Mental Health Association of Portland

From the Salem Statesman Journal, April 24, 2012

A theft of patient information from the car of the Oregon State Hospital’s chief of psychiatry has created a confidentiality breach affecting approximately 550 current and former patients, the hospital reported today.

Patients at Oregon State Hospital received a hand-delivered letter today explaining the details of the April 13 break-in of Dr. Michael Duran’s car outside the 24 Hour Fitness health club at 4546 SE McLoughlin Blvd. in Portland, hospital spokeswoman Rebeka Gipson-King said.

A backpack containing hospital notes and records is among the items taken by the thief, Gipson-King said. The records include:

• A case load list containing the names of approximately 550 patients in the care of the hospital during the first week in March. The list also includes the patients’ hospital identification number, and the doctor and treatment program assigned to each patient.
• Approximately 20 progress notes of individual patients, randomly drawn by Duran as part of an audit he was conducting of his doctors’ work. These notes include dates of birth and could include health information like the patient’s diagnosis.
• A notebook containing Duran’s day-to-day work notes.

The Social Security numbers of the patients were not compromised, and no electronic patient information was involved, Gipson-King said.

Letters detailing the breach will go out to all 618 patients treated by Oregon State Hospital during the entire month of March, to make sure everyone who could be affected is notified, Gipson-King said.

About 290 of those patients will be further notified that they could be one of the 20 people whose progress notes were taken during the theft, Gipson-King said. Because Duran’s audit was random, that is as far as hospital officials can narrow down the list.

“We have no reason to believe the information has been misused, but we want to make sure our patients are aware and have the support they need,” OSH Superintendent Greg Roberts said in a prepared statement. “The state hospital takes patient privacy very seriously. We will take any and all steps necessary to ensure no similar incident happens in the future.”

The break-in occurred around 10:15 p.m., after Duran had put in a late night at the hospital’s Salem campus. On his way to his home in Portland, he stopped off at the gym to work out, Gipson-King said.

Gipson-King said Duran took steps to hide the backpack, but the thief rooted it out and took off with it.

The Mental Health Association of Portland has opposed the re-creation of the Oregon State Hospital, and the santization of it’s history. The film, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a direct and harsh criticism of the hospital and its ilk, as operated by all superintendents, including Dean Brooks. Note: to date, the OSH Museum project has not shown off it’s fantastic collection of hand-crank portable electro-convulsive treatment devices, popular during Dr. Brooks’ time. Persons with diagnosis of mental illness are claiming their place in society – this history is our history, not to be curated and tidied by government administrators or psychiatric apologists.

From the Salem Statesman Journal, December 25, 2011

This leather director’s chair was given to Dean Brooks, former superintendent at Oregon State Hospital, by the producers of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” It is currently in Brooks’ residence but will eventually have a home in the Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health.

A personalized brown, leather director’s chair sits in Dean Brooks’ living room, with a matching script pocket hanging from the right arm. Inside the pocket is a handwritten letter, on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” stationery from the film’s production company, addressed to the former superintendent at Oregon State Hospital.

Dear Dean,

Just a little something to remember us by — Thank you for making it all possible.

Saul & Michael

The gift, from producers Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas, is destined for display in the future Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health.

The museum will be housed on the hospital campus on Center Street NE in the historic Kirkbride U Building, the one with the cupola and other preserved portions from the old J Building, which was used in the filming of “Cuckoo’s Nest.” The museum is scheduled to open Oct. 6, 2012.

This leather director's chair was given to Dean Brooks, former superintendent at Oregon State Hospital, by the producers of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.'

I deferred directing the conversation to Brooks, who has a sharp memory and is a wonderful storyteller. I could have listened all day to him talk about his unforeseen path to the state hospital, his unending concern for the patients and their care and the unexpected benefits of turning the hospital into a Hollywood set.

Brooks was superintendent from 1955 to 1981, and although he did much to improve patient care during his tenure, he is best known for inviting the makers of “Cuckoo’s Nest” into the hospital in 1974-75.

Producers had indicated the film would be set in Oregon, regardless of where it was actually made. Brooks said they had inquired at other mental health facilities on the West Coast before coming to Oregon State Hospital.

“We had the space, and I’m a bit of a daredevil anyway,” Brooks said. “I thought, why not? If we’re going to have the name, why don’t we play the game?”

Brooks was the technical advisor for the film and even had a speaking part, for which he still receives an occasional residual check. The latest was for $83.

