May was mental health awareness month and Tian Dayton Ph.D. took a look at how one Hollywood insider is using celebrity to spotlight the stigma surrounding mental illness. This is an excerpt from the interview.

You may know Joey Pantoliano as "Cosmo" from the movies The Fugitive and U.S. Marshalls or as tough guy Ralphie Cifaretto from The Sopranos. However tough and impenetrable Joey’s characters public roles were, privately he has been battling with alcohol, drugs and mental illness much of his life. Joey’s personal struggles have led him to create a foundation called No Kidding Me 2. It’s a celebrity-fueled advocacy effort to change the way society views mental illness. Some of the people serving on the advisory board are Robert Downey, Jr., Marcia Gay Harden, Patricia Cornwell, Harrison Ford, Matt Dillon, and Robin Williams. As a result of his work with the foundation and his own personal encounters, Joey has heard hundreds of stories from people about their experiences with mental illness. This inspired him to create a documentary, also titled No Kidding, Me, Too, an inspiring, provocative and even humorous look at brain disease and the people living with it.

The military asked Joey to tour Iraq thinking that his tough guy reputation would help soldiers to open up and share about their personal struggles, all of these experiences have strengthened Joey’s commitment to help to remove the stigma around depression and other forms of mental illness, the stigma that keeps people from opening up about the kinds of personal issues that might make one desperate enough to drown their pain in drugs and alcohol or to take their own lives. He is only too aware that this struggle is a life and death one, more American soldiers are being lost to suicide than in battle. I met Joey about a year and a half ago. He’s a charming, talented man who it’s impossible not to like immediately, hopefully, you will get a sense of the man and his mission here.

Tian: What inspired you to create No Kidding Me 2 and to make a documentary about mental illness?

Joey: I prefer "dis-ease" because "mental illness" implies permanence, but I see brain dis-ease as a transient thing. My dis-ease, clinical depression, literally comes and goes. Having surrendered to it, I’ve learned how to get through the dis-ease when it appears. I can sense it coming. It’s the opposite of "ease." It’s the opposite of the peace of mind that I desire, that peace of mind which I never had that defined the emptiness living inside me. In the end, I think it’s better to have a brain dis-ease than to be mentally ill. Too often people who suffer from depression and other mental health issues stay silent because they don’t want to "out" themselves. There is a stigma attached to brain dis-ease that frightens people. It stains you, places you on the other side of the boundary that society draws between "us" and "them." You become one of "them," the crazy people who are cloaked in invisibility.

But here’s the problem: the boundary is not real; it’s a myth. There is no separation between "us" and "them." We are them. If you aren’t, then your mother or your best friend or your teacher is. Brain dis-ease touches each of our lives directly and indirectly. Once I learned that I had a brain disorder, I didn’t make any attempts to keep it secret. I would talk about it openly with friends and colleagues. What surprised me was the number of people who, in response, would then tell me about their own diagnosis. That’s what inspired me to create a foundation called "No Kidding, Me, Too" (www.nkm2.org). It’s goal is to educate Americans about brain dis-ease and tear the stigma out of the closet, de-isolate it so that people will be surprised to find millions of others like themselves.

Tian: Why is this so deeply personal a passion for you?

Joey: There’s always been this kind of thing inside of me, a numbness, a sadness. I tried to fill it up with fame. Anything that was fast. Too much was never enough for me. I wanted it quick and I wanted it fast. I worry more than I should, I obsess on situations that I shouldn’t. And no matter how I can cognitively understand how I shouldn’t be – that it’s all in my head – I still feel it in my heart. That was how my subconscious worked.

When I was diagnosed with clinical depression, I realized it wasn’t of my own doing, it wasn’t my own selfishness. I wanted some peace of mind, I wanted my mind to rest. Now with modern medicine, with my exercises and yoga, I’m able to find glimpses of peace of mind. My brain doesn’t have the capacity it did when I was younger to produce the chemicals—the endorphins, the norepinephrin so I am getting some help with it. It’s sanity management that I’m occupied with now!

Tian: How did you get all of these young people to talk so openly about diagnosis in your documentary?

Joey: The core of what we believe at No Kidding, Me Too is that we don’t have the luxury of anonymity. When I first started telling people that I live with a mental disease, I was always greeted with, "no kidding, me too!" Or "my brother, my mother too." So that’s what I decided to call the organization.

Tian: So you’re openness helps others to feel more open?

