Former U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy, who has fought issues with bipolar disorder and depression, led a discussion this Monday dispelling the stigma associated with mental health issues at the USC Gould School of Law. 

According to Kennedy, the main goal of the discussion was to attack the stigma that has cast mental illness in a more shameful light than other health issues.

“If I have diabetes and eat a cake and end up in the ER because my insulin goes haywire, no one writes about that,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy was joined by Elyn Saks, a professor at Gould; Michelle Wu, a third-year psychiatry resident at USC; and Evan Langinger, a third-year law student at Gould who is advocating for people with mental illness. Steven Behnke, the Director of Ethics for the American Psychological Association, moderated the event.

The issue is an ongoing one for Kennedy, who is recovering from alcohol and drug addiction and estimates that 1,400 college students and total 38,000 Americans take their life each year. Kennedy also wrote the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which ensures healthcare coverage for mental health issues is no less than that of physical ones and was enacted in October of 2008.

“[We need to start with the law] much like we needed civil rights legislation to treat people of a different color the same as all Americans…much like we needed Lilly Ledbetter for women…much like we needed the marriage law for our gay brothers and sisters to be treated equally,” Kennedy said. “This is just a civil rights fight.”

Kennedy then turned to the “social movement” he sees as necessary in order to change public perception.

“Now we’re not talking about the law so much as the culture, because our culture doesn’t allow for this non-discrimination to take place,” Kennedy said.

The discussion featured all members of the panel sharing their own experiences with mental health issues.

“The beauty of telling stories…is that other people now identify with those stories and then they might be able to tell their story and then these illnesses don’t have such a powerful hold on all of us,” Kennedy noted.

Wu, who was accepted into medical school at Northwestern University directly from high school, says she suffered from depression and that it was insufficient treatment from her main doctor that really hurt her.

“I think that there needs to be more training…because the first person you’re going to see about a health problem is your primary physician,” Wu said.

Langinger, who suffers from bipolar disorder, is now on the Aetna USC student health plan, but says he has had to wait extra time for his coverage.

 “In the meantime, people are still being discriminated against,” Kennedy said.

After the panel was done sharing, the room was opened up to the audience for questions and sharing. One woman in attendance talked about how her daughter had become homeless after a battle with depression and how more needed to be done to prevent such problems.

One in four Americans has a mental illness, noted attendant Sharon Dunas, who is the President of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

“This has to become part of the main dialogue,” Dunas said. “We have to make it known that mental illness is like any other illness.”

The issue is also one especially relevant for college students, according to Saks.

“College-age is when most usually start having breakdowns and start becoming manic-depressive or bipolar,” Saks said. “It’s a very vulnerable age.”   

The Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy and Ethics, a part of the USC Gould School of Law, will hold a two-day symposium in March for deans of students, counselors and students—among others—to come and share their stories.

 

 

You can reach Staff Reporter Ben Kraus here.