Mentally Ill Find Strength in Each Other : Health: O.C. conference will showcase growing self-help movement.

By JULIE MARQUIS

Aug. 9, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Heather Gallas knows what it’s like to hear internal voices that begin as whispers, then become louder and more demanding, insisting on self-destruction.

The Tustin woman knows what it’s like to take a torturous emotional slide, from working as a self-supporting word processor to being a chronic mental patient, confined to locked wards. Hospitalized about 15 times in six years, she tried 40 different psychiatric drugs before hitting on a stabilizing combination.

Her life experience may not be the usual stuff of an appealing resume, but she defied predictions made three years ago that she would never again hold down a job or live on her own. And she’s convinced that other mental patients, by helping one another, can do the same.

“When I was in my deepest, darkest, blackest depression,” she said, “I could not see that other side. I hope I can be that other side to somebody. . . . That’s what I can do.”

Gallas, 34, now an Orange County mental health worker, is an eager member of a burgeoning consumer movement among mental health clients who believe there is comfort--and clout--in numbers. This week, she will join some 1,500 patients and former patients at the Anaheim Marriott for a five-day national conference geared to help them help themselves.

“It’s a conference to show the consumer that they count,” Gallas said.

Historically, she said, the message has been: ‘ “You are a schizophrenic and you can’t do anything. Sit and talk to yourself all day.’ I had a friend tell me I would never, ever work again.

“I think this conference will show, yes, we can.”

Entitled “Alternatives ‘94,” the conference is the 10th annual national convention for people with mental illnesses, but the first held in Southern California. Almost all the organizers and leaders involved, at one time or another, have been diagnosed as mentally ill.

Nearly four times as many participants are expected as were at the inaugural conference in Baltimore nine years ago--a good indication, organizers say, that their movement is taking off. “We’ve just sort of reached a critical mass,” said Joseph A. Rogers, executive director of the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse, sponsor of the conference with the help of such local agencies as the Orange County Health Care Agency and the Mental Health Assn. of Orange County. “If it’s a legitimate effort, and you get enough people involved, it takes on a life of its own,” Rogers said. “Also, I think there’s a general cynicism about the old ways of doing things . . . (which) opens people up to new ways.”

Organizers say they picked Southern California for the convention partly because mental-health consumerism here has lagged behind other parts of the country. The reasons are unclear, Rogers said, but he speculated the initially radical nature of the movement in Northern California kept the state’s more conservative areas on the sidelines.

“We’re hoping to get it going” in the south, he said.

Not everyone agrees with that comparative assessment, though.

“I think we are all behind,” said Dr. Rick Massimino, a psychiatrist who founded the John Henry Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Orange serving mentally ill people. Everywhere “there’s still terrible discrimination, a need for flexibility and understanding,” but particularly in the workplace and housing markets, Massimino said.

At the conference, more than 100 workshops will cover topics including “The Nuts and Bolts of a Successful Consumer Newsletter,” “Using Humor to Turn Your Life Around” and “Spirituality and the Self.” But the hottest topics this year are expected to be employment and health-care reform.

The workshop leaders will speak from personal experience as mental patients or former patients.

“None of these people are types that haven’t lived what they are talking about,” Rogers said--himself included. Years before becoming a movement leader, as a teen-ager, he suffered a “psychotic break” and lived on the streets of New York City for nine months, eating out of garbage cans and sleeping on a park bench.

Leaders will “discuss what it is that’s helped them recover. They’re not some Ph.D., some theoretician saying what might help the mentally ill,” he said.

Mental health clients like Marty Fuca of Garden Grove appreciate this hands-on, fraternal approach.

Fuca, who attended the “Alternatives” conference in Berkeley three years ago, said he picked up practical tips no therapist ever gave him: that it’s particularly important to avoid junk food, for example, and to spend at least two hours a day in sunlight.

“Those are things I want to know, just like a diabetic’s got to have insulin,” he said.

Some of the people at the Berkeley conference were “a little strange,” he said, “but at least they were trying.”