He played Dr. Spivey, who performed the intake interview with Randle McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson. Most of that scene was improvised by Nicholson — including his swatting of an imaginary fly, asking about a fishing photo and discussing his rape conviction — and Brooke’s reactions were authentic.

“You never knew what Jack was going to do,” Brooks said.

Nicholson also flicked cigarette ashes on Brooks and wiped them off, but that didn’t make the cut.

Brooks said Nicholson gave him good acting advice, including never let your eyes wander, don’t hurry your lines, speak slowly, and never break into another man’s lines.

Until then, the director’s chair stays with Brooks, who at 95 lives in a retirement community not far from the hospital.

The hospital was paid $250 for every day the film crew was on campus, for a stretch of about three and a half months. About 90 patients and employees worked on the film behind the scenes and in front of the camera.

“That’s what Dean wanted,” daughter Dennie said. “Not something that happened at the hospital, but something that happened with the hospital.”

Some of the most rewarding scenes came when the cameras weren’t rolling. Michael Douglas, for example, threw a New Year’s Eve Party at the house he was staying at in South Salem, but was nowhere to be found. He finally showed up at a quarter to midnight.

“Guess where he’d been?” Brooks said. “He’d been at the hospital going from ward to ward saying, ‘Happy New Year.’ ”

Nicholson and Scatman Crothers, who played the night orderly, Mr. Turkle, would visit the kids in the adolescent unit, playing games and singing songs with them.

Dean Brooks

The cast and crew gave back to the community during their stay in Salem — one of the first premieres was held at the Historic Elsinore Theatre exclusively for hospital staff and patients — and continue to give back in support of the museum.

Patton surprised Brooks during my visit with a $50,000 check from the Saul Zaentz Trust. The donation was made in his name in honor of the friendship he had with Zaentz. The trust also has indicated it will help provide access to clips and artifacts for the 2,500-square-foot, volunteer-run museum.

The film will no doubt be a centerpiece. Organizers, with an initial goal of raising $180,000 to open, are in the process of staging exhibits off-site.

Dennie Brooks and her two sisters will meet in January in New York with part of the production duo, Michael Douglas.

Patton, one of the champions for preserving portions of the J Building and for pursuing National Register of Historic Places status for the entire 144-acre campus, said about $11,000 has been donated by individuals.

The goal of the museum is to stimulate discussion about the treatment of mental health patients, and Brooks’ knowledge and insight will be invaluable.

He is on the advisory board, and his daughter is on the board of directors.

“Oregon State Hospital has a great history,” Dean Brooks said, “a great history.”

The museum’s exhibits will span the 128-year history of the institution. It will inform and educate visitors what it was and what it is, including a dark past when patients underwent risky treatments and brutal operations, from brain-cutting lobotomies and forced sterilizations to insulin-induced comas and electric shocks.

Electric shock treatment was shown in the movie Cuckoo’s Nest, and Nicholson’s character underwent a lobotomy. Brooks told me he thought the last lobotomy at Oregon State Hospital was done in 1958.

The patient population peaked at 3,545 that same year, which was early in Brooks’ tenure as superintendent. Today there are 479 patients on the Salem campus.

Brooks was hired as a staff psychiatrist in the fall of 1947. Three years later he was asked to be assistant superintendent, and in 1955 became the hospital’s 10th superintendent.

It was a quick rise for someone who wanted nothing to do with psychiatry in medical school. “I wanted to be a pediatrician and had my heart set on that,” Brooks said. “I skipped as many of my classes in psychiatry as I could. Who wanted that stuff?”

After serving in the Navy, on several ships in the Pacific, he was stationed at the Naval hospital at Camp White in Medford. The chief of medicine there told him he really liked his personality and was putting him in the psychiatry program.

“I hated it. I didn’t know how to tell whether a person had psychosis, anxiety disorder or whether they were normal,” Brooks said.

He was promised that he could get out of the program in two months, but languished for a year. And then something unexpected happened.

“I became enamored with it and found it was something I liked and wanted to follow through with,” he said.

Brooks’ administrative style at Oregon State Hospital was much different than his predecessors. He opened up communication between patients and staff. He invited patients to serve on committees to discuss hospital issues.

His motto was: “Find fact, not fault.”

Now, three decades after his retirement, he hardly recognizes the campus. Current superintendent Greg Roberts took him on a tour of the new facilities.

“I’m impressed with it and the amount of room everybody has,” Brooks said. “I would like to
find out how the patients like it. If they really like this, then it’s a success.”

From the Salem Statesman Journal, November 28, 2011

The administrator of the $458 million Oregon State Hospital replacement project will shift to a new job early next year, becoming interim director of the state office of addictions and mental health treatment programs.

