Brought to you by the Depression Is Real Coalition, The Down &
Up Show is dedicated to the reality of depression. Each week our
hosts will talk with some of the world's top experts on depression, as
well as people who have been impacted by this illness. The reality of
depression is that it is a debilitating and potentially deadly medical
condition that affects more than 15 million Americans every year. The
other reality of depression is that there is hope.
Down & Up Show #56: Advocating for Mental Health
DR. REEF KARIM:
Welcome to the Down and Up Show on depressionisreal.org. I'm your
host, Dr. Reef Karim, psychiatrist, addiction specialist and relationship
therapist.
Today we'll be speaking with Sherri Walton, a member of the board
of directors of Mental Health America of Arizona and the chair of the
Maricopa County Human Rights Committee for the mentally ill. Sherri was
diagnosed with clinical depression in 2002 and, as the mother of children
with mental care needs, Sherri's personal experience navigating the medical,
insurance and educational system gives her a unique perspective into the
stigma and barriers to treatment that families face in dealing with depression.
DR. REEF KARIM
Sherri, thank you so much for being here.
SHERRI WALTON
My pleasure.
DR. REEF KARIM
Let's start out with depression. Tell us a little bit about your
experience with depression.
SHERRI WALTON
Well, what I now know is I've had depression most of my life. As
a teenager, I'd go through periods of time where I felt down or very
sad and these would come and go.
But as an adult, they would come on for longer periods of time,
but it was always something that I could manage. And then I had postpartum
depression after the birth of each of my three children.
But with the last one, what we now realize is it never really went
away. And it affected every aspect of my life but somehow I was still
able to somewhat manage it and it was interesting because, to the outside
world, I was absolutely fine.
I had a great life, a successful husband. I was a stay-at-home
mom for my girls. And I managed their mental illnesses, finding the right
doctors and therapies and working with the schools.
And I was even an advocate working with the mental health community,
but at home, life was really, really hard. I was irritable, angry. I would
forget things and then I would feel horrible guilt about forgetting things
and being late all the time.
There were days when I didn't want to get out of bed but I had
to get out of bed because my kids had to get to school or to dance class
or doctors' appointments. But in between those things, when I was at home,
I couldn't accomplish anything.
I was always, like I said, behind, running late, and then finally
I crashed. I just couldn't do it anymore. I was diagnosed with major depression
and, once I started on medication and therapy, after a couple of months,
everything started getting better.
DR. REEF KARIM
How did you become involved in Mental Health America and what are
some of the things you're working on in that organization?
SHERRI WALTON
Well, I joined the board of directors in May of 1998 and the reasons
that I did was I spent several years dealing with my kids, getting them
the therapies they needed, the doctors they needed, fighting with insurance
companies, fighting with the schools.
And what I realized was I was very fortunate. I was a stay-at-home
mom that could do all these things. And we had the resources to private
pay for those things the insurance didn't cover so my children were doing
very, very well.
But once I got them doing well, I just wanted to do something to
make it easier for other families. And so once I got involved, what I
really realized was that all of the difficulty I'd experienced was really
due to misunderstandings about mental illness in general and the stigma
attached.
And I guess what shocked me the most was, once I got involved,
how people, both adults and children, were receiving services through
the public system.
The most vulnerable in our society were being mistreated, denied
services. And these people really lacked the ability to fight back. They
weren't treated with the basic dignity respect that all people deserve.
And I just really felt like that needed to change. And what I realized,
I finally realized the only way to really change the system was through
policy. And these are the legislators. They enact the laws that establish
how people with mental illness are treated and they provide the money.
But also the policymakers who then interpret those laws and create
the programs. So as public policy chair, what I do for MHA is I represent
MHA on various committees and coalitions throughout the state that deal
with public policy.
And that's really been one of my priorities. So I'm really kind
of the public policy piece for our organization.
DR. REEF KARIM
So you come armed and ready with the infrastructure needed to really
work on passing some of these bills.
SHERRI WALTON
Absolutely. And what I have really found, the most important thing
that I wanted to do once I really started doing public policy, especially
working with the legislature, was to bring mental health to the entire
disability community because what was happening was we were all being
pitted against each other and the disability community really wasn't
working together as a whole.
And they didn't really have an understanding of mental illness.
And so a lot of times, some of the legislation that they were writing
was good for their constituents but it really harmed ours, and so I'm
able to really bring that perspective.
