From Grief to Advocacy: A Mother’s Journey on World Mental Health Day

(KNSI) — Tuesday, October 10th marks World Mental Health Day to raise awareness of mental health issues and mobilize efforts to support it.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five U.S. adults experience a mental illness each year. One in 20 experience serious mental illness. Anxiety, major depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder are among the top conditions people struggle with, but it doesn’t look the same for everyone.

Isaiah Moorefield was kind, funny, outgoing, and popular with “a smile and a laugh that could just brighten almost any mood. He was really just nice. Everybody loved him. He was wonderful,” according to his mother, Rachel Moorefield. “Trying to describe your son in the past tense is very emotional. I, a lot of times, don’t feel like I can capture his light or essence.”

Isaiah took his own life when he was 19.

Many times, after someone dies by suicide, the phrases “I never knew they were struggling,” or “they were so upbeat and fun to be around” come up. Many times, that’s very much on purpose.

Moorefield says, people are good at hiding their depression. “I thought that I had a handle on Isaiah’s mental health, because I suffer from mental health issues myself. So, I thought that I was a great mental health advocate. I thought that I was prepared. I thought that I was in tune with what was going on with Isaiah, and looking back, I have continued to have a lot of guilt, for the things that I could have done differently, or the signs that I missed.”

Isaiah was one who was very good at hiding his emotions; Moorefield explains, “Because he was such a loving, outgoing kid, he didn’t want to burden anybody else with his problems or his feelings. He would kind of be a class clown and hide those feelings with laughter and a smile, and so when we would think that he was doing better, a lot of the times he was still struggling internally.”

The NAMI says one in six kids between six and 17 experience a mental health disorder. Half of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14. For Isaiah, it started in junior high, and Moorfield says one of the signs was the onset of Tourette’s syndrome. “When he would get more agitated, the tics would pick up a little more. So that was kind of a clue of what was going on.”

She credits one of his teachers who picked up on signals that he wasn’t as outwardly happy as he seemed and spoke up about it. “That was just so beautiful that a teacher would reach out and tell us their concerns, and that was about the time that we were getting him into therapy.”

Moorefield says therapy isn’t accessible to everyone but is still incredibly important. She has advice for family and friends of someone who is struggling. “Reaching out to others, to let them know that it’s so important to talk with their kids, get on that intimate level with them, let them know that it’s okay to not be okay and that they can talk about it. I think that it’s really important for kids to know that they have a safe person, and even adults, a safe person that they can trust that’s not going to try to fix their problem necessarily, but just to listen and validate that their problem is real and that they are being challenged by it. I think we focus so much on fixing things. And it’s not always about the fix. It’s about the journey to get better.

Moorefield breaks down some of what she has learned through the grieving process. “I have learned that nobody’s mental health issues look the same. I’ve learned that I am not the only person crying in my bathroom, and sometimes just saying that out loud, and realizing that there’s other people that are struggling too makes you feel so much less alone in this world. It sounds silly to think that other people’s suffering can help you, and it’s not so much that. It’s the realization that you’re not alone, that there’s other people out there that are struggling, and knowing that other people are fighting that same battle gives you a little bit of encouragement to fight that yourself.”

Part of why she continues to be a mental health advocate is because she wants to “share as much as I can of this experience, what it’s been like, and how the grieving and the loss, it just – it doesn’t go away. It just remains there forever, and you just learn to work through it. Even though you don’t really heal from it the way that you would hope.”

The other part is because “everything that we do is to share his light and his memory. It makes me feel as though, in a small way, that he’s still here with me, and so the more that I can do that and share him, it makes me feel like I have some sort of purpose now through him.”

Moorefield added that she wanted to let everyone know that their absence would leave a huge hole in those around them. “Sometimes that may be a little bit of encouragement that they need. Sometimes, we might not feel this way, and sometimes the darkness that’s inside of us, the depression, lies to us and says they don’t matter or that we should just give up. And I want everybody to know that they matter. They do matter. They matter so much. Isaiah mattered. Everyone matters. And sometimes it’s just really hard for us to see that.” And Moorefield stopped for several seconds to collect herself before saying, “I just don’t want anybody to go through this level of pain.”

If you or someone you know needs mental health help, the NAMI Helpline can be reached by calling 1-800-950-6264 or texting HelpLine to 62640. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached by calling 988. Veterans can call that number and press 1.

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