My personal motivation to start TrustFirst was because of my son who has Asperger's Spectrum and Schizophrenia. Caring for him has been a challenge, but I have learned so much and feel like I can take that knowledge, hope, and experience
and help others. What I have accomplished to date is really caring for my son through some very challenging events. Two challenges with my son were fighting for him through an intervention that tried to get him help with substance abuse.
Also, my Mom took her life from depression when I was 5 years old and my son Bryan struggles with a mental illness, as I mentioned above. This gives me experience in dealing with crises that are caused by mental illness.
One recent endeavor I am trying to do locally is set up a family support group to help families care for loved ones that have a mental illness. This will be a huge driver for TrustFirst to make sure we can keep the loved ones' families engaged to support,
help, and love the persons with mental illnesses.
I believe that we can help families in a crisis with a mental illness, first by finding a person for the loved one to trust and have some hope together. Too many mentally ill people are ending up in jails and prisons, or on the
streets, because they lack the support from our society or their families. I want to try and build an inner circle for each of our loved ones so that they will have a safety net to fall into when they are in a crisis. Our first goal is to get TrustFirst
501c3 certified as a nonprofit and then help 5 families within 6 months with any crisis they may be having with a metal illness issue. This could be simply finding the right service to help our loved one, or getting them support to locate health care for
our loved one challenged with a mental illness.
Our vision for the future is that we start respecting people with mental illness, like Bryan, and we want to pass along our skills of problem solving that we learned by going through crises with our son over the years.
Any donation would be greatly appreciated and we are in the startup mold so we are looking to get certified and begin to help families with a mental illness crises.
