This is the written copy of my presentation I did at the CBS Salvation Army Church on Sunday, May 5, 2024.
My name is Harris Tucker and I have a mental illness! Yes I said it, I have a mental illness. It’s a topic that is seldom talked about. For many reasons; it is highly stigmatized, very much misunderstood, discriminatory, ignorance as in not knowing, shameful and isolating. So therefore people with mental illness, suffer in silence. But I have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide; I have an illness, it’s that simple. No need to be stigmatized, no need to be misunderstood, no room for prejudice, no need to feel alone. This is why I have and I will talk about my illness with openness, transparency and truth; hiding nothing.
My advocacy for mental illness can be found on my website at: www.harrislisa72.com, where I frequently blog my journey. And also my book; Beyond The Door, My Journey Through A Lifetime of Mental Illness. It’s through both of these avenues that I have shared my story, my diagnosis, my life and my experience with, “Major Depression and Anxiety Disorder”.
I would like to read to you, ‘A Note From The Author’, contained in my book backgrounder:
“Beyond the Door” is a book like none other you will ever read. It leads you through my lifetime with mental illness, and a relapse that rendered me nothing less then a walking corpse; a body without a mind. After several years of medical help, I finally fought my way back to a somewhat functioning level. I began to write and found this to be a great source of therapy. I began to blog.It was here you would find what was going on inside this broken mind. Each blog captured my thoughts right in the moment it was written; raw, true, transparent and painful. Nothing was hidden, nothing! If this book doesn’t give you a new perspective and break down some walls of stigma, then I have failed as an author. But I know this book will do even more. It will stir within you a desire to know more – more about this illness, more about this machine we call the mind!
My book is available tonight in the foyer or online at: Amazon, Indigo, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Book Depository and Amazon Kindle.
Let me begin by saying, I am not a doctor,psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist; nor am I a professional in the field of psychiatry. What I am, is someone who has suffered from a mental illness all my life. My struggle with mental health began when I was just a child. I didn’t know then, but what I was struggling with was a mental illness. My lifetime with mental illness has provided me with a vast knowledge, and hands on life experience, that I would have never learned or gained otherwise; I had lived it and still do to this day. And so, I am someone who ‘gets it’; I understand, I’ve been there. I have survived this horrific disease and I am willing to share my journey with you. To help you better understand this illness, to educate, and by doing so, to tear down the walls of stigma that surround it.
The brain is said to be one of the most complex organs of the body and the disorders associated with it are equally as complex. And that is why mental illness is so misunderstood and so stigmatized. It certainly ‘is not’ a choice as some may think. The medical field and the scientific community have yet to come to a universal agreement on the nature and cause of depression. But the general consensus is that depression is a medical condition, an illness; not a personal failure, a weakness or a spiritual battle, as many may still think today.
Let me explain in a nutshell what I have come to understand about my illness. Our brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters, are not at the levels they should be to maintain good mental health. The neurotransmitters, that affect how we feel, are serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. When our brain is producing too much, or not enough, of these chemicals then our mental well being is greatly affected and thus, we suffer depression and other mental disorders. A great comparison to help us understand this disorder is to compare it to diabetes. When a person suffers from diabetes, it often means that their pancreas is not producing enough insulin to regulate their blood sugar levels, and therefore, have to take insulin to regulate normal sugar levels. Likewise, someone suffering from depression may need to take medication, such as SSRIs, to increase serotonin levels in the brain. When we are educated to what a mental illness is, then it leaves no room for stigmatization or misunderstanding. It is what it is; an illness!
Before I share my personal journey with my own mental illness, let me share with you some very alarming statistics, according to Global Mental Health Statistics.
- 970 million people around the world struggle with some form of mental illness.
- 1 in 4 people will be affected by a mental illness at some point in their lives. So please do not think you will never be affected, or someone you love. Its much like saying, you will never get cancer. No one is exempt! And because you are a Christian doesn’t mean you can’t suffer from depression and other mental disorders.
- Approximately 8 million deaths each year are attributed to mental disorders.
- More than 700,000 people die due to suicide every year worldwide.
Now let’s bring that home to Canada.
According to the Canadian Mental Health Association:
- Mental illness indirectly affects ALL Canadians at some time; either through their own experience, or that of a family member, friend or colleague.
- 1 in 5 people in Canada will personally experience a mental health problem or illness.
- Every year, approximately 4500 people in Canada die by suicide, which is equivalent to 12 people dying by suicide every day.
- Suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth and young adults between 15-34 years of age.
In our own province of NL suicide numbers are up by 25% in 2021, according to numbers from the province’s Chief Medical Exhaminer. NL suicide rates have tripled since the 1980’s, among the highest in Canada.
Sad to say, but the suicide rate is increasing every day and will continue to increase. One alarming fact about mental illness is that many turn to drugs and alcohol to ease the pain; this only adds to the problem; it does not solve it. And this, in turn, only exacerbates the drug and alcohol crisis that we are facing today.
And I Begin….
