Daydream Achiever

He was diagnosed with autism at age 5, and by his junior year in high school Chris Craig was so severely depressed and filled with suicidal intentions that he grew his fingernails out and gouged his wrists with them. He was told that if he got a job at a fast-food restaurant, he’d be reaching his potential.

But Craig didn’t listen. In fact, he has far exceeded expectations.

The 26-year-old Canoga Park man will receive a master’s degree in marriage, family and child counseling today at USC’s spring commencement. It will be his second graduate degree. He already holds a master’s in educational psychology from USC.

By July he should complete a doctorate in educational psychology, which he hopes will lead to a career working with children.

Craig credits intense therapy during his 24-month stay at Vista del Mar in West Los Angeles for helping him control the anxiety and depression caused by autism, a condition characterized by daydreaming and disregard for external reality. The treatment at Vista del Mar enabled him to work his way through undergraduate and graduate courses, he said.

Vista del Mar is one of the state’s largest psychiatric residential treatment programs for abused, neglected or abandoned children. It also works with emotionally disturbed, learning disabled or developmentally delayed patients.

“I got a lot of support at Vista in a low-pressure, high-structured environment,” Craig said. “It’s been really instrumental in where my life is now.”

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With encouragement from staff and routine counseling sessions, Craig, who entered the center at 17, was able to earn a high school diploma, train and compete in two marathons and enroll in college.

“This is a kid who could have been dead,” said Amy Jaffe, a social worker at Vista. “It’s remarkable that he would be able to attend college and not engage in any self-destructive behavior. He’s come a long way.”

Normally, the Vista residential treatment program is meant for children 6 to 18, Jaffe said, but Craig wasn’t ready to leave after he obtained his high school diploma. “He was still anxious and depressed,” she said.

He continued to live at Vista and attended Santa Monica College for one year before transferring to Loyola Marymount University. But he said he found the atmosphere there too socially intimidating, so after a year he transferred to Azusa Pacific University in the San Gabriel Valley.

During his undergraduate years he discovered a love for psychology. And, combined with a desire to work with children, Craig said he pursued graduate studies at USC, earning his first master’s degree there in August 1995.

“It’s rare for an autistic child to go this far,” said Sil Orlando, executive director at Vista del Mar.

Orlando estimated that about 12% of Vista’s current 140 residential and day-care patients are autistic. In all of the center’s experience in dealing with autistic children, Orlando said, Craig has been an exception.

“We’re thankful for him,” Orlando said. “He got a lot of help from us, and he’s been giving back.”

Although Craig left Vista nearly seven years ago, he sometimes returns to talk to parent support groups, telling them his personal story and explaining how he overcame his problems.

“He’s been great about letting parents know that it can be done,” Jaffe said.

He’s even done something against his introverted nature to help Vista, Orlando said. On two occasions, Craig has stood before 300 people and told his story at a support group meeting.

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This kind of behavior used to be unthinkable for Craig, who while growing up viewed social interaction as excruciatingly painful.

Craig said his depression began when he entered regular school at 13. Prior to that, he had been in special education courses, where he excelled academically but not socially. He said he would withdraw within and do things that he thought would establish order, such as flicking a light switch on and off or staring at his reflection in hubcaps in a parking lot.

By his early teenage years, Craig said, “Things weren’t working out at school or at home.”

His parents divorced before he started high school and his relationship with his mother, with whom he lived, was strained.

In his junior year at Cleveland High in Reseda, he said, the academic and social pressures became too much.

He and his mother decided to voluntarily admit him to the Neurological Psychiatric Institute at UCLA, where he was diagnosed with severe depression.

Craig said his relationship with his mother is now strong. The two also have found a spirituality to help them deal with his condition and the day-to-day problems that he encounters.

Three months ago, Craig said, he stopped going to counseling, although he admits there are tough times and there’s a chance of falling into the depression again.

“I still have that fear to this day, but it’s subsiding gradually,” Craig said.