By Sarah Arnquist, Photos by Christine Baker
Choosing recovery--A glimpse into the lives of people living with mental illness
By Sarah Arnquist, Photos by Christine Baker
Aug. 21, 2005
They are among society's most vulnerable.
These people live with mental illness. Their diagnoses range from bipolar to schizoaffective to severely depressed with symptoms and treatments as varied as their life stories.
They all spend most days at Donovan's Place, a drop-in center run for and by people with mental illnesses in Fairfield. In addition to offering shelter to many people whose board and care homes lock them out during the day, Donovan's Place provides symptom management groups, education classes and companionship.
People withstand the unpredictable elements of mental illness in the way a community withstands a hurricane. Those with solid support systems can endure and often emerge stronger while those without crumble.
Historically, the United States has not provided sufficient support systems for the mentally ill. California took a major step last fall to change that when voters passed Proposition 63, now called the Mental Health Services Act. By taxing the state's millionaires an extra 1 percent, the Act provides millions in additional funding to community mental health services. Solano County officials are now deciding how to spend these funds.
The Act is designed specifically to protect these most vulnerable individuals from institutional care - where most say they would be if not for Donovan's Place. At some point, each of these individuals fell through the system's cracks into hospital psych wards, jails and the streets.
The men and women at Donovan's Place face the same daily struggles as all Americans: Family feuds, broken hearts, job security. But their mental illnesses confound every problem and permeate every aspect of their lives.
Under the voices and medications and behind the depression and mania, though, they are sisters, sons, mothers and spouses. They have hopes and dreams for loving families and fulfilling careers. They fear failure and rejection.
In the following passages, seven people describe the stigma of mental illness and how it impacts them. They also discuss their paths to recovery - a hope many rediscovered at Donovan's Place.
Cami Harper
"At times I think, why me? Why did I have to have this?"
Cami Harper, 31, can't help but ask those questions. She said she gets angry "because I don't think it's fair to have to go through this life with a mental illness."
As she gets older, Harper is coming to terms with her fate. She stops the negative thoughts as soon as they begin. She chooses instead to focus on recovery.
Harper grew up in Fairfield. She graduated from Armijo High School in 1991 with a 3.89 grade point average. Bipolar disorder interrupted high school.
"I had a nervous breakdown at 15," she said. Her parents, scared for her safety, sent her to the hospital for three months.
Harper doesn't know how she became bipolar. She knows that she was molested as a child, and that studies show a high correlation between sexual abuse and mental illness.
Harper spent four months of 2004 in the hospital. Afterward, she knew things had to change if she wanted to regain custody of her 2-year-old daughter. She already lost one child, a son who was adopted by another family, and she's determined not to let that happen again.
"When I lost custody of my daughter, that changed my life," she said.
Poetry brought Harper to Donovan's Place. Writing has been her outlet since childhood. She led poetry groups at Donovan's until March, when her daughter came home. The groups raised Harper's self-esteem. Her shell fell away.
"The more that you're around positive people, or people that understand your situation, the more you grow as a person and the stronger you become," she said.
Harper said uneducated ideas and stereotypes perpetuate the stigma around mental illness. Educating school children could break down the stigma, she said.
"Some of us have a disadvantage in life, but we still want to be treated the same as everyone else," she said. "We want to be supported rather than pushed aside."
Harper has hope for the future. She plans to be active in her recovery. That means, she said, discussing her medications and treatment with her psychiatrist, participating in self-help groups and building a positive support system.
Several people in Harper's family live with mental illness, and she worries about passing an illness onto her children.
"I'm hoping that neither of my children end up with a problem, but if they do at least I can be there for them because I understand what it's like. But I wouldn't want them to go through what I go through."
Doris Bailey
Mental illness is criminal, and life is too hard, Doris Bailey said.
"My story is, I'm in mental health right now because I've been beat up and brutalized by society and my family for the past 30 years."
Bailey, 61, grew up in San Francisco. She graduated from Mission High School in 1963 and married shortly thereafter. She had her first child at age 19, and then her husband left.
"I worked and supported myself and two children. No one helped us," she said.
Bailey tells her story like a soloist belting out her aria. She has buttery brown skin that stretches tightly across defined cheekbones, hinting at the beautiful young women she once was. Her lips curl around her toothless smile.