MY STORY, MY JOURNEY, MY HELL
My whole life has been plagued with a mental illness.I cannot remember, in my adult life, not being prescribed an antidepressant medication. You see, I experienced my first mental breakdown when I was just sixteen years of age. At that time there was no help, medication was not approved for anyone under the age of 18. So, I was sent home by my doctor to battle this monster, and survive was all I could do. I wasn’t living, I was existing, I was surviving. This continued until I was eighteen and then I was prescribed antidepressants which helped to bring me back to a functioning level. Medication does work; it may not be a cure, but it surely helped me to navigate through life. The years that lay ahead were not easy years, but I did live a high functioning life and operated my own business for 28 years. I basically lived a fairly normal life, while struggling with depression and anxiety but both were managed by medication, and kept me fairly well.
I went on to marry the love of my life, Lisa. And then 13 years later, we were blessed with our little boy, Logan. However, this didn’t mean my illness was gone. In 2012, when Logan was one year old, I experienced a mental breakdown like I had never experienced before. I was so mentally ill, my depression and anxiety was so severe, that I physically shut down. And this is what I want to emphasize; that depression is not just about being sad, anxiety is not just about being anxious.Mental illness affects every area of your life – both mentally and physically. I feel sometimes we have the tendency to minimize the extreme seriousness of this illness. When in fact this illness is the only illness known to man that one of it’s symptoms has the ability to take away your will to live. No other illness as that power! So if you remember nothing else I said tonight, please remember that!
At the acute stage of my illness I became totally non-functioning. I had a disability; not a physical one where I was confined to a wheelchair, but a mental one, locked inside my head.I don’t remember much about those days. I had lost a lot of my memory, to a point where I was monitored for dementia. Tasks that once came so easily were now impossible to do. I couldn’t use a cell phone; a computer was a foreign object, something that I feared. I would stand at the kitchen sink and not know how to wash the dishes. In fact, it got so bad, at one point, that I didn’t know how to zipper my coat. Lisa described me as a ‘walking corpse’; a mind in constant torment. THIS IS MENTAL ILLNESS!!
Many times, I felt there was no hope, no help and no way back; just a black hole. The medical profession had tried everything possible, from: cocktails of medication to electro convulsive therapy. Up to this point, I was deemed treatment resistant, as nothing was working! When someone reaches this point, and I was there, totally hopeless and ‘unable to reason’, that many often feel that the only way to end the pain, and free their love ones of their burden, is to hope for peace through suicide. It is not our place to judge, for only God has that right and only God knows our hearts, our innermost thoughts. Thankfully, I was never suicidal; borderline, yes. I’ve had many days, when I was so sick, that I just wanted to die, to escape this hellish existence. I prayed to God to let me die. I know of one occasion when Pastor White came to visit, and he told me after the fact, that when he left my house on this particular day; he said, ‘If God did not intervene, then next week I will be performing Harris’s funeral!’ But that wasn’t God’s plan for me! I’m still here!
Even in my despair, God continued to bless us. Our precious Lauren was born amid all this chaos and turmoil, only to be diagnosed with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy on the day of her first birthday. You talk about the bottom falling out of our already shattered world. Again we were faced with yet another life-altering diagnosis. God, where are you? God, why? So many questions, so few answers. This is where my faith had to come into play, but at times, my faith was very small. Every day brought new challenges, as in my weakness, I tried to help strengthen our little girl and be a good Daddy to both Logan and Lauren. All day, everyday, I pushed myself to the limit. Normal everyday tasks, that came naturally to others, seemed insurmountable to me. But, I would not give up, so fight I did!
And, to this day I still struggle through every day; maybe not at the intensity of which I did but, I still struggle. We must realize that our brain is no different than any other organ in our body. I am no different than someone with diabetes hypertension, liver disease, heart disease, etc. Things can go wrong with the brain, just like something can go wrong with the heart. Miraculously, I have come so far, but my battle is far from over. I speak for all those who struggle with this disease. I intend to speak for those who don’t have a voice, as well as those who have succumbed to their battle with this illness. Every morning, I have to pray and ask God to see me through the day and , thankfully, He has been faithful!
When you suffer from a mental illness it is so easy to lose hope; in fact, to become totally hopeless, to be engulfed by darkness. So how can we help as a Church? What is our responsibility as a born again Christian? It certainly isn’t to pretend that mental illness doesn’t exist. Jesus has called us to be ‘Our Brother’s Keeper’, to be the Good Samaritan to someone else in need; to that someone that is struggling today.
We live in a hurting world, a world that’s filled with so much hate. A world that’s searching for something to fill that void, that emptiness. I have come to realize that, that space within us cannot be filled with anything that this world can offer; its empty lies.The only answer is a spiritual one, a supernatural power, that can only be found in Jesus and Jesus alone! We cannot do this on our own. I would never have been able to survive this battlefield of the mind, if it weren’t for my personal relationship with Jesus Christ!He understood me when no one else did. John 10:10 says, I am come that you may have life and have it more abundantly’. 2 Kings 20:5 ‘I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears’. I’ll be completely honest; I won’t give you false hope. I won’t tell you to bring it to Jesus and all your hurts, pain, sickness will go away. He can make that happen, but sometimes that’s not part of His plan; it’s not His will. What He does promise, is that no matter what, He will never leave us. Hebrews 13:5 ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’He will walk with us and, at times, He will carry us. Isaiah 43:2 states it so clearly, ‘When you pass through the waters (and you will), I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.’ And that is how I have endured the flames that mental illness has brought into my life. I have always known that He was with me; I may not have always felt He was with me, but I knew beyond a doubt that He was and is with me! Because of this, I can say, with confidence, that He will do the same for you! There is HOPE!
What is your story?