And sometimes, it's just a matter of changing a couple sentences
in a bill or getting somebody to understand that this isn't really a legislative
issue. This is really more of a policy issue within the Department of
Health or within Child Protective Services and we can work things out
that way.
So it's really brought the whole disability community together
to really look at mental illness, how it affects everybody and also, those
people at the facilities who have a mental illness.
So it's been really, really important, especially, I would say,
with the government agencies.
DR. REEF KARIM
You mentioned something so basic, it's not basic, but so common
as just trying to deal with insurance companies. I mean, if you have
your nice I-Phone cell phone and you live in a decent place and you have
the capabilities of arguing with an eighteen year old insurance person
on the other end who really doesn't understand the illness but is hired
to say no to you, that's hard enough.
Then if you don't even own a cell phone and you're homeless and
you don't have the capabilities actually of knowing what you're supposed
to say and you have to still get that person to make a change to that
you can actually get the services you need, it's almost impossible.
SHERRI WALTON
Exactly, exactly. And actually, I do a lot of that as a personal
advocate. What I do is I help people to navigate, sometimes the private
system but most often, the public mental health system.
If they've been turned down for benefits, if they need to be hospitalized,
or if they're getting out of the hospital and they need housing, these
are typically, like you say, people who are very ill, they're not able
to advocate for themselves or they don't know the system.
DR. REEF KARIM
Now what are some of the major accomplishments you hope to see
in the mental health field?
SHERRI WALTON
Well, there's a couple. There's integration. When I say integration,
integration of mental and physical health. For example, primary care
physicians should just routinely screen for depression and anxiety during
well checks, during annual physicals.
If they notice that they have a patient who's coming in once a
month or once every couple of months with a lot of just chronic ailments, "I
don't feel good, my back hurts, I have headaches, I have stomach aches," those
types of things, they should just automatically be screening for depression
and anxiety.
Heart surgeons, this is a big one. You know, as we know, there's
a huge percentage, especially of men, who develop depression after heart
surgery or after a heart attack and so heart surgeons should automatically
be discussing it and making depression awareness an important part of
their follow-up care.
They should be screening for it. And then the most important part
is that once these physicians are able to refer their patients to mental
health professionals for diagnosis, for an actual diagnosis which is very
important, the treatment plan should be determined between the patient
and the doctor and possibly their family, not with government interference.
And their insurance company, should not cut off benefits half way
through treatment. They should be able to receive whatever treatment it
takes for them to get well.
The other issue that I'd really like to see is more early intervention.
My children are a perfect example of early intervention and treatment.
They will have happy, productive lives because they received diagnosis
early and treatment early. You know, I'm a perfect example of the lack
of early intervention.
I showed signs all through my life of depression but nobody caught
it, nobody. And to be fair, it wasn't as prevalent in the medical world
back then or even within families to talk about it but now it is.
And so now we really need to be focusing on making sure that we
provide children with a diagnosis with whatever interventions, whether
they be medication or therapy or both, whatever it is that they need so
that they can then go on to live happy, productive lives.
Because most mental illnesses are chronic illnesses and what we
know about chronic illnesses is, if left untreated, they will progress.
And they will not just get better on their own. They will get worse.
So those are two of the things I would really like to see. And
of course, wrapped in that is that whole issue of mental health insurance
parity which is one of my biggest passions.
You know, having seen exactly what insurance companies do to a
diagnosis of mental illness and how they limit treatment and limit who
can give the treatment or limit how many sessions you can get, it's wrong.
Your brain is an organ, just like your heart or your liver or your
kidneys and it should be treated as such. So you know, we're getting closer
in Arizona to making that a reality and certainly we're getting closer
on a national level as well.
DR. REEF KARIM
Yes. You're definitely passionate about this and I'm curious. It
seems that you've used your personal experience with depression and mental
health physicians as inspiration rather than allowing it to hinder you.
What do you think you've learned as an individual from your experience
with depression?
It's obviously a very important topic that involves parity and
early intervention and all that, but coming from the background of having
had depression and having really lived with the symptoms and then being
treated and being much more functional, how do you think that's made you
grow as an individual?
SHERRI WALTON
Well, it's done a couple of things. First of all, it's made me
much more passionate in my advocacy. You know, having lived through it
and having lived with depression and now without it, I can relate to
people, what they are going through and how it feels to actually recover.
