Tag Archives: depression

Brendaliz’s Story

Brendaliz, a client of The Child Center of NY, who received services for addiction and therapy at the Jamaica Family Wellness Center

 

As dictated by the client and lightly edited.

I’ll be honest, I did not like therapy at first. I hated it. I didn’t want anybody in my business.

I also didn’t think my therapist would be on my side. That’s because the way I ended up at the [Jamaica Family Wellness] Center was because I had an ACS case open, and they recommended it to me. My husband was into drugs, we were losing our house, and I was smoking weed to deal with my problems. I thought ACS sent me to the Center so they could get evidence to take my kids away. I didn’t want to speak to [my therapist] Maricela because I thought she would use what I said against me. It took a while to open up to her. But little by little, I realized she wasn’t looking for a reason to take my kids away. She was there to help me and my family. She actually listened, and instead of looking at me negatively and judging me, she heard me, helped me, and made me realize that I could make changes in my life.

For example, I didn’t know that I had anxiety and depression. I had an idea but wasn’t really sure. Now that we know what it is, we can treat it. In addition to therapy, I take medications and have medication management appointments with the on-site nurse practitioner.

Maricela also helped me with a lot of practical problems I was having. My life was a mess. I didn’t have ID. I didn’t have my kids’ birth certificates. I didn’t know where to start. Maricela helped me with a lot of it. She helped me get my paperwork, my ID, and food stamps through Benefits Access. Maricela helped me with the paperwork because my reading isn’t that good. Sometimes I don’t understand what I’m reading, and Maricela would help me. She also introduced me to a group at the Center for people with addictions, and it helped me get off weed.

My motivation was my kids. I didn’t want to lose them. I always knew I had to do better, but I didn’t know how. I would smoke weed to deal with my past trauma and emotional issues. During treatment, I gained coping skills and techniques that have helped me manage my feelings and emotions in a healthy, positive way and make good choices. I started taking up drawing and coloring, which helps take me out of that “zone.” And Maricela is always there for me.

I have been in therapy for a few years, and I’m happy to say that my relationship with my kids is great now. Before, my depression was taking over. It was hard to attend to the kids while dealing with the issues I had, and I would just shut down. But with Maricela’s help, I learned to handle it. I try to be open with my kids so they will talk to me when they have a problem. When they do need me, I can be there for them. Instead of looking for reasons to take my kids away, Maricela was there to make sure I could be the best parent I could be.

Now that I’ve been in therapy for a while, I am ready to start working on my own goals so I can be the best I can be for myself, too. My goals include getting a house that I can pay for and going back to school for home decorating. I also want to improve my reading skills. I couldn’t focus on that when I had so much going on with my addiction and my kids, but now I’m ready.

I have a new way of thinking. I used to be really negative. I would look at myself like I couldn’t do anything right. I thought I wasn’t smart enough. I put myself down. Now I don’t see myself like that. I know I am capable of improving, and even though I’m older, I still can have goals and reach them. I may not be as smart as I want to be, but I am a smart woman and can try. Before, I didn’t even want to try. Now it’s different: I go out, I spend time with family, and I push myself. Before, I didn’t want to go to school. Now I can’t wait to go back. I am good at art, at decorating. My cousins and aunt who came to visit saw my artwork and said it looked so pretty and asked to have it. Now it’s hanging in their homes.

I have a totally different view of therapy than I did when I started. With a person who is not a part of your everyday life, you can put yourself out there a little bit more, and they won’t judge you. If you get a good counselor, it will help you change your family and your way of thinking. And changing that is what makes other changes possible.

Jiaxin’s Story

I came to The Child Center of NY when I was 14. Five years later, I’ve come a long way to be where I am now, talking about my journey and my healing through therapy. Some of it is hard to talk about, and some of it I have a hard time remembering, as a symptom of my post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s difficult to look back to the memories I do have, because I’ve matured a lot and have become a very different person. I can hardly imagine being the girl I was back then.

I started therapy at The Child Center’s Flushing Clinic as a result of a referral from my school. I felt lonely and empty. Everybody I knew called me weird, and I had no friends. To some, I may have just seemed edgy, but I had been suicidal and imagined different ways to kill myself. Now those feelings seem impossible. The helplessness I felt at the time seems so far away when I look back, as if I had dreamed it up.

My mother is a Chinese immigrant, and my father is a Hispanic American. When I was six, my mother left him due to the physical and emotional abuse she, my brother, and I had been subject to. We moved from shelter to shelter, and I transferred from school to school, where I was ridiculed and bullied by my classmates. At home, I resented my mother for her favoritism of my older brother. In Chinese families, the first-born son is always the favorite, and the women always come second. It was hard to connect to my mother anyway; we had different ideals. I was a self-described “daddy’s girl” at the time, and I idolized my father and thought that he was the only one who really understood me. But he had never been financially responsible or emotionally available for my needs. I was enmeshed in multilayered ethnic and cultural conflicts, value systems, and moral confusion. I trusted no one and did not identify with my peers. I didn’t even relate to my family.

