"Productive Lives" Awards

NARSAD Announces Discovery to Recovery National Awards Dinner and Honors Three Extraordinary Individuals with Second Annual ‘Productive Lives’ Awards

"(GREAT NECK, N.Y. – October 12, 2010) NARSAD is proud to announce Kay Redfield Jamison, Elyn Saks and Andrew Solomon as recipients of the NARSAD 2010 Productive Lives Awards. 

They are being recognized for their lifelong struggle and tremendous success in overcoming the staggering odds those living with mental illness face to become highly accomplished and fully contributing individuals – both in their respective professional fields and in their private circles."

I don't know if I can explain how frustrated this news leaves me. I have read their books, heard their interviews, and seen them on television.  They make me incredibly distressed.

Their successes damn my failures.

 "All three demonstrate that recovery is possible." 

I know their 'recovery is possible' mantra is supposed to make me feel hopeful, maybe even inspired.

But it makes me ANGRY.  

Because these sorts of awards, setting up these very unusual people as the standard-bearers for mental illness, mean that 

all of my bosses, teachers, legal professionals, basically everyone I deal with who has some power over my well-being, 

EXPECT THAT I SHOULD BE AS TOGETHER AND 'RECOVERED' as Kay Redfield Jamison, or Elyn Saks, or Andrew Solomon.

"They are best-selling authors, disclosing their personal stories about living with mental illness. They have also played important roles in furthering research and encouraging public discourse on these often invisible illnesses."

There is NO WAY they could be suffering the sorts of symptoms I deal with on a regular basis and write books, let alone publish them, let alone keep commitments to students, to television stations, to show up and certain times and places.


Unless you are already famous, independently wealthy, hopeless, or have a uniquely valuable skill, it is not safe to disclose one's personal story publicly.

There is nothing invisible about my illness.  Just ask all my last employers, who either fired me or declined to renew my contract after I

a. failed to show up for work 

b. went into the hospital, or

c. failed to show up for a performance and failed to notify anyone

You could say I was invisible by my absences, but my illness was definitely noticeable.

"NARSAD honored J. Randolph Lewis, senior vice president of Walgreen Co., with the inaugural 2009 Productive Lives Award for his commitment to providing an inclusive workplace that integrates people of all abilities, including those with mental illness."

I hope this guy is for real. 

 The world, and those of us with mental illnesses, need more employers who can work to our strengths. 

 I have met so many people with diagnosed mental disorders who have a lot to offer the world, who want to have 'Productive Lives,' 

but who are denied the right to participate in almost any workplace.

“We are extremely proud to present our second annual Productive Lives Awards and to recognize these highly accomplished and courageous individuals who serve as role models for the countless individuals struggling to live with mental illness,” said Benita Shobe, NARSAD president and CEO.


 “They serve as inspiration not only to us at NARSAD and our donor community, but for the millions of others who suffer silently from these debilitating illnesses. Although there is much more work to be done in our quest to discover causes, develop improved treatments, and eventually prevent and cure mental illness, their stories highlight that there is hope.”

I'm sorry Benita, but these individuals drive me more to despair. I think they are comforting to mainstream America, letting employers and others continue in their expectation that everyone with a mental illness should be able to 'be productive' and act normal if they

a. get on medication, and 

b. try hard enough.

I have been on medication for almost 25 years and I can't keep any type of job that requires me to be in certain places at certain times.

I try hard every day.

I have a very good psychiatrist and have had years of therapy.

Sometimes it just doesn't work out so neatly.

'“This celebration is unique in the annals of psychiatric science as it demonstrates both the potential of breakthrough scientific research in brain and behavior, and of science in 
giving lives back to creative, productive people,” 
said Dr. Herbert Pardes, president of the NARSAD Scientific Council, president and CEO of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health.'

I would love for scientific research and science to give me back all the years of lost opportunity, productivity and basic happiness I have lost.

But for right now we're not there yet.  

And I think those of us who AREN'T
 the lucky blessed 
Productive Ones
 would be better 


served by honoring 


more individuals who 

speak out about the 


reality of living with mental illness, 
or who work actively to 


create flexible, inclusive workplaces.

Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., is the Dalio Family Professor in Mood Disorders and professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center. A distinguished scholar in her field, she was co-author with NARSAD Scientific Council member Frederick K. Goodwin of the standard medical text on bipolar disorder, or manic depressive illness, which was chosen as the most outstanding book in biomedical sciences by the American Association of Publishers in 1990.

The broader public knows Dr. Jamison through her writings and public appearances as an impassioned advocate for those, like herself, who struggle to live with mental illness. Her best-known book, An Unquiet Mind, chronicles her own devastating, near-fatal experiences with manic depression. Published in 1995, it was on The New York Times best-seller list for more than five months.

Previous NARSAD honors include the 2000 Falcone Award and the Silver Ribbon Award, presented at a NARSAD Los Angeles event in 2007.

Elyn Saks is a distinguished legal scholar, Ph.D. in psychoanalytic science, best-selling author and recipient of a 2009 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. In her book, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, she relates her 30-year struggle with schizophrenia. Wrenching in its honesty and beauty, it was one of Time Magazine’s top 10 nonfiction books of the year and was on The New York Timesextended best seller list following its release in 2007.

Dr. Saks is the Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Law School, and adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. She is also on the faculty of the New Center for Psychoanalysis, where she earned her Ph.D. She has written extensively on mental illness and the law in both scholarly and popular articles, and in three books.

Andrew Solomon is an award-winning novelist, journalist, critic and essayist, who has written on subjects ranging from art and travel, to psychology and Proust. Most recently and famously, he wrote The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, an exhaustively researched survey of the history and science of depression and an intensely personal recounting of his own and others’ painful encounters with depression. An instant best seller, American Library Association Notable Book of 2001 and New York Times Notable Book, The Noonday Demon won the 2001 National Book Award, the Humanitarian Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, and many other prizes, and has been translated into 24 languages.

Mr. Solomon was educated at Yale University, graduating magna cum laude in 1985, and at Jesus College Cambridge, where he received the top first-class degree in English, the only foreign student ever to be so honored, as well as the University writing prize. Splitting his time between New York and London, Mr. Solomon is working toward a Ph.D. at Cambridge on the relation between biological and psychosocial models of early attachment between mothers and infants. He is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill-Cornell Medical College, and has endowed the Solomon Summer Research Fellowships at Yale University in Gay and Lesbian Studies.

Another blogger's take on the awards:

http://reflectionondepression.typepad.com/my-blog/2010/10/2010-narsad-productive-lives-award-winners.html

What do YOU think?