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)