From Silent Struggles to Open Conversations: The Mental Health Journey

This week on The Corner, host Steve Martorano is joined by Kyle Carter, the Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). On this October 10th, National Mental Health Awareness Day, they address the growing awareness surrounding mental health challenges, especially during the backdrop of a global pandemic. Tune in to hear their insightful discussion on combating the lingering stigma and the importance of continued education on mental health.

-------------------------------
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

Transcript

Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner. You're invited to hang with us as we discuss how we live today, the choices we make, what we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around for a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hello, everybody, welcome again to the Behavioral Corner. It's me, Steve Martorano, always hanging out here. On the Behavioral Corner, if you're just finding out about us, we talk about everything—really, it's a podcast about everything. That's because everything affects our behavioral health. Our show is made possible by our underwriting partner, Retreat Behavioral Health; you'll find out more about them down the road. October 10th is designated each year as National Mental Health Awareness Day. So, who better to talk to about something like this than the Executive Director of NAMI? For those of you who've never heard of NAMI, they are the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and their Executive Director, Kyle Carter, is our guest today. Hi, Kyle. Thanks for joining us.

Kyle Carter 
Good afternoon. Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Steve Martorano 
So, okay, we have a national day—that's very good—dedicated to awareness, which is an obvious term. From my perspective as a layperson, and given media coverage and all the talk about mental health crises, spikes in anxiety, depression, and drug addiction, exacerbated by a pandemic, it seems to me there's an abundance of awareness about mental illness and mental health. So, I want to ask you, as someone who's in the field, what are we doing well as a society? How would you characterize it, and what more needs to be done? 

Kyle Carter 
Ohh, again, loaded question. I think, what are we doing? Well, I think as a society, and as a generation, the concept of mental health and wellness is pretty much embedded. I think social media has aided in that process. So I think we're doing that well, as far as creating awareness and understanding the feelings when we feel them, so to speak. So when we feel anxiety, when we feel depression, all those things, we're able to at least engage in the conversation. So that's what we're doing well, the awareness part. What we're not doing so well, is understanding the value of therapeutic supports. Understanding that therapy is incredibly important and that you can't always manage everything yourself. And also as a culture, a working culture in this country, we work, work, work, work, work, but very rarely is the rest or self-care or wellness really embedded as a part of our lives. So I think that's the other part, besides accepting therapy is something that can really be a useful intervention for us. But also embedding wellness, in balance, work-life balance into our lives. And the other piece is that I think we can all do better as a society.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, that's a great answer. Because awareness is a kind of catch-all phrase, if I understand what you're saying about here's what we're doing well, we've taken mental illness out of the shadows, where we didn't talk about it. We never even spoke about it to a place now where as you say, we can discuss it openly as a mental health issue. Absolutely. Okay. So that leads me directly to, you know, what it took to get it out of the shadows. And that leads to the stigma of mental illness? How would you characterize I know, it's improved somewhat in terms of stigmatizing people. But how much more do we need to go to get people to stop being terrified and stigmatize this disorder?

Kyle Carter 
So I think, you know, to your point, we have come a long way. You know, when you look back and older times, folks that had mental health issues were being treated in closed rooms, and you didn't talk about it, because the education wasn't there. Well, where we see it sitting down today to education is somewhat that we're learning more and more about various mental illnesses and abnormalities. But where we have to go as education has to continue in all spaces all continues from 01 to 100. We have to continue to invest dollars and time equity and thought leadership and to understand all the different types of mental illnesses that exist and how they affect everyone because we're all none of us are monoliths. So it affects each one of us a little bit differently. So just investing the time and thought leadership and understanding all those pieces.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, we can spend them lot of time, maybe we can at some point talk about humanity's relationship to mental illness over the years. It was not relatively speaking that long ago, hundreds of years ago, when people were consigned to horrible asylums, thrown away and, you know, referred to as "lunatics." That was the end of it out of sight, out of mind. It things have changed dramatically, and that period...in this period of time, but that's we can we can talk a little bit more about that later. Tell me about NAMI and your role. How long have you been involved in NAMI?

