“Always a Participant”: Hollywood party for people with mental illness

When Georgette Darby has one of her bad days, she knows what will get her out of her Hollywood apartment.

“Get off your ass and go to the club,” Darby tells himself.

At Fountain House Hollywood, the 61-year-old has a job. Lunch is served Monday through Friday, and Darby, who has strong opinions about food preparation, is part of the team that prepares it. So she gets dressed—you can’t just walk around here in a fancy old T-shirt, she tells herself—and heads to a quaint establishment located in an office building on Sunset Boulevard.

Behind its glass doors lies something rare: a community run by people with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. Above the Fountain House Hollywood reception desk are the words: “You are not alone.”

Boards are replete with lists of necessary tasks. In addition to her duties in the kitchen, where onions and meatballs were sizzling on the stove on a recent Wednesday, Darby is also part of a team dedicated to promoting mental health. Others volunteer to water the plants, write the weekly newsletter, wash aprons, check in on members who haven’t shown up in a while, and take on other tasks needed to keep the club active.

Darby can come and go as she pleases, but she comes at least four days a week.

“I do what I do,” she said, “because I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through. Let me tell you this: I’m hooked, honey.

Such clubs are not a new idea. They began more than 75 years ago as a way for people leaving New York City mental hospitals to find community. The researchers say they provide a connection for people whose social connections may have been disrupted by the effects of mental illness. Now there are hundreds of them around the world. .

But the clubhouse model hasn’t taken off as widely in California as in other parts of the U.S., said Dr. Thomas Insel, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

“In California, we have a big focus on housing and providing a safe environment for people to live in,” said Insel, a board member of Fountain House, the New York organization that helped launch the Hollywood site. “But what often happens is that people with serious mental illnesses are given housing and then are left isolated all day, just staring at walls.”

Local officials said the new Fountain House Hollywood facility, which opened in July, is the only one of its kind in Los Angeles and is built on the “Clubhouse International” model pioneered at Fountain House.

This idea has long intrigued Lisa Wong, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. Wong said in her years of working at Skid Row, she noticed that newly hired clients might notice their symptoms of paranoia or schizophrenia subsiding, and then suffer another bout of depression.

“They’re dealing with loss. They are dealing with trauma. They are dealing with broken ties to previous relationships and to family. It is not enough to simply give them the means to stabilize them,” Wong said. “They really want to move on with their lives.”

Clubs can give people a sense of meaning and purpose, she said. “You take part in building something.”

At the morning meeting at Fountain House Hollywood, participants rated their feelings on a scale of 1 to 5 and answered a random question: “If you could relive one day from your past, which day would you choose and why?” — then went through announcements, upcoming events and birthdays. The board was littered with Polaroids of its members, who numbered more than two dozen as of October.

Club director Gillian Santoro sees her job as working alongside members, not running the place for them. Members helped Santoro vet candidates for the job and also review applications for new members.

When Darby and other club members became certified as food service workers, it was their idea, not hers. When a participant needed disability benefits, Santoro said, “I won’t do it for you, but I will go with you.”

This could be a radical change for members – and more empowering. People facing serious mental illness are often “told where they should be, when they should be there, what time they should be, and everything is done for them,” Santoro said.

Darby said she experienced trauma as a child that went unaddressed in her youth. As an adult, her life was turned upside down when budget cuts cost her a long tenure at a law firm. Soon she lost her home and car.

Darby found herself in downtown Los Angeles, where she sought shelter one afternoon before an approaching storm. Feeling she had no choice, she walked towards the bus.

The driver slammed on the brakes and swore at her. Shocked, Darby sought help first at the police station, then at the Department of Mental Health, and ended up in a hospital psychiatric ward.

She said her condition began to stabilize with medication and care. But Darby recalled that in many mental health programs, if you didn’t show up or do what you were told, “you lost your place. I had to start all over again.”

At Fountain House Hollywood, “you’re not forced to do anything,” she said. “Once you become a member, you will always be a member.”

Another club member, Mark Logan, said Fountain House had given him “a whole new circle of friends”.

“And I can use skills that I’m familiar with and that I share with other people,” said Logan, 61, who has written a memoir about living with bipolar disorder.

He is a member of the Fountain House Hollywood team, which provides tours, new member orientation and writes the regular newsletter, among other duties. When club members were hospitalized, the team visited them and even stopped at their homes to feed their pets, Santoro said.

“They say if you want to increase your self-esteem, do worthy things. And that’s what I’m trying to do,” Logan said.

Fountain House says its clubs save money by avoiding the costs of preventable hospitalizations, unemployment and justice system problems that people suffer without such support. The researchers estimated these savings at over $11,000 per person.

New York University researchers also calculated Medicaid savings by comparing Medicaid costs for people with mental illness who did and did not enroll in Fountain House. Their analysis found an 11% cost reduction from clubhouse participation, although the researchers cautioned that the sample size was small.

Still, experts say money has been one of the biggest obstacles to expanding the clubs, which tend to thrive where there is stable funding (Michigan, for example, pays them through its Medicaid program) but such programs often struggle for donations to survive. .

In Los Angeles County, Fountain House Hollywood receives $1 million annually through a contract with the county, with payments based on meeting goals such as the number of members the club serves, Wong said. This money comes from the Mental Health Services Act and is funded through income tax on the rich, approved by Californians.

The Hollywood Club is also funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. And as California seeks federal approval to fund the clubs through its Medicaid program, Wong said Los Angeles County hopes to use that funding in the future as the Hollywood program grows.

Santoro also hopes Fountain House Hollywood will move to a new location: a larger space next to Hollywood Forever Cemetery with an outdoor garden for growing vegetables. Participants are already discussing possible names for the future cafe. Maybe Buzz and Banter or Fountain Flow.

“When you think about traditional mental health, people come and get treatment,” said Francesca Pernice, a professor of educational psychology at Wayne State University College of Education who has studied the clubhouses.

But in the clubhouse, “they say, ‘You belong here. You have something to contribute to society and we are here to work with you,” Pernice said.

Santoro, listening to Darby tell her story that Wednesday, told her she was grateful the bus didn’t hit her.

– Because I wouldn’t be able to meet you. And I love you – you know it. And you are a huge part of this community. If you weren’t here, things wouldn’t be going this way.”

“I just hope I can make a difference,” Darby responded.

“You’re already here,” Santoro said. “Every day.”