And so it's made me a much more passionate advocate. It also probably
has taught me something as a person as well. I know when I was exhibiting
symptoms of depression, I couldn't see it.
Even though I was an advocate, even though I was dealing with my
kids, I really couldn't see it. And even if my husband or my brother at
one time kind of half jokingly said, Sherri have you ever thought about
that you might maybe need medication, I didn't think about it.
I just got angry. I was like, oh suew, let's fix Sherri and all
her problems will go away and everything with be fine. And when I started
getting treatment, things did get much, much better. So I've learned to
listen to others, especially someone who cares when they're trying to
talk to me about me.
If someone who cares is trying to tell you something and even though
you think they're completely off base or you can't imagine that what they're
saying is true or it makes you angry, if they're telling you, if this
is someone who cares about you and they're telling you this, there's a
reason.
And like I said, it's made me a better advocate because I know
what it's like to not only live with a chronic illness but I know what
it's like to live with recovery so that's really important. DR. REEF KARIM
Let's talk moms for a second. In your own experience, it took awhile
to seek help for depression so as a mother of three, do you have any advice
for other moms who might be in the same situation who may feel the symptoms
of depression but they're pretty busy?
They're moms and they may be afraid to seek help. What would you
suggest to them?
SHERRI WALTON
Well, one thing that I would tell them that when mom is depressed,
the entire house is depressed. It's like this black cloud that descends
on everything. It not only dulls your senses as far as joy and happiness
and enjoyment of things but it makes it very hard to process information,
to remember things, handle difficult situations appropriately.
Your brain is working so hard just to keep you going that all these
other areas suffer. And so raising children is hard enough, especially
young children, without this added burden. And you know, you only have
so much time with them.
And as my children, my youngest is now thirteen and I have one
in college and one that will be headed off to college soon. The time flies.
It goes by so quickly. And you don't want to lose any of that time.
So don't be afraid to seek help, don't be afraid to ask for help.
And I would also say, for women, we have an advantage. We have a great
resource with our obstetricians and our gynecologists because they're
trained to care for women throughout the entire life span.
And often, women go through depression with menopause so they're
trained to kind of look for it and to see it and that's what I did. I
was so depressed that I didn't have the capability to really find a psychiatrist
and go through what you had to go through so I went to my OB-GYN and told
him.
And he saw it, and what he did was, he said, you know, I will give
you medication and a referral for therapy but I will only do this for
six months. And then you need to find a psychiatrist to really help you
manage it.
But what that did was that helped me to get out from under the
black cloud. It helped me to be able to get up in the morning and to start
feeling well enough that I actually could then find the psychiatrist and
go to the therapies and really get that treatment.
So if you're afraid to talk to your husband or your friend or you
don't know anybody who has depression but you just feel like something
isn't right, if you respond with inappropriate anger and then later you're
going, God, I can't believe I just flew off the handle like that, I don't
know what's wrong with me, talk to your doctor.
They're a great resource for women and, like I said, it's too short.
The time you have with your kids is so short that you don't want to spend
any of it dealing with depression.
And the other thing that I found is when you do talk about it,
once you're feeling better and somebody says to you, gosh, what have you
done differently, you look so good or you look so happy, tell them.
This is how we're going to end this stigma. It's kind of one person
at a time, but that's the way it works and women are so good at helping
each other and networking with each other that that's the best thing you
can do.
DR. REEF KARIM
Well, anything else that you'd like to add?
SHERRI WALTON
Just people out there who maybe aren't sure or somehow just happened
on this conversation, mental illness is not a lifestyle choice. It's
not a result of bad parenting. Many times, it's genetic.
And so don't place blame, don't place fault, don't feel defective.
Don't feel as though you've done something wrong or there's something
wrong with you. Your brain can be born with a defect and it can get sick
just like any other organ.
So get help. It can be treated. You can get well. Don't be afraid
to talk about it. Again, life is just too short. I struggled with depression
for probably 40 years before I finally got treatment and the last several
years have been some of the best in my life.
DR. REEF KARIM
That's great. So Sherri, thank you so much for your time here.
SHERRI WALTON
Oh, you're very welcome. Any time.
DR. REEF KARIM
For the Depression is Real Coalition, I'm Dr. Reef, Karim. Join
us next time for another segment of the Down and Up Show on depressionisreal.org.
