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You are here: Home / Events and Outreach / Community Outreach / Keep Moving Forward / Transcript: Kate Eifrig – Reaching True Parity

Transcript: Kate Eifrig – Reaching True Parity

[Music]

[Logo: Ampers, with tagline: Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities.]

[Photo: Kate Eifrig]

Kate Eifrig: I want to be very “out” about mental illness because stigma is a killer, and if I can talk about it and it helps one person, that’s worth my social anxiety for the day.

[Logo: Ampers, with taglines: Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities, and Keep Moving Forward.]

Host: This is Keep Moving Forward.

[Photo: President George H.W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. Photo courtesy of the George Bush Presidential Library.]

George H.W. Bush: Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.

[Logos: ADA 25: Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990-2015, and Disability Rights Are Civil Rights. Logos courtesy of the ADA National Network, www.adata.org.]

Host: Exploring the legacy and promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

[Photos: Kate Eifrig and her service dog]

Kate Eifrig: My name is Kate Eifrig. I have refractory treatment-resistant major clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

For 17 years I was, other people say, a very successful actor in the Twin Cities and in the last four years of my career I was extremely sick, and nobody knew.

What almost anybody with mental illness will tell you is one of the frustrating things is its invisibility. Because you want it to look like you hurt. You want to look like you have a big bloody bandage wrapped around your head.

An equitable society for people with mental illnesses, it would stop being called “mental illnesses.” It would just be called an “illness.” If we reach true parity, it won’t be called “mental health,” it will just be called “health.”

[Logos: the Minnesota Council on Disability, the Minnesota Humanities Center, the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund, and the Ampers radio station.]

Host: Keep Moving Forward is supported by the Minnesota Council on Disability, the Minnesota Humanities Center, and the Minnesota Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund, online at Ampers.org.

Page last updated: September 24, 2021

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