Kyle Carter 
So, NAMI, Philadelphia, I've been the executive director as of yesterday, six months. Oh, congratulations. Thank you so much. It was my anniversary. So NAMI is a national organization with over 600 affiliates. So I've been in my role, it's been in existence in Philadelphia for about five years. I'm the first person of color to lead not only Philadelphia, which is, I think, noteworthy for a city of Philadelphia that's very much full of black and brown people. So again, they have that representation and hopefully, that programmatic equity and health equity, I think is incredibly important. As far as some of the things that I bring to the role, I previously served in the city leadership for the BH IDF, I am a Professor of Psychology myself, a licensed clinician, and I've held other director-level positions in the mental health space. So I bring a world of experience, and blessed to be able to bring that experience to this role. As far as NAMI has some of the programmatic things that we offer, we offer everything from support groups, which could be grief, gun violence, LGBTQI plus youth, and a number of BIPOC supports. There are a number of support groups that we offer. When we offer an Ending the silence suicide prevention program. We offer NAMI on campus in which we're actually in several universities throughout the city in which the students are able to mirror NAMI sport and not miss composition, in order to offer direct service resources to the students right there on campus. We offer crisis intervention training to city police and other law enforcement, along with a plethora of other supports that I started going all on and will be here for a really long time. But I think when it comes to mental health, mental illness, NAMI has really positioned as kind of the North Star of offering a wide variety and a diverse variety of supports, to hopefully affect and ______.

Steve Martorano 
Oh, so clearly, NAMI has a broad series of goals. You outlined a couple on your website. And, by the way, it's a terrific resource. There'll be a link on the podcast so you guys can access it. And you mentioned education. You mentioned your role as an advocate for understanding this. Let's get back to the stigma of it. How problematic is that at this late date? People still have weird ideas about mental illness, don't they?

Kyle Carter 
Absolutely. You know, to your point, you use the verbiage "lunatics" earlier, the phrasing, "retardation" and things of that nature were used, still to this day, but very recently, and what those things essentially do is it casts a really negative dispersion around those that are affected by mental illness, caregivers and those directly affected. So more often than not, does it stop people from actually looking into meaningful care? When we talked earlier about equity and those that are deciding I don't want to get a therapist because it's that dark stigma, that dark cloud that sits over it. So I think it deters people from really looking into meaningful care to hopefully support their mental illness in the various challenges.

Steve Martorano 
Now I want to take a look at three areas of society and how they're how they manage these things. Well, three or four, but first, there are people of color. Does that constituency still have the sort of attitude that mental health, treatment, and care are for people of means? And somehow, they may shy away from it. Either lack of resources or a sense of Oh, come on, man, just man up, you're depressed? Of course, you're depressed things are bad here. Right? Is that That's still prevalent in that community?

Kyle Carter 
Absolutely. So what I will I have to preface it by saying obviously, as a man of color, we are not a model life so I don't speak for everyone but I can't speak for myself in my professional experience. I don't necessarily know if the therapeutic support from people of means. I think that the more pervasive issue of why people of color do not see it is the weakness piece you're perceived as being weak. If you go with a therapist, man up the man up thing and that's for all genders. It doesn't necessarily have to be for black men per se, but I think it uniquely affects black men.

Steve Martorano 
It's also characteristic of other ethnic groups. I mean, you know, an Italian American family when I was growing up, I mean, the idea that someone would be seeing a therapist was not, it wasn't so much stigmatized as it was never thought of anybody. It was in therapy. I just mentioned people of color, because across the board is, you know, health care, delivery, and treatment. They lag behind for a multitude of reasons. Let's talk about the police. I mean, I think most people understand now that mental illness can be treated, and then you could get and then you get help. But there's a point at which mental illness intersects with society that precedes all of that. And it is very often at the point, of a police presence. I mean, police see more mental health issues than psychiatrists. I would say, Is there a close second, anyway? How well do you think, in general, I know it's a general statement, but police are being trained to understand what's going on, in a situation like that, where a mental issue may be at play.

Kyle Carter 
Well, I'm gonna start by, you know, unabashedly giving NAMI, a pat on the back, along with Philadelphia police and fire departments and things of that nature for instituting things like something that we do, which is crisis intervention training. And that is the appropriate proactive approach, to work with law enforcers that are going to intersect with those that have mental health and behavioral health challenges. And we offer different training and scenarios and things like that, to arm them with some strategies so that when they intersect, they're able to handle it appropriately and preferably without violent incident. So I think based on integrating tactics and interventions like that, we're doing better than we used to.

Steve Martorano 
So let's talk about Philadelphia, where chapters are located, with regard to cooperation with the authorities. Does it sound like the police are on board and the training sets, due to mental health crisis counselors' role with any police that you know, on a regular basis in Philadelphia?

Kyle Carter 
Yes, so there are, as part of CIT, and associated programming, there are CIT officers that support the different districts all throughout the city. We're offering different trainings and supporting the cops as they interface. So there's ongoing training, ongoing strategies, ongoing interventions that are being poured into these distant districts, that way law enforcement actually have some degree of something to pull from when they're thrown into some of these very unique and sometimes very dangerous situations.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, yeah. And for those people who think that this is solely a benefit for the disturbed person to the mentally ill person, it also helps policing. Because I mean, you know, anything that will lower the threshold of violence and, to death maybe is a good thing. I think more police departments should be actively involved. That's sort of a mission across the board nationally, with Nambi. To get police to work, and then I guess, the final, there are so many other aspects of society, but the family becomes a major component in this. Mental illness is a family disease, in a sense, and there can be tremendous collateral damage from someone who has mental health issues among their family and loved ones. What kind of support is out there for families, with people suffering from mental illness?

