LET’S HAVE MORE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, but let’s be honest, we need to have these conversations year-round. Mental Health America (MHA) declared this year’s theme “More Good Days, Together,” emphasizing community support, building connections, and defining personalized self-care. They have campaigns focusing on sharing stories, reducing stigma, and accessing practical wellness resources.

I’ve always tried to encourage these kinds of conversations, in real life, and on the Morning Buzz. So, when Tara Ostromencki reached out to see if we’d be interested in talking about mental health and sharing helpful information and resources with the community, I said, “absolutely.”

Tara is an integrative psychiatric nurse practitioner blending traditional and non-traditional care for the whole person. She works with kids through older adults on anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, and mood disorders, and is the first in the area offering Spravato treatments. You can reach out to Tara with questions by email:
Tara@haelenmentalhealth.com

We had two chats about mental health, or as she calls it, head health to make it more comfortable to talk about.

The first one focused on kids, including signs parents can look for in their kiddos, especially changes in behavior, online safety, how to start hard conversations with your children, and barriers with treatment. Some resources Tara wanted to highlight include: 211 Wisconsin connecting with local programs and services, and 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, offering texting or calling with licensed professionals 24/7/365.

We also had another discussion focusing on adults. One thing I had discussed on the show is Brain Dumping, a journaling technique that I find has way less pressure for me. You can get things out on the paper and then, if you want, Tara said you can categorize it, or organize it as a next step. She sent this article to me after for more information. She also highlighted that we need to drop the idea that self care is selfish. It’s important, and part of our physical care.

I really liked Tara’s phrasing of calling it “head health,” maybe that will make it easier for us to all talk about with each other. Full disclosure, since we’re encouraging openness about mental health, this interview was recorded several months ago. I didn’t tell Tara at the time, but have since, that we recorded these interviews a few days after one of my closest and dearest friends died, which was also less than a year after my mother died. There’s been a lot of heart-shattering grief, but also healing for me. I am so blessed to have wonderful support but like most of us, some days are better than others. For some reason, the task of editing our lengthy, but amazing, conversation and posting this blog was more overwhelming than most have been. But I did it now.

I’m reminded of an account I follow on TikTok, Christi Newrutzen. She does videos about how long it actually takes to do something you’re procrastinating. It’s pretty funny, but also an open look at the challenges she has with her head health, and has inspired a lot of people to take the step to do the thing they’ve been procrastinating. In ode to Christi, in my case this week, I’d say editing the audio took 2 hours, the blog, including links and quotes from re-listening to Tara’s audio, took about an hour and a half. There was also a short, 7 minute crying break so a total of 3 hours and 37 minutes to do something I’d been procrastinating for months. Thanks to Tara for her time and patience and helping to encourage normalizing these conversations.

Take care of yourselves, your loved ones, and your community. You matter and we need you all. <3