Expert Night: Conversations We Need to Have
Battery Powered members got to talking at Expert Night. Not surprising, knowing our ever-inquisitive membership—except for the subject matter. In front of a crowd of fellow members and a star-studded panel of experts and activists, one member stood up and said, “My daughter is bipolar.” Another said to the panelists, “I have schizophrenia. I didn’t know there were people like you, doing so much.”
Tom Insel, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, surveyed the room. Insel called mental health an urgent health and civil rights issue and acknowledged the unspoken burden of disease. “Why hasn’t there been more progress? Every one of us has a stake in this, and yet none of us is talking about it,” he said.
Celebrated actress and mental health advocate Glenn Close, MacArthur Fellow Elyn Saks and neuroscientist Loren Frank joined Insel at Battery Powered’s Mental Health Expert Night, with moderator Megan Jones, a clinical psychologist and healthcare entrepreneur at Lantern. Close opened a frank and personal discussion among the experts about mental health, stigma and the powerful combination of advocacy and philanthropic support.
Insel said he has seen progress start and stall during his tenure at NIMH and in his current work with Verily (formerly Google LIfe Sciences). “What we needed was a revolution in science, in policy, but also in the way we think and talk about mental health,” he said. Today, that revolution shows potential to fully rise. Leaps in scientific understanding have created a more urgent need to strip away stigma surrounding mental illness and start conversations about wellness and care.
Watch the full evening here:
Tackling Stigma Head On
Damaging stigma that keeps many people suffering in silence is best confronted with direct communication, according to Close. “My life changed when my sister came up to me and told me she needed help,” said Close. “The difficulty of saying that, and the courage it took is something that moves me.”
Elyn Saks has collaborated with Close on advocacy projects, including an anti-stigma PSA for Close’s organization, Bring Change 2 Mind. Saks is a law professor and leads The Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at University of Southern California. She is no stranger to telling her own story, having published a memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, to chronicle her struggles with schizophrenia.
“My mind is both my best friend and my worst enemy,” Saks said. It took her many years to acknowledge and accept her disease, and she counts herself very lucky to have access to medication, behavioral therapy, and a supportive community of friends, family and colleagues.
“People shouldn’t have to suffer, but so often they do because they can’t get care,” she said. “So many people are surprised that there are people out there like me, to which I always respond, how many more high functioning people could there be if we gave people the best resources out there?”
Advocating for Change
When the audience was asked to stand if they were touched by mental illness in their lives, just about everyone in the room got out of their chairs.
“We’re here because we all have a very personal connection to this,” said Loren Frank. Frank’s research at UCSF focuses on the brain’s capacity to capture memories and learn new things. “We are all a product of our experiences,” he said. That’s true at a neurological level, Frank added, noting that billions of neurons in our brains store patterns of recognition. They work across the different sections of our minds like an orchestra conductor to determine which memories to switch on and off and help us navigate the world around us.
“It’s actually amazing that any of us function at all,” he said, due to the complexity of the patterns running through our brains every second. All the more reason to expand our understanding of how the brain works, so we know how we can help when something goes wrong. “If we have a better genetic understanding of what makes everyone different, we’ll be that much closer to making a difference.”
Battery Powered will have the opportunity to make a difference this spring by funding innovative mental health and wellness projects that support individuals, families and communities. The experts opened an important dialogue around stigma, access to quality care and resources, and the potential to advance policy and research for more effective treatments.
Glenn Close urged the membership to continue their learning journey and speak up about what they discover. “We are determined to move the needle, to start the conversation,” she said. We have to educate ourselves and start a movement where everyone is involved to find out, where do you intervene?”
These much-needed conversations are just the first step in the efforts to end stigma and find solutions. They show the possibility of experiencing mental illness and learning to live a full and productive life. Mostly, these are conversations that need to happen beyond The Battery, here at home and on a global stage.
For more information about Battery Powered’s Mental Health theme, visit: https://www.thebatterysf.com/#/batterypowered/givingtheme/mental-health
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