Do you sometimes feel as if your brain is running on empty?  There are some simple things you can do to pump up your problem-solving abilities, fight forgetfulness and think more clearly and creatively.  Studies of athletes indicate that imagining a tennis serve or ski run between competitions can boost performance.  By “practicing mentally”, you may build mental “muscle” by sparking the brain connections needed during the real thing.  Focus your attention to help remember “where” you put something!  If you tend to misplace your car keys, for example, say to yourself, “I’m placing the keys on the shelf by the hallway mirror”.   Research suggests that as you age, you can reverse a decline in thinking abilities by becoming more mentally active.  Suggestions:  learn a new language, study a new subject, play games like checkers, and do crosswords and other puzzles. Evidence also shows that people in their 70’s and 80’s who stay healthy can expand their brainpower and easily match the mental abilities of a 30 year old.  You can continually work on boosting your brainpower by keeping physically active, managing stress and maintaining a positive attitude.

Tackling Depression & Surviving Suicide Loss
A Quarterbacks Inspiring Story: Eric Hipple, author, former Detroit Lion and former FOX sports analyst, talks about recovery after depression and a suicide in his family.

Presented by the Portage County Suicide Prevention Coalition
Tuesday, Apr 28 6:00p to 8:00p
at Kent State University KIVA, Kent, OH

Free admission. Resgister for free CEUs: call 330-678-3006 or email Deborahn@townhall2.com.

Co-sponsored by the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation, Mental Health & Recovery Board of Portage County, Coleman Foundation, KSU Office of Safety & Sercurity, Delta Tau Delta and Townhall II.

Eric Hipple is a former NFL quarterback whose ten year career was spent entirely with the Detroit Lions. His accomplishments include 2 playoff bids and a divisional championship. In addition, he was named Most Valuable Player for the 1981 season. His jersey hangs in the Canton Hall of Fame. He’s ranked 5th in all-time career passing yards in the Detroit record books.

Since his retirement from the Detroit Lions, Eric has been a professional motivational speaker. Eric’s public speaking work shifted to topics of depressive disorder awareness and treatment, and to suicide prevention in 2000, after the tragic death of his 15-year-old son to suicide.

Eric currently serves on the board AAS (American Assoc. of Suicidology) and Michigan’s Mental Illness Research Association (MIRA), a fund-raising organization that gives grants to further brain research. He works at the Univ. of Michigan’s Depression Center as Outreach Coordinator.

Eric has recently authored a book ” Real Men DO Cry ” it chronicles his life as a NFL Quarterback from youth to his current position and his struggle with suicide loss and his own depression. His story is one of hope and recovery and uses education as well a practical advice to help others live and enjoy life again.

There are a few things that you should take into consideration when you would like to make a healthy lifestyle change. 

First, start with a lifestyle change that you are most interested in making (i.e. healthy eating, walking, losing weight). You must believe you can be successful in making that change.  Start with smaller changes first and then tackle the harder, more difficult changes later.  If we set ourselves up at the onset for failure with the most difficult task, we will more than likely sabotage our chances of positive change.  Additionally, seek advice from your health care professional prior to beginning any physical fitness activity.  They may also provide much needed guidance.

Secondly, find reliable sources of information.  Try talking with people around you who are health conscious, or have made similar changes to those you would like to make.  Find out what they did, how they did it, what challenges they had to overcome, what they learned about their experience and maybe even ask them to hold you accountable while you are going through these new lifestyle changes.  Enlist the help of your spouse or friends to build a support system.  Maybe they will even make the changes with you!

Lastly, create an action plan.  Write out specific goals and a realistic time frame for what you want to change.  Be as specific as you can so you can measure your results.  Either keep a daily log of your progress or a weekly progress chart.  This will help motivate you and keep you accountable for your actions, not to mention the encouragement it will be to see your progress with time.  Once you reach your first small goal, reward yourself.  Get new clothes, take a special trip or do something special or something that you have wanted to do in the past.  Rewarding yourself insures your progress, keeps your enthusiasm and positively changes your actions.  DON’T get discouraged if you have a setback or two.  That’s to be expected.  Start again and learn from your mistakes.  It’s the person who never gives up who wins in the end.  As Donald Trump has said, “Try Again, and if that doesn’t work, Try Again, and if that doesn’t work Try Again.”