Bailey has good childhood memories, but they stop there, she said. The single mom worked long hours in retail stores and supermarkets. She was poor. Life was hard. People piled problems on her until she collapsed.
"You just can't carry your problem and everybody else's," she said.
Bailey first went to the hospital for several months when she was 26. "It's criminal to be locked up in a mental institution," she said.
The side effects of her medications in the early days were awful, but they're better now. Her medications help her function day to day. Bailey shares a house with three other women in Suisun City, and said she likes it because they live independently. They pay rent, cook and clean for themselves.
Bailey goes to Donovan's Place nearly every day. She passes the time in a safe and comfortable place. That's enough for now, she said.
Her message for society: "I'm not crazy. None of us are crazy. Mental patients are not just the poor. They are a lot of people who are working, housewives and children. Mental illness affects everybody."
Christopher Dale Ward
Chris Ward believes people living with mental illnesses contribute to society.
"We have more insights than other people do because we have learned to pass certain things," he said. "What other people see as problems we just sail right past, but what others breeze by causes us to stumble."
A brain hemorrhage in 2000 destroyed Ward's right eye and left him with severe depression and post traumatic stress disorder, a disorder that disrupts almost 5 percent of Americans' lives following traumatic life events.
"What happened to me doesn't happen to everyone," he said.
Ward, 35, was born and raised in Fairfield. Police knew his first name by the time he dropped out of high school. He earned his GED and then moved to Houston, where he worked as a chef in superior restaurants.
In 2000, he returned to Fairfield, and within months his father died, and Ward's brain hemorrhaged.
"I thought I was going to die and my life was over with," he said.
Ward sunk into a deep depression. His health problems "destroyed the person I was" and his life lost meaning. For five years, he wandered in and out of low-paying service jobs, feeling lost and misunderstood.
His dedicated social worker guided him to Donovan's Place four months ago and immediately he felt at home, he said.
"For five years, I've been waiting to fit in somewhere."
Ward now stands proudly to his full 6-foot frame. He feels useful doing the janitorial at work at Donovan's for $6.25 a day. He knows it's not much money, but said, "to me, it's not the amount I'm earning. (It's the fact that) I'm earning a living."
He wishes more people understood him. People want us to "just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, but sometimes we can't," he said.
Ward enrolled in Solano Community College this fall. He dreams of being a peer counselor.
Londa Anderson
"I don't think God makes mistakes."
For a long time, Londa Anderson, 36, fought her schizoaffective diagnosis, but she's learning to accept it.
Anderson came to Donovan's Place five months ago from the streets of Berkeley. She was withdrawn and depressed. She sat alone - her wet, almond eyes avoiding all others.
Now, for the first time in a long time she wants to feel better. She reads about her illness. She dives into her artwork to control her symptoms. She even began leading a group therapy session.
"I don't love myself but I'm learning to," she told the group.
Anderson has been lonely and depressed for as long as she can remember. She was abused as a child and raised her younger brother, doing most things that a mother would.
"I never had a childhood until I became an adult," she said.
She never fit in. At Armijo High School, she was always an outsider.
Doctors diagnosed her mental illness 10 years ago. At her lowest point, she was homeless and using drugs. But before that she worked hard. She fought fires and floods with the California Conservation Corps. She cleaned houses and worked with children.
"I used to be able to function in the workforce. I used to work three jobs at a time," she said.
Anderson said the stigma around mental illness makes it hard to find a home, get a job and make friends.
"The stigma) makes me afraid to approach people and even tell them I have a mental illness," she said.
Anderson said she wants to find an apartment where the landlord won't take advantage of her. She wants a good job so she can help her elderly grandfather. She wants a loving relationship and, someday, a family of her own. She, too, has newly found hope.
"It's not going to be like this all the time. Down the road, maybe these groups will help me deal with my mental illness. Maybe I'll be off my medications. Maybe I won't need it. I'll still hear voices, but I'll be in control. That's what I want - control of my life."
Joseph Andrew Haynes
Joe Haynes felt relieved when doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia at age 25. Haynes showed up at the police station begging for help.
"I knew there was something wrong with me, but I didn't know what it was," he said.
The diagnosis left him with questions, but it also gave him answers.
Haynes, 49, was a lonely child growing up in Merced. He started drinking alcohol at age 14, and said it became a problem by age 15.
"I didn't fit in. I couldn't act like a normal person," Haynes said.