Then I met my therapist who, through talking and sharing my thoughts, I created a bond of trust with. She was also a bridge that connected my mother and me, as she was Chinese and could understand the more traditional values of being Chinese. She helped me reconcile some aspects of being a Chinese American. Suddenly I didn’t feel so left out, especially as someone who wasn’t fully Chinese. I developed a sense of hope through her acceptance of who I was and was getting better.

However, the road to becoming stronger than my depression or anxiety was far from over. My paternal aunts denied my mental illness and tried to violently exorcise me. It is one of the darkest moments in my life, and to this day it still affects me. I had my physical and emotional control ripped from my hands, and my support cut off completely. I attempted suicide twice. I worked through the challenges I faced in the aftermath with my therapist — the nightmares and all, and through that I became stronger than what I felt. I cut contact completely with my paternal family, and I started to heal. Wounds became scabs, became scars.

But my story doesn’t end there. Even though I was improving every step of the way — my grades were up, I was volunteering and working in summer, and I was even applying to college — I had also been slowly piecing together, through journaling and voice recording, some scattered traumatic memories. And even though I still doubt it sometimes, there is undeniable evidence that my father sexually molested and abused me in some way when I was a child. I will probably never know what happened in detail, nor do I ever want to. But it was truly a milestone revelation. I experienced a therapeutic catharsis through finding and talking about it, but I would have never gotten this far without the trust I had in my therapist. I would have never verbalized the doubts and fears I had otherwise. And without her support through the aftermath, knowing that she would be there if I felt depressed, I don’t know how I would have coped.

As I worked through my feelings and emotions, I began to change my outfit and diet, and soon I began looking like your average teenager. I started to focus on better things in life, things that I had always loved, like animals. I started meeting new friends, I came closer to terms with the multicultural conflict in my life, and I even grew out of my brother’s shadow. Soon I graduated high school and started my first year at Hunter College. Currently I am in my second year of college, majoring in psychology with a concentration in animal behavior. I’ve made so many new friends, and I’m excited to see what life has in store for me.

Preventing Copycat Suicide in the Wake of Jonghyun’s Death

By Anderson Sungmin Yoon, DSW, LCSW-R, CASAC, RPT-S
Vice President, Integrated and Value-Based Care

On December 18, 27-year-old Korean “K-pop” artist Jonghyun, lead singer of global boy band SHINee, was found unconscious in an apartment in Seoul. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, where he was immediately taken. The cause was suicide.

Like most, it was a tragedy that didn’t need to happen. Continue reading

Mental Illness Can Touch Anyone: Help Should Reach Everyone, Too

Mental Illness Can Touch Anyone: Help Should Reach Everyone, TooAfter comedian Robin Williams died, we asked how someone with access to the best help in the world wasn’t able to find what he needed. Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen noted that for Williams, money was no barrier to the best possible care. So what’s the verdict for ordinary people who are trying to find the help they need? “Accessing mental health care is getting harder, not easier,” Cullen wrote. “It’s getting more expensive for families, not less.”

For a select group of our country’s youth, the Affordable Care Act is good news. A recent study found that more young people are getting the mental health care and substance abuse treatment they need, thanks to the change allowing them to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26. This is excellent progress. But what about teens and young adults who have few resources, whose parents are uninsured and dealing with their own mental health needs? Cuts in mental health funding mean that these young people are less likely to have access to mental health care–and also that they are more likely to need it.

When we fail to treat childhood trauma, we pay for it later on, in tragic mental illness and costly health problems that perpetuate the cycle of childhood trauma for the next generation. Continue reading

Remembering Robin Williams and Renewing Our Commitment to Care

Robin WilliamsWhen the media broke the news of Robin Williams’ death, it was shocking to realize that someone who gave people so much joy was experiencing such pain. He was loved and revered by people he’d never met—a man who had every success and a family who loved him but who still felt unable to reach for the help that he needed. His loss is devastating, and it’s a fresh reminder that people all around us are struggling, without access to the resources and care that could help them survive.

Robin Williams was not alone. 1.1 million people attempt suicide each year, and 39,000 people take their own lives. One in five Americans suffered from a mental illness in the last year, but only 39 percent of them were able to get mental health services. We must erase the stigma that prevents people from getting help, and we must make sure that everyone seeking help has access to the care they need. Continue reading


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