Why This Credit Union Is Advocating for Mental Health

Toward the end of last year, Sharonview’s leadership and I focused on building a strategic plan for 2024 and beyond. The discussion naturally turned to our community pillars: Ending Homelessness, Alleviating Hunger and Promoting Financial Literacy. These are causes that we, as an organization, seek to support and uplift. As we reflected, it seemed that promoting financial literacy was helpful, but redundant – it’s what we do, day in and day out as we strive to help our members achieve their financial goals. This allowed me to introduce something that is near and dear to my heart: Mental Health Advocacy and Awareness.

This new pillar is in alignment with the other two as there can be overlap of individuals and families impacted by mental health concerns while facing food and shelter insecurity. All three of these community-focused pillars are supported by our organization’s desire to improve financial literacy in the communities we serve.

The team responded enthusiastically. Here is why this pillar is important to me.

My Son, My Hero

I am a proud dad, but my son amazes me. At 17, he replaced the entire brake system on his car just by watching a YouTube video.

My wife and I are exceptionally proud of all he’s accomplished. At 25, he has a home, food on the table, his own transportation. He saved up and bought a pick-up truck he’d wanted for a long time.

He defied the odds and graduated from high school. He wants to continue his education – not at a four-year college, but at a trade school.

Having an education has given him considerable stability. This may sound like I didn’t expect this outcome. To be honest, there was a point where I was concerned. My son has profound learning and mental health challenges. He is highly dyslexic, has short-term memory disorder, is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and struggles processing and finding the “right” word. Any one of these can make doing daily tasks difficult.

Early on, his mom and I saw that reading was a struggle, but he could pick up a new skill quickly by watching a video. He was able to learn when he didn’t have to rely on reading to learn. He learns by doing.

I didn’t even know he’d replaced his brake system until he announced he’d finished. I surreptitiously took his car to a mechanic the next day and asked him to check behind my son. He assured me my son had done a great job.

He has commonsense in spades; he’s also highly intelligent, athletic and mechanical. Intellectually, there is nothing wrong with my son; he learns differently.

Early Intervention Is Key

Our son began exhibiting behaviors that concerned us when he was very young. By the time he was eight, we’d begun to grasp the scope of his challenges and consulted doctors.

Without early intervention, I’m not sure he’d have a job or live on his own today. Many parents of children with mental illness care for them for a lifetime.

“At least 8.4 million people in the U.S. provide care to an adult with a mental or emotional health issue,” according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). “Caregivers of adults with mental or emotional health issues spend an average of 32 hours per week providing unpaid care.”

Getting a diagnosis and treatment took years of trial and error. Once you have a diagnosis and treatment regimen, it’s not static. When a child reaches adolescence, hormonal changes impact the efficacy of their medications. Figuring out medications and dosages is an ongoing puzzle.

Education is a puzzle, too. There are private schools that specialize in one, maybe two, mental health disorders, but not the combination of disorders he has. There is no program, that we’re aware of, for bipolar students with dyslexia.

When he was in high school, we hired an attorney to push the school to adopt teaching methods tailored to dyslexic students – and not just for his benefit. The first year the school offered the program, our son was one of 13 students enrolled. The program is still going and about 30 students each year are part of it.

Mental Health Advocacy in the Workplace

My son’s dyslexia led me to reevaluate the way we teach financial literacy – a program we offer throughout the year.

When we go into a school or community center to teach budgeting basics, we don’t want even one person to feel lost. To make these lessons inclusive for people with learning differences, we include gamification as a teaching tool. It’s activity-based and a lot of fun. It’s been especially useful for kids and adults with dyslexia, ADHD and other reading comprehension challenges. We’ve helped to level the playing field.

We’ve also opened a dialogue about mental health internally that we plan to eventually take out in the community. It’s both simple and revolutionary to talk about mental health at work. Having open conversations about it will eventually help minimize the stigma of shame and fear.

Our benefits team promotes Mental Health Awareness month with helpful tips, reminders about our Employee Assistance Program and links to other resources. Our goal is to normalize the discussion of mental health. Sharonview employees can talk with their leader about mental health, and they have the grace to do what’s needed to take care of themselves and their families. That grace was extended to me repeatedly over the years.

When my son was younger, I’d often leave work early for his doctors’ and counselors’ appointments. I was open about it because there’s no shame in it and I didn’t want my teammates to worry about why I was at the doctor every other week.

When our son reached middle school, my wife left her career to become a full-time caregiver. My job allowed her to become a stay-at-home mom and allowed us to afford treatment. We’re lucky. Not every family has that luxury.

Health care is expensive, and mental health care, especially so. Insurance didn’t cover most of it, so we paid out of pocket for medications, and weekly counseling sessions and psychiatrist visits. Again, we felt lucky to have the resources to get help.

A Family Disease

Mental illness impacts entire families. We sought help from a psychologist to learn how best to parent our special-needs child.

We even coached our extended family about our son’s illnesses. It took them years to fully understand the challenges we face. There were many times my wife and I felt lonely and isolated.

We found support through doctors and counselors who put us in touch with parents facing similar challenges. Talking with someone who’s walking your same journey is invaluable.

I don’t want to give the impression that our family life is a constant struggle. It’s different. And because of the help we have reached out for over the years, and the support we have received and transparency we have expressed with family and friends, we are able to have a full life with joy and laughter that balances some of the tougher times. Our son brings us great joy, and we cherish the time we spend together.

Erasing the Stigma

If you live with a mental illness or have a family member who does, know this: You are not alone.

According to NAMI, 57.8 million U.S. adults – or one in five – experienced mental illness in 2021. But not every family is open about it. Bringing it into the daylight is the first step in normalizing it.

I’m hopeful. Help is more accessible today than when we started this journey. Now, we just need to tell the stories and provide information about where help may be available in our communities.

Herb White is president/CEO for the $1.6 billion, Indian Land, S.C.-based Sharonview Federal Credit Union.