The Truth About Self-Diagnosis w/ Hana Pierson & Brooke Davis

Is it anxiety or just stress?

In this episode, Hillary sits down with Hannah (Wedgwood Outpatient Clinician) and Brooke Davis (Director of Mental Health at Kenowa Hills Public Schools) to talk about the growing trend of self-diagnosis among teens and why understanding mental health requires more than just a label.

They explore the impact of social media, the difference between stress and anxiety, and why person-first language matters. Together, they offer insight into how parents, educators, and communities can support kids with compassion, clarity, and proactive care.

If you’ve ever wondered how to talk about mental health in a healthier, more accurate way, this conversation is full of thoughtful guidance and hope.

For more information on the podcast, please visit: https://www.wedgwood.org/podcast/

To get connected to mental health support and counseling, please visit: https://www.wedgwood.org/counseling/

To learn more about Wedgwood, please visit: https://www.wedgwood.org/

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Transcript

Hillary: 0:00

Hey, it's Hillary. Join me for a helpful and hopeful chat about mental health in our community. So grab a cup of coffee or tea. This is Wedgwood's Coffee Break conversation. I'm so excited for today's Coffee Break. We've got Hannah and Brooke with us. Thank you both so much for taking the time. You're welcome. I'll let you both Introduce yourselves a little

Unknown: 0:24

bit. My name is Hannah. I am one of the outpatient clinicians here at Wedgwood. I've been here for just over a year, and I kind of do a little bit of everything. I work in our substance use program. I work with mental health kiddos as young as six or seven, and all the way to older adults. And then I am currently getting certified for our kids trauma focused program as well. Awesome. Thanks for being here. And I am Brooke Davis, and I am the Director of Mental Health Services for kenwel Hills public schools. I've been doing that for four years. This is my fifth year. Going into my fifth year, I have been a licensed social worker prior to that, for about 25 years, and I've worked at St John's home. I also have worked in the school for the last 25 years, and I also have my private practice with purpose counseling. So I've been doing a little bit of everything as well.

Hillary: 1:18

Wonderful. I'm so glad you both are here because I would love to chat a little bit about labels identity and mental health diagnosis. So I've heard from other mental health providers and educators that there is this trend where kids, like want to have some sort of diagnosis, or feel like they should, or that they maybe have self diagnosed, that they have one, because it seems like everybody has one, or they're seeing all this stuff on social media. Is, how are you guys seeing this in your work? Is this a trend that you've noticed too?

Unknown: 1:52

I don't know about Hannah, but I definitely do in school, I think it has become almost like a badge of honor for kids, I think the older they get, like in middle school and up, it's like this whole Tiktok generation, and it's something that helps kids identify when they're starting to have symptoms or starting to feel a certain kind of way. It helps them identify with their peers, and it helps them name what's going on for them. And so I definitely have started to see them, especially when they start talking about things like, Don't trauma dump, or when we have groups, we have a mental health club at our school, and a lot of students identify wanting to be a part of that based on what trauma is for them and how they identify with anxiety. So I start to see it more and more and more with our students, but I think as adults, we play a big part in that. And I'll let Hannah speak to that, and then maybe go back to as adults, how we play a part in that. Sure, yeah, I definitely echo what Brooke said. As far as with the kids that I'm working with, there is definitely a great comfort with talking about the mental health diagnoses that they may or may not carry. And I think the piece that I see missing is we talk a lot about what mental health diagnosis we might have, but my kids are not talking as much about what they're doing to live with that diagnosis. So as Brooke said, it's when something is happening to us. We want words to understand what's happening. And so we go online, and we whether we're looking at influencers or whether we're looking at more credible sources, like the National Institute of Mental Health, we find words that feel right, and we start to identify with that. But then there's that missing piece of, how am I living my life differently to cope with my anxiety, my depression, my trauma, rather than just kind of being proud of, well, I have this, and so I fit in, yeah, and, and I would agree with what Brooke said is it's not just kids that are doing this. We do this as adults too. We also have that desire to understand what's happening, yeah, and the find the words that feel good to describe what we're experiencing.

