A true advocate: LifeSpring helps mentally ill, addicted for 50 years

July 07--JEFFERSONVILLE -- Donnie was 17 years old when he thought his hearing was coming back.

The Pekin native, who contracted spinal meningitis at 3 years old, causing his deafness, was told at church that he would hear again if he prayed hard enough.

"So he thinks he's getting his hearing back and he thinks that it's working," Donnie's brother, Victoria George, said.

But within the next year, amid Donnie jumping out of windows and huddling under trees in the dead of winter, it became apparent that the voices he was hearing were not a sign of recovering from deafness. Rather, they were a sign that he had inherited the schizophrenia that his father -- and later, his older brother -- suffered from.

"That's when LifeSpring got involved, and not just with my brother," George said. "They got involved in the rest of the family as well."

LifeSpring Health Systems is a publicly-funded community health center in Indiana that has provided resources for recovery for the mentally ill for the past 50 years.

Operating in 15 facilities across six counties, including Clark and Floyd, LifeSpring provides counseling services, case and care management, substance abuse counseling and intensive outpatient and inpatient services, said CEO Terry Stawar.

Help can range from one-on-one counseling sessions to medication management to post-hospitalization residential care.

"It's a super important resource because it's one of the few places you can go and get the full spectrum of services," Stawar said.

LifeSpring began in 1964 as the Southern Indiana Health and Guidance Center in Jeffersonville, mostly offering child and family counseling.

The center's name changed to LifeSpring in the 1980s when states were given more money for mental health facilities during former President Ronald Reagan's administration. That's when LifeSpring expanded its services, including treatment for those with severe mental illnesses who were released from state hospitals. LifeSpring has also added substance abuse programs and safety net resources in the years since.

Today, LifeSpring helps as many as 9,000 people every year.

"There's just a tremendous need for these services," Stawar said.

Public funding has allowed the community health center to operate on a sliding fee scale, meaning payment is based on a client's income.

"Most of the people that come here don't pay anything because they have Medicaid," Stawar said.

Misty Gilbert, vice president of recovery services and therapist, helps both inpatient and outpatient clients who suffer from mental illness or addiction.

"I think some of the most common misperceptions is that [patients] can just get over it," Gilbert said. "It's not that easy. If it were that easy ... they would not need these services."

One of Gilbert's tasks is helping patients transition from hospitals to home therapies.

"When they leave the state hospitals, they're usually not ready to live in an apartment on their own," she said.

For Donnie, LifeSpring's group living and counseling services was the difference between being too ill to attend school and well enough to keep a stable job in a different city.

"LifeSpring seemed to oversee a lot of what Donnie was doing," George said.

All the while, the community health center helped George -- the youngest sister -- and her family cope.

"It's hard to not only survive but to thrive in that kind of environment growing up, and they made it possible for me to do that," she said.

The community health center prescribed Donnie with life-changing medication, assisted him in finding a group home and work program and connected him with people who eventually helped him find an apartment in Indianapolis.

Through his late 20s and 30s, he had a job, his own apartment and a girlfriend.

"He was happy for a number of years," George said.

As Donnie grew older, his body no longer responded to the medication and he became ill again. Twelve years ago, he moved back to Jeffersonville to live with his parents. Donnie is now 50 years old.

George said if it wasn't for LifeSpring, her brother would not have had the good life he had before he was no longer able to live on his own.

"LifeSpring provided the resource and the network to give my family the support that they needed and they really did act as an advocate..." she said. "I wouldn't have gotten as far in my life, my family wouldn't have done as well as they did had they not existed the way that they did."

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