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Bay View Center offers understanding ear to those with mental illness

News Photo by Julie Riddle Nina Barres, a member at Alpena’s Bay View Center, plays hand pool with the help of a friend Friday in the center’s welcoming family room.

ALPENA — “Bay View Center,” the printing on Jacqueline Fitzgerald’s teal blue shirt reads. “Where You Are Accepted.”

Located in the former home of Dick’s Toys and Small Appliances on Alpena’s north side, Bay View Center’s comfortable couches, plentiful craft supplies, and pool table offer a friendly welcome.

The center’s members, all individuals struggling with mental illness, drop in when they like — knowing, each time they do, that they’ll be understood in at least this one place.

Faces flit through the center’s main hangout space and back hallway with smaller meeting rooms: a petite, cheerful young woman with vibrant, red-tipped hair. A 30-something man in a neat white shirt, sweatpants, and headphones. A white-haired woman in a gentle, flowered sweater.

Friendly faces, peaceful.

And behind each of them, a very personal struggle with mental illness.

Mental health is like a piece of cardboard in a toilet bowl, Fitzgerald, the center’s director, said.

A person fighting frightening mental and emotional struggles can begin to spin, to be sucked into a frightening and dangerous place. If they’re not helped, if the swirl in their mind isn’t stopped, they can suddenly end up in the hospital, in deep mental distress.

Or worse.

The goal of Bay View Center is to catch them at the top of the bowl, Fitzgerald said.

‘I DO HAVE MENTAL ILLNESS’

The average person struggling with mental health issues dies up to 25 years before their healthy counterpart, Fitzgerald said, citing a study by the World Health Organization. Many factors play into that statistic, from lack of self-care to increased suicide rates to the economic disadvantages that sometimes accompany mental illness.

Loneliness, many scientific studies have shown, greatly increases the risk of heart disease and death. Being alone in the world can weigh heavily on people with mental illness, their struggles with social and economic factors often isolating them from the people around them.

That’s why Bay View Center opened its doors nine years ago, Fitzgerald said.

The center employs three certified peer-support specialists, people who have struggled with their own mental health and now support others going through the same difficulties.

In her role as director, Fitzgerald is always hustling, finding funding, coaching volunteers, and attending training. One day, she may find herself praising a member who sent only half a desk’s contents flying in a fit of frustration, instead of the whole desktop, like the week before. Another day she may spend talking on the phone for an hour and a half to keep another member from jumping off a bridge.

Like all staff and volunteers, Fitzgerald has a mental illness story of her own.

“I’ve never slept under a bridge. I’ve never decided to jump off a bridge. But I did sit on a couch for a week, and the only thing I did was go from my couch to my bed,” Fitzgerald said in matter-of-fact tones, the voice of someone who has been there, who gets it. “I’m not as visible as the guy who jumps off the bridge. But I do have mental illness.”

‘YOU’RE STILL ALONE’

Being understood makes all the difference, Bay View Center member Laura Smith said. Family and friends are supportive and want to help. But when they look at her, she said, she sees the pain in their eyes.

“You can have 100 friends or family that love you, but you’re still alone,” Smith said.

When you walk in the door of the center, though, you don’t feel judged, the bubbly, bright-smiled woman said. You feel understood.

People who haven’t struggled with mental health themselves — sometimes, even those with professional training in counseling — don’t get it, Smith said. She has been told many times to “be a duck,” to let her troubles roll off her back.

“You don’t know!” she said. “If I could, that’s what I’d do!”

When people with mental illness are in a bad stage, they can seem like bad people, Fitzgerald said. Social irregularities and questionable choices associated with mental health troubles can keep people from being accepted by a landlord or offered a job, exacerbating their struggles.

Members at the center are sometimes quarrelsome or rude, and sometimes bristle when given directions, Fitzgerald said. She understands why.

“They’ve been called stupid their whole lives,” she said. “But mental illness is not just stupid people.”

She counted five bachelors’ degrees in the building at that moment. The center’s members and workers include a registered nurse, a teacher, several high-level degrees.

One out of every six adults lives with a mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Still, it’s a taboo topic among many.

“It’s easier to talk about erectile dysfunction than about mental health,” Smith said wryly.

‘YOU CAN’T SAY IT’

Public figures, from Whoopi Goldberg to Lady Gaga, have made recent efforts to bring mental illness into the public eye, talking about their personal and family experiences. Smith and Fitzgerald applauded those efforts, expressing a longing to see them repeated in Northeast Michigan.

“There’s got to be an MD, a lawyer, a dentist, a head of some big corporation, there’s got to be one with mental illness,” Fitzgerald said. “But you can’t say it.”

Her wish is that the next generation doesn’t have to be ashamed to talk about mental illness.

“I’d like them to brag about it,” she said, earnestness in her voice.

“Don’t ever let anybody tell you that you’re not worthy,” she tells members. “You’re carrying around an extra cement block. You’re dealing with it every day. And you’re moving forward.”

Amid the craft supplies and couches of Bay View Center, people strengthened by companionship and acceptance keep moving, fighting their fights.

Smith envisions more centers like Bay View, with an even wider reach. Places welcoming to anyone who struggles with substance abuse, domestic violence, poverty, terminal illness, emotional trauma. A place with calming craft supplies at the ready, pool tables and couches, and understanding ears — of people who have been there, who get it — prepared to listen.

“If everyone got together, it would end the stigma,” Smith said. “They could save lives.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.

Mental illness, by the numbers

Statistics on mental illness in 2017, the most recent year data is available:

∫ An estimated 46.6 million (18.9%) of U.S. adults aged 18 or older had a mental illness.

∫ Mental illness was higher among women (22.3%) than men (15.1%).

∫ Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of mental illness (25.8%), compared to adults aged 26-49 years (22.2%) and aged 50 and older (13.8%).

∫ Among the 46.6 million adults with mental illness, 19.8 million (42.6%) received mental health services.

Source: National Institute of Mental Health

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