Lisa Lacy: What Did You Have to Perform to Survive?

In the understanding the current mental health sort of ecosystem, I love what you shared.

And I'll bring in a little bit of my experience here that it's difficult for our listeners to follow, probably who are just listening.

So I have a metaphor here that I look at life as something sort of concentric circles, meaning, let's say, someone who is suffering from a mental health condition.

They are in the innermost circle.

Then there are people who are caring for them, their loved ones.

They are the next circle.

Then there are people around them in the society.

Then there are wider group and wider communities.

What makes it harder to understand is when we are in one circle, we do not know what the people in the next circle are feeling, what they are going through.

They cannot always articulate what they are going through.

And which is why we need to talk about mental health a lot.

I like that word a lot, yes.

When you talk about it, then you see that, okay, my story is not so different from the next person.

Yeah,

there's a lot of people that are alone.

And I was very high functioning.

I was running a corporate consulting business that was highly successful at the same time.

So on the surface, I looked very polished and put together.

And behind the scenes, I was slowly unraveling.

And being swallowed whole by addiction and mental health crisis.

So, yes, you're absolutely right.

And it's hard, too, for the caregivers, for the people who love the people that are struggling.

Sometimes they feel very helpless sometimes.

There's not a lot of support.

If you've already been to rehabilitation for addiction recovery and you're sober and you're not having suicidal ideation, it's very hard to find a place to put you.