Bipolar She - Episode 8 RAW

Colin was a bright and compassionate boy who struggled with anxiety and ADHD. He battled depression since elementary school but didn't fit into the traditional school system. After his passing, his parents and other parents formed a group to address the lack of support in schools for mental health issues. They compiled a list of improvements and successfully advocated for the establishment of wellness centers in their school district. These centers provide support and resources for students struggling with mental health. They also worked to change the home and hospital program to allow students with mental health issues to continue their education while receiving treatment. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much for coming out to the podcast. My pleasure. Thank you. And I know this is hard, and I'm sorry that this loss has brought us together. Yes. So I'd really love to just learn a bit about Colin. All right. So Colin was a really bright boy and one that people would often say kind of an old soul. There was some wisdom that shouldn't have been in a little elementary school boy of people, of situations, how to talk to people. But he was struggling. He was struggling with anxiety. He was struggling with ADHD. And as often happens, you know, when someone is struggling, other people kind of pull away. But with him, people were drawn to him. He was a bright light that people came to. But he was really struggling. And something I learned much later on was a lot of people have shared that people with that personality, with great empathy, often are taking on other people's pain without addressing their own. And I feel that was really a part of Colin's life, was that he was taking on a lot of people's pain and sharing confessions of troubles that were going on at home, relationships and so forth, and that he was a compassionate soul who would listen. So he had battled depression since middle school? Actually in elementary school. It really, I think the third day of class, third day of third grade, the teacher called us in and said, you know, we're seeing these behaviors. And we're like, OK. And as he progressed through elementary school, I'll never forget that he was, we were asking for an IEP, individual education plan for him, because he was very bright. He scored top marks on tests, but he didn't do homework. And they're grading him on homework. And, you know, our questions back to the school were he's showing he mastered the skill. He's demonstrated he understands the lesson. You're just giving him busy work and that's not working for him. Can we do something else? And as we met with the school psychologist and the counselor and a couple of teachers and so on, we had asked the daycare director to come in from Merriwood next door and a wise lady. As we sat through this discussion about what to do, we call it and how to help him and so forth. We walked outside and she said, you know, I've been to a couple hundred of these. And there's something you need to know is that if I was stuck on a desert island. The one person I would want me to call it over my own children. Because of how he understands life and drives himself and is supportive of other people. And so when we lost him a few years later, we mentioned that at his memorial that he had to earn this is Bonnie Award of being a kind, compassionate soul. So, you know, that's what I want people to remember of him. Those who met him really, you know, he was funny. He was very caring, really smart kid, but he just didn't follow the track that they were supposed to be in. And so he was at Akalani's. Yes, he went to Akalani's high school. And then as a sophomore, we had him he was getting, you know, therapy advice. He was on medication. And at that point, as parents, we felt we were doing the right thing. We were supporting him. We were listening to what the doctors were saying. But what we didn't know is just how much pain he was in. And then we lost him in January of 2013. And just 15 years old. Yeah. Yeah, I was very, you know, the trauma like that doesn't ever go away. You don't ever get over it. It is always there just below the surface, just percolating along. And all you do is get better at dealing with it. And so that's what my wife and I had. I've just been working on this whole time and it's been 11 years since we lost him and it's still there. It's right below the surface. I heard an analogy that helped me in dealing with this. And that was to picture yourself on the Bonneville Salt Flats. And there's two to three inches of water just above that salt. And as you're as you're walking along, you're heading towards the mountains. You think you're walking forward and then suddenly you will drop into an icy cold pit of water. It's dark. You don't know how far it is the other side. You don't know how hard it's going to be to fight your way back up to the to the surface. And eventually you do. You reach the other side and you pull yourself out. And you take a breath and you may only get one more step before you fall into the next one. But over time, you learn to see where they are and stop, step to the side and just they're still there. And they're just as deep and just as cold. But you're just doing a better job of managing the grief going around them. And so early on when he passed away, what were some things that people offered you or what out there helped with your grief? What I learned is everybody processes grief in a different way and there is no right or wrong