Navigating Mental Illness: Parents Stories

Kristina Cook shares how lifelong anxiety and postpartum depression, combined with her daughter Genevieve's escalating, unpredictable mood instability, rage, suicidality, and mania, pushed their family into crisis despite years of therapy, medications, and an 11-year-old's 16-week hospital in-treatment stay with a discharge plan involving notifying police. After an RFK Jr. press conference led her...

In this powerful episode of 'Navigating Mental Illness: Parent Stories,' hosts Bill Nowicki and Laura Nowicki welcome Kim, a resilient mother who shares her emotional and challenging journey navigating her daughter's bipolar disorder. Kim recounts her struggles from initial denial to becoming a fierce advocate for her daughter's health, detailing episodes of crisis, multiple hospitalizations, and...

In this episode of Navigating Mental Illness: Parents Stories, the hosts interview Sarah Boes, who shares her compelling journey from rural Kentucky to becoming a nurse practitioner and a mother. Sarah details her daughter's diagnosis with Tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect, and discusses the emotional highs and lows from selling her business to managing her daughter's multiple surgeri...

Mary, a mother of four, shares her family's journey with her son's mental health challenges. Her son, who was adopted at birth, began exhibiting sympt oms of bipolar disorder at a young age. Mary and her husband have navigated numerous challenges, including meltdowns, rages, and hospitalizations, while trying to provide a stable and loving environment for their son and other children. Highlights:...

In this episode, Bill interviews therapist Amber about the challenges parents face when their child is struggling with mental illness. Amber discusses the importance of parents focusing on processing their own emotions and reactions, rather than solely trying to fix the child's problems. She notes how children can resent parents for not giving them space to work through challenges, and how sibling...

In today's episode, Terry shares a deeply personal and emotional journey of navigating her son's mental illnesses, including anxiety and bipolar disorder. Join us as she recounts the challenges of seeking help, the impact on family relationships, her learnings, and the small victories that have facilitated a better understanding and approach towards mental illness. This heartfelt discussion provid...

In this heart-wrenching yet inspiring episode of "Navigating Mental Illness: Parents Stories," Bill sits down with Celeste, a mother from Bill's home state of New Jersey, who shares her journey navigating the complexities of her daughter's multiple mental health conditions, including OCD, severe anxiety, PTSD, and ADHD.   Celeste opens up about her daughter's early childhood, the struggles they fa...

This episode of "Navigating Mental Illness: Parents Stories" features Courtney, a mother who has been supporting her son through his mental health and substance abuse struggles. Courtney shares the journey of her son's development, the initial signs of trouble, his refusal to accept help, and the spiral into drug use and psychosis.   Courtney candidly discusses the emotional toll this has taken on...

In this eye-opening episode of "Navigating Mental Illness: Parents Stories," we hear from Lila, a mother who shares her deeply personal journey with her son's mental health challenges. Diagnosed early with Asperger's syndrome and later with bipolar disorder, Lila's son faced social and academic struggles despite his intellectual brilliance. Lila talks about the turning point when her son found sol...

In this deeply moving episode of the "Navigating Mental Illness: Parents Stories" podcast, we sit down one mom (she chooses anonymity) as she shares the tumultuous experience of dealing with their son's severe mental illness. From terrifying moments of psychosis and emergency room visits to the challenges of balancing professional life and personal anguish, her story is a raw and honest portrayal...

In this poignant episode of "Navigating Mental Illness: Parent Stories," we dive into the compelling journey of a family as they navigate the complexities of living with bipolar disorder. Joined by Renee and her son Jacob, listeners are taken through the challenges from Jacob's hyperactive childhood to the dark days of his young adulthood, marked by extreme emotional highs and lows. Renee talks ab...

In this insightful episode, we sit down with Erica, a devoted mother who shares her journey navigating her son's bipolar disorder. From recognizing the initial symptoms to dealing with multiple hospitalizations, Erica provides a candid look into the challenges and coping strategies she has discovered along the way. She discusses the impact of medications, the importance of mental health support, a...