Hillary: 4:19

Yeah. And you, both have touched on this quite a bit, but in my own life, I've seen it too, that in like, even small ways, even with like personality assessments or whatever, being able to put words to feelings or behaviors is really validating and empowering. I think you know to be like, Oh, this is how this plays out in my life, or this is what this looks like, or why I do this. Why is accurately naming mental health challenges or getting a diagnosis from a mental health professional so important, so making sure that it's not just like a self assessed thing, but like someone with some credentials has looked at it? Why is that so

Unknown: 4:57

important? Well, I think the way this. System is set up is twofold. I think, one, we have set up a system of care that in order for you to at school, or whether you are seeking support, you have to have a mental health diagnosis. And I think sometimes in doing that and setting the system up that way, the level of care that you get comes with the diagnosis. And so sometimes what I've seen in schools is parents will come to me and say, I can't get my child help unless they have these particular things. Yeah. And so that's hard as a parent when you are trying to get your child help or seek services for your child, and you say they're having these behavioral difficulties, and we have to put a name with those behavior difficulties. We have to put a diagnosis versus saying, let's just treat what's going on with your kid. Now, parents are learning, let's diagnose your child. And so when we start to seek medical help, we go into, what is this diagnosis? And so parents feel like when we don't have an answer, sometimes it's hard, and they start to mistrust. But it's important that you seek professional help from people that are know, especially when you're working with anybody at that young age in the K 12 system, because you don't know how that's gonna progress for a child. Yeah. And so it's hugely important, because kids are misdiagnosed, and then there's medication that goes along with those misdiagnoses, and people seek those medications, and then it's hard to pretty much understand why things are not working. So it's very important that you are working with a doctor or medical professional. I always say to my parents, if I get hurt, I just don't take if I say I hurt my knee, they're just not going to prescribe medication. They're also going to prescribe a treatment plan. Yeah, and that's important that you're not just going to take ibuprofen. I might seek physical therapy too. So it's not it goes hand in hand, yeah? And any treatment plan will have to have sometimes both. You're not going to just say, I'm going to take ibuprofen and my knee is instantly going to be better. You're going to seek a doctor to want to make sure those things are going hand in hand, to make sure your knee or something is getting better. And I think mental health is the same way. What the difference is. I think when we're in schools, we talk about things in terms of mental illness and not good mental health practices. And so if we start to talk about mental health earlier and not things in terms of mental illness, then we can give kids the coping skills that they need. So when it turns into mental illness, they know they need to seek the professional that they need, because they have good mental health practices in place, yeah? And so for physical health, we do it. We put physical health in place, and then when it gets to the extreme, we seek a doctor, yeah? But in mental health, that's not the case. Yeah, just wait and wait and wait, and we think we can take care of our own mental illness knowing we need to seek a counselor or a professional at that point, we just sometimes don't do that because we feel like we can handle it on our own. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll add on to that, everything that Brooke said is spot on. I think another benefit of kind of seeking that professional help, that professional diagnosis is especially in our younger kids, who don't necessarily have the complex vocabulary that we do as adults to describe what specifically am I feeling, what body sensations are tied to it? What is the difference between a feeling and a behavior and a thought, right? So many diagnoses for our younger kids are so similar, and so if we're trying to self diagnose, we can end up with the wrong answer. So as Brooke said, when when you go to the doctor and you have an injury, we're not just prescribing ibuprofen, we're prescribing a treatment plan, but there's also some necessary work to do to understand why did this injury happen? So what's going on? What was already going on in your body before you had this accident? Are you do you have a family history of a mental illness? Did you experience a trauma as a child? Are we talking about a behavioral thing, or does this have maybe a deeper root in something that happened to you. And so, yeah, there's, I think this bigger piece of diagnosing is a complex process. It doesn't happen within the initial session. We have this assessment period where we get to know you and and learn you know, who are you, where are you coming from? Where are you now? And how has that maybe played a role in the diagnosis that that we're deciding on?

Hillary: 9:27

Yeah, it kind of sounds like in the realm of kids, they might think that a diagnosis is like a ah, I figured out I have anxiety, and that is the answer to all of the things. But how you guys are describing it is. It's really a very holistic process that needs to take place.

