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Group Promotes Support for Mentally Ill Though “Listening Well”
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Group Promotes Support for Mentally Ill Though “Listening Well”
New Funding for Mental Health Services on the Way
By Michael Thomas
For Joy McCorkle her descent into mental illness began with a rush of color. At the time, she taught in public schools, working with students with special needs.
“I drove into the schoolyard, shut off the motor and looked through the windshield,” she recalls. “A large chartreuse cloud came from the right and from the left came a cloud of lavender. … It covered the whole building.”
McCorkle decided not to report her visions.
“‘Great, I’m hallucinating,’ I thought to myself. I taught that day, in a classroom full of bright and eager green and purple children. Leaving that afternoon, I caught myself trying to drive onto the off ramp of the 101 freeway.”
McCorkle tells the story of her first “break” in lucid and intelligent prose. Her sense of humor defies the terrible suffering that she experienced in the years following that moment in the school parking lot.
Now she is openly sharing her story as part of the Listening Well program. The group aims to reduce the suffering and stigma associated with mental illness by cultivating a broader understanding of how it strikes people from all walks of life and working in a variety of professions.
The program was started by Paula Comunelli, who is based in Felton and was the founding Director for the Santa Cruz County Mental Health Coalition. The Coalition held three summits on mental health issues, first in April and October of 2003 and again in November of 2004. One of the summit’s successes was engaging people recovering from mental health problems in discussions of how to improve the support system.
One of the problems raised was the lack of prevention and early onset treatment to help individuals before their lives are torn apart by mental illness.
Now that the Coalition is dormant, Comunelli has turned her focus to the stories. She started Listening Well for Mental Health and is doing presentations around the State for mental health professionals and other groups.
New Money Coming to Mental Health Treatment
Comunelli hopes that the real-life stories told by Listening Well participants will help to shape priorities for a flood of money headed for mental health treatment in California.
State voters passed the Mental Health Services Act in November of 2004, placing a 1 percent tax on incomes over $1 million. In this, the Act’s first full year, the Act is expected to generate $683 million for new and expanded mental health programs.
“If we can have providers listen to these stories, they can see what’s working for those people that have come through [mental illnesses,]” Comunelli explained.
Many of the program participants have spent time on the streets or living in cars.
“They are telling their stories because they can,” Comunelli said. “I also have bipolar disorder, so I know what it means to be living with the gifts and challenges of mental health issues.”
Comunelli’s own story demonstrates the danger of attaching stigma to mental illness and hiding it away.
“My grandmother committed suicide but no one told me until I was 28 and I had [experienced] my first ‘break,’” she said. “My mother said [my grandmother] was so depressed she didn’t leave the house for three days.”
Comunelli said that at the time she couldn’t find a forum to discuss her feelings.
“There’s no forum for people to start to talk about this to make it ok,” she added.
Now she is changing that, with the help of people brave enough to tell their stories.
Ellen’s Story
Sixteen years ago, Ellen started wrangling with a two-headed beast " mental health problems and substance abuse. A large percentage of those individuals officially diagnosed with a mental health disease " about 50 percent, according to the National Comorbidity survey " have turned to drugs at some point. Starting the recovery process forced her to confront suppressed memories of childhood abuse, she says.
Her story demonstrates how recovery can be a long process, and even with support from the County’s Mental Health Resources, backsliding was a constant threat.
In 1990, Ellen was newly sober and she joined a “dual-diagnosis” group called Double Trouble that addressed both mental health and addiction.
“We could talk openly with each other about medication and other challenges. I made progress and got to where I felt pretty good,” she recalls.
But the feeling of success prompted her to quit taking her medication.
“Within a short time I was propelled into a manic state. I was delusional,” Ellen said.
One evening she decided to move to Davenport and started out on foot. Propelled by manic energy, she kept walking into the night along the North Coast. Then a police car pulled up behind her.
