Mental Health Month is a time to join together and raise awareness and acceptance for mental illness by sharing stories, informing and educating, and learning new strategies that can help on your journey to mental wellness. All month long, MHAOhio will be promoting Mental Health Month and we hope you will join us!
Allison Mitsui is a product manager at Northwoods and the vice president of the MHAOhio Board of Trustees. She is a leader in our community and has had a lifelong passion for mental health advocacy, which is why she has decided to share her story about her own journey with mental illness in the hopes that others will do the same.
Q. When did your journey with mental illness start?
A. I started seeing a counselor when I was about 15 years old for depression. I was struggling with self-harm, which I have since learned is very common for adolescents, but at the time I didn’t know that. It didn’t feel normal, and it certainly didn’t feel healthy. Then, in college, I had my first panic attack about an hour before one of my math finals. This is when I started learning about anxiety and panic disorder. Then the summer after my junior year of college, I lost a friend to suicide. Since then I have lost several people that I was close with, but he was the first person that I was close with that completed suicide and it was formative.
Q. What was the experience of losing your friend like?
A. I still remember getting that phone call. It’s clear as day, I can picture that moment. I can tell you exactly where I was, and I can tell you exactly how it felt. It was over a decade ago now and still to this day it’s hard to talk about. It left an irreparable mark on my world.
Whenever something like that happens you always wish that you could have done something, but you can’t go back in time. You can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube. But you can help other people. So, I think that really kick started this work for me; I wanted to do something about this. I went on to work at Nationwide and then started at Northwoods. I also started to do Out of the Darkness Walks with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and now I’m on the board for MHAOhio.
Q. What has your experience with mental illness been like since starting your career?
A. I’ve been working on my mental health for most of my life, and I still struggle with it. I live with generalized anxiety, and that can lead to things like imposter syndrome. Even filling out my application for the MHAOhio board, I had the form filled out and the email drafted, and I just couldn’t hit that send button. I thought, ‘what could I possibly have to offer?’ But, in hindsight, I think that experience and those struggles give me a unique perspective.
Q. What is your advice to someone who also wants to help?
A. You don’t have to fix everything to make a difference. I can’t solve the mental health crisis, but I can provide support to the people in my life, and I can share my story to help others feel more comfortable sharing theirs. And through my work with MHAOhio I can help to provide support and resources to an even larger group of people.
I think there’s this kind of underlying belief that if we talk about suicide that it makes the person more likely to attempt suicide, especially if you talk about it with someone who you think might be struggling. But we know statistically that actually the inverse of that is true. If somebody is having a hard time, and if they’re having intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideations, being able to talk about it actually makes them less likely to attempt suicide. So, my advice would be to just be there. It’s okay to just say, ‘I can see that you’re going through something difficult. I don’t know how to fix it, but I’m here for you and we will get through this together.’
MHAOhio thanks Allison for sharing her story, which is an incredibly courageous thing to do. The reality is that one in five people will experience mental illness in their life – and many more will know someone who does – but only 16 percent seek support. This Mental Health Month, we encourage you to fight in the open by sharing your story on social media and helping others in their fight for a healthier, happier life.
