Big Brothers Big Sisters Executive Director Glenn Stutzman hopes to bring awareness to mental illness

May 05--ELKHART -- Glenn Stutzman didn't seek help until it was almost too late. He was thinking about ending his life.

Almost two years have passed since Stutzman's experience with anxiety and depression. Now recovered, the executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Elkhart County said he wants to bring awareness to mental health disorders and the available resources.

That's why he's sharing his personal story in a blog hosted by Oaklawn that published this week on www.elkharttruth.com, on the front page of Thursday's Elkhart Truth and in speaking engagements throughout the area.

One might ask why someone in a high-profile leadership position with a major nonprofit organization would go public with a personal story when it would be easier to keep quiet about his problems.

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For Stutzman, though, it's about making sure people know that depression can affect people in every walk of life -- from CEOs to blue-collar workers to stay-at-home moms.

"It's everybody," he said. "There's nobody exempt from this."

Stutzman's symptoms began materializing in 2014, which he described as a "really, really difficult year."

"I began to spiral downwards with anxiety and what later turned into depression," he said. "It got worse and worse throughout that year as a tremendous amount of work and situations that were different from what I have experienced before brought about much more stress."

It all came to a tipping point that October, when the Goshen man lost 23 pounds, wasn't sleeping and couldn't perform everyday tasks.

"It was a terribly lonely feeling. It was terribly hard to believe positive things. It was very difficult to believe it would get better," he remembered. "I can remember someone saying to me, 'It won't always be like this. It will get better. You'll look back a year from now and you'll understand why God put you through this.' At the time, you just don't believe it."

But what might be surprising is Stutzman was receiving care from his primary doctor at that time.

"It was the fact I didn't realize how much help I needed. I guess that's the big thing I try to get through (to people)," he said.

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Oaklawn is helping to spotlight this important issue in a variety of ways:

It was only after he sought professional mental health care at Oaklawn in Goshen that his recovery began. "I was in the hospital a couple of nights and began seeing a counselor. The biggest help too were medications, exercise and doing some volunteering. It was a five-month recovery process for me," Stutzman explained.

His struggle through mental illness is what led him to Big Brothers Big Sisters. Stutzman left his job as the vice president of finance for The Commodore Corp. in Goshen to focus on his recovery.

"I simply couldn't do it. I couldn't think. I couldn't think straight," he said.

Getting the right help was the first step in Stutzman's recovery, and it's a step many people don't think to take. When people suffer through an undiagnosed mental disorder or illness, they often don't think to see a doctor.

"If you had a broken leg, everyone would go, 'Oh, I'm so sorry. What happened?' They want to hear the story and everything else. Mental health is no different," Stutzman explained. "If your leg was broken, would we not send you to your family doctor? If your arm was broken, wouldn't we send you to a doctor?"

By telling his own story, Stutzman has connected to others and even solidified their own journeys with mental illness. For example, a friend's father was telling him "to snap out of it" when he was suffering through depression.

"I said, 'No, you can't just snap out of it. You know where I'm coming from.' He said, 'That means so much to me as opposed to my dad telling me it's a made-up issue,'" Stutzman recalled.

That's why destigmatizing mental illness is just as important as awareness. Nearly 44 million Americans -- 1 in 5 -- experiences mental illness every year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

He said he wants to change the stigma by telling his story. Stutzman considers himself fully recovered and is functioning well with counseling and medication. It does get better, but first you have to seek treatment, he said.

"My message is to get that professional help if you get to a point that you think there's no help available, there's nowhere I can turn, I might as well end my life," Stutzman said.

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