MENTAL HEALTH
Video PSA's from my YouTube channel
Roughly a year after recovering from his second psychotic break in 1999, Robert began giving talks at juvenile halls, libraries, veterans’ homes and mental-health support groups, as well as schools, community centers and bookstores.
In addition to discussing his baseball novel, "Strikeout at Hell Gate," and the writing process, Robert spoke of how it is possible to tame depression, psychosis and suicidal ideation.
Since 2005, Robert has written numerous op-eds for the L.A. Times, Huffington Post and Thrive Global on many different aspects of mental health. But the overall message has always been the same: There should be no stigma to mental illness!
Over the past two decades, Robert has given keynote addresses at mental-health conferences at Patton State Hospital, Loma Linda University Medical School and USC Verdugo Hills Hospital, as well as the 2017 annual gala for Thresholds, one of the nation’s oldest mental-health support groups, based in Chicago.
In his speeches and his media appearances on TV and radio, Robert has cited Freud’s dictum of work and love as the keys to psychic health.
In recent years, as Robert has more fully processed the trauma that he endured in kindergarten, Robert has delved more deeply into the issue of PTSD. He has argued that schools, like churches, synagogues, the Boy Scouts and the Olympics, need to do a much better job of vetting teachers and other adults on staff.
​
If anyone is feeling at risk, they should call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Overcoming PTSD from Kindergarten
In this PSA, Robert spoke of the traumas that our medical professionals and EMT workers are facing and how he overcame his own trauma inflicted on him when he was a 5-year-old boy in kindergarten.
You Can Have a Great Life
Robert shares his backstory and offers insight about two keys to psychic health that, in addition to medication and therapy, are vitally important on the road toward recovery.
A Common Misconception
Robert explains that people with rage issues or grievance issues, and people who are filled with anger, resentment, or hatred, are very different from individuals who have clinical mental illness.
You Can Enrich the World
Robert shares a surprising aspect about mental illness. He mentions that many people suffering from illness have used their unique vantage point to “think different” and enrich the world with their creativity.
Shedding the Stigma of Psychosis
Robert offers insight about the differences between mental illness and psychopathic behavior.