‘Everything became very quiet’; Fighting the stigma associated with mental health

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Nestled in a quiet corner of Greenville – home to pets, the horses that bring Charlie Darke to the County Fair every year and a little donkey that acts as a guard against coyotes for those horses – the family The Pope opened their home to the Dayton Daily News. . Charlie and his mother, Tiffany, shared what it’s like to deal with the changes in Charlie’s mental health, as well as the stigma that comes with those problems.

For Tiffany, that moment in their family’s life almost two years ago meant seeing Charlie lose the sparkle in his eye and his joy.

The spark in Charlie is that something has returned, evident as he talks about problems that adults twice his age find difficult to explain.

Mental health problems can affect people of all ages, Dayton Children’s says, including children and teenagers. While it’s normal for children and teens to feel sad or depressed from time to time, it can become more of a habit if the sadness lasts for weeks or more, affecting children’s daily lives .

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“One way to look at it is if it really changes the way you can work,” said Dr. Kelly Blankenship, director of psychiatry at Dayton Children’s.

Depression is a mood disorder, which can manifest as sad or irritable feelings that last for weeks or more and affect a child’s daily life, according to Dayton Children’s.

‘A very dark time’

For Charlie, he began to be pessimistic about almost everything, he said.

“It was a very dark time,” said Charlie.

Trying to cope with his feelings alone, Charlie’s symptoms of depression deepened, not wanting to leave his room or his bed, feeling like it didn’t matter anymore. .

He said that he stopped showing interest in things that normally made him happy.

“Everything went very quiet,” Charlie said. I spent more time in my bed than spending time with my friends and doing the things I wanted to do.”

Charlie stopped doing certain sports and other activities. Tiffany first thought that Charlie might be changing interests.

Tiffany said: “We found that we were leaving things behind and not replacing them. And suddenly I feel like, we don’t do anything we like anymore.

“It was hard to get him involved in life, and we saw a lot of things happen,” Tiffany said.

Looking for a solution

Tiffany and Charlie have always been close, so they started talking about what Tiffany saw happening with Charlie.

“It got to the point where we knew it wasn’t him and it wasn’t just a young thing, which I think is hard for parents to distinguish because young people go through a lot of different things and they have their moments. come back down,” said Tiffany. It became clear that Charlie was struggling with a serious problem.

“Once we realized it was a big problem, we immediately started looking for solutions and help,” said Tiffany.

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It was also difficult for him to face his depression because he didn’t feel like he had a reason to be depressed.

“He thought he could handle it, and he thought he was OK,” Tiffany said.

Although his depression may have been gradual, once it reached its peak, his family and he knew they needed immediate help.

“When it went up, it went up fast,” Tiffany said.

Charlie ended up in the hospital, but it was also what he needed to realize that he needed help.

“I feel like the part of it that helped me the most was waking up to something like, this is serious, something needs to change,” Charlie said.

Overcoming stigma

For Charlie, he found that medication was part of the help he needed to manage his depression, but in order to get to the point where he could seek help, he had to overcome the stigma surrounding it. and mental health.

“That’s another thing that my mom and I talked about that’s like another stigma is that it’s a chemical imbalance in your brain. Mental illness should be treated more like physical illness than it is intellectual, at least as much,” Charlie said.

There are people who are genetically predisposed to struggle at certain levels with anxiety and depression if they don’t get treatment, Blankenship said. For those on that end, they may develop a mental illness even if they don’t have social anxiety disorder affecting them.

“And there’s something different,” said Blankenship. “There are people who have genes that no matter what they encounter in life, they are unlikely to experience depression or anxiety.”

Most people will fall in the middle, he said.

“They’re going to have an easy genetic predisposition to depression or anxiety,” Blankenship said.

The stigma around mental health says they should be able to get by, but it would be like someone with asthma refusing to use an inhaler to help them breathe, Charlie said.

“If you’ve broken your arm, you can’t ask yourself, ‘Oh, Sammy doesn’t have a cast on his right arm, so it hurts to have a cast on my arm.’ It’s because you have different needs, and your arm is broken,” Charlie said.

Charlie credited his mother with helping him accept the fact that there was a problem and that he needed help for his mental health.

“I was lucky to have a mother who is very careful, who loves me very much, and immediately notices when things are off,” said Charlie.

Becoming an advocate

Seeing Charlie enjoying life again and having hope for the future was all Tiffany could ask for as a parent, Tiffany said.

“That’s all you want,” Tiffany said. Seeing him grow up and be able to make the right decisions for himself made me able to sleep at night.”

Charlie traveled to Washington, DC last year to speak to lawmakers about his mental health journey on behalf of the more than 7,000 children who have also received behavioral health treatment at Dayton Children’s that year.

This journey not only helped him advocate for thousands of children and youth facing mental health issues in Ohio, but it helped measure his growth, showing how he handled those dark times. faced them and turned the experience into something positive.

“A year ago from that time … I was very down and I thought nothing was going to change and I didn’t have motivation for all these things,” Charlie said. So it’s like, now I’m in Washington DC and I’m talking to congressmen.

By simply sharing his experiences, it meant that Charlie was not hindered by stigma.

“Maybe I’m not changing things, but at least I’m trying,” Charlie said.