Joey: Yes, it breeds a sense of comfort. There’s a shared struggle. Everyone you see in the documentary made it to the cut because they’re all such heroes. They trusted me with their stories. They felt safe in sharing their secrets. And that’s what this movie is really about, six upwardly mobile individuals; a vascular surgeon who is bipolar; amazing kids just going out into the world. Our stories were alike. We didn’t know we had a mental disease. We just knew there was something wrong. And through the journey of trying to figure out how to fix that emptiness that lived inside of us, and still does occasionally, we took on behaviors like cutting, or bulimia, anorexia, gambling, alcohol, drugs; things that felt better, and made us feel whole. And then they stopped working.

Tian: What do you want young people to gain from this film?

Joey: We believe that a young kid can see this movie and say, "wait a minute. Drugs are not the answer. I don’t want to screw my brain up now. I don’t want to increase my chances of being depressed later in life.( a possible side effect of adolescent drug abuse) Why do myself that kind of damage?" When teens turn to drugs, they’re literally taking the happiness they’re going to need in their 30s and 40s and using it up in their teens. I’m talking about dopamine and seratonin, etc. This movie is telling them there’s no shame in how they feel, they’re in good company.

Tian: In this documentary, you talk to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. What kind of stories are you hearing from soldiers related to mental health?

Joey: This is the first war where our military is losing more GIs to suicide than they are to battle. We were hearing that the post-traumatic stress and the feeling of powerlessness may not be entirely about being in battle. The kids that are completing their suicides tend to be Anglo-American, between 19 and 21 years old, first tour of duty within their first 6 months. The soldiers and officers that I talked to, a lot of their issues stem more from what’s going on at home than what’s going on there with the IED’s. It’s about situations and relationships at home. Last September, during Suicide Prevention Week, we went to Iraq through the USO to show the documentary and share our experiences with mental dis-ease, our strengths and weaknesses, our hopes, and to communicate the counter-intuitive message that they have to surrender to their dis-ease in order to win. There I was telling these warriors who are there to win a war that they must surrender to win, that the more I talked about my own dis-ease and the more I surrendered to it, the less stressful it became. The military actually allowed us to say "surrender to win" in the program. It was a tall order to ask in the military, nothing less than a complete mindset change. It turns out General Patton was wrong to slap that soldier (in the movie, that is), because that soldier was suffering from PTSD, and Patton thought that by smacking the kid it would help him to grow. But the guy was as ill as someone with bandages, and the only difference between him and another wounded soldier was that he didn’t have the bandage to prove the wound. The reception in Iraq was better than I could have imagined - shockingly wonderful. After seeing the movie, the GI’s became intimate with us. They were sharing things with us that they wouldn’t share with anyone else. We were one of them. They were one of us. This isn’t a military disease after all. What’s happening in the military is a microcosm of what’s happening all across this country. If you go to nkm2.org, there’s a 3-minute piece called "Between Iraq and a Hard Place" that we put together from footage during our Stomp the Stigma tour in Iraq.

Tian: Have you felt stigmatized in Hollywood now that you’ve come out so loudly and strongly about your experience?

Joey: No way. That’s where we all wind up anyway, in Hollywood! It’s a virtual cornucopia of mental dis-ease! We just call it "addiction." But "addictions" are the symptoms. Underlying addiction is mental dis-ease.

Movies tend to demonize or romanticize. They don’t tell the truth. The truth is, there’s an upwards of 80% recovery rate with all forms of dis-ease once you have been diagnosed and have surrendered to it and have begun to treat it.

Tian: So how do you see recovery or Emotional Sobriety?

Joey: Being a part of these 12-step programs, I realize that by not drinking and being alcohol-free today doesn’t mean I’m sober. You know, I hear people say "I’ve been sober 20 years," but there’s still anger and resentment pouring through them. My goal is to have emotional sobriety, where I’m emotionally free and walking through life in a loose-fitting garment, you know? I met you because somebody told me about your book Forgiving and Moving On. You told me you wrote this when you were going through a serious time in your ACOA recovery. At that time, I was thinking about committing suicide. I believe that in order to be reborn, like even the Christ figure, that I need to take a murder weapon and turn it into a symbol of peace.

Tian: So that is what fuels your passion for making mental illness "cool" or more acceptable and understood?

Joey: I connected to your book Emotional Sobriety immediately, and to you and your husband, because you got what I was trying to get to. You helped me know what I was trying to get to.

Tian: What would you like the world to know?

Joey: That you’re not alone, we’re not alone. We spend so much time trying to keep the world from knowing our secrets, saying things to ourselves like, "If they only knew what a failure I am…. I got em all fooled but they’re going to find out. They’re going to find out about me!" But really my heart, all it wants to do, at the core, is say, "hey, you exist, me too. let’s hug." That’s why I’m so attracted to the 12-step program. Because I hear these stories and I say, "Oh my God, that’s me."