Most of us are well aware of America's mental health crisis, but lack to tools to support each others and help ourselves. 

As mental health specialist and CDC Children's Mental Health Champion Patrice Beard shares, learning to spot the pink flags - those early warning signs that show up before the big red flags - can make a big difference!

 

he Odyssey: Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. 

The Center for Family Involvement at VCU School of Education's Partnership for People with Disabilities provides informational and emotional support to people with disabilities and their families. All of our services are free. We just want to help. We know how hard this can be because we're in it with you. 

SHOW NOTES:

988 LIFELINE: 24/7 Support for suicide and crisis prevention. Using the 988 Lifeline is free. When you call, text, or chat the 988 lifeline, your conversation is confidential. The 988 Lifeline provides judgement-free care. Talking with someone can help save your life.

Mental illness warning signs and symptoms.

Understanding what depression looks like in teens.

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

NAMI Virginia

More about Kevin Hines, who attmepted to kill himself by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and is now a powerful advocate for suicde prevention. 

Centers for Disease Control statistics on children's mental health

REALISTIC Self Care Strategies for Caregivers

How dangerous are phones and screens for teens?

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

01:00:06 :18 - 01:00:35 :11

Erin Croyle

Welcome to the Odyssey. Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. I'm Erin Croyle, the creator and host of the Odyssey podcast explores how our lives change when someone we love has a disability. It's something I became intimately familiar with when my first child was born with Down syndrome in 2010. Now I work with the center for Family Involvement Advocates partnership for people with disabilities.

 

01:00:35 :13 - 01:01:05 :09

Erin Croyle

This podcast explores the triumphs and hardships that we face. We celebrate the joys that the odyssey of parenting, caregiving, and disability bring. But there's no sugarcoating of the tough stuff. Sure, we can do hard things. There's a whole podcast dedicated to the idea, but this caregiving life that we're living, it is next level. It's all consuming in a way that no one can understand unless they're living it too.

 

01:01:05 :11 - 01:01:39 :07

Erin Croyle

We're so busy doing the hard things, thinking this is just how it is, that we don't even realize how tapped out and burnt out we are. This is why I had to have the CFI's mental health specialist and one of the CDC's children's mental health champions, Patrice Beard, on the show to talk about how we can better support everyone from those close to us, to acquaintances, to strangers, to ourselves.

 

01:01:39 :09 - 01:01:56 :03

Erin Croyle

Patrice, part of what makes what we do at the center for Family Involvement so unique is that all of us have lived experience that informs our work. Can you tell us how you got started down this path to mental health awareness and education?

 

01:01:56 :05 - 01:02:17 :02

Patrice Beard

Sure. I started off. I had been off work for a few years. I had originally worked for a medical home, plus, and I got familiar with Danny Yarbrough, our Dana, and, I was looking for a job, and she said, hey, the Partnership's got some admin opportunity part time. Do you want to come work for us? I was like, sure.

 

01:02:17 :02 - 01:02:43 :05

Patrice Beard

So I started working for Admin Center for Family Involvement and got familiar with the center for Family Involvement. What they do, and then reaching out and helping families and that whole lived experience. I realized that there was nobody on the team. What that mental health look experience that I had. And so then we talked and I said, you know, I can help families with this.

 

01:02:43 :05 - 01:03:11 :08

Patrice Beard

And she said, okay, well, you'll have to go through the navigator program. So I started talking to families and helping families through that. And then at the partnership, I was struggling. One day I came into work and I was having my daughter, who has some mental health conditions. I was just struggling with her in school and somebody said, hey, have you heard of NAMI, which is the National Alliance on Mental Illness?

 

01:03:11 :10 - 01:03:37 :15

Patrice Beard

And I realized I had all these amazing programs for families. So I started taking these programs. So I took like family, a family, I took children's challenging behavior. And this was so amazing. And I was sitting in a room with other families who knew my exact experience and who I could talk with, and I could learn. It was an amazing to me that there were all these people that had the same kind of experiences that I had.

 

01:03:37 :17 - 01:03:59 :03

Patrice Beard

It was just awesome. So I just started soaking it up and taking all these classes. I'm like, okay, I like classes so much now I'm going to learn how to teach them. I would take the training, the trainer classes, and through all of these processes, I was able to get better and better at understanding how to handle and how to handle the situation with mental illness and my daughter and then my family.

 

01:03:59 :05 - 01:04:27 :03

Patrice Beard

And then I was using those resources to help other family members that would call in to the set up for family involvement. From there, it just kind of snowballed. Anything I could get Ahold of and learn and take and get a certification in is what I would do. With that, Dana saw that, she just allowed me to grow, and then it just kind of developed, and then she kind of said, hey, I think we need a mental health specialist on staff, and here you are.

 

01:04:27 :04 - 01:04:49 :16

Patrice Beard

So I was able to join the center for Family Involvement team as a mental health specialist. So that's what I do now. And I'm still always taking webinars, and I'm always trying to learn more things so I can help families ultimately, as always, to help families. And now I'm on boards like the Department of Behavioral Health Mental Health Advisory Board.

 

01:04:49 :18 - 01:05:01 :01

Patrice Beard

I'm asked to do presentations. And so it's amazing. So it's really totally just from all of the experience and having the opportunity at the partnership to evolve.

 

01:05:01 :03 - 01:05:34 :19

Erin Croyle

Amazing. I'm going to mute real quick and close my door. My mom is visiting, so it's normally really quiet in my house. And she's puttering around in the background. And it's a really beautiful thing I don't get to experience and I love it, but I had to close my door. I want to explain for our listeners, you know, we talk about family navigators, and that's part of what makes the center for Family Involvement so unique, so we have staff who specialize in many things, but we also have volunteer family navigators who are trained.

 

01:05:34 :21 - 01:06:01 :06

Erin Croyle

And the beauty of family navigators is that they also bring in lived experience, and we're