way. And so I'm always cautious when I share this. This works for me and it may be the worst thing for you. Just know that. So my wife and I, the day we lost Colin, the first call was to my dad. Second call was to 911. And the third call was to a family friend, a fireman here in town. And then we just kind of held on to each other, held on to our little girl. And one of her friends was over that night. So we just held on to everybody and said, we're going to get through this. We didn't know how, but our church brought two people to our home that lost someone to suicide. And for me, that was the most important conversation. That day to meet somebody who had been through what I was fearing, you know, the future and could share that I could make it. So for me, that was the most helpful. For my wife, her track, we would go to we went to counseling. So the local crisis center had a group for parents who had lost children, very specific group. And in it were just what it sounded like. And so we learned of their losses and how they had dealt with it. But after a while, I started to think, boy, they're still going here five years later. I don't want to be here in five years. And I've got my own trauma. I don't want to live their trauma. So that was me just saying it's OK to be selfish. And I stopped going. My wife went for a little bit longer, but for her, it was very helpful, very helpful to share her trauma with other people where she knew she was safe. And she read all kinds of books that people had written who had also lost a child. And she found those helpful. To me, they were not they were destructive. It was not the right thing for me. So I just, you know, those are two same event, two different perspectives on how people dealt with it. And how did being well come together? A few months after losing Colin, a couple of parents from the high school contacted me and they were saying, I hope this isn't too soon. And they were very courteous about it. But one had a daughter with severe anxiety who went out of school for about six months. Another one had a daughter who had struggled with or battled successfully leukemia through middle school. And they just asked, how was the high school? I'm not very good. I may use some stronger words, but worse than the high school is how the middle school dealt with the loss. And what our little girl was going through while she was trying to process this. So we became together. We compiled a list of like 70 things that we felt the schools were not doing well. And then we went out and looked at other school districts in Northern California, one similar to ours. And we thought, well, what are they doing? It's one thing to just complain. That's another thing to actually come with a well thought out solution, a plan. And so that's what we did. We took our time. We did these visits and we came back to our high school board and said, here's the problem, which was suicide ideation at our school was 24 percent. So that's from the California Healthy Kids Survey. And that was 24 percent of kids had seriously thought about taking their life in the last 12 months. And the state average was 15. So it was quite a bit higher than the state. We presented the concept of wellness centers that all these other schools had, along with how it's funded, job titles, what would cost the district, all the kind of nuts and bolts that go together with it. And our pleas fell on great ears, ears that were willing to hear, willing to take this, acknowledge it was an issue and that we could do better. And after four years, we opened the first wellness center at Los Alamos High School and then Camp Lindo, Auclanis, Monti and then the continuing education school. So all campuses have wellness centers now and they're staffed by district personnel. And there is a new methodology of dealing with. Kids coming back from home and hospital. I mentioned that the two other parents and. The process at the time was that you were unenrolled from the school you were at and enrolled in the home and hospital program. And what that meant was you couldn't go on to that school campus because you're no longer a student. And so there was no transition. You were either in or out. And so what we're able to do is convince the district that it is not against that code. They could do it and they did. So now a student can be in the in the home and hospital program, but also come on campus just to do their bio labs so that they can make sure they have the requirements for getting into a UC system. But before that had been shut off. So this home and hospital program, is it for students that were in mental health facilities? Originally, when that when that program first was initiated, it's for kids who broke their leg skiing. It was it was, you know, you're hurt and you couldn't come back to school. But what has happened is the student population has changed. Is it now? Eighty five percent of them are in there for mental health issues and they may not have been hospitalized, but they can't be on campus. And so it's trying to give them the skills and so forth to get back into the education stream instead of being completely knocked out. And so the success of working with those parents, with the school district and putting wellness centers in the schools is what led to being well-being formed. And we then went on to neighboring school district and they committed to putting 30 wellness centers in. And then we realized that all the school districts we were dealing with were from affluent