Unknown: 9:45

It really is. It's almost like we've taken stress and the idea of stress is anxiety. So now it's not stress anymore. It's just automatically jumping to anxiety, yeah. And so it's that fine line between what we grew up. With everyday stress, they have taken that word. Now does not matter, everything is anxiety. And so which anxiety can be very complex, and it might be anxiety, but it takes a professional to diagnose anxiety, yeah, whereas now our kids have diagnosed themselves with anxiety, and that's what I see a lot of, is parents coming in and using that language that is a is, is a clinician to diagnose. They've diagnosed it. My child has anxiety, and then we ask those questions, well, who diagnosed that? Or are you? Which is a very legitimate question, right, right? And the parents was like, Well, I just know. And I said, well, they have symptoms of stress, or they have symptoms of anxiety, because you haven't seeked as as a professional but that's a professional diagnosis. But those words become interchangeable, because mental health and mental illness is interchangeable now, and I think it's just that whole idea of social media, and what we are getting from social media. You plan everything through social media, and so now you can get your diagnosis through social media. You can get your diagnosis from your friends. You can get your treatment plan from your friends. This is what I have, so you must have it too, and it's not bad, because kids want things named, yeah, the system is flooded. I can't get in until six months from now. So I'm going to go to what generationally is happening, and that's for this generation social media. So they're using the tools that they have to get their needs met. It's just not a holistic perspective, like Hannah said, you have to look at everything. When we're developing these treatment plans, we're not just doing it on one appointment. We're getting to know you. We're looking at all of those root causes, all of that history, because all of that matters, and getting to the right thing in order to help and give you some strategies and tools and coping skills to be able to help you get to overcome some of those things that you are dealing with, and get you to some good outcomes and some good treatment plans, and not just the one and done. Yeah,

Hillary: 11:59

so when we name something, it can sometimes become a label or a defining aspect, like you talked about with the kids, like, oh, I have anxiety. What are the risks of maybe intentionally or unintentionally, putting someone in a box with their diagnosis and not seeing them as the whole person?

