Mental illness forum allows sufferers to share stories

By Alex Bridges - abridges@nvdaily.com

WINCHESTER -- Judy Woolridge knows first-hand the hardships of living with mental illness.

The bullying and harassment by other people doesn't help -- all of which Woolridge says still happens to her on the streets of Winchester.

On Wednesday, Woolridge, who said she suffers from anxiety, stood before dozens of people at a forum hosted by the Winchester affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Concern Hotline.

She recounted the "dark days," struggles, eventual acceptance of having a disease and then successes.

"The only non-dark day that I've had was when I spend a week with my friend, Jeff, in Hawaii, or when I go to my son's house ... and I don't feel harassed," Woolridge said.

Woolridge recalled a time when she considered suicide and cited the story of Phoebe Prince, the teenage girl in Massachusetts who killed herself after suffering from constant bullying and harassment at school.

Agencies such as NAMI have helped her learn to cope, she added.

"I accept that I have a mental illness -- not mentally ill, but a person first with a mental illness second," Woolridge told the crowd.

Mental illness symptoms came on suddenly for Middletown resident Steven Mitchell seven years ago. Since then, Mitchell said the symptoms caused him to lose his 16-year job at Winchester Medical Center and one at Mount Weather. Friends and family have supported him, Mitchell said, and he feels better with treatment.

"A lot of my friends, a lot of people understood," Mitchell recalled. "Some people didn't. I'm pretty much a cutup and carried on anyway. I'm glad to be getting back to that way."

Woolridge and Mitchell are part of the growing number of people in the Northern Shenandoah Valley living with mental illness. The area faces the problem of how to treat and provide support to people living with mental illnesses, several local experts acknowledged during a panel discussion at the forum.

The audience learned of such services as the in-home aide provided by the National Counseling Group Inc., with an office in the Winchester area; the outpatient and inpatient work done through Valley Health; as well as through NAMI, Concern Hotline and Northwestern Community Services. Agencies often work together.

But the region suffers a shortage of psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners, according to Pamela K. Kuehl, a therapist with Valley Health's Valley Behavioral Health Associates. Some doctors no longer take new patients and others have waiting lists.

Lisa Shaffer and Jennifer Molina, crisis care nurses at Winchester Medical Center, see mentally ill patients in the emergency ward. They "are the eyes and ears" for the psychiatrists, Molina said, seeing an estimated 225 people a month, including those patients sent from Valley Health's other hospitals.

"We see the same struggle that everybody else sees in Winchester -- a lack of services," Molina said. "We are the face of telling people that 'you don't have insurance, there's not a lot of services out there.'"

Cuts in state funds has forced Northwestern Community Services to scale back its services and to whom it can provide help, according to Dennis Vaughn, a crisis services liaison for the agency in Front Royal.

The agency's successes include programs aimed at training law enforcement and jail officers on how to treat people who suffer from mental illness, Vaughn said. A program based in Winchester and then cut came back in a different form thanks to the Salvation Army and the clients.

"It's not all doom and gloom," Vaughn said.

Visit Concern Hotline on the web at www.concern-
hotline.com or the NAMI chapter at www.nami-
winchester.org for more information.