Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 20, 1994 TAG: 9403200106
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He made it as far as Fort Benning, Ga. But after three days in the military, he started making sexually derogatory statements to some local girls; he thought that he was communicating with them only in his mind. He ended up in the hospital - and out of the service.
Davis, now 28, was having a psychotic episode. For 10 years, he has been in and out of hospitals, on and off medication.
Davis' mental illness is something he needs to talk about, but it's not something that everybody understands.
Unless, that is, Davis is seated on one of the well-worn donated couches in the smoke-filled rooms of On Our Own of the Roanoke Valley, a recently opened drop-in center run by and for the mentally ill.
There, Davis said, "most of us can sit back and even laugh at what we went through."
Hatched with a $23,000 grant from the state Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, the fledgling center provides a "safe haven" for anyone who has been a consumer of mental health services, Director Jimmy Ribble said.
"We feel free here to talk about what we want to talk about," said Opal Bland, who suffers from depression. Bland, who helped win the grant for On Our Own, is tired of people not listening to the mentally ill.
Other people ignore them, discriminate against them and are uncomfortable around them, a group gathered recently at the center said. This is their place, where they can say what they want, do what they want and be themselves.
"It belongs to us," said Marianne Todd, who also worked on the grant. Todd, a manic depressive, values the center's autonomy.
At the center, "consumers," as they prefer to call themselves, can socialize, snack or watch sports on a black-and-white television. Sometimes they hold informal support groups. Other times they invite educational speakers, such as police officers who can explain what will happen if someone issues a temporary detaining order - a forced hospitalization - against them.
Ribble said he got the idea for the center three years ago at a statewide conference for the Virginia Mental Health Consumers Association in Lynchburg. There he met Judi Chamberlin, author of "On Our Own," a 1978 book about the national movement of self-help groups.
Because of Chamberlin's book, drop-in centers have sprung up in Massachusetts, Maryland and elsewhere in the country.
Diagnosed as a schizophrenic in the 1960s, Chamberlin left the mental-health system in 1966 and now gets support only through self-help groups. She said she does not advocate that everyone give up treatment, or that drop-in centers, which are largely social and educational, take the place of medication or therapy.
"But know that you have choices, and know that you have options," she said.
Ribble's center, at 115 Day Ave. S.W., was given a community service award last week by the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of the Roanoke Valley. Open to adults since Nov. 16, it has promised to open its doors even wider, making the center available to a woman trying to start a social organization for mentally ill teen-agers.
Brenda, who asked that her last name not be used to protect her son's privacy, would like to hear from others in the Roanoke Valley who might be interested in forming such a group. She can be reached at 977-1445.
by CNB