He thought someone wanted to kill him. He had visions of bullets flying at his head. Drugs and alcohol eased his pain and symptoms for a while. Haynes has never held down a long-term job. The Army kicked him out.
Haynes said he is used to people either taunting or shunning him. He avoids people because he fears their reactions, there is no one to fear at Donovan's Place, he said.
After his diagnosis, Haynes learned that schizophrenia was a disease - a chemical imbalance in his brain. A diagnosis gave him medications that stifle the voices; medications that boost his self-esteem and help him sleep.
Haynes has been sober for 13 years, and his goal now is to stay where he is. He lives in a board and care home but would like to have his own apartment. Maybe, he said, he will find a girlfriend.
Haynes wants people to understand that despite his illness, he is intelligent and creative. He plays the guitar and writes poetry. He also wants people to know that he's not faking it.
"I think I really am mentally ill. I'm not pretending to be mentally ill. I don't want to be considered a phony and just in it for the money."
Jackie Gainer
"When I decided I wasn't going to be a victim - that I was going to be a survivor . . . Then, recovery blossomed."
Jackie Gainer, 39, lives with intense anxiety and depression caused by premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a severe form of premenstrual syndrome that may be linked to sexual abuse.
Gainer was sexually abused by her stepfather from age 3 to 12. Growing up, she rarely talked about it. She locked her shame inside, letting it poison her.
In middle school, she started smoking marijuana. While at Napa High School, she turned to drugs and boys. She dropped out and became a full-time addict for nearly 20 years.
"I was using drugs to medicate, definitely," she said. "Of course, I didn't know that then."
Gainer often felt severely depressed but never thought she had a mental illness. Then she stopped using and started volunteering at Donovan's Place's sister program in Vallejo. Surprising no one more than herself, Gainer felt at home there.
"I was able to be myself, and it was totally OK," she said.
She accepted that she was a mental health consumer. She takes an anti-depressant. She goes to counseling. Gainer shed her own stigma toward the label.
Eight years later, Gainer is the activities director at Donovan's Place. Gainer now talks freely about her past to help others who are struggling.
"I know when I was in recovery, I depended on hearing all the brave stories of others that made me think I wasn't the only one," she said.
Gainer said Donovan's Place transformed her. She learned to use a computer, write reports and speak in front of crowds - things she never thought she could do.
"I totally amaze myself with all the stuff that I do, and I never thought I could," she said.
Recovery is a lifelong process, though, Gainer said. She still sets goals to move forward.
"My goal is to continue to step into the fears that are in my life and not let fear build walls in front of my opportunities."
Virginia Anne Sabbagh
"Life is really hard already," she said. "If you have a mental illness, it's that much more difficult."
Life stacked extreme challenges against 46-year-old Virginia Sabbagh. She was molested, abused and neglected as a child. Her ex-husband beat her and took away her three children. Severe depression and Munchausen's syndrome - a rare condition when people hurt themselves - make life harder, but Sabbagh believes in recovery. She has seen it and lived it.
"We're mentally ill, but we're not stupid," she said. "We can lead normal lives."
Sabbagh is the executive director at Donovan's Place. She first came five years ago seeking help. She found a family, a home and a passion.
Now, Sabbagh is one of the strongest advocates for the mentally ill and self-help programs in Solano County, though it took her years to find her voice.
She first tried to commit suicide at age 6 by drinking Drano. "I just wanted to get away from the pain," she said.
A lifetime of abuse calloused Sabbagh to other feelings. She burned and cut herself just to feel something. She has attempted suicide several times and spent months in hospitals, but she endured. Sabbagh is the sole high school and college graduate in her family.
She worked as a lab technician at Kaiser for years. No one there knew her past, though. No one knew she abused methamphetamines for 14 years. No one knew she had children or a mental illness.
The stigma was too strong to speak openly, Sabbagh said. The stigma makes people refuse to shake your hand as if you have a contagious disease, she said. Stigma is people staring at you and talking down to you, she said.
Donovan's Place is stigma-free. There, it's OK not to be OK, Sabbagh said.
"I came here and (everyone) knows everything there is to know about me," she said. "This is my home and these people are my family."
The message of recovery empowered Sabbagh, and now she empowers others. She supports them on their bad days, knowing they'll return the favor. Each day can be a struggle, but together they find strength to go on, she said.
"I have to move forward because there's got to be something better than what I've been through."