Active Minds National Speaker Colleen Coffey

National Speaker Colleen Coffey from Active Minds shares her story, “A Complete Life”, relating her earliest memories of anxiety at the age of three, through her teens, and into adulthood. With a family history of mental health disorders, she was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, disordered eating and obsessive/compulsive disorder at a young age but did not get correct treatment until much later in life. In spite of a high school and college career that included leadership positions, starring roles, and popularity Colleen silently suffered panic attacks, extreme stress, and feelings of emptiness. While in graduate school, she found proper treatment, and with a combination of psychiatric and medical doctors, a therapist and a nutritionist, she broke out of the cycle of being angry, sad, anxious and preoccupied. She learned that diagnoses don’t lead her life, healthy coping skills were accessible, and she was good enough as herself. Colleen has become a widely-sought speaker and consultant, devoted to showing audiences that mental health disorders are often a product of biology or environment, or both, and that recovery is possible, stigma is useless, and everyone holds the power to transform communities