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DALLAS TWP. —Portraying a mother whose family was affected by suicide, actor Karen Padden from Laurel Run stood on the Misericordia University stage and talked about finding her son dead, and later finding a jar the whole family had filled the previous Thanksgiving with their wishes for the coming year.
Her son had written on a small piece of paper, “Next year I just hope to be alive.”
“Oh, that hit me so hard,” she said. “I now share my story with anyone who will listen.”
Sharing stories is what The Voices Project: Mental Health is all about, and audiences are welcome to attend a theatrical presentation Thursday through Sunday at Misericordia to hear what it’s like to be a person affected by anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders, alcoholism, substance abuse, the autism spectrum and other conditions.
Presented in a series of vignettes by 21 actors, the script is based on the real experiences of 60 people who were interviewed by 55 Misericordia students, under the direction of professor of psychology Alicia Nordstrom and associate professor of English Amanda Caleb.
Some of the stories will be hard to hear, Nordstrom said before a recent rehearsal, acknowledging that a portion of the segment on post traumatic stress “feels like it punches you in the gut.”
Padden’s portrayal of the mother who lost a son to suicide is also painful to hear.
“You wonder how people can go on,” Padden said.
But there also are lighter moments, such as actor Eric Lutz’s presentation of a memory from a person whose Tourette’s Syndrome causes involuntary facial tics. As a child, that person went to a sleepover at another child’s house and told that boy he had tics. When the boy’s mother heard that, she made her son “check himself for ticks, you know, the insect.”
In recent years Nordstrom started the Voices project with interviews that focused on different races, religions, sexual orientation and physical abilities.
This time around, the project focuses on people with mental health issues.
“What are the stereotypes about people with mental health issues?” she asked her students before they conducted the interviews. There are ideas, she noted, that “they can’t hold a job, can’t handle a relationship.”
“One thing I really hope people get out of this is that people with mental health conditions are just like you and me,” she said. “They’re our friends, our co-workers, our students. They’re us.”
Contradicting another stereotype, she said, “Only 7.5 percent of crimes are committed by people with mental health issues. People with mental health conditions are more likely to be victims.”
Sometimes, she said, people who recognize that they have mental health issues develop stronger coping mechanisms than many people who don’t have such conditions because they’re handling the added stress of maintaining a facade.
Nordstrom would like society to become more accepting, so people with mental health conditions don’t feel the need to hide them.
“If you have cancer, if you break a leg, if your roof caves in or your dog dies, people can talk about that,” she said. So why not feel free to talk about your mental health, without fear of repercussions?
Early in the project, Nordstrom said, she thought it might be difficult to find people for the students to interview. But as word spread, it wasn’t. “People wanted to tell their stories,” she said. “I have a waiting list.”
