Cohen Miles-Rath
Appearances
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
When I share that part of my story about going through the incarceration system and my experience with that, I think it opens up that discussion. Clearly, jail was not the right place for me, if you hear more about what it was like to be in solitary confinement with psychosis. But what would be the place for me in that type of state? I thought I was in hell.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
I was trying to give birth to Satan's child. I literally physically tried to do that in the middle of a cell. There are so many dark, difficult things. But what place would be best for me to recover in a state of like that? I don't know. There's a discussion there. There's a discussion there. There's a way to approach that better. And it's a complex system. And there's no one easy answer.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Yeah, I appreciate you having me.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
So I'm always trying to be open to hearing the multiple perspectives and striving for the best solution, which I'm not sure what is. But I think we can get there.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
My goals over the three to five years is first, I really just want to get my story out there, which it's already been out there, but I'm excited for my book publication. And I'm really hoping that continue the momentum with that, get more speaking engagements because of it. This summer, I'm actually going to a conference out in Texas.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
It's called Empath Consulting, and they've created an alternative to emergency crises for mental health crises. So I'm really interested in learning more about that model that they've started to implement in a couple of states and share my perspective there to help them fine tune that type of model.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And if it works, I would like to just continue getting in front of those type of mental professionals, people in the field, people doing this work. So that way they could find ways to better fine tune what they're doing and advocate for those changes that they need in their own communities. Because every community is different. Every state is different.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
I have been in the mental health advocacy field for more than a half a decade now. I worked at the Mental Health Association in New York State for five years. If you're familiar with the MHA Network on Mental Health America, they're an affiliate of theirs. And it was work around policy advocacy, implementing training throughout New York State, mental health-related training.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
It's just basically to continue that momentum and hopefully just get more opportunities to do this. Would I love to write another book? Yes. That will hopefully come down the line right now. It's just get my book out there and start speaking as much as I can.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Yeah, when I share my experience, I go back to childhood because I go step by step. I'm not diving into everything in my life, but I'm touching on these key points from childhood to college to when I first started facing mental illness, when my signs and symptoms got worse, when I got intervention in hospital, and then when I faced a crisis and the whole recovery portion.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And I've done that because... In this framework of mental health field and how we can better approach mental health, it is just so complex. So when I talk about my childhood, I talk about some adverse childhood experiences, ACEs, something that has a lot of research behind it that shows that it's a risk factor for future mental health challenges and so forth.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
I'm using my expertise that I've learned in mental health advocacy in my story throughout the time so that way it's not just, oh, this was just my experience, but there is research and knowledge behind all of this that I use to show how there were so many opportunities prior to that incident in which I could have gotten the help or my help could have been more effective.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
to where the incident could have been prevented and it did not have to get to that crisis point for me to finally accept my mental illness. And I hope that when people hear that, they're like, they're thinking like, oh, I could do something now if I'm struggling. I could help someone else who I know is struggling so that way helping them could get more effective.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
So they're never at that potential crisis point or even like getting to a point where they're just really struggling and no one is willing to help.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
I always say that recovery is not just possible, but probable in the right circumstances. We, as family, as friends, as coworkers, as parents, as just people in the community, we have that opportunity and space to help create those circumstances in which people are more likely to get the help they need. And that, to me, speaks to that good side of this conversation and this hopeful aspect to it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
We offered a bunch of different trainings and so forth. In the past year, I moved on to the New York State Office of Mental Health, which I work for the Suicide Prevention Center, in which I do similar work, but geared towards suicide prevention. That's my professional space.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Yes, we can dive into specific policies that might change certain aspects in the systems that would help improve. But that's one piece of this. There's so much more to just how our network, our social network and our communities and our interpersonal relationships and even ourselves can do to start making that change within and be in better positions where people,
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
