Our son, 23, has schizophrenia, and he lives with us. Our close family members are aware of it, and his health care workers are aware of it, but no one else. Unfortunately, this is not an illness that receives a lot of support and understanding, so to protect ourselves and him, we remain silent. He also suffers from severe anxiety and doesn't leave the house alone. He is quite smart, reads anything and everything. His room is filled with books, Hemingway, Dickens, etc.

He knows that he is ill, and is frustrated by the boundaries that the anxiety has set. He works very hard every day to get past those boundaries and repair his mind. There is no peace in his life.

People have such a misconception about mental illness, and the media feeds that misconception. Any time I hear a story about a multiple shooting or other horrific crime, I know the words mental health are not far behind. So that is what people associate mental health with. The media has a great power.

I'm not saying our life is not stressful, it is. Our son's illness has changed our lives, and we deal with a lot, but so does he. He is his worst enemy, and the illness tortures only him. When he vents, we take it, when he wants to give up, we try and give him strength. He is terrified he will always be alone, and he is terrified he will wake up one day and decide he can't take it anymore. Those are the things that scare us also. And those are the things people don't understand. I'm trying not to go on too far, but that is a bit of our story.

I recently saw a commercial about a young girl with an eating disorder, and the message was that not all suicide notes are written on paper, or obvious, and I thought that was a great commercial to make people empathetic towards this huge problem. So maybe that is the key. Find a way to make people see that great people have this illness and they are still great people, they are just ill. Not scary ill, just ill.