Unknown: 12:18

I can jump in on this one, I think especially in the trauma focused program we are as part of that program, each child who qualifies for that has to have a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder. And so there's a lot of conversation that has to happen with these kids of what is PTSD, and many of them react by saying, Well, I can't have that. That's a really big diagnosis. That's scary, yeah. And so there's a lot of stigma that comes with even the way that that we might talk about it as professionals of, Oh, your everyday Generalized Anxiety versus bipolar or a personality disorder or PTSD. And so the stigma that can come with these quote, unquote, heavier diagnoses can feel very limiting. So, you know, some of my kids, they say, Well, I can't have PTSD because I don't, you know, I didn't go to war. I don't have really scary flashbacks. I don't have all of these more stereotypical symptoms of it. And so there's a lot of time and space that's needed to compassionately enter that space and say, well, a mental health diagnosis looks different for everyone, and you might be experiencing more arousal symptoms than someone else. You might be experiencing more avoidance than someone else, and really sitting with the client and saying, This is you first. You the person first, and you happen to be dealing with PTSD, but you are not PTSD. This is simply a tool that we are using to try and help you understand how what has happened to you is impacting the way that you are now. But when we reduce ourself to that box, we really, even as clinicians, we miss out on seeing a lot of the really unique personality that our kids have because we are only seeing that diagnosis, and not the child, not the adult, not the client. And yeah, I was gonna say that's, I think that's the biggest thing. Is, when you box somebody into a diagnosis, they begin to think that's all that they are. Yeah. And I think we hear a lot in education of educating the whole child, and what does that really mean? And I think kids have fallen into this trap of, I can't be anything else, and their anxiety is taking over them. And I use anxiety because that's all I hear in schools right now, is my anxiety. So I can't learn, I can't be educated, I can't function in the world because of my anxiety. Society, and it's not really who they are. It's just something that they are dealing with at that time and space, and they begin to think that they can't get over it, or they can't move away from it. And I think a lot of that is, is we have as a society, failed to really teach them how to really deal with their mental health. Yeah, we teach Physical health in schools. We really do. We have physical education classes, but we really haven't leaned into really teaching what mental health looks like. And so the system has gotten flooded. We are six months out with appointments, nine months out with appointments. And so we have really changed what mental illness has looked like. And so Hannah's dealing with trauma and PTSD, some of those higher level of diagnosis that kids are really coming with. And then you have the kids that do have anxiety and the kids that are just stress bound, who don't have the coping skills to deal with everyday problems, because our system didn't take didn't stop to say, maybe we should start teaching good mental health practices and every day. How do we handle stressors in our lives and things that are coming up? So we didn't change with the times. Yeah. We didn't say, now we need to not only teach Physical health, we need to start teaching mental health, yeah, and give good mental health practices, because our brains need to be developed differently, and we need to get kids to understand their their this is a part of them. Like everybody has mental health. I have so many people that says, Well, I don't have mental health. Well, you don't have mental illness. Yeah, we all have mental just like we have we need physical health. We need mental health. Yeah, our brains need developing, just like our bodies need developing. And I think that's where we miss the boat sometimes. But you're not your diagnosis. I'm not the anxiety that I live with. It's just something that I have to deal with when certain things trigger me or certain things come into play. It's just something that I know I have to have a routine for. I have to function with. I have to deal with through the means that I work with my counselor on I have to have my safety plan in place, and I can still be a functioning adult. It's just that when kids are growing up and they get to a certain spot, they have to know that those things are true. I think what's hard about it is, if we can, if we misdiagnose somebody, or you're giving them to be they don't know those things. So then they don't function, they don't function in the right space with those things. And that's that's what's hard, is they become dilapidated, or they can't move, they can't function in those spaces. And then they're not being educated, or they're not functioning adults because they think they can't, because they think they I hear them all the time. Well, I can't do that because I have anxiety. And now we're trying to get them to move differently in certain spaces, and the data shows that. The data shows we're starting to have kids not graduate. We're starting to have kids drop out. We're starting to have kids struggle in schools. God, sit in classes. I hear that from teachers, like, I'm not a mental health professional. I don't know how to navigate classes. And what do I do with these kids in my class who have all of these mental health or these mental illnesses? And I say, Well, you don't have kids that have all of these mental illnesses. We just have to teach better mental health practices in class so kids who have higher level or need higher levels of care can get the higher levels of care, or the kids that need Hannah's program can get Hannah's program, because we're now doing our due diligence of teaching these things, because we have a captive audience. Schools have the most kids in play all the time. Yeah, we have to do schools differently, yeah? And teach mental health like we teach physical health. Yeah? And it doesn't have to be teaching about mental illness. Doesn't have to be group therapy. It's teaching basic needs of your mind, just like we teach basic needs of the body through physical health. Yeah, I think that goes back to the importance of getting an accurate diagnosis as well. So if we have a child who thinks that they have experienced a trauma, and one of the one of the big things we talk about is not everything is a trauma. There is a specific definition for that. But if we have a child who is locking themselves into this idea of, I've experienced a trauma, and so I can't do anything because of that, when in reality, maybe we're dealing with anxiety, maybe we're dealing with depression or different diagnosis, if we have the wrong idea of what's going on. We're not going to be able to provide the best treatment plan because we're inherently misunderstanding what is happening with this child, what is happening with this adult. And so, you know, as Brooke has said, yes, it's so, so important to be teaching kids things like sleep hygiene and, you know, screen time limits and going outside and all of these things that are just naturally good for our brains. But it's also so important to be modeling using the correct language of stress versus anxiety, sadness versus depression, being scared. Scared versus being traumatized, because those words determine the different kinds of coping skills and treatment plans that we need to pursue, and if we're pursuing the wrong treatment plan, we're not going to see improvement, because we're not treating what's actually wrong. We're treating your elbow rather than your knee. Yeah,

Hillary: 20:16

yeah, yeah. And I think too how much that much must shift a person's internal narrative too, using the correct terms, like, if you know they're walking around thinking they've experienced a trauma, when really, when they reflect and talk with somebody about it, like, oh, it's really just fear and anxiety. And so how do I navigate that, as opposed to trauma? And I think you mentioned Hannah earlier, a diagnosis is a tool to use to determine to better understand your feelings and behaviors, which is something I've not thought about before. But a very cool idea of your diagnosis is maybe not a label. It's a tool, which I really, really appreciate.