Jolted by the headlights and the glint of a badge, she recoiled in fear. She told the officer she was training for the Olympics. The officer said he was just called out to help. He said there had been a rape nearby just weeks earlier.
Her defenses fell. She accepted a ride home, high on a brush with danger and survival.
More challenges followed. Like many people with mental illnesses, Ellen was rejected by members of her family. The deaths of her mother and brother sent her tumbling through the darkness, utterly alone and depressed.
“Then my miracle happened. A lay minister came out and talked to me. She got me back in touch with my coordinator who got me hospitalized and stabilized on medicine,” she explained.
Points of light materialized: she got a Section 8 housing voucher from the Housing Authority and found a riverside apartment with a view of the ocean. She enrolled at Cabrillo College and graduated with a degree in French. Then came a job. She now works as a counselor for other dual-diagnosis patients.
“I began to carry the message of hope and recovery to others,” she says of the years as a counselor. “As I did, so did I recover.”
“Shrinks” Have Problems Too
Art Anton is a professional psychologist, but last year he had a frightening brush with severe depression. His story demonstrates that you don’t have to be on the street to experience mental illness, and with early intervention, you don’t have to end up there either.
In March last year, Art started feeling depressed, but unlike normal mood swings, it didn’t seem related to anything in particular " and it wouldn’t stop.
“I felt extremely depressed, day, after day, after day,” he explains. “I sat in my office listening to my clients and wanting to scream, ‘You think you’ve got troubles? Look at me!’”
He couldn’t find pleasure in any normal pursuits, and each long day was spent looking forward to its end. The feelings made no sense.
“My marriage and home life were going well. My cat wasn’t ignoring me, at least not all of the time … and I was doing work that I love,” Art explained.
After two months of struggling, Art went to see his primary care physician and asked to be put on an anti-depressant.
“I had to face up to the fact that I was getting into deep trouble,” he said.
His doctor prescribed Prozac, and says it was a lifesaver for him " though not the right course for everyone. He cautioned that mentally healthy people who are entering their golden years should be wary of unexplainable changes in mood or behavior.
“I am an older person, 75, and older folks like me are prone to mood disorders that can crop up rather suddenly as a result of changes in body chemistry,” he explained. “Being a psychologist did not make me special or save me.”
A Long Wait for the Right Diagnosis
For Joy, the special education teacher, 23 years passed between that moment in the parking lot and the day she found the medication and support services she needed to put her life back together.
She remembers the intervening years as a patchwork of painful images. She found herself living in a tent city of homeless people in Phoenix, Arizona. The climate there is easier to manage while living on the streets, but it also contributed to one of her confusing episodes.
“I remember feeling so dry that I would do anything for some lotion. Someone gave me Crisco with which I generously lathered my body,” she recalls.
She was in a vacant dirt lot next to a Salvation Army and found herself covered in dirt and grease.
With help just out of reach, she was exposed to abuse and was raped on more than one occasion. Once it was at the hands of a seemingly friendly man she met on a bus to a church service. Recognizing her vulnerability, the man found her later in the tent city, where he pulled her by the hair into a tent and struck her with a flashlight. He invited other men, whose faces she doesn’t remember, to join in the horrible abuse.
“The mind is a wonderful thing. Some things the mind chooses not to remember,” she said.
Other memories were stra-ngely beautiful, but nonetheless painful.
“I remember looking into the clouds and seeing my husband riding a beautiful Morgan horse to come rescue me, but he never materialized,” she recalls.
The fantasy of a rescuer isn’t uncommon for people suffering mental illness. But like many who have escaped the streets, Joy realized that she had to save herself. She got a bus pass to go to Maricopa County Hospital. At the bus stop, she found a pregnant woman and asked for her help.
“Could I hold onto her blouse while she guided me to the hospital grounds?” Joy writes.