communities. And we wanted to address that by trying to find a way to fund wellness centers in less affluent communities, because we think all kids need that equal access. So ideally, how did the wellness centers function? The outline that we started with was that they were adjacent to a counseling center. So they would have a private entrance so that, you know. There's there's still a lot of stigma with acknowledging a mental health challenge. And so for students to be able to enter that where it didn't look like they were going into the wellness center was a real bonus for them. The structure involved the first person they meet, an intake specialist, that's just going to ask him, are you OK? And what they're determining is they're triaging the student. Do you need just 10 minutes to pull yourself together? Do you need 10 minutes and then a counselor to talk to you? Do we need to schedule an appointment for you to come back in? So they're just assessing what requirements might be there within the student. And, you know, most of the time, it really is just 10 minutes to just calm down and then get back in school. One of the major reasons we pressed for this to be on campus is that we don't want to disrupt the kids' education. And that can sound a little mean, but they're there to learn. And if we can give them a break, help them through a difficult time and they can continue to learn, that's going to help them in their life. If we pull them out of school, we're not helping them that much to continue. And for some students, that is the appropriate thing to do. But when we, you know, it's broken into three tiers, tier one being many, tier two being most, and tier three being a few. And so we view wellness centers as addressing the many. Letting all the students know, yeah, you're going to have a hard time. Things come up. People in your family may pass. There's accidents and deaths and bad test scores, all kinds of things, you know, breakups and so forth. So let's help them deal with those life events. And so you've been in many districts now. Not only here in the Bay Area, but throughout California and working with folks down in San Bernardino, Orange County, San Diego County, Fresno County, all over. Because mental health doesn't recognize socioeconomic status. It doesn't recognize any of those things that we place on people. It can affect everybody. So beyond the student centers, what else can we be doing right now for youth mental health? What we feel is that there are three legs of mental health support. And those three are required to help a student have a good base. And what we see is that right now, our students are engaged in self-harm. They're really struggling. Those rates are up about 40 percent since COVID. So this is really coming home now. And the students, students that that lose their lives. Often feel alone, they feel abandoned or isolated. And some of those are key things to look for when a child is, you know, withdrawing and so forth. So it's important to include students. And that inclusion is broad. Things like having sports, a drama club, a wellness center, you know, as we're focusing on. But all of those things are important for student mental health. And the three legs are students, parents and educators. We run into a lot of initiatives that include two. But rare do we find that they include all three. And we know that, you know, they're at school eight hours a day, but then they're at home. So if you're doing a lot of work at school and not doing anything at home, you've not built a stable platform. So for parents, how do they work with school faculty and psychologists? That's a tough question. And it's a tough question because, like, school psychologists are completely overwhelmed. You know, you pull one aside and when they're not wearing their school hat and they'll just say, I've got way more students than I can talk to. I've got way more I need to talk to and I can't take any more on. And so it's very difficult for them, knowing how much they've already got on their plate, to say, yeah, I'll talk to a new parent. It's a difficult thing. I understand their pain. So is it getting more psychologists or helping get community organizations involved for them to be referenced out to? I think that's a part of it. But as a parent who has a child that's struggling, it's important to understand that you are their chief advocate. And that nobody else is going to fight as strong as you are. So if somebody is not completely on board, look for another person. Look for another avenue to get your child to help because they're only young ones. And there are tremendous resources out there. And as a parent, it can be overwhelming. In my presentation at the end of it, I go, oh, look, I have resources. And it's completely filled with all kinds of websites and different wonderful organizations. And then the next slide is even more resources. And look, I've got a page three. There's so many resources. It's very hard for a parent and even more for a student to sort their way out. But finding a guide, finding someone to help you go through it and understanding the schools, they're facing a tremendous difficulty of their own. And so they can't necessarily really help your child more than just saying, well, you know, we'll keep an eye on them. So you have some projects going on right now. I'd love to hear about them. Oh, yeah. I'll start with our newest one, which is a program called Handle With Care. So that is a program that started in West Virginia. And what got