Unknown: 20:56

Yeah, as Brooke said, it's a part of me. So I am a person who carries a mental health diagnosis, and it is a part of me. It is part of how I interact and understand the world, but it is not who I am, and so when I when I view it as a tool, which, granted, I don't do all the time. I'm a human right because I'm a therapist doesn't mean I have the best mindset all the time, yeah, but when I use my diagnosis as a tool, rather than limiting where I could go and boxing me in and saying I can't do this because of my diagnosis, it allows me to change that wording and say I need to do things a little bit differently. I need to cope with the world a little bit differently. I need to implement different mental health practices at home and at work to make sure that I'm functioning. Well, I don't necessarily need to implement more or less than somebody else who doesn't have this diagnosis. I just need to do things differently. And that is the wording that I use with so many of my kids who are very quick to say, well, something's wrong with me. What's wrong with me? MS, Hannah, what's wrong with me? And the question is, okay, it's not what's wrong with you, it's what's happening in you, and what do we need to do differently to help you cope, not to help you get better, not to help fix you, because there's nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You have had things happen to you that have changed the way that your brain and your body react to the world, and now we're just working together to figure out, what do we need to do differently to help you function well and achieve the goals and dreams that you want to achieve, because they're still attainable for you, we just might need to take a different route, and that's okay. I love that. Yeah. And I think the more we speak in those terms, the less the stigma becomes of I can't do things because of this. I can't do things because I'm diagnosed with anxiety, or I can't do things because the world would shut down. And I tell kids that there's more of us that have a diagnosis, you know, we wouldn't be functioning, right? So it's, how do we navigate spaces that have triggers for us? Or how do we maneuver in these spaces? Because you can navigate the spaces and in, and we can work through these so I think that's very important. And we have to start looking at people as a whole. You know? We have to start having these discussions, as, when we start to educate our whole child, or we start to treat the whole child, looking at everything the mind, body and soul, and what does that that look like, and even working with people in their spirituality, like, how does that come into play for people? You know, at school, we have a huge separation between church and state, and I really buy into that, but I also talk to people about that, and really, because I have some kids that are very spiritual, and how do we ground you and what's important to you and what's going to work for you? Yeah, and making sure that's a part of their treatment plan if they want that to be a part of their treatment plan. With my kids, and where does that spirituality come into play for them? And what do they believe, if that's going to be something that gets them over the hump? Because I think that's an important part of them, and that's how I grew up. And so we don't take that framework necessarily away from them, because I believe I worked at Pine Rest as a clinician for years, and I had kids coming in, and it grounded them. It grounded them, for them to say, it's important for me to live in prayer. It's important for me and my family to look at Christianity in this way, and it's important for me to have an understanding. As a therapist and with my private practice, people come in saying they want a Christian counselor. They want somebody who understands Christianity in this place. And some people come in and they don't, but being able to work where people are from, and being able to give them a sense that wherever they come from, there is whether it's a higher power, whether it's living through prayer, they can have those things where they. Sit down and they can be able to use that, to be able to focus their treatment on that. And I think that's what counseling is really about, taking the gifts and the talents that you have and building your treatment upon those things, and building a bonding, building a part of that. Yeah, we're not as therapists. Some people are so scared to enter into this space. We're not changing you. We're really working with what you have to build on that, to build that treatment plan based on the needs that you have. I'm not building it based on the needs that I have. Hannah's not building it based on your her needs. Yeah, we have our own treatment plans. I have my own treatment plan myself,

Hillary: 25:38

right? And what works for you won't work for Hannah won't work for me? No, I don't know,

Unknown: 25:43

in dealing with that. So it is really individualized, and that's why it's so dangerous when kids are getting these things from their friends or they're labeling themselves, yeah, because it's not cookie cutter, you know, it's not something that you can just go and get a label or diagnosis from anybody, because it really is individualized. It really is your own treatment plan based on your own needs, even when you're in a program, like even when you're in Wedgwood, or even when you're in a program, like bigger setting, where you're part of a group, it's still individualized. It's still an individualized program, even in a school setting, it's not based on the group. Some of the tenants of the program are based on, you know what? I mean, the tenants of which will but it's not based on that. You're still getting an individualized treatment plan. Yeah, I think people need to understand that, so you can't just go get it on this mainstream what my friend is telling me, yeah, what social media is telling me, or I'm just diagnosing myself. So it really does take, there really is some foundational skills that we get as clinicians to really work with you through this and ask the right questions. Plus, it takes a lot of schooling that we did a lot for to get this to get to my face, exactly, which I tell my dad, what does that masters pay for? I tell my dad, a lot of hard work and study to get to this point where we really believe in this, to really ask the right questions, to get people to have these analogies so

