Community forum to consider mental wellness issues

January 24, 2015 11:00 pm • Last Updated: January 23, 2015 5:06 pm

By RITA CHRISTOPHER, Special to The Day

Stress and anxiety are as much a part of 21st-century life as email and cell phones, yet far harder to master than dialing a number or typing a note.

But that's just what an upcoming program, "Compassion Counts: A Shoreline Community Forum Exploring Mental Wellness in and Age of Stress and Anxiety," will tackle on Thursday, Jan. 29, at Westbrook High School. Sponsors for the program include some 15 state organizations ranging from the Essex Community Fund to Middlesex Hospital.

"We don't really have a choice not to have this conversation. The issues are here anyway; we'd better be doing something about it," says Jackie Doane, head of the Essex Community Fund.

Doane was the moving force behind the program. The Essex Community Fund is better known for extending needed help to local organizations like the Boy Scouts and the town libraries, but Doane saw a far wider role for the organization.

"We are a community fund and last year we asked ourselves what issues we were addressing and what issues we were not addressing, and it was obvious that mental health was a huge issue we were not addressing," she says. "Should this be a responsibility of the Essex Community Fund? Absolutely, if we look at what affects the community and what the community needs."

Doane started calling clinicians and mental health providers to set up an exploratory committee to formulate a program and was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm she found. She organized a preliminary meeting at the Essex Library, but was unsure how many people would attend. So many people came, she said, that the gathering had to be moved to a larger room.

"The energy in the room was unbelievable," she said.

Planners have designed the community forum as a discussion, not a lecture, between the five panel members themselves and the audience.

"This meeting is set up to be an awareness session - what are the issues and what are the resources," said Cynthia Clegg, CEO of the Community Foundation of Middlesex County, whom Doane consulted early in her organizing efforts.

CFMC is one of the sponsors of the upcoming program. Program panelist and therapist Alicia Farrell of Clearview Consulting in Old Saybrook noted that the use of the word "compassion" in the forum's title was an important key to understanding the program.

"This is about compassion toward yourself and toward others," she said.

Attendees will fill out question cards that moderator Dan Osborne of Gilead Community Services in Middletown can refer to panelists for answers or to other experts who will be part of the audience. Submitted questions that are not answered during the discussion will receive email replies.

Osborne added that the conversation will not focus on the tragedy perpetrated by a mentally ill young man at Sandy Hook Elementary School two years ago, but he acknowledged that the event made community mental health a far more visible subject.

Panel members will discuss not simply the elements of mental wellness, but also the consequences of ignoring mental health. One panelist, a local businessman, will talk personally about his own recovery from drug and alcohol abuse, and another, a mother, will talk about her son's battle with the same problems.

Farrell intends to make her participation both clinical and very personal. She will discuss her mother's suicide and its lasting effects on her.

"It's quite a struggle to talk about it, but it could encourage somebody to reach out for help," she notes.

Osborne will talk about training for a program called Mental Health First Aid, for which community members can take an eight-hour training course.

"It's like what an EMT would do, emergency first aid - good enough to hold somebody until professional help arrives," he explains.

Tom Allen of Pathways Center for Learning and Behavioral Health in Essex, a member of the group of clinicians organizing the program, admitted that mental health problems, despite years of reassurance from everybody from physicians and therapists to politicians, still carry a stigma.

"People are so concerned with appearance - what others will think," said Allen, "but we all share in the struggle with stress, with depression, and everybody needs to hear this message."

According to Osborne, issues of mental wellness should be no more controversial than ones of physical wellness.

"If people have lung cancer or diabetes, they know they are sick. Why should it be different for schizophrenia or depression?" he asks.

Organizers look for an audience of mixed ages from teens to seniors, pointing out that the discussion could make it easier for parents and their teenage children to bring up persistent issues like drug use if the community conversation had already opened up significant aspects of the topic. Equally, it would make it easier for those who know someone struggling with an issue of mental wellness to offer support. In addition, it would give those who attend a better sense of what behaviors to look for and where to recommend services when dealing with a family member or a friend who may be coping with a mental health issue.

Doane said the current forum is the first of what she envisions as an ongoing community conversation on mental wellness. A program focused on teenage issues has already been scheduled for next fall.