, Santa, we wanted to give you something just to commemorate your time here. This was created by some of the patients at Clarity Child Guidance Center. We have one for Linnea as well that we will send home with you. But thank you again. So we would like to let everyone know that we have a limited supply of the Johnson's book for sale over here on the side and send it will be there to meet you and sign your copy. Before you go, we want you to understand that to mark your calendars for the upcoming Pathways to Hope conference on August 11 12th at the Hoban Center. Pathways to Hope is a community collaborative ministry facilitated by the Bear County faith community and by organizations throughout the city to break down barriers and help more families get help. They have an exciting lineup of speakers for parents and for professionals. And you'll find a card in your swag bag with details on the program and registration information. And we look forward to seeing you there. Remember, as you're leaving, please stop by and say hello to our exhibitors who helped make this conference possible. There's lots of resources in our area. And there's many of them at those tables. And please thank them for their participation and support and making this day possible. And remember your passport, if you could get that stamped at each one of those places and turn it in after your last breakout session, we're giving away two opportunities to come to ClarityCon 2018 for free. So we also want to thank Nowcast for streaming this luncheon presentation and their sponsor, the City of San Antonio Department of Human Services and through the Bear Cares Child Mental Health Program who made this possible. So please also at your tables, if you haven't signed in and you need your CEUs, please sign in and take your survey, which was also at your place, fill that out, and you will pick up your CEU certificate as you pass off your survey at the back at the back entrance there. So this concludes our lunch presentation. Thank you all very much.