On The Job With Schizophrenia
Moe Armstrong advises his job trainees to slump on the job. Forget the firm handshake, dump that eye-contact stuff you read about in career books. Just lay low and lay back, Armstrong advises his students.
“I know America wants a dynamic work force, but working with us, you have to scale that back,” said Armstrong, a mentally ill man who teaches mental health professionals how to counsel people like himself.
Armstrong, at 54, has become famous for his intensive, down-to-earth training seminars. He is famous partly because he says things other trainers don’t say in ways that make people listen. But he is also famous because he himself has schizophrenia and is one of the few examples of a mentally ill person teaching the professionals who are meant to help the mentally ill.
In the board room, psychiatrists or business people might need to be direct and firm with each other. But mental health counselors will simply confuse and frighten their clients if they come on too strong and too eager, Armstrong says.
“You don’t have to be that up and on for us. Just be yourselves,” said Armstrong, the full time director of consumer and family affairs for Vinfen, the largest human service organization in the state, with 1600 full- and part-time employees. The company serves people with disabilities, including mental illnesses, mental retardation and AIDS. With 100 residential programs and 10 day programs, Vinfen places an emphasis on involving clients in their care, and working to keep people as independent as possible.
Armstrong’s down-to-earth and unconventional advice to caregivers, as well as his ability to work with other mentally ill people, has given him a name in the mental health community.
After his training class last week, one trainee interrupted him from an interview to say, “hearing you speak gets me excited.” The 45-minute lecture had been as much drama as school. Armstrong’s emotional explanations include dozens of tiny one-act plays packed with the punch of Armstrong’s intimacy with mental illness.
“Here comes Moe,” he tells the group. He is a large man dressed casually in a t-shirt, shorts and sandals. He paces and moves like a movie director. “My brain is on fire and you have to deal with me,” Armstrong warns his classroom.
He explains that schizophrenics have a brain disorder that leaves them easily scared, hurt and confused. It is going to be up to them to “pick up the pieces.”
Armstrong is convinced his own experiences with mental health make him better at working with other providers, as well as with the mentally ill. He meets regularly with families and mentally ill people and helps them cope, starting from square one. First off, he says, he teaches people whose brains are “on fire” how to calm down and sleep at night.
Armstrong, who had his first mental break in 1965 in Vietnam, believes his illness was triggered by post-traumatic stress syndrome, and led to his spending some two decades of his adult years as a drifter. He believes he also had a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, like many others with his illness.
Schizophrenia is described by the National Institute of Mental Health as “the most chronic and disabling of the major mental illnesses.” It may be one disorder, or it may be many disorders, with different causes. Few generalizations hold true for all people who are diagnosed as schizophrenic, according to the NIMH.
About one out of 100 people in the general population will be diagnosed with schizophrenia during their lifetime, but the incidence is higher in people with a family history. The illness is usually marked by the sudden onset of severe psychotic symptoms like a person’s being out of touch with reality, or unable to separate real from unreal experiences. There are no specific causes, treatments or diagnostic tests.
Armstrong’s anxiety reached unbearable levels in Vietnam, when he was 21. He was sent back to his home state of Illinois, where he was hospitalized for four months. From there, he drifted to California, where his craziness seemed to fit in with the mood of the time. For a year, he thought he was St. Francis and went around in a house coat. Then he headed to New Mexico, where he lived alone in a tent in the mountains and served as a local tourist attraction.
“People from the town would say, ‘Have you been drunk with the crazy guy in the mountains?’” recalled Armstrong in an interview last week. “I knew I had the break from the war. I knew I couldn’t hold a job or keep a relationship but I never thought I was just mentally ill.”
Through the years, Armstrong drifted in and out of California, in and out of Buddhism, and mostly into substance abuse. His family knew where he was, although the connection was weak. But by the 80s, Armstrong was ready to give working a try. After enough years on his own, he came to the decision he wanted to get off Social Security and hold onto a job. He went into broadcasting for a short time, and, encouraged that he had made it through broadcasting school, he returned to college.
Armstrong got himself into the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico and eventually earned several degrees, including a bachelor’s in English, a master’s in organizational development and a MBA.
During that period, he got into counseling for the first time after nearly two decades of struggling with schizophrenia.
He remembers when he walked into a veteran’s center out west and was able to see a counselor. “The first time I went into counseling it was such a relief,” he recalled. Among other things, he learned what he now tells other mentally ill people. He had to stay away from alcohol and drugs, and he must always make sure he has a home.
After finishing school, Armstrong was surprised to find the mental health world does not readily hire people with mental illnesses. Finally he got hired to work in a day center for the mentally ill in Albuquerque. At the same time he began doing national workshops through Mental Illness Anonymous educating others with mental illness how to live with the condition.
Recently, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill honored Armstrong with the prestigious Lionel Aldridge Award. It was given for his courage in living with schizophrenia and the work he has done with the mentally ill in Boston. Last year, ABC News, the Larry King Live Show, and BBC featured Armstrong, interviewing him on his ideas about mental illness and how to treat the mentally ill.
But Tony Zipple, [former] senior vice president at Vinfen, recognized Armstrong’s talents years ago after seeing him present workshops at mental health conferences around the country.
Zipple recruited Armstrong and Armstrong decided to join Vinfen. He had never really been to Boston, but was impressed by Zipple, who he saw as a “cool guy,” someone he could work for.
“I felt I could make a difference here and Tony Zipple was very cool,” said Armstrong, who moved here five years ago and now lives in Cambridgeport with a woman he loves and who shares with him the challenge of living with mental illness.
Zipple was just as taken with Armstrong. “I was really impressed with not just his knowledge and skill and dedication but also his personal style and charm and I thought he would be a tremendous match with Vinfen’s needs,” said Zipple. He also thought Armstrong would be a boon to the advocacy movement in this state, he said.
At Vinfen, Armstrong gives workshops to professionals, mental health consumers, and the families of the mentally ill. And always, he gives them a window into his own experiences as a mentally ill person and as a consumer of mental health services.
His main concern is that the mental health field gets more people involved who have experienced mental illness. His other hope is that mental health workers in general will be given more useful training. Finally, he believes that medication is over-prescribed. Ideally, he told mental health workers, doctors will consult with them about medicine and find out if they have given a person such a large dose the person can’t even make a sandwich anymore.
Although Armstrong is now a national figure with a good job and steady home, he knows that every day he is healthy is a gift. Last summer, he had his worst break in 30 years. He was completely disoriented, filled with terror at night and as close to suicide as he has ever been. He stopped driving, knowing he was a danger to himself and others. There was no precipitant and no warning that was clear to Armstrong.
During this time, he came close to checking himself into a hospital. But Armstrong tried to do the kind of work in his head that he might suggest to his clients. Each day he reminded himself that he had a good life with structure and meaning.
“I have someone who loves me,” he told himself, continuing, “I have a place to live and I’m going back to our programs [at Vinfen].”
A lot of his motivation comes from knowing that he is saving lives in his work. But regardless of how he is feeling on any particular day, he has certain things he tells himself every day.
“I’ve got schizophrenia pride,” he said. “And there is nothing wrong with being mentally ill in my world. I say four times a day, ‘I’ve got a legitimate condition and I need appropriate care and by God I’m going to get the care I need.’”
(Reprinted with permission from The Cambridge Chronicle)