If we're ever in a position of facing a mental health challenge or even experiencing mental illness, we're better positioned to manage it and to change it and to support it. So, like, I know a big component for me, and I'm interested in people you've also talked to. Like, there's a big responsibility on my own.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Ever since I'd gotten my diagnosis and went through that experience, like, I have a responsibility to manage that. I do. And if I ever struggle with it, I go to my family, I go to my dad, I go to my girlfriend, I talk to people because I know that I can rely on them or have them be there to support me through it if I'm struggling to manage it myself.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Getting to that point of acceptance for the individual is a very challenging thing. And I wouldn't want anyone to go through such a severe crisis to finally have that awareness of it, but rather to creating completely different circumstances long before that ever happened so that a way they're more likely to accept it initially.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
I think one of the most important things to tell people about this is, there's so much, but I think... conversations around mental health have increased significantly, especially since COVID had happened. And there's been so many positives with that. And I think the conversations have just been amazing. And I think this is an important piece.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
There needs to be recognition of mental illness is a bit different than a mental health challenge when you start to face certain signs and symptoms of mental illness. And it does take a different approach than having a fight with someone or going through a job loss or something like that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
There are certain aspects of mental illness that not everyone faces, but a lot of people do just based on certain predispositions or other factors. So I think there still is a lot of stigma with certain mental illness, particularly with schizophrenia, psychosis and so forth.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Now, I also have my own story with mental illness in which I've written a memoir about and I am publishing that memoir this year. I've spent about six years trying to get this thing published. And on top of that, I've been out doing speaking engagements, telling my story, sharing the peer perspective about going through systems such as incarceration and hospitalizations and so forth.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
So as the greater public is having a conversation about mental health, I just want to make sure that we're also talking about these types of diagnoses and these types of signs and symptoms that look different for every person, but also that we need to talk about that as well. And we need to be open about that too, because anyone can face a mental illness. One in five people do.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
So we just kind of make sure we're taking care of those who are most vulnerable and struggle potentially the most.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Yeah. And I'm very forward with the incident that I went through to minimize like Attacking my dad with a knife, believing the devil was inside him because at face value, people read that and they're like, oh my God, like it's so hard to fathom. And it's so stigmatized. I faced significant shame ever since that happened. Gone through processes of managing that and my work has reduced that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
But still, to bring something like that to the table, I think helps to be like, okay, like making people have empathy for me, right? With that situation, I think helps other people to have empathy for anyone who goes through something such as that and encourages us to do more so that away, again, people don't get to that crisis point.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Mm-hmm. Initially, the first time that I'd felt significant shame due to my situation was after I'd gotten out of jail. And I went on the Facebook and I looked at the comments on the news articles about me. My mugshot plastered everywhere. Words saying, son bites his father's ear off. The comments, they were making jokes. They were making jokes about Mike Tyson. They were just brutal.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
I remember reading those. And I remember... I felt the shame, but also at the same time, I was like, okay, these people, I don't know these people. They're strangers to me. They don't know anything about what had happened. And I just knew that. And I was like, I, so I wasn't like significantly bothered because I was like, I'm still here and I'm going to prove them wrong.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And that probably helped fuel my whole path to in some aspect is that I wanted to show them and I wanted to tell them like, okay, there's so much more to this. And it wasn't just the public who had also shamed me. I heard rumors from people in college, my friends. So there's always been a level of uncertainty with people's comfortableness with me and willingness to do that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
But ever since I've gotten to the point where I am and I'm trying to be more active on social media and everything that I've done so far, like I can see the cognitive shift in people that I've interacted with throughout the years that
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
I could tell that they built empathy for me and that level of empathy has increased because I've been able to show my perspective, reveal it, and I've been very active with it, which not everyone does and that's okay.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
