Fierce Goodbye

Mental Illness

Mental illnesses are the leading cause of suicide. Mental illness can be fatal - and we need to treat these diseases as potentially fatal, but very treatable, according to experts like Kay Jamison, quoted below. We do our loved ones and ourselves a great favor to know and understand as much about mental illness as we possibly can.

This country does not make it easy to get
health care for your brain.
There's no pretense that there's fairness
in mental health coverage.
Until we say that the brain is just as serious as an organ
and just as serious a cause of death
as the heart, kidney, liver or the lungs,
we're not going to be able to treat the people we need to.
We're going to lose 30,000 lives a year as we are now.
Kay Jamison, psychologist at Johns Hopkins University

About Mental Illness

Facts about mental illness from NAMI, The Nation's Voice on Mental Illness. http://www.nami.org/

Josh's Story

Psychiatrist Michael Dyck writes of working with Josh Goossen, a Christian man who struggled hard to overcome a disease, which ultimately took his life but never took away his burning desire to fulfill God's purpose for him.

Excerpts from Kay Jamison interview

Dr. Jamison talks about bi-polar illness, depression, why college students are at risk, how churches can respond, and much more.

One of the things I think that helped in our healing
was to realize that Darrel died of an illness,
that his brain was ill and the brain can become ill
just like any other organ in the body from stress.
I knew that but it was helpful
to have a professional person say that.
Merle Brubaker, father of an adult son who died by suicide.