Kyle Carter 
Absolutely. And you raised a very important point that mental illness and behavioral health challenges that affect the whole person, and part of the whole person is family and community. So I think as far as NAMI, in particular, we offer a number of different programs. And so I mentioned I will mention the support groups that we offer. For families, we offer some of our signature programs and family to peer-to-peer. So we offer family to family, peer to peer and those are Nami signature programs, specifically embedded to work with families that have caregivers or family members affected by mental illness. We offer training, ongoing training, as well as a support group format, to help support families and an ongoing battle because again, nobody's monolith, it affects families differently. So what we try to do is just arm families with strategies and interventions, scenarios, and everything we can add to their tool belt to deal with all the very difficult and dynamic challenges that come with working with someone and living with someone with mental health challenges.

Steve Martorano  
So someone listening to this might be confronting a loved one with a mental illness problem. They call someone like NAMI and say I need to talk to some people. Is that how it would work?

Kyle Carter  
Yes. So what you could do the best way to do it is to go to our website, NAMIPhilly, so that's namiphilly.org. You can go on and go to the console. First, you can go to the different tab "About Us." And then you can also learn about a particular program and get a broader understanding, once you feel like you're interested, you can simply go to the Contact Us page, and we will reach out to you and talk to you about our different support groups. And hopefully, you've been able to join

Steve Martorano 
These support groups are led by mental health professionals or they just peer, peer to peer here.

Kyle Carter 
They are literally led by professionals as well as those with lived experience.

Steve Martorano 
Okay.

Kyle Carter 
Just mentioned, most importantly, they are all free.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, they're free. I was just gonna, I was gonna get to that. Let's talk a bit about I mean, the effect of the pandemic has been negative across the board, touching every aspect of our lives, but it has had a devastating effect on our mental well-being. Are you seeing more young people or parents of young people talking about mental illness among younger people?

Kyle Carter 
Yes, because they were the unfortunately, pandemic created just such a dark cyclical effect when it comes to isolation by both the adults and the youth. So then you've turned on social media, but you still don't have that person in person in-person interaction. So that leads to some mental illness and mental health challenges. And just that lack of in-person, social-communicative experience, also adds additional challenge. More often than not, the additional stress for parents that more often not had to essentially become teacher assistants, because of the transition to home-based learning as opposed to being in brick and mortar. So all those things, the isolation, the different stressors on parents, and the lack of social communicative situations for use by being confined at home, all kind of brought together a really difficult challenge for two to three years. And we're still trying to get out of it, unfortunately.

Steve Martorano 
Our guest is Kyle Carter, he is the executive director of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness on this mental health awareness day, October 10th. Kyle, do you agree with with other people who've looked at the situation of social media, and said that, while there's much that we can benefit from social media, it also has a downside and it can ironically, isolate people, rather than bring them together? Are you seeing that among people who come for help at NAMI kind of sense of isolation?

Kyle Carter 
Absolutely, I think there's a lot of isolation. So then people are very much stricken with a desire to kind of follow others with different ideals and things of that nature. And that just unfortunately, leads to a lot of challenges, a lot of anxiety, a lot of stressors, a lot of depression, because again, there's that lack of social communicative experience being in person talking to people, they're just simply on a computer, more often than not, not directly communicating with anyone. So because of that lack, you just kind of just lead by words as opposed to any kind of substantive action.

Steve Martorano 
In the treatment of substance abuse. The clinicians and the treatment providers often use the term co-occurring disorders, and they almost always have a mental health variety. They seem to go hand in hand. Two things, one, with regard to substance abuse sufferers. NAMI can direct them for help, but you don't directly provide substance abuse counseling. Right.

Kyle Carter 
So excellent question. So yes, NAMI is one of the key resources that we offer is our warm line. Our warm line is not a crisis line. But what it is is essentially a resource hotline in which we will connect folks with various resources around the city. So whether it's other providers, whether it's to fill up your crisis line, if needed, 988 If you need any type of substance abuse centers, they have needed in all those different resources we have at our disposal that we have available, that we can connect you to. So while we're not a direct provider, we are someone who can direct you to resources as needed.

Steve Martorano 
And the other area where there's a pronounced intersection between mental illness and society is homelessness. What I know is there's no number you can put on this but how large a problem is that is mental illness among the homeless population and your guesstimate?

