Julie is a 20-something woman with bipolar disorder.<\/a> She had stunned me, as she does with even the most jaded listeners, the first time I heard her account of the night she went to the Golden Gate Bridge and how she got to the railing fully intending to make the jump. Her depression had raged for weeks, and she just wanted out. As Julie tells it, seconds before she was going to jump, along came a bridge cop.<\/p>\n The six-word phrase that helps someone feel less alone when they’re struggling: Do you need someone to talk to?<\/p>\n Such gentle, simple words, magical and breathtaking in their power<\/p>\n Julie tells how she surprised herself when she answered “yes” and talked nonstop as the policeman walked her to the bridge office. Curiosity now fills the formerly blank faces in my audience.<\/p>\n I go on to tell them about my son Alex’s diagnosis of schizophrenia <\/a>at age 17, exactly their age, the approximate age when most schizophrenics experience their first psychotic symptoms, as supported by research.<\/a><\/p>\n I read to them from Alex’s journal describing the day he was too paranoid to stay in class. I sat down behind a dumpster, declared it my kingdom, and began drawing soldiers. I drew an angel with eyes and tits. I drew knights to fight my holy war. I began to forget that I was back there cause I was scared of the world.<\/p>\n I explain some of what had led up to Alex’s first psychotic break. The weeks of pot smoking, months of disorientation, an inability to sleep, disordered (strange) thinking, incoherent speech, and his withdrawal from everyone and everything he loved.<\/p>\n Their questions come in waves:<\/p>\n “Did your son smoking pot make him get schizophrenia?” (It helped trigger it.)<\/p>\n “How’s he doing now?” (he stayed on medication for a few years, and now he’s finished college and working in his field, and no, he doesn’t smoke pot anymore, by choice.) I tell them about PREP (Prevention and Recovery from Early Psychosis<\/a>), the new clinic at UCSF for treating early psychosis in young people to prevent schizophrenia from developing into a full-blown disease. A study in the Early Intervention in Psychiatry Journal describes<\/a> the development of the clinic.<\/p>\n “My friend told me once he wanted to die, what should I have said?” (Listen first, let him know you care, and then try to get help from a school counselor or another adult)<\/p>\n Sweet. That’s the word that comes to mind when I think about those teenagers who were probably my most gratifying audience in the 30-odd presentations I’ve given this past year. That is, once the veil of the unfamiliar had come down, once mental illness was put in terms they could relate to by telling stories of people like them. Then, they were ready to learn and help in whatever way they could.<\/p>\n![\"friends](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/friends-talking-cafe-offering-support.png\" "\\"The")
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