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Author kicks off mental health week

BY DANIEL MCCOY

Eagle correspondent

Standing before his audience, his blue jeans hanging loosely around the tops of his red Converse sneakers, author J.D. Stottlemire posed a simple question.

"Who defines normal?" he asked.

"Normal is different for everyone."

Stottlemire was the guest speaker at the kick-off event for Mental Health Awareness Week at Newman University by the Wichita chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

NAMI Wichita is one of more than 1,100 local affiliates of the organization nationwide.

Rose Stengel, a board member of NAMI Wichita, said the annual event is designed to help raise community awareness by trying to break through some of the stigmas associated with mental illness.

"If it was some other kind of illness we could talk about it, but because it's mental illness, people don't want to talk about it," Stengel said.

Stottlemire has used his own experiences and those of people he has met through NAMI to try to begin the dialogue Stengel said is sometimes missing.

Stottlemire was previously the president of NAMI Topeka and has suffered from bipolar disorder most of his life.

Growing up in Oregon, Stottlemire said that his disease set in around age 7 but he wasn't diagnosed until he was in his 20s.

In 2000, Stottlemire wrote "You, Me and Apollo," sharing his life's experience to spread a message that mental illness doesn't have to hold someone back.

Born the same day the Apollo spacecraft first passed around the dark side of the moon, he said the title of his book was in reference to something he said he and the spacecraft had in common.

"It had a flaw with its wiring, and

I have a flaw with my wiring," he said.

Stottlemire's speech was followed by a candle lighting designed to symbolically light the way toward recovery for those with mental illness and their families.

For Stottlemire, that begins with accepting who you are and realizing that you are normal for you.

"Recovery is real," he said. "It comes from letting yourself be normal. Be normal and be happy."

Reach Daniel McCoy at 316-268-6233 or dmccoy@wichitaeagle.com.