Persons looking for information about how mental illness affects a loved one can join the Family-to-Family Education Program set to start March 19 in Ravenna.

The free, 12-week program is sponsored by NAMI Portage County, the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Portage County and Coleman Professional Services.

Classes will run from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. every Thursday at the Sue Hetrick Building of Coleman Professional Services, 3922 Lovers Lane, Ravenna. The in-depth curriculum covers symptoms, treatment, medications, advocacy and caregiver issues.

To sign up, call the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Portage County at 330-673-1756, ext. 201, by March 18. For more information about Family-to-Family, go to www.nami.org.
Thanks for considering this!

President Obama and his administration are promoting the economic stimulus package to increase spending and stimulate the economy by generating jobs for individuals and revenues for business entities.  Most importantly to the behavioral healthcare community are the dollars allocated for the implementation of electronic health records.  These set aside dollars are part of President Obama’s promise to address health care concerns nationwide.

Legislation was passed on Friday February 6, 2009 that approved spending approximately $19 billion helping organizations convert their client records to electronic health records.  The key to being awarded the funding is to register on the web site, recovery.ohio.gov and click on the “Submit Your Proposal” button at the top. On the next page, you will be required to provide your county, and zip code, contact information, a description of the project the number of jobs created and the dollar amount requested for your organization.  There are a few additional questions.

As soon as the State is informed relative to dollars available, these registered organizations will be contacted.  It is imperative that healthcare facilities follow the required protocol in a timely manner to ensure they are a part of the stimulus package benefits.

A large part of staying “well” is managing our stress.  Stress.  We all have it.  It comes in all shapes and sizes!  What does stress mean to you?  Stress is the way you react to any change in the status quo (good, bad, real, or even imagined.)  We all process stress and respond to stressors differently.  We physically respond to stress with increased breathing, heart rate and blood pressure.  Our muscles tense us, we sweat, our blood sugar for energy actually increases and even our abstract thinking is diminished.

The stress response can make you more productive.  However, high levels of stress can make you less productive and possible lead to health issues such as: heartburn, headaches, back and/or neck pain, heart disease and the lowering of the body’s immune system.  What can we do that will help to lower our overall stress?  Eat healthy, limit caffeine, limit alcohol, drink 8-10 glasses of water a day, get enough rest and sleep, get regular exercise and balance work and play. 

Dear Mental Health Advocate:

The future of mental health services in Ohio is resting in the hands of the United States Congress.  If Congress does not include funding for states in the Federal Stimulus Package currently under consideration, we are told by Governor Strickland that 51,530 fewer Ohioans will receive mental health services, including individuals with bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia and other major disorders. 

We need your help.  Please contact your representative and Senators Voinovich and Brown in Washington and urge them to support state assistance in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Let them know that without these funds, there are people with severe mental illness in Ohio who will die. 

Call the numbers below and ask to be connected to your Congressman and Senators.  If you are unsure who your representative is, click here:  http://www.oacbha.org/advocacy/congress.html.  

Your friends at the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Ohio (NAMI Ohio) 

A new study by SANE Australia reveals people affected by mental illness pay a high price when it comes to relationships and social contact, with the study showing half have no close relationship with another person.

The research, conducted September to December 2008, focused on the emotional and physical relationships of people living with a mental illness, the consequences of this for their lives and what can be done about it.  To read the whole story, visit: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/137751.php.

How can we help to prevent the loneliness?

Are the best steps preventative, reactionary or a combination?

Let me start by saying that “trenches” is probably a poor choice of words. This isn’t a war we fight, nor are suffering in spirit and body as that word might imply. But dear reader, I do want you to know what we do as mental health providers is a job, a job that is sometimes funny, sometimes uplifting, sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes tedious and sometimes absurd. My hope in this occasional column is to offer you some insights into the daily practice of mental health counseling so that you will get a sense of what we counselors experience and why what we do matters to us as employees, to our customers and to the larger community that supports (I hope) in financial and conscientious ways the work of community mental health.

