Ohana patient spotlight: Jaelyn Parker
Coping with adversity, embracing resilience, and building mental fitness
Jaelyn Parker is no stranger to adversity — she was quite literally born into. Parker and her twin sister were born prematurely, and for Parker, that resulted in cerebral palsy. Adversity is a recurring theme in Parker’s life, but so, too is resilience.
Parker never let cerebral palsy hold her back. She participated in beauty pageants, competed in the Special Olympics for track and field and earned a trip to compete at the state level, and was a paid contributor to Make Just Right, a design consultancy that specializes in helping products and services be more inclusive.
Immediately when I started at Ohana, it was clear that they would be my collaborative team working towards my best interest. When I met my psychiatrist, I fell in love with her. We got along and I enjoyed her company.
—Jaelyn Parker, Ohana patient
Parker had a harder time with excruciating anxiety and depression that was rooted in troubled personal relationships. The dynamic of some of her closest and most important relationships seemed to be defined by anger, arguments, and animosity, often causing Parker to isolate, withdraw, and shut down.
“I held a lot of resentment,” Parker says. “I had a difficult time expressing my emotions and how I felt, and I didn’t have the capacity to deal with my close relationships because I had issues of my own. It made me not trust people, not want to be around people, and I thought everything was dangerous.”
Those tense relationships resulted in Parker avoiding family time and often struggling to get out of bed. At age 12, Parker started thinking about suicide, struggling with her “will to live and be on this earth.” What Parker was going through was debilitating and painful.
Parker’s sister and brother were already receiving mental health treatment from Ohana, Montage Health’s innovative mental health program serving youth and their families throughout Monterey County. During a family group session, the family's Ohana therapist recognized Parker's distress. That’s when Parker began receiving Ohana’s outpatient therapy services.
“Immediately when I started at Ohana, it was clear that they would be my collaborative team working towards my best interest,” Parker said. "When I met my psychiatrist, I fell in love with her. We got along and I enjoyed her company.”
Parker’s time at Ohana consisted of outpatient cognitive behavioral therapy and she was put on medication that she says was a lifesaver. “For the entire hour we would talk about situations that would happen and how I could handle them without having panic attacks. We’d work through my trust issues and the ways that my toxic relationships affected me."
Parker’s time at Ohana didn’t come without significant challenges. During treatment, her therapist recognized that Parker also suffered from anorexia, and her suicidal thoughts reached a point where she was briefly hospitalized.
Ohana worked with Parker, standing by her side through every step of her healing journey. Parker learn tools and skills to manage her anxiety and depression in ways that would build upon her already strong foundation of resilience and help her develop mental fitness. “Even though I still have anxiety and hard days with depression, I have the skills now to be able to cope and get through those difficult moments without doing something that is detrimental to my health and well-being,” she says.
In two years of hard work at Ohana, Parker came a long way. Despite everything she faced, she maintained excellent academic scores, earning a spot in Fresno State University’s Business Administration program where she just started her sophomore year.
“Today I’m somewhere I never thought I would be,” Parker says. "I’m not pretending anymore. I have a newfound hope. I didn’t think I would live through my freshman year of high school, let alone my freshman year of college. And that's because my team at Ohana was there to support me and guide me through every experience.”
Although the adversity that Parker faced was the root of her anxiety and depression, it also contributed to who she is and who she aspires to be. “Now I work as an advocate for kids and students with disabilities. That has become one of the main purposes of my life and something I really want to do for the world.”
