What does being a "young carer" mean?
When someone we love starts feeling unwell
all the attention goes to that person, to his or her needs.
But what happens if that someone
is your mum or your dad?
What happens to you if you are still a kid or a teenager
when your parents start becoming unwell?
When I was a teen I didn't have the slightest idea
I was a "young carer".
Like everyone else I went to school, I had fun with my friends.
But what lays behind these pictures, that we don't see?
Before telling you about the hidden iceberg
I want to take a step back, go back to the start.
If I'd ask you what has changed and what has stayed the same,
you'd probably tell me, apart from my age, that I still love dogs
and I've changed my haircut.
But what stays invisible in those pictures?
What took me from the child you see in the center
to the adult I am today,
passing through the adolescent me you see on the left?
Suddenly a tsunami hit my family.
A tsunami that has been growing progressively, until devastating us.
A tsunami called health problem.
And when it hits one or both of your parents
and you are still a child or an adolescent
you rely on them
it becomes really hard.
And if I told you that the health problem
is a "mental health" problem?
The load for a daughter or a son can become extremely heavy
and can be made of sense of guilt, fear, anger, sadness,
a whirlwind of alternating emotions of love and hate,
the constant feeling of walking on eggshells,
an excessive load of responsibilities, difficulty concentrating
and also doing household chores,
like doing the grocery shopping, taking care of younger siblings,
or talking to doctors and managing therapy.
Or being bullied,
maybe because of the strange behaviour your parent might display.
But in addition to this
you might find yourself dealing with real emergencies
for which no one ever prepared you.
Like handling the situation when your father or mother
see or hear things that do not exist: psychosis.
Or having to deal with the extreme swings of mania and depression
without anyone preparing you for that.
Or even witnessing or thwarting suicide attempts.
On top of that,
having to continue with your everyday life,
going to school, study...
the reason why I am here today is that another weight adds to our shoulders
which is often that you can't talk about it with anyone.
If you say that your mum or dad have a physical health issue,
a cancer or another physical illness,
hardly would someone blame them for that
or believe they are bad parents or weak persons.
Hardly would someone consider you as genetically compromised
and automatically destined to inherit the same illness.
But if you try to say that your mum or dad suffer from major depression,
bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, or in case there is no diagnosis,
you describe their behaviour
and say: "there's something wrong with mum or dad",
the outside world's response will be completely different.
Still today, worldwide, physical health and mental health
are not granted equal dignity and respect.
Still today mental health is not perceived
as a common good for us all.
And this causes a delay in understanding what's happening
inside of ourselves and our loved ones, in asking and getting help,
and often not getting any treatment at all.
And for you as a son or daughter, the load becomes much heavier.
The atmosphere you feel around you,
communication problems, within and outside the family,
stigma, prejudice, shame
may lead you to keep everything inside you and not to say anything at all.
But loneliness and silence are a heavy load to carry for a minor.
How did I cope with the situation?
What lays behind those photos that can't be seen?
Behind that smile?
An armor started to form, automatically,
behind which I used to hide, an armor made of ice
that allowed me to keep fear, anger and pain inside
and prevent them from overwhelming me and the people around me,
and allowed me to keep on doing the things my peers were also doing
but which at the same time
made me feel light years apart from them,
because it made me grow up faster than others.
At the same time there was also a cry for help
a cry for help that couldn't, that wasn't able to come out
and that no one, not even in school, imagined.
When did the first crack start to open in that armor?
When, for the first time, did light start to seep in?
I still fondly remember the psychologist of the family counseling
who is the first reliable person outside my family
with whom I could open myself up and that gradually helped me
identify trustworthy persons around me, extended network
that could support me.
But the real watershed for me has been
reading on Internet forums the stories of daughters and sons from other countries
thanks to the love for languages inherited from my parents.
The stories of us children of mentally ill parents
are all different, all unique.
But there's one thing that blows my mind we have in common
That we often believe we are the only ones.
But statistically that's impossible! We're millions in the world
Nevertheless we persuade ourselves that no one else
has ever experienced the same things we have experienced.
You know why that happens?
Because we don't talk about our stories of children.
Through stories of activists, daughters and sons from Australia, US & Canada,
not only I could give a name to emotions I had been feeling
and understand they were a natural reaction to what I experienced,
but I could also acknowledge the positive traits
that I developed to cope with that situation.
So I took my first intercontinental flight, alone
and went to Vancouver, in Canada, for the first conference as a speaker,
to meet those daughters and sons, to talk to them.
That has been a moment of positive, powerful reflection
as in them I could see the story I had lived,
but also the one yet to be written.
In them I saw the pain, but also the power of redemption,
to transform that pain in seeds for change.
I saw those positive traits of resilience, empathy, courage,
willingness to challenge the status quo that I didn't recognize in me,
until I saw them reflected through them and finally felt mine, too.
That encounter has been a gift, an immeasurable gift,
that keeps giving me energy even now.
And it's a gift I strongly wanted to bring back to Italy, to Europe
to help other "forgotten children"
take some of this burden from off their shoulders.
My wish is that no child, no adolescent nor young adult
has to feel alone anymore when one or both parents
start suffering from a mental illness.
It's an immense wish, that needs everyone's help
because, otherwise, how could I prevent myself
from carrying again the world upon my shoulders?
And so that brings us to today.
In 2017, with other Italian daughters and sons, Gaia, Carlo and Marco,
we started the first Italian not for profit
created by and for daughters and sons
to give voice to children and adolescents who don't have a voice,
to advocate for our rights also within institutions
and it is called COMIP, Children of Mentally Ill Parents,
daughters and sons.
We started a project
that is called like the mini guide I've written
and that I would have needed when I was fifteen
and is called: "When Mum Or Dad Are Unwell
mini guide to survival for children of parents with mental ill health".
It is a grassroots project, started through crowdfunding,
with the aid of people around me, some of them are in this theater now,
who believed in the same wish
and gave us the nourishment to begin and fly high.
This project has the ambitious goal to donate a copy of this mini guide
to all school and public libraries, all family counseling centers
and to mental health centers in Italy
so that no child or teen is ever left alone
nor their families.
Especially children whose parents are not aware
of their illness and are not even in treatment for their disorder.
We need to think about these kids, too!
I have been one of them for quite some time.
At first, when I started planning this project
I told myself: "I am never going to make it, how am I going to do it?"
Little by little, though, I asked help from people around me
also to professional hikers guides, offering to tell
my story in ten minutes during an excursion
and find this way people from civil society
who may not have lived this type of experience
who wanted to become our "postmen of change"
and deliver a copy of the mini guide as a donation from Comip
to the public library of their city.
And now we've managed to reach a lot of regions,
from Aosta Valley to Sicily and Sardinia.
And we are not going to stop, we want to reach them all.
Another wish we have is to raise awareness within institutions
and make them do more for us, but also civil society,
and invest more in mental health.
Another enormous wish we are fulfilling
is to meet schools, talk to students, to young people.
Not only caregivers, daughters & sons, but them all.
To have a toolbox
to deal with all emotions, both positive and negative,
with life's challenges by starting well equipped,
before feeling too unwell.
To save lives.
A long and winding road lays ahead of us,
but if there's one thing I know for sure
is that one of the positive traits
we daughters and sons of parents with mental illness have
is the willingness to change the status quo.
That's why I know that that girl
is going to make her wish come true, with your help, too.
If this story struck you, moved you,
talk about it, tell it to your friends, to your colleagues.
Let's open together that tiny door that didn't open for us.
Let the Light shine in!
Thank you.
(Applause)