NAMI-Bowling Green, Wellness Connection help people heal

Vicki Patterson hasn't always lived a stable life.

Now a peer support specialist for the Bowling Green chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Patterson was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder ? which is also known as multiple personality disorder ? and anxiety disorder. She has recovered from them, but still suffers from bipolar disorder type 2.

"I'm a survivor of child abuse and child pornography. I believe they set me up for mental illness. I know they did for" dissociative identity disorder, she said. "I tried to be perfect and wanted things to be a certain way. With borderline personality disorder I had black and white thinking. I can look back at 62 and see in elementary school that I was sick."

NAMI-Bowling Green and the Wellness Connection have played a role in her healing, Patterson said.

"When I got a connection with the Wellness Connection and NAMI I felt like I had a solid connection. It's hard coming in that door the first time," she said. "It's something new. It's not comfortable. This is a hidden treasure in Bowling Green."

Mental health by the numbers

According to the national NAMI website at nami.org, one in five adults in America experience mental illness. Nearly one in 25 adults in America live with a serious mental illness. Half of all chronic mental illness begins by the age of 14, with three-quarters by the age of 24.

The National Institute on Mental Health says that 1 percent (2.4 million) of American adults live with schizophrenia, 2.6 percent (6.1 million) live with bipolar disorder, 6.9 percent (16 million) live with major depression and 18.1 percent (42 million) live with anxiety disorders. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide and is a major contributor to the global burden of disease. About 10.2 million adults have co-occurring mental health and addiction disorders.

According to the American Journal of Psychiatry and U.S. Surgeon General's Report in 1999, serious mental illness costs America $193.2 billion in lost earnings every year. Ninety percent of those who die by suicide ? the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. ? have an underlying mental illness.

NAMI-Bowling Green and the Wellness Connection

NAMI-Bowling Green was started by Marty Harrison in the 1960s when it was called the Bowling Green Alliance of Mental Illness, said NAMI-Bowling Green Vice President Larry Gregory.

"In 1986 they incorporated into NAMI-Bowling Green. They became part of NAMI Kentucky," he said. "All the major cities had affiliates under the NAMI umbrella."

In its current incarnation, NAMI-Bowling Green has been in Bowling Green for 30 years. The Wellness Connection from which NAMI operates is going into its fourth year. It is located at 428A Center St. The peer-run service is owned, administratively controlled and operated by mental health consumers and emphasizes self-help as its operational approach. It is designed to show people with mental illness and their families that recovery is possible and to bring them hope. The center serves NAMI-Bowling Green's 10-county coverage area ? Allen, Barren, Butler, Edmonson, Hart, Logan, Metcalfe, Monroe, Simpson and Warren ? and is operated by grants and donations, but more donations are needed to help provide the free programs, according to NAMI-Bowling Green President Deborah Weed.

"We're looking for board members and people to invest in the program. We have been told we may not have a grant next year," she said. "We want people working and living their lives because they can be just like anyone else."

About 57 to 75 people use services provided by the Wellness Connection every three months, but Weed believes there are more who could use them.

"We're very underutilized," she said. "Isolating is part of mental illness."

NAMI-Bowling Green and Wellness Connection programs

Isolation is one reason NAMI-Bowling Green decided there needed to be a NAMI Connection at Western Kentucky University.

"When you come into WKU you're already isolated. We want them to become a support group when we're not there," Weed said. "We started it two semesters ago. We take ones who want to know if they have a mental illness and those who have learned their diagnosis."

The WKU component talks to the students about services such as the Student Accessibility Resource Center, which helps students with disabilities maximize their educational potential, Weed said.

"We tell them don't wait until the end of the semester to contact them," she said. "We want to make sure you're primed for success before you get to that point."

Students need a place to talk about their issues and not feel like they're going to be taken to the hospital, Weed said. They can even talk about suicide, which is the second most common reason that people ages 16 to 25 die.

"When they can open up in my group, you see all this healing because they have an open arena to discuss it. We talk to them about what led them to this point and share," she said. "For the most part they're pretty open."

Another program under the NAMI-Bowling Green umbrella is PETS 4 Vets, which stands for Providing Effective Therapy with Service Dogs. The program, paid for with grants and donations, pairs veterans with PTSD with a service dog. It started three years ago and got its first grant two years ago.

"We just sponsored our second veteran dog. She's a lady veteran this time out of Scottsville. She has PTSD due to being in the (U.S.) Navy," said Gregory, who co-founded the Vets 4 Vets program, of which PETS 4 Vets is a part, with Bob Wilson. "She wound up getting a black (Labrador Retriever). They're still in training. They have three or four weeks of training left.

"She's adapted to the dog and it's adapted to her. They're going to the grocery store and Wal-Mart to get the dog familiar with her and get her familiar with the dog in different settings," said Gregory, who is also second vice chairman of NAMI Kentucky and vice chairman of Operation Stand Down Kentucky, another organization for veterans. "For the first time she started training to now I've seen a change. She's not nearly as skittish as she was before."

