The Necessary Conversation

Actress, director and producer Mädchen Amick has been gracing your TV sets for the past 30 years. You might know her as the intense mama bear Alice Cooper on the hit show Riverdale or as the young troubled waitress Shelly Johnson in the ‘90s cult-classic show Twin Peaks. Amick was destined to be in the arts, growing up with a musician father; she “grew up around the stage, and grew the love of music and performing.” After taking a theater class in high school, she fell in love with theater and acting, and “a light bulb went off like, ‘This is what I want to do.’”

Despite all of the success in her career, Amick’s most rewarding job is being the mother of two children, Mina and Sylvester. Like all families, they’ve had their own fair share of hardships and triumphs. In 2011, her son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and it was “something that was hard on the family.” The journey of her son’s mental health made Amick realize, however, that this topic wasn’t discussed enough. “We didn’t know where to go, what to do. There was no support system, and it just angered me so I said, ‘I’m going to change this,’” she recalls. The lack of conversation inspired this fierce mother to share her family’s story in an effort to erase the negative stigma attached to mental disorders. “Instead of putting people into a category and into a box and thinking, ‘They’re just weird,’ we should take the time to learn about it,” she affirms.

Although, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, 1 in 5 adults is living with a mental illness in the U.S., approximately 46.6 million in 2017, there hasn’t been enough dialogue about it, and Amick was clueless about the facts of her son’s diagnosis at first. Due to the lack of education, Amick was once one of those individuals who believed in the negative stigma associated with mental illness. “[The diagnosis] was a moment of complete shock. When I heard ‘bipolar,’ it felt like a death sentence for my son,” she shares. “After educating myself on it, I found out it was completely manageable, and you can live successful and happy lives with this diagnosis.”

After the shock of her son’s diagnosis wore off, it became a “tool for him and the family to use” – to help them understand him and work better as a family. “If we hadn’t found out his diagnosis, it would’ve been a lifetime of misunderstanding his moods,” she adds. “It made him understand himself and become his own best version.”

Amick wants to start implementing health reform so people with mental illness can get the help they need. “Instead of demonizing these people, we should really understand and have sympathy and empathy for them. People just want to ignore it, sweep it under the rug, and put it away,” says Amick, hoping to uplift families around the world and let them know they are not alone. “They can get through this, and there is a positive outcome. It doesn’t have to be a desperate situation. It can actually become a really beautiful journey.”

Writer: Gavy Contreras 

Photographer & Videographer: Catherine Asanov (@catherineasanov) 

Stylist: Andrew Philip Nguyen 

Hair: Ericka Verrett 

Makeup: Andre Sarmiento 

Editor: Eiko Watanabe 

Special thanks to Diablo Restaurant + Cantina (@diablotacola - www.diablotacos.com) & EPK Media (@myepk & @epkmedia - myepkmedia.com)