Hillary: 27:13

and to, like, think you have all of that back knowledge to know. Okay, if this works this way, then for this person, it might show this. I mean, so you know how it all can work together and play together with all of the knowledge that you have. So it's really important to go to somebody who's got,

Unknown: 27:30

yes, I'm not, I promise you, I'm not trying to be a knee doctor. I'm not doing surgery. You know, we Brooke and I, obviously, Brooke has significantly more experience in the field than I do, but neither of us would say, I think, would say that we know everything about everybody and every mental illness. There are always things that we're learning as social workers. That's one of our core values, is lifelong learning. And that said, you know, Brooks, Brooks saying, I'm not out here to be a knee doctor, right? You wouldn't go to a knee doctor for a heart surgery. You wouldn't go to your dentist for, you know, to get your eyes checked, and so don't go to social media to get your mental health diagnosis. Like come to a counselor, come to someone who's trained and and trust that we are not just telling you, you know something out of a book. We we want to get to know you. We want to find the right words that describe what's going on for you. But we need you to trust us that we're we want to understand you, and we're not just giving you a diagnosis to give you one. We want to make sure that we're giving you the right

Hillary: 28:40

one. Yeah, yeah. What can schools, workplaces, mental health providers, health care workers, churches and the community at large do to focus on the whole person and rather than just a person's diagnosis or label?

Unknown: 28:59

Oh, I know it's a big question, it is. I I think that we have to start having robust conversations around mental health. Yes, I think we have to move away from jumping right to mental illness. And once you start to talk about diagnosis, and once you start to talk about labels you're getting, you're getting into mental illness. I think everybody has to have a robust mental health plan. And what does that look like if you're in an organization these days, if you are working at, let's say, Steelcase, if you're working at Walmart, if you're working at Meijer, if you are even at Wedgwood, if you are in a district, a school district, what does your mental health plan look like for your staff and your students? And that's a proactive approach to making sure people are well, and it's really proactive. It's not a reactive approach. I do think in the United States, and I'm going to say it, we are very reactive to our systems. Oh, yeah. We have things in place that react to when we wait until people are not well, to try to put things in place, yeah, saying, What can we do to be proactive? Even a lot of our funding came at a reactive approach. A lot of things we had to even during covid Or a lot of things that happened we were giving money when people were not well, you had to be seeing a counselor. You had to use the money for specific things in schools, but it was certain ways that you qualified. You had to have nurses or practitioners that meet this qualification, and had to have a certain degree, and they had to so money was being accessed by having certain criteria, but that was based on who needed the money versus let's develop these plans for people to stay well. Let's develop plans for our staff in these organizations to just be well. And how do we make sure that the people around us have good mental health practices in place, whether it's like Hannah said that we are getting a good night's sleep, whether we are drinking water every day, whether we are buying into people being able to work out. I grew up in Detroit. They have rec centers. My dad is so excited because I'm a daddy's girl. Obviously, the rec centers are back open. He can do he can access for pretty minimally, going to do water aerobics. He can go do swimming every day. Or they have fitness classes for his age group, 79 where he can get access to working out pretty cheaply. Our families can't access the why, because the cost of the why. They can't access certain things that will give them good mental health practices, because it's hard to financially afford it. So what do we have at organizations that people can access that is at cost so they can't have good mental health practices? That's what I think organizations and churches need to do, is, how do we get people to have these robust plans? And having discussions about, what does it take to get people healthy. And how are we going to integrate good cooking classes? How are we going to integrate Wednesday night meals at our salad bars? Or, how are we going to integrate salads can be unhealthy too. I'm just gonna make I can make a pretty unhealthy salad. So that might not be the answer, but how are we going to get nutritionists and people who that's their lane in organizations to help people stay healthy. How are we going to have the discussions and get the right people in to do it, versus waiting till we feel ill to talk about mental health? Because that's what it needs to be. It needs to be robust mental health plans that encompass the whole body and the whole child and the whole mind, versus waiting until we're out of that lane to start to do some of that. Yeah,

