Staff photo by Fritz Busch Former state legislator, mental health advocate and author Mindy Greiling shares her powerful story of navigating her son’s schizophrenia and her efforts to change policies that hindered her ability to help him at the South Central Minnesota Mental Health Conference at the Sleepy Eye Event Center Wednesday.

SLEEPY EYE — A former 20-year state legislator, mental health advocate and author shared a powerful story of navigating her son’s schizophrenia and her efforts to change policies and overcome fear and stigma at the South Central Minnesota Mental Health Conference at the Sleepy Eye Event Center Wednesday.

“I’m really glad to be here at a conference with openness, empathy, understanding and stigma. Those are things I talk about in this conversation. I want to shine a bright light on the mental health system,” said Mindy Greiling of Roseville.

She said her son Jim was relatively healthy for her first eight years in the legislator before he got sick.

Greiling said she did public and private mental health advocacy.

Twenty years ago, she initiated the creation of the first-in-the-nation bipartisan mental health caucus of state leaders focusing on raising awareness of mental health issues and examining the impact of it on state government. Focus areas included the criminal justice system, employment, children’s health and exploring results of a Minnesota Mental Health Action Group study.

“We ramped up the study of mental health issues,” Greiling said.

“There is still much to do including decriminalization. I continue to advocate for individuals with severe mental health issues. Most of them need continued mental health support,” she said.

“Minnesota has one of the best mental health systems in the country. I shudder when I think what it may be like getting services for our son in some other states. I served on the national NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) board and just finished serving on the national board for Schizophrenia and Psychosis For Action Alliance, which focuses only on illnesses that cause psychosis including bi-polar disorder, clinical depression and sometimes psychosis,” she said.

Greiling said she wrote a book “Fix What You Can, Schizophrenia and a Lawmaker’s Fight for Her son.”

“The path is packed to empathy in stories. That’s what I wanted to write about,” she said.

Greiling asked the audience to raise their hands if they have any family that have not dealt with any kind of mental illness including COVID distress, substance abuse, all the way up to schizophrenia.

Nobody raised their hands.

“Some people think because schizophrenia is said to affect only one in 100 people around the world, it isn’t very prevalent. According to the University of Minnesota Psychiatry Dept., more people have schizophrenia than epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Schlerosis, HIV/AIDS and insulin dependent diabetes. We need to speak up more about schizophrenia because most people don’t know how common it is,” she said.

Greiling said her son Jim has schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder with mood swings and depression.

“He’s a challenge but we’ve learned over the 25 years that he has been sick that it can be managed. It’s a very treatable illness with what can be considered recovery. That doesn’t mean you get over it,” she said.

Greiling said more and more recent research shows cannabis triggers psychosis. She said studies show individuals using cannabis daily are four times as likely to have psychosis and 30% get schizophrenia.

“I think that’s a shocking factoid,” said Greiling.

According to a Nov. 15, 2023 post by the National Institute of Health National Library of Medicine “cannabis is known to cause psychotic disorders, and the increasing use of cannabis constitutes an important health problem. The risk is more pronounced in people with genetic predisposition and increases with heavy and high potency cannabis use.”

Jen Maurer of the Heart of New Ulm Brown County Mental Health and Wellness Action team said the second annual mental health conference was full with 230 attendees a month ago. A waiting list was created for possible registration openings.

Health conference attendees included Minnesota Public Health staff and individuals from county public health departments, school and hospital staff from as far away as the Brainerd area.

More mental health conference stories will appear in future editions of The Journal.