me interested in it was my wife, who had been a just retired schoolteacher for 35 years, had a student, a little third grader, that just couldn't hold it together one morning. And she went over and gave her a hug and said, what's going on? And there had been a fire at her apartment. So she'd been dropped off at school. And, you know, her clothes still smelled like smoke. So my wife's like, oh, you know, give her some care today. And at lunch she shared this. Another teacher popped up their head and said, wait a minute, I have her sister. And I benched her because she was acting out in class and I thought she was really, you know, being disruptive. I wish I'd known. So when that story was shared to me, I'm like, wait, I've heard that slogan somewhere before in all the, you know, conferences and stuff I've been to. So I went back and found that Handle With Care is in 45 other states. It's in nine other counties in our state. And we don't have it here. So I partnered with Stanislaw Office of Education to present it here in Contra Costa. Contra Costa County Behavioral Health gave us a grant to pilot this program in Richmond and in San Ramon. And what the program does is it allows law enforcement when they are at an event, a crisis event, and they notice school-aged children. They collect their name, what school they go to, and the date of birth just to make sure you've got the right student. Then a notification is sent to the school, Handle This Child With Care. That's the only information that's conveyed. And what Being Well does is we go to those schools and train the teachers and administrators what to do when they receive that. And it does not rush up and hug the child. It is just to observe, just to look to see that perhaps their processing is just fine. But in case they're not, you can know why. And if they're acting up in class, you're going to know, you know, they had a tough time last night, whatever it was. I'm going to give them a break. So that's the Handle With Care program kind of in a nutshell. And we're really looking forward to it. I know Richmond is clamoring for it. They're just, can you start tomorrow on this program? But we're hoping that that over the next, you know, five or six years will spread throughout the entire county. And we'll have that program in place. And then the larger event is kind of harking back to what we did with the wellness centers. We're looking at the funding gaps and the inequity throughout our state of students who were struggling but weren't able to get resources. So we started a campaign for a mental health awareness license plate here in California. We always believe, remember those three legs? So we believe that, you know, for students, nothing about us without us. So we went to students and said, we're going to run a statewide contest for the design of this license plate. And we collaborated with the California Association of Art Instructors. And off it went. And a few months later, we collected all the designs. And it was just inspiring. It was inspiring. There was full-on CAD designs down to crayon on binder paper. And in it were these emotions and messages that these young people felt were important and needed to get out. And our instructions were pretty simple. Here's the requirements the state has on what a plate has to look like. And it has to be cool. It has to be something you want to put on the back of your car when you get one. And the winning design came out of a student in San Ramon Valley Unified at Doherty Valley School. And when we asked her about it, met with her, and she said, mental health is so often portrayed as a negative. We all have it. And you can have good mental health. So her expression, and she wanted it to be, you know, joyful. That, you know, there is hope. There is help out there for good mental health. So that is our long-term campaign. We've been working on it for five years. The average time for a plate like this is eight years. So we're actually doing pretty good. And our state sponsor is the California Department of Education. So we have had outstanding support from our state superintendent of public instruction, Tony Thurman, who's a Contra Costa kid. You know, his kids go to school here in Contra Costa County. So he's like, yes, we're in 100%. Let's make this happen. And that's encouraging, you know, because it's so easy to say no. It's so easy. And we went back and looked at the last two successful license plates. Because of the last 14, 12 didn't make it. And so we just kind of tried to learn from what their struggles were. And a big part of it is just awareness. If it's a small organization that's leading the campaign, it's very hard for people to be aware of it in the state. There's no help from the DMV on meeting a preliminary order of 7,500 registrations. Once you have that, then it goes into production. And so far, there's never been a specialized license plate that's gone out of production. So it will be a fundraiser for the Department of Education. The money is funding resources for wellness centers in schools throughout our state. Our hope is that as we continue, we'll help define what is best practices for wellness centers. Like the submissions for the license plate, every school district, and there's over 1,000, have different ideas of what a wellness center should be like. And so we want to help kind of coalesce that to these are some good standards that we think everybody should strive to attain. Are the wellness centers for high school, junior high, and even