This Kansas City nurse is taking to the theater to address mental health stigmas

Ten years ago, Tiffany Schweigert directed and produced the 2008 American rock musical “Next to Normal” in Kansas City.

Schweigert hadn’t considered a career in health care, but Brian Yorkey’s Tony Award-winning play struck a chord that ended up changing the course of his life. The story revolves around a mother battling bipolar disorder and how the worsening of the illness affects her family.

Now a behavioral health nurse at the University of Kansas Health System, Schweigert is bringing the play to Kansas City to create a conversation around “Next to Normal” topics, including pain, depression, drug abuse and modern psychiatric practices.

“With the pandemic so high on everyone’s mind, we are now seeing the other side of what that entails,” Schweigert said at a KU Health System briefing Thursday. “I work at Strawberry Hill, where we see a lot of our patients come in with the consequences of that on their mental health. I hope that people will come and see this performance and see how we all struggle with mental health.”

The play, produced by The Barn Players, is presented from October 21 to 30 at the Johnson County Arts & Heritage Center Black Box Theater.

It’s no coincidence that Schweigert is presenting the play at a time when 90% of adults say they see mental health as a crisis in the United States, according to a CNN poll. The same survey showed that half of those surveyed said that they or a loved one had mental health problems that required treatment.

Throughout the pandemic, but especially in recent months as more people try to return to pre-COVID-19 routines, Schweigert has noticed that more patients are dealing with the fallout of recent years on their mental health. .

Through “Next to Normal,” Schweigert hopes people can find common ground with characters experiencing similar health dilemmas. For those involved in the production, the musical has certainly accomplished that.

“It’s been a short but intense process talking not only about their character development but also about their individual struggles, how they’ve dealt with their own mental or physical health and how that can relate to their character,” Schweigert said.

For example, lead actress Ashley Young is battling multiple sclerosis, a potentially debilitating disease of the brain and spinal cord.

“That’s a chronic disease that you have to live with every day,” Schweigert said. “We want to normalize mental health. It’s like diabetes or high blood pressure, where we have to take our medications every day and something we live with forever.”

Lauren Luck, director of the behavioral health program at KU Health System, said at the briefing that much of the stigma surrounding mental health has to do with the fact that mental health conditions aren’t visible in the same way. way than other medical conditions.

“What we do know is that it’s not just in anyone’s head,” Luck said. “There are biological, genetic, hormonal, and other neurotropic things going on in our brains that we know cause mental illness. It is a physical illness. We just can’t see it yet.”

Luck encouraged those struggling with behavioral or mental health issues to reach out to a therapist, friend, family member or health care provider.

“If it’s interfering with your daily life, don’t wait until it’s worse than that,” Luck said. “Let’s get help before it gets so bad that you feel like there’s so much stigma that you’re too scared to reach out.”