Re: Seeking advice re mentally ill community member
From: Hope Dundas (suhopduumich.edu)
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 20:36:54 -0700 (PDT)

Dear Diana,

I wish I had an easy answer. But maybe I can offer a perspective. I have a serious mental illness - bipolar disorder - and have been a part of, and lived at, Great Oak since it's inception (OK, missed a few months at the very beginning, but close ;).

When I joined, I had only been diagnosed for about a year - I'd had a very serious breakdown the fall previous, been hospitalized, and thanks to the very lucky situation of having a good job at the University, had the luxury of taking a medical leave rather than losing my job.

Another lucky stroke is that bipolar is one of the most treatable mental illnesses there is, and I have an excellent psychiatrist and have found a good regimen of drugs that keep me healthy and happy. That said, I've had a few minor breakdowns and medical leaves since living here, and have been blessed by the support of the community as a whole, and individually.

I'm glad to hear that your community is working together to try to find a solution/way to move forward. I also encourage them to engage mental health professionals - the local Community Mental Health office can most likely provide some advice, and perhaps someone to come in and talk with the community as a whole. If you *do* decide to try to engage with this woman, I agree that it would be best to try to work with her mother. Hopefully she can get stable on her medications and have a fruitful and healthy life. Unfortunately, schizophrenia is one of the hardest mental illnesses to treat, so she will likely need a sheltered, or at least supported, environment - but the medications are getting better all the time, so if she can learn to comply with the treatment, she could have a better life.

I did some looking around, and here are a few resources that may help you --

Mental Health Association of North Carolina
http://www.mha-nc.org/resources.htm

Also, some good national groups:

National Alliance on Mental Illness
http://www.nami.org/ - click on "Find Support" -- Education and Training

And they have a NC chapter
http://www.naminc.org/

The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance has a good page on how to help someone with a mental illness (even though it's aimed towards mood disorders, there are still a lot of good suggestions here) http://www.dbsalliance.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_helping

Also - feel free to email me if you have more questions, or if I can be of help in any way to you or your community.

Best wishes to all, and kind thoughts ~

        Hope Dundas,
        Great Oak Cohousing, Ann Arbor, MI
        http://www.gocoho.org/


On Fri, 30 Mar 2007, Fred H Olson wrote:

Diana Christian <christian_d1 [at] bellsouth.net>
is the author of the message below.
It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
due to a problem.
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------

Hello,

I'm seeking help from people who may have dealt with having a mentally ill person living in their community. In our case, the person is a neighbor who comes over every day and often sleeps here on someone's porch, or in the woods. It's a very painful, sad situation...

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