“That and two cents will get you a cup of coffee,” my father used to say when I was growing up. He was an Evangelical Quaker pastor, a self-taught artist of wood burnings. My father was a brilliant, creative, caring man who was the stable emotional foundation of our home.
Emotional foundations and mental stability would play an outsized role in my life when both crumbled in my forties. A psychotic break, five hospitalizations in behavioral health facilities, and more than a decade of clawing back to regain my emotional foundations and mental health integrity taught me valuable life lessons.
My hope is to share with you my two cents, my lived experience of mental illness, and the unwanted journey it forces on everyday people like you and me. Whether you battle daily with your mental health or you love someone who does, I want you to know that you are not alone — and that there is hope.
Danei Edelen (Photo provided)
My name is Danei Edelen, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness NKY. I am a wife, mother, artist in residence at Edelen Acres, founder of NAMI Brown County (Ohio), and 2020 Ohio News Media Hooper award-winning mental health columnist. I also worked in high-tech, with more than 20 years’ experience in marketing technology companies such as Nortel and Amdocs.
“Crazy”
A lot has changed in our culture since I had my psychotic break in 2008. At one time, people like me who had been hospitalized were labeled “crazy, dangerous, or violent.” However, nothing could be further from the truth.
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, only 3-5% of violent acts are attributed to severe mental illness. That’s only one of the many stigmas associated with mental illness. Dozens more linger in our culture and society.
Let me be clear, mental illness stinks. It may take a decade or more just to get your medication right, if you are fortunate. If you aren’t, the threat of self-destruction may follow you like an ominous dark cloud. Friends may vanish. Family members may grow to resent your disease. No one seems to understand.
I was fortunate. After my break, my parents came down from northern Ohio once a month for a year to help. My mother assisted my husband with household chores. My father allowed me to vent all my fears out loud while I paced around the living room, and all he would say was, “You are going to make it.”
But four years into my journey, my father died suddenly, never getting to see me finally regain my mental health; to rebuild the emotional foundation he instilled in me.
Finding the National Alliance on Mental Illness
All sickness is hard on the sufferers, but no stigma exists for cancer or heart disease. Not true for mental illness. Not only do you feel broken inside, but people you thought cared about you may back off and make excuses about why they can no longer be around you. They don’t understand why the medicines you’re on now slow you down, make you perpetually sleepy, cause dizziness and weight gain, or make you feel like someone you’re not. They can’t comprehend your struggle to put the pieces of you back together again.
That return to wholeness involves grieving both what was and what is, with all the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. To be psychologically healthy, it is perfectly normal for you to go through this process. Yet, your process will be different from mine or someone else’s.
In 2015, I discovered the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the largest grassroots organization in the country focused on mental health, helping people like me — and their families — build better lives. Through NAMI, I attended support group meetings and realized I am not alone on this journey. NAMI provides free educational classes that help you understand not only the biology behind having a brain disease but also the psychology to accept that you have lived through a traumatic event that turned your world upside down. NAMI programs walk you through the grief process. NAMI is a safe place to vent difficult, negative emotions.
On April 15, 2024, I became executive director of NAMI Northern Kentucky. I am elated to share my lived experience with you to help educate, equip, and empower you to choose life daily and to be a “mental health warrior.” I’m looking forward to sharing with you what I’ve learned along this journey and providing “my two cents” on the difficult topic of mental illness.
In eternity, I know my father is smiling.
Danei Edelen is the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Northern Kentucky.