Why the mentally ill turn to each other for help

By Kim Palchikoff, Special to the Sun

Friday, April 17, 2015 | 2 a.m.

When Joe Tyler learned he was a paranoid schizophrenic, he didn’t turn to pricey psychologists to help him cope.

Instead, he shared the very disturbing voices in his head with someone who could relate. Not that it was easy. Talking about mental illness is never easy. But Tyler knew one thing for sure: If he was going to talk to a stranger about the thoughts in his head, he’d rather open up to someone who had walked a mile in his shoes.

Maybe they’d know what to do. And hopefully they wouldn’t be judgmental.

“Before I got help, I thought I was Jesus Christ,” Tyler says. “Then I thought I was supposed to be protecting President Jimmy Carter from assassination.” Once he streaked naked across his neighborhood in the middle of the night. His parents met him with a blanket.

For months he bounced around, he said, in a state of delusion, from mental hospitals to halfway houses. As a veteran, he was offered treatment at the VA. Nothing seemed to work.

He credits two things with bringing him back down to reality: the antipsychotic medication Risperdal and, later on, a therapy program called, “Peer-to-Peer,” run by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Welcome to the world of peer counseling, a booming form of self-help therapy in the mental health community that is gaining attention nationally and traction in Nevada. Peer counselors will tell you that the benefits are obvious: it’s low cost, often free, effective and popular.

While not all agree on what to call it — some say it’s counseling while others call it support — the concept is simple: seasoned individuals who’ve battled mental illness themselves but have learned to deal with it, get trained to work with others who are in need of assistance.

Having a degree in psychology or therapy is not a prerequisite in becoming a peer counselor; having a mental illness is.

“I felt more comfortable with this group,” said Tyler. “There wasn’t a feeling of discrimination.”

According to the national alliance, about 20,000 Americans nationwide have participated in the peer support program since its inception in 2001. Nevada was one of the first states to offer it.

As Tyler talked about the voices in his brain, the peer leader showered him with formal and anecdotal information about his disease and how to live with it. He also was shown how to write an advance directive, so in case he relapsed, there were plans in place for what he wanted his family to do.

“If you’re an ER doctor who’s had a stressful day, who would you rather talk to about it, a colleague who knows what you’re going through, or a friend who doesn’t?” said Jo Anna Rios, the Las Vegas-based president of the newly formed Peer Alliance of Nevada, or PAN.

Rios is afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Her newly established organization, with about 30 members statewide, is working to create peer support groups so people like herself can connect and advise those in the same boat.

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Known for her chatty personality and gift of gab, Vickie Delicate, 42, recalled being suddenly tongue-tied when she walked into her first peer-led meeting 11 years ago. It was sponsored by a state agency, the Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services.

She was reluctant to talk about the voices in her head.

“The peer group was very beneficial in the beginning treatment of my illness,” she said. “I didn’t understand my disease, I felt separated from the rest of the world, and I was frightened because I had a doctor telling me I was going to have to take medication for the rest of my life.”

Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, eventually she learned to open up to her Peer-to-Peer group and talk about her feelings and the events leading up to her diagnosis.

Eventually she was attending five sessions a week, and enjoyed the simplicity of the routine: show up, sign in, sit around a table in a sparse conference room, introduce yourself and your diagnosis, and join in on the conversation. Much of it was educational in nature.

“These peer-led classes help you recognize when your mental health is out of whack,” she said. “You have to reach out and let people know.”

There are other peer groups offering help to the mentally ill.

Elizabeth J., 39, who was diagnosed as bipolar 13 years ago, is a volunteer peer facilitator for Connections, a Las Vegas group affiliated with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Connections is less focused on education and more on providing moral support.

Having a peer leader, she says, “puts people at ease. There’s not a barrier, the participants see where we’re coming from, there’s a comfort level.”

In her weekly gatherings, the group talks about medications, side effects, concerns about stigma and getting rejected from society.

“Living well with a mental illness is the biggest problem,” she says. “A lot of people don’t know that they can live well. It’s hard for them to get past the feeling of hopelessness. They think, ‘Woe is me, my life is over.’ But I tell them, there’s life, there’s living. You don’t quit living.”

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At its offices in Las Vegas and Sparks, the state’s mental health services agency hires mentally ill people to serve as “consumer services assistants.”

Peer counseling is a strategy also used by the state agency that offers outpatient and inpatient services for the adult mentally ill, in Las Vegas and Sparks. At each location, several mentally ill people have been hired to serve as “consumer services assistants.” Their jobs include providing support for persons who visit the agency’s drop-in center and offering assistance in navigating the state’s mental health system, said Jose Marcos Perez, director of community services at the Las Vegas office, which serves about 5,000 people.

The state offers more conventional therapy services, Perez says, “but some feel more comfortable talking to peers.”

Myra Schultz, a recovery services coordinator and a colleague of Perez who’s been in the mental health industry for 44 years, said that since the peer-led groups in Las Vegas started about 15 years ago, she’s seen a drop in hospitalization rates and more participants going back to school, getting a job and learning new skills.

Patrick Hendry, a national advocate for peer-run groups and a vice president for consumer advocacy at Mental Health America, a national mental health organization, couldn’t agree more.

“A lot of people who are diagnosed with a severe mental illness like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia are led to believe that they will never work, or work only at a low stress job,” he says. “Peer support groups present them with a message of hope, that they can fully recover and return to work.”

Joe Tyler, who has a master’s degree in public health, is one of the assistants hired to provide peer support at the state office in Sparks. He is a vocal advocate for Nevada’s estimated 90,000 mentally ill, including eight years as Nevada president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Now 62, he’s lived with his schizophrenia for more than 30 years. He’s got a lot to say about what works and what doesn’t.

He provides testimony to the Nevada Legislature on mental health issues, and often takes his two trained parrots to mental hospitals and the VA, where he puts on a bird therapy show. In the many weekly groups he leads, Tyler shares with others one strategy that has helped him get through his darkest days: humor.

But it’s his work as a talk show host for “Erasing the Stigma,” a weekly TV program that is available on YouTube, that has gained him the most notoriety.

These days, he doesn’t just answer questions from clients, he draws state officials — including former governors — into the discussion of mental illness.

For Elizabeth, acting as a peer counselor not only helps group members but benefits her.

“I get to witness other people growing and changing,” she says. “There are moms and dads, people who had lives, then became mentally ill and are now afraid. I tell them, ‘We’re different, but we’re human beings. I write poetry. I’m not a useless human being doing nothing.”

“Peer-to-Peer” is a 10-week, free educational course run in Las Vegas and nationwide by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Depression Bipolar Support Alliance offers free, peer led support groups.