It's hard to find veterans for the program, Gregory said.

"They have to be (Veterans Administration) qualified with a letter stating they have PTSD," he said.

The organizers continue to raise money through donations, fundraisers and grants. People can donate by going to the NAMI Bowling Green website at namibg-wellnessconnection.com. A fundraising dinner will be from 5 to 8 p.m.Oct. 25 at Roosters at 247 Three Springs Road. Dinner is $15.

"One hundred percent of the money is going for PTSD dogs as well as other veterans needs," Gregory said.

Operation Stand Down Kentucky will have its first barbecue smoke-off for veterans April 7-8 at Martin Dodge on Scottsville Road, Gregory said.

"All the proceeds will go for veterans in need. We plan to make it a state event," he said. "We want it to be a barbecue sanctioned event."

Vets 4 Vets helps educate veterans in various ways, including teaching them how to live with PTSD, he said.

"We support them where we can as far as moral support," Gregory said. "We go even as far as getting them through the week and helping them get help."

The Wellness Connection also has a variety of other programs, including the KYSTARS recovery support group, NAMI Bowling Green family and consumer support group meetings, Emotions Anonymous 12-step meeting, Double Trouble in Recovery 12-step program for those with mental illness and addiction to substances, Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (ASCA) and many more.

"The ASCA support group is the only one in Kentucky. We started it in July because everyone who was coming here seemed to have that common denominator in their past," Weed said.

"Child abuse comes in a variety of different forms," she said. "They learn how to balance their lives and heal from it."

NAMI-Bowling Green also has materials translated in Spanish. Weed hopes to reach many more in the international community.

"We're trying to reach out to the community, but it's been difficult because of the language barrier," she said. "They are coming here and not knowing the language brings about anxiety. We want to reach out to somebody where we can translate."

LifeSkills is one of NAMI Bowling Green's biggest supporters, Weed said. NAMI brings an abbreviated version of KYSTARS to LifeSkills' crisis center.

"We both want to see people get healthy and live their life," she said. "There's so many things that traumatize people. There's hardly anyone who's not touched by mental illness."

Some mentally ill people wind up in jail because their diagnosis got out of control. Mental health court would benefit Bowling Green, Weed said.

"People lose Medicaid once you've been in jail 30 days, so you have to start all over. Drugs can become ineffective once they leave your system," she said. "Sometimes they lose their apartments. Nobody knows where they are or they couldn't pay rent. (Mental health court) is working at the other places where they put it."

There are places like the Wellness Connection that promote recovery and could help people who are coming out of the hospital or jail, said Rachael Lovinger, a peer support specialist at the Wellness Connection.

"You learn what you can and share it," she said. "You only keep what you have by sharing it."

'Whatever you put in front of your treatment you will lose'

Lovinger was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, bipolar unspecified, borderline personality disorder and PTSD. She is also a recovering drug and alcohol addict.

"Treatment brought me to Kentucky in 2008 from Georgia," she said. "Back home I couldn't find a facility to get treatment. I did three months of treatment."

Lovinger knew she would be triggered and fall back into her addictions if she went back to Georgia.

"I decided to make a clean start. Whatever you put in front of your recovery you will lose," she said. "It takes time. It takes a lot of work ? progress, not perfection."

Getting help for borderline personality disorder has been a rocky road for Lovinger.

"Borderline personality disorder has a bad reputation. If you have it, therapists don't want to have anything to do with you," she said. "I self medicated."

Now Lovinger takes care of herself to make sure she stays well.

"I take my medicine every day. I go to meetings. I do service work ? I give back what's been given to me," she said. "I thank NAMI because if it hadn't been for them I wouldn't have gotten treatment. They got me my life back."

'Coming out of mental illness takes constant work'

Patterson is trying to remember the painful pieces of her past in order to continue her healing.

"I know there's more memories to work on. The only memory I have of the child pornography is the last one. It may have started in infancy," she said. "All of these things come with scars. I learned abnormal ways to handle situations. Coming out of mental illness takes constant work. Even though I know I've recovered, I know there are still traits that I have to work on."

Patterson raised her children while she was suffering with mental illness.

"It affected how I raised my kids. My daughter was the mom and I was the child. I did not want to touch them," she said. "I did not want to be touched. It affected my marriage. It tore me up for what I'd done to affect my family. I hurt for them because they had to deal with a lot.

"It's not all about me, and I had to learn that," she said. "I had to apologize."

Patterson wants to "carry a message that carries hope."

"You can recover as a young person. If they have help they can recover sooner," she said. "I'm grateful I have come through everything I've come through because it made me a better person."

Patterson considers herself a success story.

"I've gone from not having a life to having a life. I want to be a voice for mental illness, child abuse and now human trafficking," she said. "I had been hopeless until I came here. I couldn't see the blessings that I have. I have a higher power. God was the one who carried me through."

- For more information about NAMI programs, call 270-796-2606 or visit namibg-wellnessconnection.com.

- Follow features reporter Alyssa Harvey on Twitter @bgdnfeatures or visit bgdailynews.com.