There, on June 7, 1999, at Howard University, with Mrs. Gore In the lead and President Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Vice President Gore In tow, the nation's top families confronted head on the problems of mental health. They heard testimony from researchers, clinical practitioners and the mentally III. They heard TV newsman Mike Wallace talk openly about his own depression. They heard President Clinton announce "the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan," which provides full parity in coverage of mental health and substance abuse treatment for millions of federal employees. And they heard Mrs. Gore call mental Illness "the last great stigma of the 20th century that we need to make sure ends here and now."
Equally Important as these efforts, however, Is the role model Mrs. Gore became as she fearlessly spoke about her own mental Illness. Her disclosures began In 1996, when In her book Picture This: A Visual Diary she revealed her mother's history of deep depression, which sometimes resulted In hospitalization. They became much more personal in 1999 when she admitted that when her 6-year-old son was hit by a car, she sunk Into clinical depression herself. Though her son recovered, it took months for her to do the same.
These revelations, as much as her political connections, gave power to Mrs. Gore's words when she told the gathered White House conference: "When you get to this point of being seriously depressed...you can't Just will your way out of that or pray your way out of that or pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps out of that. You really have to go and get help."
CELINDA JUNGHEIM Vice President, L.J. Melody and Company, a CB RichardEllis Company
Depression and sadness are among Celinda Jungheim's earliest childhood memories. She talks openly about them now, at age 60, a recovered woman with a good job and a loving marriage. But as a girl of even 5 or 6, she would withdraw for days into her dark, private world. She recalls periods when "I would hate myself and hate everybody. My mother remembers me walking around saying, 'I wish I were dead.'"
Today, Jungheim is free from her dark moods--her last episode was in the late 1970s--but that has not occurred without a lot of suffering. Her difficulties plagued the California native through her university education, two marriages and one child. In her 20s, she attempted suicide several times, was hospitalized repeatedly, was treated with a variety of medications and many rounds of electric shock therapy. She visited a psychiatrist as often as five times a week and still found no relief.
On the outside, Jungheim's troubles were not apparent. "I was always a person who if something was bothering me I didn't talk about it, and when I felt better, I didn't need to talk about it," she reflects. What went on inside, however, was a different story. At 27, Jungheim made her final and most serious suicide attempt, and on her 28th birthday her parents committed her to the Camarillo State Hospital in California, a day she looks back on with tremendous thanks.
What helped Jungheim survive? Though she was diagnosed with schizophrenia (a diagnosis she questions) and told that "schizophrenics almost never get well," Jungheim attributes her initial success to group self-help work. She began attending sessions of a national organization called Recovery Inc.
It was there that she learned "tools to help you handle the feelings and thoughts you are having," as well as the mind-set she needed to benefit from therapy. And it was in the hospital that Jungheim also met the man who would become her third husband.
Jungheim now lives with her husband of 23 years. She works as a vice president for a major mortgage banking firm, and she continues her involvement in the mental health field. She has been president of Recovery Inc., leads self-help groups, and serves on various committees that work with the California Department of Health and other agencies to better provide care for the mentally ill.
Her message: "People need to not worry about the stigma and go out and seek the help they need."
Adapted by Ph.D.
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