Kyle Carter 
I'll just rather than utilizing a nominal figure, I'll just say it's a huge problem. We know that homelessness throughout the city and there's you know, there's areas like Kensington in which it is incredibly pronounced. And again, you know, when we speak about CO occurring, we see you know, the addiction and substance abuse crisis that really exists in a pronounced nature and it gives us an area but all across the city that when you have homelessness, you see depression, you see substance abuse, see all these things, kind of compile To bring themselves together to this create a really dangerous situation. So there is a huge intersection between mental illness homelessness and substance abuse. And it's a huge problem specifically in the city.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, okay, you have a, as you mentioned earlier, a very extensive deep background in this field. But you didn't always have your attention focused on this. I wonder if you have the same experience I have had, the more I learned about mental illness, I find myself being far less quick to judge behavior I see as you know, the work of a bad person or, well, that guy's drunk, we all see the videos that are posted of people behaving badly, or are inebriated related, to the point where they're fighting, I tend to find myself now going, that person has a problem. They're just they're not just jerks. But they may be but they're jerks with problems. You I know, you have grown to understand that that's really the core issue here is to get people to look at these behaviors and say they need help.

Kyle Carter 
Yes, you have people who view people who have mental illnesses and challenges as humans, flawed humans, and I'll tell you, one of the reasons why students work is because I come from lived experience. My mother was stricken with clinical depression. So around 11, or 12, that's something that we had to do, I was raised in a single-parent household. So that's something at the age of 11, and 12, I got to see my superhero become a very flawed person. And we had to work through that. And I had to become very mature very quickly, to help support her through that and the different addictions that came with that. So yes, you know, my own experiences, he, you know, does humanize you. But again, it's removing the stigma as a society as people as humans. And that's simply identifying a challenge.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, it's easy to say that this is a character flaw and dismiss it as such. And it is not it's a disease. It is a brain chemistry disease, a group of them. Finally, in the workforce, one of the reasons people would be reluctant to mention that they're having mental health issues is the fear of losing their jobs. Can Nambi advise people on what their rights are employment and work rights or direct them to places where they can find out?

Kyle Carter 
Yeah, so we will more likely do the latter, which is just a wreck, and I'm saying it we're looking at the area of rights and legal support community legal service, or something of that nature. So we would be the director kind of a navigator in that sense, to ensure people have the right resources to learn all the information that they possibly need in their situation.

Steve Martorano 
And they're far more protections than they probably are aware of, right?

Kyle Carter 
Oh, yes, absolutely. And again, education is the central point of all of the mental illness and mental health and behavioral health challenges. So it's important to be fully educated on your rights, and everything associated with that.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah. Kyle Carter, thanks, this last thing on your website, you have a mission statement. And yours is very, very clear. And very, to the point, you talk about the goal being in regard to mental illness, mental health, prevention, and cure. Now, I know you think these are doable, but really, prevention and cure of mental illness. pretty lofty,

Kyle Carter 
very lofty goals. Indeed. And I think when we, you know, we have to be reasonable when we think about the phrase cure the cure for mental health challenges, and mental illness is education. So all of our advocacy, and all of our programs have one central focus educating the public. So I think if we're properly educated, about our rights, for the different interventions and strategies to help us push through some of these mental illness challenges, that's when we can progress as a society. So when we think of a cure, we think of education.

Steve Martorano 
We all get better. It's it's absolutely doable. Carter from NAMI. Thanks so much. If people want more information, they should refer to the website. We'll have a link for that. How are you guys funded? Incidentally, donations are what?

Kyle Carter  
Yeah, normally, sponsorships and some small fundraising. But again, do we have our big walk this weekend or on October 7?

Steve Martorano 
Yes.

Kyle Carter 
And then we have some ongoing things as well. Feel free to go to the website to, you know, take a look at what we're doing, and feel free to donate as well. But yeah, just the generosity of sponsors as well as the community.

Steve Martorano 
Thanks so much. I hope you can come back and see us from time to time here on the Corner. You're a great resource.

Kyle Carter 
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time.

Steve Martorano  
And thank you guys for yours as well. It's the Behavioral Corner. You'll find this wherever our podcasts are being dispersed. When you do check us out. We got all the shows up like a library. Go back and look at some of the old ones. If you like it, subscribe. Follow us like us. We're on all those platforms. See you next time on the Behavioral Corner take care.

Synergy Health Programs 
Millions of Americans are negatively affected daily by their mental health. Retreat has served the community for over ten years, offering comprehensive mental health programming through our mental health division, Synergy Health Programs. To learn more about Synergy, please reach out today at 855-802-6600.

The Behavioral Corner 
That's it for now. Make it a habit to hang out at the Behavioral Corner, and when we're not hanging out, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at the Behavioral Corner.