Their aspirations were not grandiose, he said.

“They knew they weren’t Lee Iacoccas . . . but they wanted to know ‘My life means something.’ They wanted to know if they’re thrown in the loony bin, ‘I’m not going to be there the rest of my life.’ ”

Fuca said even outpatient therapy, let alone institutionalization, made him feel as though he was a hopeless case, as though he ought to wear a sign saying “Marty Fuca, mentally ill.”

Rogers and others are careful to stress, however, that theirs is not an anti-professional, anti-white-coat movement. Rogers does take issue with large institutions that, in his view, make feeble efforts at rehabilitation, and he objects to over-reliance on therapists, but he does not condemn all doctors or drugs.

“The professional can provide a certain level of care when the patient is in an acute state,” he said. But “on a day-to-day basis, living in the community, you’ve got to be responsible for yourself.”

Some psychiatrists recognized long ago the healing power of compassion and empathy among patients.

“They understand (each other),” said Himasiri De Silva, president of the Orange County Psychiatric Society and co-founder of the patient-directed group, Depressive and Manic Depressive Assn. of Orange County.

“They have gone through similar episodes. They can identify with each other . . . know there is hope, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

There is a practical advantage: “The therapist is not always available. A friend is available most of the time.”

Psychiatrists do not view the consumer movement as supplanting their role, De Silva said. On the other hand, he said, he wishes his peers would be more supportive of the consumer movement by referring patients to groups run by their peers. But patients aren’t combining forces just to help themselves cope--it’s also a way to get things done. De Silva points out that 5% to 10% of the population suffer from a mental illness--that means there are millions of people who together could wield formidable political and economic power.

Former House majority whip Tony Coelho, the conference’s keynote speaker Friday morning, says he will urge his audience to stand up for themselves in the workplace and in the debate over health-care reform, to ensure that their needs are covered.

The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which Coelho introduced, made it illegal to discriminate against disabled workers and required employers to make “reasonable accommodations” for them. But that, Coelho said, was only half the battle.

“We have to go out there now and fight for our rights,” said Coelho, an epileptic who chairs the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. “That’s cumbersome and tiresome and irritating, but at least we’re in the ballgame now.”

Rogers said proof that mentally ill consumers are major political players lies in the support they now are receiving from government agencies at the national and local levels. This year’s conference, for example, was funded through a grant from the federal Center for Mental Health Services. Orange County mental health officials are providing support in the form of in-kind services.

“It’s hard to say no when a group of organized citizens demands something,” Rogers said, adding that officials value the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of self-help organizations.

For people like Gallas, the newfound recognition and power are plainly exhilarating.

“The mental health movement is getting huge,” she said. “It’s going to be a big surprise. We’re going to send quite a message to a lot of people.”

Attending the Conference

What: Conference for mentally ill or formerly mentally ill people, called “Alternatives ‘94: Celebrating 10 Years of Alternatives: A Decade of Dignity, Wellness and Unity.”

When: Wednesday to Aug. 14

Where: Anaheim Marriott, 700 W. Convention Way, Anaheim

How: To attend, contact Matthew Factor at the Marriott, (714) 750-8000. General admission is $100, $60 for residents of Orange and Los Angeles counties. Limited number of full scholarships are available for low-income people with mental disabilities. Food not included.

Mental Health Help

A sampling of area mental health agencies and associations serving couples, families and individuals:

* California Assn. of Marriage and Family Therapists

Phone: (800) 564-2638 or (714) 556-7129

Referrals to psychotherapy services; staffed by Orange County chapter of association of marriage, family and child counselors (MFCC)

* Children’s Hospital of Orange County

Phone: Department of Health Psychology, (714) 532-8481

Psychological evaluation, consultation and treatment of medically fragile children and their families.

* Counseling and Psychotherapy Referral Service

Phone: (714) 259-7167

Referrals made by type of counseling needed; staffed by National Assn. of Social Workers.

* Hotline of Southern California