Hillary: 32:42

yeah. We don't have to wait for things to get bad to make things better, but

Unknown: 32:45

organizations need to start having that discussion and putting putting money towards that, versus waiting to put money towards the reactive approach. So that's what we need to do. We need to look at the mental health plans, and that does include your physical health, your mental health, your nutrition, your diet, all of that, and we will start to feel better, and people will be more productive at work. It will increase your workflow so much more if we can start to wrap our minds around having somebody just in charge of that part of the organization. Yeah, yeah. I think that's, you know, again, this idea of treating the whole child, the whole person, not just your mental health symptoms, not just your physical health symptoms, I think something that all of the clients that I'm working with, whether children or adults, for many of them, it's maybe the first time that they've realized that mental health does take a physical toll on our body. So when you have a complaint of chronic stomach aches, chronic headaches, chronic fatigue, it's not always just a physical route, like it can be when we're living with depression, anxiety, trauma, it can show up in our bodies. And so as Brooke said, you know, having a proactive mental health plan, it's it's a it encompasses the whole person. It's sleeping, it's eating, it's how are you connecting with other people? What does your social life look like? Are you finding meaning and value in your work? How are you feeling supported in your employment, in your vocation, in your community, right? And so specifically from a church mindset I loved when Brooke talked about the connection of spirituality in the mental health room, and that's something that in my schooling recently, there's actually starting to be this uptick in my instructors, you know, talking to us about this is so important, because our spirituality is a part of who we are, and so When we're doing our biopsychosocial assessments, add in that spirituality piece, you know, bring it in when we're talking in churches. Are you connected with a spiritual mentor? Are you getting mental health counseling and these, I think growing up, those two roles were in opposition of each other. You couldn't have a. Spiritual guidance and mental health guidance at the same time, and now I'm trying to work with clients and say, Can we cooperate? Because these are both really important parts of you that are connected. They don't occur in a vacuum from each other. So can churches be more open to cooperating with mental health plans with mental illness as well. Rather than saying this is exclusively a spiritual source, or this is exclusively a mental source, can we recognize that they go hand in hand? We have youth groups all the time, like through our churches, we have the churches provide youth groups for our students. It is the way for them to feel safe. So it's a part of our any of our threat assessments, any of our crisis plan. Do you feel connected to a church? Because what we're finding is if kids feel like they have a place where they belong and a place that they're safe, then they feel more connected to school. And where they feel safest is some of those youth groups through spiritual spiritual institutions. So we have integrated it a lot more, and kids will answer that. They like going to the wins, Wednesday night youth groups. They like feeling a part of a place that provides safety for them. So we have been answering the questions more and more, and that's where churches begin to show up when you're trying to do the whole child and not leaving them separate from that. And they do feed them. They do they do provide all of the things that we are encompassing in this, in this, but you can't have a society that does not work with all the aspects. When you're starting to talk about mental health, we can't do this alone. When we're starting to say we need to educate the whole child, you can't leave certain groups out. You can't say, I'm going to do it and I'm a school, but I'm going to leave businesses out. I'm going to leave churches out. It has to be everybody trying to get dig into this together to say, this is what we're going to do. And that's why I really liked when I the first time I went to the group about the whole child, the last year, I met Brooke, the other Brooke at the event. And I loved it because state of the child, state of the child, because it was really pulling together so many different people, and it was my first experience at the state of the child is because it was so many different people talking about so many different things, really focused on what kids need, yeah, and experiencing that from so many different aspects of Kids in a different frame of mind and being proactive to talk about issues that we've never been able to sit around the table and talk about with a variety of different people. And until we begin to have some of those conversations with so many different people, like minded people in different avenues, then it just becomes tough, and that's what we need, more of more people willing to have the conversations like this, to move away from just this assembly line of just diagnosing, diagnosing, diagnosing that this has turned into, it just becomes very difficult. So this has been nice, yeah.

Hillary: 37:53

What would you say is your number one tip for our listeners to be a part of creating communities that are not creating communities for people that are not limiting, limited by their mental health diagnosis or their mental health challenges.