But hopefully if they can have empathy for my incident, maybe when they see something in the news about another incident or something else that happens and they don't know enough about it, maybe they'll have more empathy for that too.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Yeah. Thank you for having me, Tony. I really appreciate this conversation.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Yeah, so that's a great question because I did not have any inclination to accept anything the difficulties that I was facing with my mental health, which did increase to a severe mental health crisis until after the worst of my mental health crisis had happened. And that was the day that I came back from psychosis in jail, where I had come back to reality and realizing what had happened.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
From that moment on, I did a complete 180, embracing mental health treatments, accepting my mental illness, and eventually getting to where I'm at today.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Due to the incidents that had happened between my father and I that I was arrested for, my first week in jail, I was in like a severe state of psychosis. I was in solitary confinement. And I'd experienced just this horrific situation in which When I did come back and realized what had happened, I wasn't sure I was ever going to get out. I had two felonies, potential felonies.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And fortunately, due to a lot of certain circumstances, the court recognized what had happened was clearly a result of a severe mental illness. And I'd been hospitalized twice before this too, so there was a little bit of history and past to that, in which I was able to get out of jail after 30 days. I had mandatory treatments. I was on probation for a year. It was a conditional discharge.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
So it wasn't just I'm getting out. That's it. There were certain things that I had to do to maintain my freedom or everything could come back. And one felony was dropped. The other felony was reduced down to a misdemeanor. I did get that on my record.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
How I like to frame that part of my experience is really through what's known as the four dimensions of recovery, which a lot of mental health organizations talk about the four dimensions of recovery, which are purpose, home, health, and community. So like when I got out of the jail, my mom opened up her home. My parents were separated. They had been separated all my life.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And due to the incident with my dad, he wasn't willing to let me live with him for valid reasons. It took a lot of us to build our trust together. But my mom opened the doors. She gave me a place of home, a place of comfort, a place where I could really just focus on managing my treatment. So like I lived with my mom. I picked up a job at Burger King, so I gained some independence.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Fortunately, I was in a spot where I could walk to work. I didn't have a car. I was able to walk to my treatment. I was seeing a psychiatrist or a nurse practitioner. I was seeing group therapy. I was seeing substance misuse therapy. And I was seeing a mental health counselor, like four things every week, right? And that's how dedicated my rehabilitation was to the health dimension.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
A lot of that I had to do as part of my conditional discharge process. In that space, I was very vulnerable and I was very active in wanting to know how to manage my mental health and my diagnosis a lot better than I was before. So health home was taken care of. The community aspect, I still had a lot of friends.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
I was in a community of support too that really, I think, supported me in getting through that process. And then lastly, purpose. Before I went to jail, I was going to college, a four-year degree at SUNY Geneseo, which is a small university in upstate New York. I was expelled after what happened when I got arrested.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
I was able to get back in after I got out of jail, and there I was able to finish out my degree. I had a couple classes left. I was able to get my degree and a plan for the future, which was to pursue my master's degree in social work. So I had a purpose to my life that really helped me go from jail to grad school within a year or so, something like that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
It was a very tough time in my life. There were days because I'd have to walk a mile to Burger King to work. I was also taking medication and some of the side effects of the medication included feeling draggy and slow and like my creative thinking was gone. It's really tough. It was a really tough time because there were a lot of times I doubted myself.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And even when trying to get pursue a master's degree in social work, I had a huge stigma over my experience that I went through. I'd attacked my dad with a knife and that was in the local news, like when the incident happened. And that created barriers for me worrying about getting accepted in the grad school. Every grad school asked, have you ever been expelled from college? I had to say yes.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And then I had to share my story in a way that would get them to understand. There was a lot of doubt. And I like to think that I was really privileged to have all those four dimensions and really strengthen those four dimensions really helped me just keep that forward momentum going. I will also add that prior to all of this, I was also a big athlete all my life. I was a very
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
