Former NAMI Head Describes Mental Illness From Patient’s Perspective

“Building trust, being willing to meet someone where they are, and taking the time to find out what matters to them—not what’s the matter with them.”

That’s what Keris Jän Myrick, M.B.A., Ph.D., said was important for clinicians to remember during a special “Conversations” event sponsored by the American Psychiatric Foundation at the APA Institute on Psychiatric Services in San Francisco last month. Myrick spent an hour with APA President Paul Summergrad, M.D., in a warm and engaging discussion about her own experience with mental illness, her treatment with a creative and thoughtful psychiatrist, and the challenges and opportunities inherent in trying to improve access to quality care for people with serious mental illness.

Myrick is director of the Office of Consumer Affairs at the federal Center for Mental Health Services. That office supports the inclusion of peer/consumer perspectives and issues throughout the agency and supports programs such as the Voice Awards, SAMHSA Wellness Initiatives and Wellness Week, and the Recovery to Practice Project. She has long been a national leader in the mental health advocacy field and a nonprofit executive, known for her innovative approach to mental health reform and the public disclosure of her personal story of experience with serious mental illness. Actively involved in the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), she is a past president of the NAMI Board of Directors.

Her childhood was marked by moving from place to place in a military family and feeling early on that she was somehow different. “You know the way the soft, rounded pieces of a puzzle fit nicely together? I felt like this jagged piece that didn’t fit,” she said. She described the precise moment at age 24—in a grocery store while buying cereal—when she began to hear voices. In a family that encouraged high achievement, it was something she was reluctant to share. “I didn’t want to disappoint my parents or make them ashamed of me,” she recalled. “And I didn’t want them to be afraid of me.”

In fact, her parents were extraordinarily supportive, she said, and it was her own experience with mental illness and treatment that inspired her to become an advocate. During her talk with Summergrad, Myrick emphasized the need for clinicians and treatment systems to remember the person behind the disorder. Recalling her first encounter with the mental health system, she said, “I wasn’t Keris anymore; I was this gaggle of symptoms. I became a diagnosis.” Summergrad concurred with the point, saying that as “doctors of the soul,” psychiatrists must remember that the patient is a “person who is not defined by symptoms.”

The “Conversations” event has become a regular feature of APA meetings, highlighting prominent individuals who have firsthand experience with mental illness. Past speakers have included Patrick Kennedy, Maureen McCormick, George Stephanopolous, Brooke Shields, and Tipper Gore. ■

To view more photos from APA’s 2014 Institute on Psychiatric Services, click here.