When behavioral health hits close to home

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“Nobody needs to be perpetually sad all the time. No one needs to be drinking all the time. That’s not a happy, healthy lifestyle, and when we put it in our back pocket and say it’s too embarrassing to discuss, we’re compounding it.”

Lannin Braddock

When Lannin Braddock was asked to co-chair Novant Health Brunswick Medical Center Foundation’s A Path Forward campaign, she knew her answer was, “Yes.”

The goal of the campaign is to raise $3.5 million to implement programs and services that will help people with mental illness, substance misuse, eating disorders and other behavioral health issues.

“This work is needed in this county, for sure,” she said. “I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to be involved in something that could change the county, change the state, change the United States.”

But for Braddock, the campaign is also personal.

”Everybody has been affected by behavioral health. I have, too,” she said.

Braddock, who launched her own commercial real estate business a few years ago, spent most of her childhood outside Baltimore. She attended an all-girls boarding school, where she witnessed multiple behavioral health issues firsthand. Girls in her school tried to commit suicide, suffered mental breakdowns and struggled with anorexia and bulimia.

“It’s always been in my world, and I’ve always thought there was a need for services to be available — and not just in big cities,” Braddock said.

Then, it struck closer to home.

Braddock has a brother, eight years her junior. As she recalls, he was the child who always liked taking risks, who was always a little defiant.

“I always joked that, if I tapped the envelope, he blew it off the table,” Braddock recalled.

In high school, he started smoking marijuana and drinking. He also attended boarding school, which eventually offered him an entrée into harder drugs. By the time he was 21 years old, he was addicted to heroin, Braddock said.

“At his first inpatient rehab, the doctor looked at him and said: ‘You’ll always be a drug addict. I don’t even know why you’re here,’” Braddock said. “He was asked to leave the program after violating their no smoking policy, and when that happened, my brother said, ‘I can do this on my own.’”

He enrolled in an outpatient program and successfully stopped using heroin.

“He’s been sober for six years now,” she said. “He’s gone back to college to finish his degree and wants to go into law school. And I think he’s going to do great things.”

As he went through the process, he realized he was self-medicating, using alcohol and drugs to manage underlying mental health issues. He’s not alone:  One in seven American adults has a mental health condition. And more than a quarter have experienced some type of behavioral health disorder in a given year.

Unfortunately, treatment options are limited. In Brunswick County, there is one mental healthcare provider for every 1,310 residents (the national average is a ratio of 490 to 1). Those who seek help are forced to rely on the emergency room for referrals to mental health treatment facilities, which can take days.

That is having a profound and devastating impact on the population. In Brunswick County, there were 162 heroin overdoses between January and June of 2019. Of those who suffered overdoses, 28 people died.

Braddock is fully aware that, had her brother not followed the road to recovery, he could have become a similar statistic.

“I’m blessed and thankful that he beat the statistics and the odds and that he’s still with us today,” she said.

Now, Braddock is committed to helping other families get the support they need, when they need it. Novant Health Brunswick Medical Center Foundation’s A Path Forward campaign focuses on a few key areas, such as expanding the ER at Novant Health Brunswick Medical Center. Plans are to dedicate five new beds to behavioral health patients and create programs that will offer support to schools in detecting mental health problems earlier in students’ lives.

“There’s not a nurse in every school, so even if children are struggling with things at home, there’s no one who is equipped to handle information like that,” Braddock said. “Most mental health crises are well-hidden. You don’t see them, and there’s no one to look out for these kids. It’s a problem compounded with a problem compounded with a problem.”

That means the potential for impact is extraordinary should new programs be implemented.

“I go back to my brother. No one was hearing him. No one was checking up on him to make sure he was really OK,” Braddock said. “I don’t know that it would have changed his story, but he probably needed someone to say, ‘Hey, let’s talk.’ And maybe some choices would have been different.”

A Path Forward kicked off in 2019 and recently held its first major fundraiser, which raised more than $40,000. That puts the campaign well on its way to hitting its $3.5 million goal in the next few years.

“It feels like I’m actually accomplishing something that could set a standard or precedent for a huge issue that we all struggle with — every state, everywhere,” Braddock said.

“Nobody needs to be perpetually sad all the time. No one needs to be drinking all the time. That’s not a happy, healthy lifestyle, and when we put it in our back pocket and say it’s too embarrassing to discuss, we’re compounding it.”

So Braddock talks about it. She raises money for it. And she recommends others in the community do the same.

“Novant Health is a nonprofit health system,” she explained. “They are in the community to serve you, and we should be giving back to them so they can continue to serve our future. They can’t afford to do that without our support.