When Mum Or Dad Are Unwell| Stefania Buoni | TEDxNapoli

What does it mean being a "young carer"? What happens to You when your parents have an illness and you are still a child or an adolescent? And if the illness they suffer from is... a "mental illness"?
Active change agent, president and co-founder of "COMIP - CHILDREN OF MENTALLY ILL PARENTS", Italy's first not for profit organization created by and for daughters and sons of parents suffering from mental ill health, the "forgotten children".
In 2018, thanks to the Social Publishing Service of Cesvol Umbria-Terni, Stefania Buoni publishes the book "When Mum or Dad are Unwell - mini survival guide for daughters and sons of parents with a mental illness", the book she would have needed when she was 15 and that she is reprinting and distributing through crowdfunding.
In the same year, together with COMIP, she launches a project with the same name - which is still ongoing - to raise awareness about young carers in Italian schools.

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)