At the psychiatric unit she was asked why she needed help. She pointed to her feet, which were bleeding from a week of pacing barefoot, unable to sleep because she couldn’t find a safe place to lie down. At the hospital, a psychologist told her she had bipolar disorder.
“I was finally put on the correct medication … 23 years after I saw my first psychiatrist,” she said.
Six years ago, Joy was back in Santa Cruz County and found the Mental Health Client Action Network, on Cayuga Street near Soquel Avenue. There she was em-powered by a network of peers who understood her struggles from their own experience.
At the drop-in center, she learned computer skills so that she could put her poetry on paper. Peers encouraged her to cultivate her obvious talents. She went to Cabrillo to continue with computers and creative writing courses, and ended up getting a job as a receptionist.
After years of living a stable, happy life, she has embraced the insight that floated in with those prismatic clouds. “My mental illness has allowed me to see through unique eyes, eyes that see color where others see black and white,” she wrote in a Listening Well memoir. “My illness has made me see with my heart.”
[subehad]Officials Promise Money from Prop 63 to be Put to Good Use
Mental health patients often endure long periods of homelessness, drug addiction and sometimes even abuse before a correct diagnosis is made. Delays and lack of resources raise the inevitable question of whether years of living in pain and fear could be averted if the public safety net were expanded to catch more emerging problems.
In recent years, funding for mental health programs has been in a constant decline, forcing officials to focus resources on the most needy.
“The less money there was, the more scared people got and the less they reached out,” Paula Comunelli explained. Comunelli lives in Felton and was the founding Director for the Santa Cruz County Mental Health Coalition. As a result of cuts, she said “there is no place to go for help for people who are seemingly functional.”
According to Carolyn Stewart, the County’s Interim Mental Health and Substance Abuse Director, “the bulk of the County services are for the most severely mentally ill and the most severely challenged.”
Decades ago, then-Governor Ronald Reagan initiated a shift away from State-operated institutions to locally provided services that promised more opportunities for patients to return to normal life. Regardless of the merits of that plan, without money counties could never fully meet the challenge.
The passage of the Mental Health Services Act has raised hopes that funding guaranteed to counties decades ago will finally appear. Stewart said that expanded funding could reach Santa Cruz County as soon as this spring.
In November, County Mental Health released their first three-year plan, outlining how the first round of funding from the Act would be directed towards expanded community services and support.
“Generally, there is going to be money to address a lot of the unserved needs,” Stewart said. If the State approves the County’s plan, many of the new services will be focused on children and Latinos.
From Counseling to Independent Living Programs
The plan includes new staff for a slew of programs, from counselors working with local school districts to boosted funding for non-profits that assist with housing and independent living.
A Center for Hope and Healing is among the proposals. The 10-bed residential facility would have six full-time counselors and would serve individuals in crisis or transitioning out of psychiatric facilities and nursing homes.
The Mental Health Client Action Network, where Joy found support, could get two new half-time “peer supporters.” The Network would also be the site of a new Wellness Center that links the needy with essential County services.
Comunelli said the Plan was assembled rapidly to meet State deadlines, but she said that it incorporated a good amount of feedback from users of the system.
“They have never asked as many people for input as they [did] this last round,” she said.
The plan also includes a full-time discharge planner at the County Jail who would facilitate prompt release and help connect inmates suffering from mental health problems with housing and other resources.
That’s one step towards addressing a major problem that Comunelli sees in the existing system.
“We keep saving the same people. They go through the hospital, they go through the jail, they get [back] on the street,” she said. “Those are very expensive ways to take care of our mentally ill.”
In a second round of funding from the Mental Health Services Act, Comunelli sees the potential for more prevention services. She said the Mental Health Coalition may regroup to provide a voice for the mentally ill when planning for that round of funding begins.
In the meantime, Stewart said that the current plan has been approved by the Mental Health Board and the County Board of Supervisors. On Feb. 7, local officials will head to Sacramento to discuss the slew of new programs with State regulators.
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