            I am a counselor. I listen to people. I listen to people pretty much all day, every day. Listening is harder than it may seem at first take (you know, you just sit on your butt and nod your head). Most people actually listen through one ear while 90% of what they hear dribbles out the other ear. That’s really okay for everyday relationships, otherwise our heads would probably explode, but for counseling it doesn’t work. Now don’t get me wrong, I do my share of dribbling (and drooling but that’s another subject) but I would guesstimate that as a counselor I only let go of about 75% (other peoples’ names, what they had for breakfast, etc.) of what people say to me during an average session. Big deal, you might say, that’s only a 15 % percent difference. Be careful of judging that difference too quickly. First of all I have to decide moment to moment which 15% of the exiting 90% percent is necessary to retain, what is likely to be helpful to the work I’m going to do with the person(s) sitting in front of me. Yeah, sometimes I grab a hold of the wrong stuff and throw it in the mental closet only to find out a few weeks later, it was useless information. Time to clean out the closet. Sometimes I got the right stuff but put it on the wrong shelf. Then as I’m listening to the next 15% at a follow-up appointment, I’ve also have to be rearranging the stuff I heard the week(s) before. I also have to do that with each person I meet for 45-55 minutes in a row. This is a long time. Sometimes I can feel my brain burning through cells that I will never replace. But if I look out the window for too long and fantasize about climbing the tree outside my window (okay, I do that sometimes!), I might miss the one thing that could make a difference in this person having a better life and also influencing everyone he/she interacts with in a slightly more positive manner. So generally speaking, I pay attention.

Now let’s take that same 15% retention rate over roughly fifty minutes for each individual. Multiply that by approximately 15-20 individuals each week. Add the same ratio times about 25 group members each week. Now continue that listening quota over an average number of sessions per person of about 15-25 times yearly. I think you can see that over a sample year’s time, myself and the other fine counselors I work with are probably building the great pyramids of listening. I don’t want to pretend that they aren’t pyramids missing a few bricks, the lines aren’t always very plumb and there might be an occasional mummy in the catacombs but they are still pyramids of peoples’ lives. And all those great pyramids (currently 124 of them on my caseload alone) have to fit inside my in head at the same time and not get too muddled up or knocking each other over. I can tell you it’s a tight fit (I might have to build an addition, or remove eighth grade—it wasn’t a great year). This is part of what we do as counselors.

 Okay, that’s probably more than you wanted to know about the art of listening. Next time, I’ll share a little bit about another skill we provide, the art of talking and why it’s not what you say but how you say it that matters. Until then, remember to breathe.

Paul Schoenberg, Ph.D.

As the financial investment reports hit our mailboxes in January and the media pumps out the specifics of our “Global Financial Crisis” to millions of viewers, non-profit organizations begin to brace for the worst. Non-profit fundraising isn’t the most pleasant topic to discuss over lunch or breakfast with a donor. During a recent Foundation Board Meeting, my smart Resource Development Professional gave us all a great internet article by Jeffrey Byrne & Associates entitled “Stay Calm, Keep Focus on Fundraising in Uncertain Times” (info@givinginstitute.org). I would recommend you all to read these brief but thoughtful recommendations.

One point of the seven recommendations that resonate with me is the need to get back to fundamentals. How often do many of us take advantage of our donor relationships; expecting them to write us a check after a brief lunch. Getting back to fundraising basics means to believe in your mission statement, articulate your organization’s needs to the donor and cultivate your relationship. Many of us send birthday or anniversary cards, call on them to talk about an event in the local paper or get their advice on an important issue. Above all we need to be good listeners and enjoy the valuable relationship of our donors. Donor cultivation is more than one event but a continuous process that should build over time. Let’s quit the whining, start meaningful relationship building, and be thoughtful supporters to our donors.