Motherhood, Mental Illness And The Other Mermaid

By Author: Sandra Yance
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eWomenNetwork member, Julia Sutton, shares her heart-breaking journey about the challenges of being a caregiver to family members who suffer from mental illness, including her brother and her son. It has consumed her, and now she is on a mission to eradicate the stigma around childhood mental illness through a children’s book she wrote and the help of a local hospital.

Watch the video below or listen to the interview on the eWN Podcast Network.

Mental Illness Runs in My Family

PHYLLIS SMITH: Hello and welcome to Spotlight on eWomenNetwork, I’m Phyllis Smith. Today is a pretty serious topic. We’re going to be talking about, taking a deeper look into mental illness. So, listen to these statistics: according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness or NAOMI:

1 in 5 adults in the US, that’s about 44 million people (nearly 20% of the population), experience mental illness in a given year.

1 in 25 adults in the United States, that’s about 10 million people (about 4% of the population), experience a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes ...
... with or limits one or more major life activity.

These numbers are staggering and joining me today is a woman who has experience with mental illness first hand. She is an author, an illustrator, and philanthropist. Now she’s featured on this eWomenNetwork “Member Spotlight” series. I’m so honored to have her here. Please welcome Julia Sutton.

JULIA SUTTON: Thank you so much for having me.

PHYLLIS SMITH: And we’re so happy to have you here. So, you’ve just written your first book. This is a dream come true, a 20-year dream come true called, The Other Mermaid. It’s a children’s book. Before we do talk about that - mental illness has been in your family - your brother and then your son. So, can you tell us first about your brother and what his diagnosis was, and how it manifested in your family and your experience growing up?

JULIA SUTTON: Let’s see, this was in the early to mid-70’s and there wasn’t a lot of information about mental illness. So, my brother has been diagnosed with a plethora of different illnesses and I don’t know if they ever got it right. It’s schizophrenia. He has been on medication, mostly he’s self-medicated, and that’s a huge issue with mental illness, because a lot of the medications that are used for the person taking them it feels like it’s taking their soul away. It takes away who they are.

So as a young person growing up it was embarrassing, it was a secret, it was confusing because I would talk to my brother and I couldn’t tell who knows maybe he saw something that the rest of us really didn’t see and it was there. How do you know? My brother and I remain very close to this day. I love him and I support him in his own ventures. What he has done, mostly has lived in outskirts areas. He doesn’t really do well in cities. So, he lives in Alaska. Right now, he’s in Colorado and that’s how he’s dealt with it.

More Info : https://www.ewomennetwork.com/blog/ewomennetwork-1/post/motherhood-mental-illness-and-the-other-mermaid-121