Yellow Ribbon Week speaker talks overcoming schizophrenia
Hope and positivity dominated the discussion at Tuesday night’s presentation, Steve Harrington: An Incredible Journey.
Steve Harrington, a speaker on the topic of mental illness, addressed a crowd in French Auditorium as part of Yellow Ribbon’s 4th annual Suicide Prevention Week.
He shared his personal story of being diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early 40s, as well as his setbacks and triumphs on the road to his recovery.
He also shared the plan he used to recover, and passed it on as a way to help others improve their lives. The plan is simplified into three steps, ‘ready, set, do it,’ and is based on something his brother said to him in their childhood.
“I had to create a system for wellness to cope with what was besieging me,” he said. The plan, Harrington said, could be important to anyone who is trying to recover from something in their life.
Harrington illustrated the first step of his plan, called ‘ready,’ as the step in which one should take stock of their skills and talents.
“Take stock of what your skills and strengths are,” he said. “It’s those strengths that are the stepping stones to recovery.”
The next step, ‘Set,’ is all about making a plan and developing small objectives to recovery that are easily accomplished.
“Making that plan is really important,” he said, adding that one of these objectives should be developing a support system.
The final step, ‘Do it,’ is all about putting new plans and objectives into action.
“Whenever we try something new we get scared. That’s human nature. But if we don’t try, nothing changes,” Harrington said.
Harrington’s plan came in handy along his road to recovery, which began with a bad experience in a psychiatric ward and ended with a realization that if his life was going to change, he needed to be the one to change it.
After that diagnosis, Harrington went on to do many things including writing books, consulting for the federal government and talking to groups about his story.
“I’m living an extraordinary life,” he said.
Anastacia Thomas, president of Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention, explained the RSO chose to bring Harrington to campus because of his extraordinary story.
“We wanted to emphasize that talking about it helps with the stigma surrounding the issue,” said Thomas, an Illinois senior.
Miranda Schaub, a junior from Traverse City and vice president of Yellow Ribbon, explained she feels students could get a lot from the talk because they could connect to the personal element in it.
“A lot of people take more away from someone who has actually gone through it,” she said. “They can connect to it more.”
