BILL
I was born in Jacksonville, Florida in January 1956. I lived there until the time I joined the service in 1976. I have three sisters--one older and two younger. I went to the University of Florida for one year and then I transferred to Florida Community College in Jacksonville. I worked part time at Sears and went to college part time and I joined the service in 1976. The service was all right for me. I liked the physical aspects of it. I liked the discipline. It seemed to be all right for me. I was in ROTC at the University of Florida and I planned to be an officer but instead I ended up as an enlisted man. I stayed in for seven years and was given one award—an Army commendation award for the work I did in Italy and South Germany.

I was married to a German girl for three years. I met her when I was stationed in north Italy. We have a son now; he was born in Italy and is now twenty-three years old. In 1980, we moved back to the United States.

I was twenty-seven at the time of diagnosis. I think my time had come up for reenlistment option and I don’t really recall the one particular incident, but I was seeing a psychiatrist on a periodic basis. There wasn’t anything that was very dramatic that happened. I was hospitalized under the psychiatrist’s orders and I ended up leaving the service three months later from Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. They said I had a bipolar illness and that I had to be treated and discharged. I told them I wanted to stay in the Army and they said it was better that I receive treatment from the VA.

The psychiatrist decided that I should be hospitalized for a while. That was in November 1982. There have been different medications that have come out that are better. They used to call certain drugs “dirty drugs.” That’s what I’ve heard now. They just didn’t help people as much as they do now. For me the big change has been the right prescription, the right combination of medication, and some type of social interaction. Things are different now. My social worker has placed me in an apartment. I have a place of my own…a place I can call my own and that’s made a big difference for me. There was a time about two years ago when I spent a year living in an assisted living facility. I was there a little over a year and then my social worker came over and said it was all right to move to an apartment. My sister, Michelle, came from Jacksonville and we shopped around for an apartment, and we found a nice one.

I’m pretty much normal now--stabilized. And that’s the way my family reacts. If I act normal, they treat me normal. That’s the way it is now. I’ve been married three times and I have three sons. One is twenty-three, the other is seventeen and the other is fourteen. I have contact with the two who live in Jacksonville. The older boy has been adopted by his stepfather; they live in New Jersey. I haven’t seen him in twenty years. So that’s tough, but I’m just not pushing it, but I have a picture of him. The other two live in Jacksonville and I see them periodically. Now that they are older, it’s a little bit easier for them to accept things. I don’t really know if it’s that obvious that I notice. I think a lot has to do with making a lot of progress so it’s not that obvious to anybody either.

I’ve been in MHICM for about a year and a half. It has helped with some good social interaction. They help me with my medications; they helped me with buying a place to live and they help me with transportation sometimes when I need to go grocery shopping. They also help me with transportation to the bus station since I’ve been taking care of my dad in Jacksonville for a few months. He had a stroke a couple of years ago and has a speech impediment and he is eighty-six years old. He’s kind of frail and it’s hard for him to get around.

I’m friends with a couple of patients in the MHICM program. I do a few things on my own also. I read a lot and study. I just got into reading again; I’m teaching myself how to read better. I’m a member of a Gainesville gym. I like athletics. Sometimes I go to the movies on my own, but I haven’t been lately, since I have a DVD player and rent DVD’s at blockbuster.

In MHICM, you can tell how healthy you are or how good you are by your association with other people in the groups. That’s a good way to explain it. I’m still doing pretty well, and I’m going to continue to do well. They help me a lot here. I’ve turned to them for help and they didn’t turn me away. I think it’s a good relationship.

There is a stigma attached to mental illness and there used to be a worse stigma than there is now. As long as you are socially functional at some level then there’s less of a stigma. And the more adept you are at some talent, like some hobby or your education level or your functioning within these groups, then the less you feel yourself mentally ill. I had some hard times in the past with the stigma. When I got out of the Army I had a very rough time with it. I had a rough time getting the VA to pay me a certain percentage of pay that I thought I was promised. I can remember being promised a certain number of severance pay to leave the Army and I had a wife and a son at the time. I ended up getting 100% from the VA and it makes a big difference in my standard of living.

Sometimes it takes dedicated, caring work to care for other people. And without being naïve, people can be helped and can become healthy and loving, happy people.