They wash dishes, pick up litter and clean bathrooms. They also lead major corporations, defend clients in court, and perform surgeries. While many of them spend their lives isolated from others, their ranks also include some of the most powerful people in history.
They are people with a mental illness. Like everyone else, they struggle daily to survive and live meaningful lives. Unlike other people, however, they face the added pressure of dealing with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or clinical depression, and the stigma that comes with the territory.
AIM Center in Chattanooga has been working since 1989 to not only reduce the stigma, but also help people with a mental illness to thrive.
Walking into the Center’s facility on West MLK Boulevard can shatter one’s preconceptions about what it means to be mentally ill. On any given weekday, the center is buzzing with activity. There’s hardly an empty hallway, and most rooms are beehives of movement.
Surprisingly, most of the people who occupy these spaces are not staff members catering to the needs of the Center’s clients, but the people the Center exists to help. Instead of being passive recipients of a social service, they have an active part in running the place. They are the pulse that follows the heartbeat.
Bonnie Currey, executive director of AIM Center since its creation in 1989, explains:
“We do psychiatric rehabilitation. And we use the clubhouse model, which empowers people to become members, not clients or patients. So our members and staff work together to make decisions. This gives them a sense of ownership.”
It also encourages peer relations, which Currey says can be a big factor in the rehabilitation of a person with a mental illness.
“We have divided our program into four service areas: employment, education, administrative support and housing. In our education program, we have members who are tutors. The idea is to take someone with a psychiatric disorder, and no self esteem or motivation, and give them the opportunity to do real work,” Currey says.
The programs at AIM Center are open to people ages 16 and older with personality disorders and psychiatric disabilities. Although the goal is to enable members to become productive citizens, there are immediate benefits as well. Currey says one client told her the only time he stopped hearing voices was when he would come to the Center and pick up trash.
“If a person with a mental illness is anxious about something, and we give him an opportunity to become vested in a positive experience, he can sometimes compartmentalize the bad stuff,” she says.
The seeds of AIM Center were sown when a group of parents approached Currey about putting together a program to address the needs of their mentally ill sons and daughters.
As the chair of the local mental health association board, Currey was already concerned about the fate of the young adults Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute and Valley Psychiatric Hospital were releasing. She saw that while the former patients were stable, they had no social or vocational outlets, and therefore would segregate themselves in their homes.
“A lot of people had been in Moccasin Bend for years. The hospital was their life. It told them what to do and when to do it. And they were being discharged. So I put together a task force and we studied the model we believed would work best,” she says.
Currey divides the growth of AIM Center into four stages, the first of which involved learning to teach its members to be independent. Once this was accomplished, the Center began empowering its members through work at the clubhouse.
“We teach our members to become advocates for themselves and take ownership in the Center. For example, each service area has a member who’s identified as a community resource person. Instead of our members checking with one of our workers on the status of their supplemental security income or housing, they go to the resource person, who’s trained and can do an excellent job,” she says.
The third stage of the evolution of AIM Center involved becoming proficient at social integration, in which the Center builds the skills and self-esteem of its members so they become active participants in their communities.
“We don’t want to be a day program, where you come here every day and we’re your whole life. There are more natural supports for people in the community. And we’ve been successful at this. There was a time when all of our members came every day, but that’s no longer the case,” Currey says.
As an example of how the Center integrates its members into the community, Currey describes its transitional employment program, whereby the Center “owns” a job and teaches its members to perform its duties.
“We send in two job coaches to learn the job, which they then teach to two of our members. The coaches also stand-in when no one else is available. One of our coaches has been washing dishes,” she says, smiling.
AIM Center is currently focused on helping its members recover from their mental illnesses and lead successful lives. The latter includes addressing the general health issues of its members.
“In the last decade, the average life expectancy of a person with a mental illness has declined another 10 years to 53. When a person has a mental illness, taking care of that issue becomes their entire focus, which means they don’t concentrate enough on their general health. So we’re doing a lot of recovery and wellness classes,” Currey says.
As AIM Center has grown, the stigma attached to those with mental illnesses has decreased. Currey credits this to the emergence of medications, beginning in the ’90s, that allow the mentally ill to function better in society. However, there’s still more territory to win in the battle for public acceptance, Currey says.
“People don’t want to deal with the mentally ill. They perceive people with psychiatric disorders as difficult, dangerous and unpredictable. But things are getting better.”
Currey is encouraged by the way people in Chattanooga have helped AIM Center through volunteer service. Individuals, companies and organizations are also contributing to the Center’s current capital campaign, which is aimed at raising money to complete the renovation of its 16,500 square foot facility. Additions will include a fitness center and three classrooms.
“Twenty six percent of the country’s population has a psychiatric disorder during any given year. In Greater Chattanooga, that equates to 136,318 people. Of those, 23 percent, or 31,458 suffer from severe mental illness. The renovations will help us meet current and projected demand for psychiatric rehabilitation services in this area,” Currey says.
AIM Center receives funds from the United Way, Hamilton County, TennCare and other sources. Some of these lifelines are in danger of being cut back or eliminated.
A Chattanooga attorney recently said, “AIM Center does more good with less money than any other nonprofit in Chattanooga.”
Indeed, from its GED classes, to its computer courses, to its art programs, to its HUD and Section 8 housing options, it’s hard to find the point at which the Center’s services end. This is good news for Chattanooga, which, like every community, must manage the issue of mental illnesses with an eye on tomorrow.