***My hope is that this post will help parents and caregivers better understand the role that peer pressure can play in an adolescent’s mental health crisis, especially where cutting is involved*** One of the most startling experiences during my son’s mental health crisis was the realization that within his adolescent peer group, mental illness […]
Shattering the Stigma
Today, Far From Paradise’s latest post is being featured over at OldSchoolNewSchoolMom.com as part of their Stigma Fighters series – You can read it in full here. ****Head on over and show some love! Stigma Fighters is a blog series where real people with mental health issues are sharing their stories in order to combat societal stigma. Human beings […]
The Scars We Choose
Lately I have been thinking about the things we do in life to commemorate or to remember a period of time. There are many ways we remember these times; some choose writing about experiences, or photographing important memorable items and still others choose to create a memorial or select an artifact to serve as a […]
It’s Their Journey
Spring has finally sprung up here in the northeast USA. It has been a long, cold winter as it is every year. As much as I dislike the cold and grey days, it truly allows me to appreciate when winter breaks and spring arrives. There is a buzz that I feel, like I can actually […]
No is Not the Right Answer
The following was originally published as a guest post on both The Mindstorm and Parents Like Us Club blogs on February 8, 2013. Chrisa Hickey is the “Master-Mom” behind both of these blogs. She is also the mother of a child with mental illness, a powerful advocate and a voice for all whom the mental […]
Ad-Mission Impossible
An armed security guard was our escort to the ward. As I followed my son and the guard, it was obvious that the path they chose to walk took us through the deepest bowels of the hospital. At one point it felt as though we had stepped back in time, as we walked through a […]