In this powerful episode, we hear the story of Sue, a mother whose son has struggled with mental illness for over a decade. Sue shares the harrowing details of her son's journey, from a seemingly happy and successful teenager to someone battling bipolar and schizoaffective disorders. The podcast covers the family's encounters with the mental health system, including hospitalizations, medication ch...

Keywords: Mental illness Schizophrenia Hospitalization Caregiver stress Suicide prevention Healthcare system challenges Parental advocacy Episode Summary: In this powerful episode, we hear the deeply personal story of Rita, a mother whose 27-year-old daughter has been battling mental illness since the age of 17. Rita shares the harrowing journey of her daughter's diagnosis of schizophrenia, her nu...

Mary describes feeling like she lives in a lighthouse, constantly needing to keep the light shining to prevent her daughter from hitting the rocks. This is a powerful analogy for the struggle of parenting a child dealing with addiction. The importance of maintaining faith, praying constantly, and trusting one's instincts as a parent is emphasized. Mary shares how she felt God intervened to prevent...

Tina always loved running. She has done half and full marathons, but with her daughter's mental illness, she is exhausted and has no energy to start running again. As a child, her daughter scratched a derogatory statement in the kitchen countertop and blamed it on her brother. Fast forward, she has two children out of wedlock, couch surf, has had restraining orders against her and many other chall...

Melissa's hadn't even babysat prior to having her daughter. When at two she fought going to bed, she thought it was pretty normal. Not until she looked, did she realize it was way more intense. Melissa turned out to be an overachiever in school and was super active outside school, but she always had issues with keeping friends. Her struggles with relationships continued and both her and her daught...

Sandra and her husband thought they would be empty nesters by now. They have grandchildren, ride bikes, fish, train dogs and support a son with a mental illness. While he has improved his situation, he is still dependent on his parents. Sandra has spent the time trying to udnerstand her son's condition. For example, when he draws a house, he starts with the windows; basically he has trouble seeing...

Deb and her son had to wait a 1 1/2 years to see a psychiatrist in the remote area of Canada she lives. That is just one of the challenges she had to face to try and help her son. But as we have heard many times, she has stuck by him even during especially scary times when he was not stable. Like the time he called the paramedics saying she had a heart attack, even though she was fine. All of thes...

Rebecca's son is a handful, to put out mildly. He is smart and did well in school until he started having issues and then the challenges multiplied. She has had to: change schools, have him committed, take over his medical decisions, contact politicians in Mississippi to get him transferred back to Pennsylvania and a whole lot more. Rebecca is also a therapist which goes to show that her journey h...

Kate and Scott's son had many diagnoses starting in the 7th grade including ODD and ADHD, Cognitive Distortion, Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression and Anxiety. As engaged parents, they worked hard to find services and worked with the school to advocate for him, but the challenges left them drained. They searched for answers and information on how best to parent their child, a sweet kid, b...

Angie's son is violent and so bad that she has had to have a gun on her nightstand to protect her and the rest of her family. Angie's son's violent outbursts started in grade school and so did her journey to understand and treat his illness. By Angie's own admission her ability to support him is running out. She has bought him and provided insurance for 8 cars, all wrecked.     She knew separation...

Kathy son is 34 years old and living at home. Hospitalized around 15 times and does not do well on his own. However, given her macular degeneration diagnosis, she was determined to take an RV trip, knowing that her son would probably contact her.   She went and he did need her, but he managed to keep safe and she went away. Kathy has done her best to help her son, but she had hoped to have him mor...

Rosali's daughter mental health challenges started at an early age. She was diagnosed with mental illness (high cyclic bipolar and borderline personality disorder) at age 13. After a suicide attempt, Rosali worked to get her counseling help.   In another hurdle for Rosali, Washington State age of consent is 12 for a parent to not receive medical information. So after not taking her meds and contin...

Welcome to Season 3!!! We created a fun, new logo and 20 episodes recorded!   We feel like we are starting out again, like Jen, out first episode's mom. Jen has many questions and is learning the difficulties of a parent dealing with these with issues on her own, since her husband shocking suicide in 2018. Losing his dad, one of Jen's son started down a long road of mental illness, eventually diag...