Advocates host potluck to raise awareness about mental illness in Fairbanks
Published Wednesday, October 21, 2009
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Stumble It!FAIRBANKS — Practice empathy.
This was the most common message from members of the Alaska Mental Health Board and Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse when asked what community members can do to encourage recovery among those suffering from mental illness.
More than 50 community members, students and advocates gathered at the informal potluck inside the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center on Tuesday night to talk about their experiences as patients and caregivers to those suffering from a wide range of illnesses.
“It takes a community to help someone recover, not just a doctor or a psychiatrist,” Andrea Schmook said. Schmook recovered from acute paranoid schizophrenia and has been living medication free for 26 years. She now works with the board and has helped to establish peer support groups for those living with mental illness.
“It’s as simple as asking yourself how you would like to be treated if you were diagnosed with a mental illness,” Schmook said.
She stressed how important it is for those in recovery to feel appreciated, valued and treated with dignity in order to move beyond their mental illness.
“Whether it’s a neighbor, a co-worker or even a family member, everyone has a right not to live on the fringe of their community,” she said.
Teaching communities to move beyond the stigmas and discomfort associated with mental illness is one of the major goals of both boards and was a topic of conversation Tuesday night.
“Each and every person has to personally choose how to treat other people with a disability be they mentally disabled or an alcoholic,” said Kate Burkhart, executive director of the Alaska Mental Health Board. “A community has to decide how it will approach these people, and there are three choices — you can punish them, ostracize them or find a way to include them into the community.”
The availability of mental health services is not one of the biggest issues facing Fairbanks patients, attendees and board members said.
“The public perception is that there’s a lack of coordination among the many services that are currently available here,” Burkhart said.
Many people suffering from mental illness have difficulty maintaining a home. This isn’t because of a lack of adequate housing, but because landlords and tenants often lack the skills to work together. Many landlords aren’t aware of services available to help them work with their tenants to receive rent on time.
“The infrastructure is no problem; we just need to teach people how to stay in it,” Burkhart said. “There is a coordinated effort with the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation to help both potential tenants and landlords work together.”
Kris Duncan, a planner with the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, said a large part of her work is coordinating the caseworkers of mentally ill tenants directly with landlords to ensure successful living arrangements.
“It’s helping people overcome stigmas and really, with the help of a caseworker, many of these tenants who may suffer from a disability can turn out to be very stable tenants,” she said.
From addiction and schizophrenia to post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and fetal alcohol syndrome, mental illnesses are wide ranging and impact everyone differently, Burkhart said.
“A big part of what these two boards do is fight stigmas associated with mental illness and alcoholism. Many are afraid of mental illness, but we’re trying to teach people that it is possible to face your illness and still live a normal healthy life,” Burkhart said. “You don’t have to build a new fancy building to do that. It’s more a matter of integrating primary care medicine with mental health treatment and taking a more holistic approach to treatment. It all comes down to educating people about mental illness and how to work with someone who is diagnosed with an illness.”
Community Discussion
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My mother would be so proud to see the community working together trying to find solutions and ways to work together. It was part of her biggest fight all those years.
May she be remembered for all she did. Ann De Nardo
Too bad the mental health lands trust has been so mismanaged.
Too bad they have to hold a potluck in order to help people in such great need. I'd rather Chrysler hold the potluck, and these folks have the resources they need. Naive, stupid, juvenile, bleeding heart Liberal 5th grade comment right? Probably. Just thank your lucky stars if neither you, nor any of your loved ones, are afflicted with any of this. And pray that none of your future children, or grandchildren will be either...
Pinhead the State has been holding meetings in Fairbanks for the past few days. The potlatch was just a social event. Look at the State budget for Behavioral Health and you will see that these folks have more than enough money to operate. It has nothing to do with lack of funding as much as lack of being able to maintain qualified staff. Take a look at the want ads and it is clear they can not attract people to work in this community behavior health. Might go back to they fact that behavioral health understaffed one of its halfway houses and violated it's own admission policies letting a violent person in resulting in the murder of a staff member. Seems ever since then they have had problems with staffing. Not to mention the State closed down the FNA Detox center recently.
FreeDarfur, it wouldn't be so difficult to attract qualified staffing if they paid more than $10 an hour to the workers getting down and dirty. Another example of a large budget getting wasted on executive directors and all the fringe!!
Free,
I am conflating two things here, which are of course unrelated. One is my outrage (ongoing) at the state of mental health care in this country. This is a personal thing for me, and I can not be rational about it. The other is today's report on the TARP funding issue. Here again, I am so angry I could explode, and the Obama Administration is as guilty as Bush, if not more so.
So no, my reaction wasn't in any way measured or logical. And no, throwing good money after bad into these programs does little good when funds are mismanaged, staffing is poorly trained, etc, etc. Still, I would rather my money gets wasted by folks like these than the SOBs on Wall Street. Better still that it wasn't wasted at all, but who am I kidding?
Perhaps if these folks could co-ordinate with the Troopers, [or some how miraclously induce the Troopers to become educated and responsible] we would have fewer cases of people being forced over the edge, threatening to shoot motorists, holding bank employees hostage, getting their noses shoot off, getting killed because of confrontational encounters agressively pursued by LEOs . . . .
Refusing Law-enforcement assistence and services, looking the other way while extreme bullying and abusive or exploitive behavor goes on, and then justifying their inaction by ostracizing and encouraging ostracization in the community, by spreading rumor and slander through the 'social' grapevine, enabling exploitive abuse by refusal to record and maintain accurate records of complaints or to fully and accurately investigate . . . . . standard practice for Alaska State Troopers in the Interior.
These practices not only frequently make those diagnosed with some form of mental illness a safe target of criminal exploitation, the same practices frequently CREATE mental illnesses such as Post Traumatic Stress, depression, etc, as victims try to deal with the ostracization and isolation inflicted by the 'sweep it under the rug' method the Troopers often use to "create a 'sensation' of Public Safety" without full investigation or justice, when hideous crimes are perpetrated.
The reason the pay on line workers $10 an hour, take a look at what administrative staff make and the administrative overhead is. The people who actually work with clients are expected to get low pay, long hours and no weekends, while administration is just the opposite: no client contact, high pay and weekends and holidays off. The other fact is try bringing in a new psychiatrist into this community. The current private psychiatric group has a hold on the psychiatric business and newcomers are not welcome.
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