When Joshua Roberts was 32 years old, his life changed following a bipolar disorder diagnosis.
“It first happened in my mind and then in external reality," Roberts said. "Six times, there I was, on the inside of a psychiatric hospital in these yellow socks and a wristband implying I was sick in the head."
Roberts said when he experienced deep depression he couldn't do anything. He dropped out of school and quit his job.
"It took everything I was to push my newly born daughter around the block — that I discovered the power of lived experience through YouTube," Roberts said.
He said spiritual-based mental health programs run by people with similar experiences helped him.
"I think that was the most powerful discovery for me," Roberts said. "Spiritual models that reframed the way I saw my bipolar, and the way that I saw myself, and the way I saw reality — and that’s actually made my life better now than it ever was before."
Now working as a peer support specialist for the San Diego chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness or NAMI San Diego, Roberts graduated from a training program earlier this year that taught him to use his mental health story to advocate for policy changes to help others.
NAMI started the Smarts for Advocacy trainings earlier this year. It's funded by San Diego County’s Behavioral Health Services Department.
Sten Walker, NAMI San Diego's community advocacy services program manager, said one of the best ways to effect change is to go directly to the policymakers.
"To help them out — because they don’t know everything — they need to hear this stuff," Walker said. "There really is something to having people with lived experiences as part of the conversation. No matter how well intentioned someone may be as a policy maker, as a doctor, there is something lost there when they aren’t directly affected by it."
The Smarts For Advocacy program focuses at the county level.
"What we focus on is just making sure that these voices are amplified and we are being heard," Walker said.
Roberts is focused on expanding the spiritual treatments and peer-support services that have guided him. He said the training helped him understand how the system works.
"How the legislation works and who the government is, because I always thought they were kind of these abstract, out there people. Then I realized that they are just real people and that we can actually contact them and make these changes," Roberts said.
The next Smarts for Advocacy trainings are happening virtually on July 25 and 27 and are open to the public. The program has funding to continue for at least the next couple of years. NAMI's goal is to train 300 people each year. Walker said about 135 people have gone through the program so far.
A spokesperson for San Diego County's Behavioral Health Services Department said they are listening to people who share their personal mental health stories.
"The need for hearing the voice of individuals with lived experience — inclusive of their family members — has never been so valued in our current system of care," said spokesperson Fernanda Lopez.
County officials said the behavioral health department created a peer council to get feedback on how county-funded mental health programs are working. Graduates of the Smarts For Advocacy training are eligible to become a member of the peer council.