very dedicated distance runner. And a lot of those characteristics that I've learned in that sport, I think helped me to do the same in this process where you have to do a lot of hard work to get where you want to get and to be your idea of success with whatever it is.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Yeah, so I initially wanted to get my master's in social work to become a substance use counselor or a therapist. That was what I initially had thought of. But then in grad school, as I continued to learn about mental health from that clinical point of view and with social work, they don't just focus on direct service. That degree, they do branch out to advocacy and the more macro work.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And I realized in my studies there that that's just how my mind went, how my mind thinks. So that's when I really wanted to be more involved with the advocacy piece. And then it was all about just finding a position after grad school that could align with that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And I know that with my story, with my experience, I always knew that I wanted to bring that into the picture because what I learned is that stories can really make an impact. When people hear these types of experiences, it allows them to relate and understand another person's point of view with it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And I think that helps to fuel more effective advocacy and more effective ideas and how there are certain things that we can change in our systems, our culture to better serve people who might go through those type of experiences as well.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
The first time that I wrote about my experience, the first time that I was vulnerable in that public space was actually in my second year of grad school. When I had done that, I wrote a blog post for NAMI, National Alliance of Mental Illness.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And that really, I think, based on people's responses and how people would come up to me afterwards and be vulnerable about themselves, to me, that was like, okay, there's something wrong. to that. There was something to me being vulnerable in a public space that could help others. And that was a spark.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Once I got in my professional position, I got my eight dimensions of wellness all structured, my financial wellness, I'm living comfortably. I can now open up my experience in a much more versatile way. And that's when I started writing my memoir and putting my heart and soul into that so I could really leap forward with it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Yes, it's A Mending Reality, An Advocate's Existential Journey with Mental Health.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
Yes, I will say that as soon as I started putting pen to paper, I mean, and it flowed. Part of that writing experience was coping for me. The experience with psychosis, being in jail, thinking that I was a prophet, thinking that I discovered the truth of the universe. There was a grandiose nature to it too. It's such a challenging experience.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And even the incident with my dad, attacking him, that haunted my dreams for many years after the incident. So going through that writing process, it really served my own therapeutic process of just putting it out there and reading it and it helped to cope with it. And in many cases, it was triggering. But again, being vulnerable with myself, I think,
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
helped me really understand myself even better my mental health my diagnosis and there was a lot of challenges since I've written it but it was definitely very helpful I think overall in just my own mental health I mean I spent five years on this thing this book and I didn't know if it was going to get published or not for a long time and that was a whole different set of challenges that I've
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
somehow found a way to overcome and get to the position where it's actually going to be released and i will say that i'm not terrified a lot of people have read this book but not the general public so it does get a lot of reads i'm not worried or stressed about how people might react to it because the way that i've written it i really think can impact people significantly and make them understand that type of experience a lot further
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
That's the most meaningful part of doing my work with this. Last year, about a year ago, stood before 200 plus mental health advocates at an advocacy day up in Albany. I had 10 minutes to share my story in a way that captivated them and inspired them to advocate right there. The way I structure my speaking, I try to make it gripping and pull you in.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
The first sentence I say is, when I was 22 years old, facing a mental health crisis, I tried to kill my dad. And I remember when I say that, the audience, you see those gasps, you see those eyes widen, and then it's a hook that pulls them in. Then I take it apart, right? And I'm like, what could have prevented this? And they're seeing me at the stage.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
They're seeing someone who's done that in front of them. And I think that in itself is, wow. There's a lot more to this story. There's so much more to the story. I did have many students come up to me after that talk, just thank me for being vulnerable and appreciating me doing that because the advocacy day is really meant to provide a space for that.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And when eventually during the day they go out and they allow students to grab the mic and share their own story, I could hear them. sharing their difficulties and their challenges. And I do like to think that by me doing that, created a space for them to do that themselves.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
And I think that just helps to fuel this momentum around changing how we approach mental health in circumstances that are very difficult.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Cohen Miles-Rath: How One Man Transformed Crisis into a Call for Change
At this point in my career, I'm geared more towards trying to improve our trainings and our education around mental health. As far as like specific incarceration systems, I do keep up to date with what is happening and I will support other people's work with that.