Help From Within

Whipping through the rooms of the Golden Treasure’s clubhouse, Minnie Reynoso is a blur of smiles, hugs and chatter as she greets the two dozen or so people gathered there.

Reynoso is overseeing the daily workings of a unique mental health facility, the only in Orange County run by people with mental disabilities for people like themselves. Her cheer is contagious, and the two dozen or so club members, playing pool and milling about before their free lunch is served, respond like parched plants to water.

She knows everyone and knows all about them--who is schizophrenic, who has anxiety attacks or who, like herself, has bipolar disorder--and she said that makes her especially suited to the job. “We all really understand each other in a way that I don’t think somebody can unless they’ve been there,” Reynoso said.

Hundreds of mentally disabled people from Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties belong to the Garden Grove club, which receives about 250 visits from mentally ill patients each week. Seven full- and part-time staff members lead support groups and teach classes in subjects ranging from penmanship and personal hygiene to ceramics and poetry writing. It also holds social events such as dances and talent contests.

The need for this type of facility is great, experts said. Mental illnesses affect one in four families in Orange County, and experts estimate that up to 64,000 local residents, many undiagnosed, suffer from some sort of mental disability.

The club is next door to an outpatient clinic that provides medical support when necessary. Off-site administrative duties are handled by the Mental Health Assn.

County mental health experts said the club’s approach to dealing with mental illness is a model for other mental health services providers, including two new centers the county hopes will open this summer.

For many members, the club is their refuge. Scorned by some in the outside world, stigmatized and made fun of, even spat on, members say the club is a haven from “normal people,” who can be cruel.

“The only friends I have are here,” said Ken, a staff member who asked that his last name not be used. Brown-haired, blue-eyed and clean-cut, Ken does administrative work. “At other places where I worked, people would make fun of me, saying I was crazy or a nut case,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes as he recalled the pain. “I’m very sensitive, and it hurt my feelings so bad.”

At the club, he says, there is but one unbreakable rule: Everyone is nice to everyone.

“Here, we’re just like a family,” Ken said. “And for some people, this is all the family they have.”

Members decide how the club will run, voting for officers and making as many decisions as possible. The decor is ‘70s thrift-shop, but it is clean and neat and safe.

Staffers say they love working at the club, but the primary experience that bonds them with club members is the shared struggle for mental stability, which is freely discussed.

For club President John Kaine, remaining stable is easier in the daytime, when he is surrounded by friends. His nights, recently, have been terrifying.

“I had a setback last week because the nightmares have come back--ones where I’m falling and falling; I was trying to pull on something, to catch a rope or ledge or something to hang on to, but I couldn’t.”

He always wakes before crashing in his dreams. “I’ve never experienced having to die. That leaves me some hope.”

Kane, 44, likes numbers, and his psychiatrists have advised him to use them as a way to cope with people and stress. Asked where he grew up, for example, Kane, names the capital of Idaho, but also offers the exact longitude and latitude for Boise.

Besides the symptoms of their illnesses, the stigma of having a brain disorder is the heaviest burden they bear, club members said. Consequences, and not just hurt feelings, result from what they believe is society’s revulsion at mental illness, experts say.

“I will see many people come to treatment who have clearly been ill two or three years, but who have been afraid to acknowledge there might be something wrong,” said Dr. Rimal B. Bera, board president of the Orange County Mental Health Assn. and a professor of psychiatry at UC Irvine.

After more than 10 years of battling for stability, Reynoso is able to sense when others need help. She knows that her depressions will pass. But until it does, she finds the same support at the club that she offers to others when she is well.

Darkness, depression and sometimes delusions are all part of what Reynoso, 36, calls life on the spiral staircase she scales to ecstatic heights and then tumbles down, plummeting into despair.

She has suffered through brain surgery and two miscarriages, but her depression can uncoil with a broken nail or stain on her pants.

Years ago, when she was untreated, her central delusion was that she was not of this world, but had been sent here to help someone.

“I know how it sounds, but I thought if I reached out and touched anyone, then I’d be done--I’d die,” Reynoso said. She credits doctors for helping her conquer the delusions, and the county Mental Health Assn. for helping her blossom.

Her delusion, however, did have a toehold in reality.

The Minnie Reynoso who didn’t speak, talk to or smile at anyone does not exist anymore. And she was right about having a purpose, a purpose that brought her to the clubhouse.

“Now I know that all along my purpose was to help people just like myself,” she said.