Unknown: 38:08

Person first language. So, you know, we've, we've said a couple times throughout this podcast, you know, kids saying, Well, I have anxiety. I am an anxious person, and so I can't do x, y, z, so we just, we need to change the way that we talk about having a mental health diagnosis. So rather than a person who has anxiety, a person who often struggles with anxiety, but is also capable of feeling peace, you know, a person who might struggle significantly with very severe depression, and is also capable of, at times, experiencing joy a person who struggles with anxious attachment, but is also capable of having safe and secure relationships. When we center the person right, it comes back to this idea of labeling and limiting. We have to center the whole person you are. Your diagnosis is a tool. It is a part of you, but it is not your entire identity. It doesn't color you, it doesn't push you into a category. It just says, this is this is part of you. This is something you live with every day. This changes the way that you interact with the world. But you are also more than major depression, more than generalized anxiety, PTSD, whatever this is. Yeah, it's it. We have to start with person first language.

Hillary: 39:33

I love that,

Unknown: 39:33

um. I think for me, it's advocacy. Don't be afraid to have the conversation with friends and family and advocate, advocate for better mental health, and conversations like I had a niece. We have one niece in my family, and for years we just never we talk about everything that we're very we're very open family. And I just noticed for years we never talked about mental health. And I. I said, we'll talk about everything, and it just never came across the dinner table. We talk about politics, we talk about everything. We are a very talkative family, and I just said, How does this not come across the table, knowing that a lot of us are teachers in mental health, yeah, grew up in Detroit. So I just say, have have the conversation with your kids and advocate. Don't be afraid to advocate with your politicians, with your neighborhood, with your families, and be willing to talk to your kids at home about mental health, and just ask them, What do you see on social media? Just your own families, because they will be able to tell you, that's how I knew what was going on, because I don't have all these social medias. Is my niece just, I mean, she's graduated from college now she's telling me what she's seeing and who's telling her, and I found out where they're getting these diagnoses from who they're hearing from their friends, and they are getting the information from not us, and they're getting it from other people, and it is ingrained in them now it is, you know, so we're missing opportunities with these kids in high school and even grade school now of where they're getting their information, and we have to do better. So don't be afraid to have the conversation and start to advocate in systems that you're a part of, to talk about mental health before it gets to the point where we've lost this whole generation and they move right to mental illness,

Hillary: 41:24

yeah, proactive conversations that are thoughtful, yes,

Unknown: 41:28

yeah. And I think on that note, also normalizing talking about emotions with our kids and with our you know, as an adult child, talking about emotions with my parents and my siblings as well, and and getting used to saying, Okay, are you experiencing anxiety or are you stressed? And and just normalizing that difference, we don't have to jump to, like Brooke said, we don't have to jump to mental illness, but just because we don't have a diagnosis doesn't mean that we're not allowed to feel a little bit anxious, a little bit sad, a little bit stressed. And so just normalizing that conversation with our kids of, hey, what's on your mind, what's bugging you, you seem a little bit stressed out lately. How can I help? And modeling like Brooke said, we're modeling those mental health practices, whether it's taking better breaks, helping organize homework, but, you know, advocating and normalizing that you don't have to have a mental health diagnosis to talk about what you're feeling and what you're experiencing,

Hillary: 42:32

and talking about it more gives kids, and I would imagine adults too, better vocabulary to better identify and Name the different feelings that they're having or emotions. So it's not all just happy, sad, no, mad. There's, there's a whole big spectrum. Though, you can

Unknown: 42:48

have a tummy ache, and it does not have to be because you ate something bad, right? To tell that to parents all the time. When my stomach hurts, it does not have to be because I had something bad to eat. It can be a physical it can be a reaction to some stress. You know, it's just, we have to just listen to kids, help them name some things. But they can work through it. Yeah, they can work through this, this idea that they're having when they say, I don't know, that can be a true statement. We have to help them realize that that might be some stress they're feeling because of a test, or that might be some stress they're feeling because they don't want to see Johnny, who might be picking on them at school, and we can help them push through some of those emotions or those feelings that they're having, to help push through what's next

Hillary: 43:34

for them. Absolutely, this was such a great conversation. You guys. Thank you so much for taking this coffee break with me today and sharing your expertise and

Unknown: 43:42

insight with us absolutely anytime.

Hillary: 43:46

If this conversation got you thinking about mental health, support for yourself or for a loved one, head to our website. Wedgwood's counseling services are open to kids, adults and families, and are designed to fit your individual, unique needs and goals without long waits to get an appointment on the calendar. Learn more at our website, wedgwood.org, stay hopeful, stay helpful, and let's have another coffee break soon. You.