Writers, Actors Cast Therapists in Lead Role

With panic in their voices, Hollywood writers and actors bombard Dennis Palumbo at all hours: What if my talent dries up? What if my dreams die? What if my life collapses?

“My phone is ringing off the hook with people needing counseling or referrals for Prozac and Paxil,” said Palumbo, a Sherman Oaks psychotherapist and former screenwriter who began fielding frenzied calls in February and sees some of Hollywood’s top talent, including Oscar, Emmy and Pulitzer prize winners. “I’m inundated.”

During this season of Hollywood labor troubles, therapists clustered near the region’s studios say they’re swamped with writers and actors who need anxieties soothed, moods uplifted and anger tamed.

To be sure, writers and actors--a sensitive, introspective bunch who, let’s be honest, tend to thrive on drama--are no strangers to the couch. Even during the good times. Indeed, writers and actors toil in an erratic, cutthroat industry where one’s innermost feelings routinely are exposed and trampled on. In recent weeks, fear of strikes has doubled and tripled their workload--and stress--as they rush to finish projects before contracts expire.

Walkout obsessions, coupled with a weakening economy, have sent many over the edge, say psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists.

Like Palumbo, therapists skip lunch and midday breaks to counsel patients in person and by phone. They keep waiting lists for last-minute cancellations. Many also have extended their hours to weekends and evenings.

“There’s a lot more self-examination” during uncertain economic times, said Helen Grusd, president of the Los Angeles County Psychological Assn. and a clinical psychologist in Beverly Hills and Sherman Oaks. “People are questioning, ‘Who am I?’ ‘Where am I going?”’

Friday’s agreement between the 11,500-member Writers Guild of America and studios and networks won’t immediately affect the need for counseling, therapists say, because writers have only begun working through their problems.

“The issues and feelings that brought them into therapy don’t go away because there is a settlement,” said Palumbo, author of “Writing From the Inside Out: Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within”

For actors, the angst still runs deep. They’re bracing for a possible summer strike by the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract expires June 30. Talks are expected to begin in mid-May.

Neither guild sponsors support groups for mental health counseling, according to representatives, although one SAG member acknowledged “a lot of people sure need it.”

Upcoming SAG talks worry one 29-year-old actor, who requested anonymity. He thinks about it when he arises before daylight to work as an extra, technician or cameraman, and late at night when he returns to his Hollywood apartment, exhausted.

He works any job he can get so he can stash away money in case of a strike. On bad days, he wonders if he should move back to the Midwest.

“Therapy is a possibility,” he said.

For now, because he’s so busy, he leans on his friends, some of whom are in therapy. “There’s a feeling of impending doom,” he said. “This is already a difficult and lonely town. . . . I think it’s getting overwhelming for a lot of people.”

Because the entertainment industry is so fickle, most writers and actors try to mentally prepare for periods of unemployment. What makes a strike so distressing, Palumbo and other therapists say, is the hostility and vulnerability that emerges during negotiations.

Soft-spoken but also outspoken, Palumbo, 50, sat on a plaid couch in his fourth-floor Ventura Boulevard office, across from the Sherman Oaks Galleria, and compared studios and networks to dysfunctional parents, and writers and actors to children: “The matrix of Hollywood power elements--networks, studios, producers, agents--retains for many the authority to validate or invalidate their abilities, aesthetic judgment and, ultimately, self-worth.”

Stress over a strike also has spawned problems that writers and actors didn’t realize they had, therapists say.

Indeed, a crisis can be positive because it pushes people to seek therapy, said Nicholas Cummings, past president of the American Psychological Assn. and a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada in Reno. “A strike is a trigger, not a cause,” Cummings said. “The problems were already there, but a lot of people hide from the problems by keeping busy at work. They’re finally getting help.”

Even non-guild writers and actors--who move to Los Angeles from all over the world, desperately hoping to break into show business--grappled with strike despair. As chairman of the San Fernando Valley-based Scriptwriters Network, a nonprofit group that helps emerging writers, Bill Lundy said he has devoted much of his time in recent weeks to playing surrogate therapist to the group’s 750 paid members. “It tough,” he said. “There has been a lot of anxiety.”

Stephanie Stolinsky, a clinical psychologist in Beverly Hills, has encouraged actors and writers to view the negotiations and possible strikes as a time for upbeat reflection.

“I tell them to really explore what they do,” said Stolinsky, a former actor and an acting coach.

After a crisis passes, Palumbo’s patients often become more creative and introspective and experience a renewed passion for their livelihood.

“They realize that it’s not the job that matters most, but the family,” he said. “It’s not the Lexus, but the kids.”