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Father's coast-to-coast jog raises funds for mental illnessFeb 03, 2011 (The Sun - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A man is running over 2,600 miles from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast to raise money and awareness for people with a mental illness. Guy Fessenden, who recently ran through Yuma, began on Oct. 2 near Savannah, Ga., and hopes to complete 100 marathons in 140 days, finishing near Los Angeles on Feb. 19. "I started with my toes in the Atlantic Ocean and I will finish with my toes in the Pacific," he told the Yuma Sun recently during a phone interview. "I do three days of running 26 miles each, and the fourth day I rest. Right now I have completed marathon number 89. I have 11 to go, until we get to the Santa Monica pier." Fessenden was inspired to run such a long distance by his 28-year-old daughter Suzanne, who has schizophrenia. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, schizophrenia is a mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses and to behave normally in social situations. "Suzanne started hearing voices in her head when she was about 13," Fessenden said. "It went on for about three years but she didn't tell anyone, which I guess points to the stigma of mental illness. It is something we just don't want to talk about. We don't deal with it. We put it in the closet, we turn off the lights, we lock the door and cover our eyes and ears and make believe it isn't there." The voices would tell extremely negative things to Suzanne, Fessenden said. Fessenden took his daughter to several doctors to find out what ailed her, but no one could give an accurate diagnosis. It finally lead to Suzanne's first hospitalization at the age of 16. Fessenden said his daughter has been hospitalized 20 times over the past 12 years. "At one point she was in a two-week program she repeated over and over again for two and a half years because they didn't know what else to do with her. There was nothing else we as her parents could do for her except put her into a state institution which is just throw away the key -- you never see her again and it is horrific conditions." When medications weren't enough, and not willing to have Suzanne committed, Fessenden and his wife decided to proceed with their doctor's recommendation of Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), or shock therapy. Fessenden said the therapy didn't work. "In her case she lost most of her short-term memory, years of memories and her ability to be able to think in complete sentences. Now if she speaks in a sentence -- by the time she gets to the end she forgot what she started to talk about -- and it is a direct result of ECT." Fessenden wants to get the word out and raise money so a new less harmful treatment can be discovered. "It goes to help people like my daughter so they don't have to use things like ECT which was invented in the 1930s. What other form of illness do we have where the leading technology is 80 years old? This may be the best technology available, but it is horrible." The proceeds from donations garnered along the way will benefit many organizations including the Brain and Behavior Research Fund and the National Association for Mental Illness. For more information about Fessenden's cause log on to http://afathersjourney.org/blog/ or facebook.com/afathersjourney. Chris McDaniel can be reached at [email protected] or 539-6849. To see more of The Sun or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.yumasun.com/. Copyright (c) 2011, The Sun, Yuma, Ariz. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. |