How to Build a Support Network

Joe Greco, director of the film Canvas, whose mother has schizophrenia, describes how he found comfort and inspiration by connecting with others and learning that he wasn't alone.

When I was a young boy, I watched my mother battle schizophrenia and she was actually taken out of the home by the police. She wouldn't take her medicine and so that harrowing experience, watching her literally be dragged out of the house, had a profound and deep impact on me. My father had a very difficult time paying the medical bills, because mental illness wasn't covered by insurance and people wouldn't come over to the house and visit because they were afraid that mom might do something strange. So I started to see that my story was more than my story, it was a lot of peoples' stories. I would urge people to talk about it and share and reach out and join NARSAD or join these other wonderful organizations because when I was a kid, when my family was really dealing with it, there weren't as many organizations and there wasn't the Internet. Now, you can go online and research and blog and connect with other people and these newsgroups, who are going through this problem and realize, wow, I am not alone and there's a lot of comfort in that. I wish when I was a kid, I had known that I wasn't the only child who had a parent who was mentally ill. It was nice to see that I am not alone. So I think the more people can talk about it, the more people will come forward the more good that can be done.