elementary schools? Yes. Yes. So our start was in high schools. And we realized that very quickly that middle school is where a lot of these problems start to come up. But since then, we've actually kind of seen that elementary school, where they really start to bubble to the surface and are often kind of held off. Because, you know, children are going through all kinds of different phases. And it's easy to say, oh, it's a phase or, you know, they're just adjusting to this or maybe it's a slight learning disability. But nobody wants to say my child has a mental health issue because of the stigma. What we often don't understand is those phases are a mental health issue. Statistically, most major mental health issues like ADHD, oppositional defiance disorders, schizophrenia and so forth, present themselves at seven. But kids don't even, these are typical statistics, kids don't even get their first consultation until they're 14. So for seven years, this little kiddo has been trying to figure out, why am I not like everybody else? Why am I thinking this way when everybody else seems to be thinking that way? So recognizing that it is an elementary school where we need to be kind of identifying kids who need help is difficult, difficult for people to understand. So looking forward to anyone listening today, what do you suggest that we do to help youth, you know, have good, strong mental health? Excellent question, and I'm glad you asked it that way because I really want to end on a really hopeful note. There's so many statistics out there that can bring us down and seem, you know, like, you know, you don't stand a chance, but we do. And there is one secret magic ingredient, and that is to add a caring adult. So that's not just me saying, hey, this is a good idea. There's a Dr. Cheryl King at University of Michigan. She did a study, and she had roughly 400 students who had either made suicide attempts or shown strong suicide ideation. These were high school kids. Cut the group in half. One group got the regular awesome treatment, whatever that may be. The second group got the same awesome treatment, but they introduced a caring adult. The student chose it. And I know for parents, it's a little bit of a heartbreak. It's usually not the parent. In fact, rarely is it the parent. There's a whole lot of reasons why. But it could be a coach, a faith leader, the bus driver, a neighbor, an uncle, an aunt, you know, someone like that. But having that caring adult in a kid's life is the number one protector for kids' mental health. So if your child is introverted and spends their whole time on a computer screen, try to find some other way to get another adult into that person's life to help break them from that. Because that's where the hope is. The hope is, yes, your child will thrive. I ran a survey. I interviewed parents, and it was like an hour and a half series of questions we went through. And I thought I knew the answer. My surveys, the way I designed it, was asking them when you would take a child to a professional. When would you realize that this is something you can't handle as an adult? And that's my intent. It walked away with a completely different answer. And that was that parents will do anything for their child if they know how much they're struggling. And so it's helping parents understand, if you see this behavior that's an indicator of that, and it's not necessarily a phase of them being rude to you, there's something behind the action that's going on there. And so giving that hope, I think, is critical. Dr. Cheryl King's research ran for 12 years. At the end of the 12 years, she had reduced the student deaths by 660%. No drugs, no side effects, just having a caring adult in that child's life. And that's the secret sauce. That's what we need to find. Yeah, I read that study. It's just amazing. Yeah, amazing stuff. And when we share that with professionals, they're like, I want to help more. They're like, I want to be that caring adult. But they can't be for everybody. So it's important to share that. And we just need to look closely, too. Yeah. When we lost Colin, one of the hardest things is the blame and shame that people come with. There's a lot of people who say, I can't imagine. Well, see, we don't want you to imagine. We really don't. We don't want you to be where we are. What we want you to do is focus on how you can help your child. That study I ran, what I found, what I walked away with was what parents want for their kids, it was all the same. Once I kind of boiled it down, they want them to lead happy, independent lives. I didn't mention what school they went to. I didn't mention how much they made. I didn't mention where they lived, because that was not important. It was that they were happy and independent. That surprised me, and I've worked towards it ever since. It's helping parents understand it's not the grades, it's not the school. It's what kind of shoes you're wearing. Are you happy? And if you're not, let's get you there, because that will pay off. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming out. I'm really grateful for this experience to speak with you. My pleasure. And I know it's a difficult topic, and I know it can be upsetting. I try not to let it get too sad, but there are times when I can't stop it from getting sad. When I think about it, and just that a really bright light just got turned off way too soon. I'm glad I got to hear some of his story. I know it's a big story. Thank you. Thank you so much. My pleasure.