Linda Hammond, who steered construction of the Oregon State Hospital replacement project, will become interim director of the state office of addictions and mental health treatment programs.

Linda Hammond, who has steered construction of a soon-to-be-completed state hospital complex in Salem, will succeed Richard Harris as head of the Addictions and Mental Health Division, or AMH.

Harris is retiring in January.

Bruce Goldberg, director of the Oregon Health Authority, announced the looming leadership change in an email circulated Wednesday.

Goldberg credited Harris for providing “innovative, thoughtful and inspirational” leadership “during a time of great change and challenge for our agency.”

Harris’ accomplishments included hiring Greg Roberts, the current superintendent of the state hospital, and overseeing transformation of the 128-year-old psychiatric facility “into a place of hope, healing and safety,” Goldberg said.

He said Hammond is the right person to step in as interim AMH director, citing her “strong administrative experience and a proven ability to lead people through change.”

Goldberg said a national search for a permanent director will be conducted in the summer.

Hammond has received kudos from state leaders for keeping the hospital replacement project on schedule and within its budget.

Completion of a state-of-the-art 620-bed hospital in Salem is scheduled for early next year. After that, construction will start on a smaller mental hospital on state prison land in Junction City.

In 2007, legislators approved construction of two hospitals to replace the crumbling, long-neglected psychiatric hospital in Salem, which opened in 1883 and was deemed obsolete and unsafe by state-hired consultants in 2005.

For the past several months, Hammond has held a dual role — as administrator of the hospital replacement project and interim chief financial officer for the Oregon Health Authority.

In an email to co-workers Wednesday, Hammond said Jodie Jones, deputy administrator of the hospital replacement project, will take the reins as its administrator.

“What I realized while I was in my dual-roles of interim chief financial officer and project administrator is that the project is too important — this team is too important — not to have a full-time, designated leader,” Hammond wrote.

“During my absence, Jodie has done an outstanding job, with support from all of you, as this project’s on-site administrator. I have asked and she has accepted this as her permanent role. She will continue to report to me but in my position as interim AMH administrator.”

To: Addictions and Mental Health Services Interested Parties
From: Bruce Goldberg, M.D., OHA Director

Richard Harris

Today I share news of the January retirement of Richard Harris, director of the Addictions and Mental Health Division.

Richard has been a truly outstanding leader at AMH and OHA during more than three years of service.

As many of you know, he left retirement from Central City Concern in Portland to guide AMH during a time of great change and challenge for our agency. His leadership has been innovative, thoughtful and inspirational. Among his many accomplishments are hiring the superintendent at the Oregon State Hospital, Greg Roberts, and overseeing
the rebuilding of the hospital into a place of hope, healing and safety. Richard has also been strongly committed to the work of better integrating addictions and mental health services into Oregon’s health care system. I for one am most appreciative of his contributions, and know everyone joins me in thanking him for his service to our clients, our agency and our state. He is leaving us better than he found us.

I have asked Linda Hammond to serve as interim director of AMH after Richard’s retirement.

As we work to transform the health care delivery system with our partners, over the next several months we will also need to transform ourselves and the way we work. Linda is the right person to lead us through that period of change. We will conduct a national search for a permanent director next summer, when we have a better idea of the needs of our agency, our health care system and our state.

I know many of you are familiar with Linda. She has served in key leadership roles in AMH and in community services in Oregonand elsewhere. She brings strong administrative experience and a proven ability to lead people through change.

Before her current role as administrator of the Oregon State Hospital Replacement Project, Linda was the budget administrator for AMH. Prior to that, she held key leadership positions at Oregon Housing and Community Services and other nonprofit organizations. She also worked in a community facility in England for children living with mental and physical disabilities. Linda holds degrees in psychology, specializing in child development, and business management.

Over the next few months Richard and Linda will work together closely to ensure a smooth transition. Please join me in expressing appreciation to Richard for his service and in welcoming Linda to her new role.

From the Salem Statesman Journal, August 17, 2011

Nearly 175 Oregon State Hospital patients moved out of cramped, obsolete quarters on the Salem campus Tuesday, taking up residence in a newly opened part of the $280 million hospital replacement facility, called Trails.

It was a good, first day in Trails for patient Lynn Jones, who said the three-story, 234-bed wing of the new hospital provides OSH residents with vastly improved living conditions.

“I really like it; I was struck by the openness,” Jones said. “I think the environment is calming and therapeutic, more conducive to recovery.”

Tuesday’s mass patient moves into Trails marked another milestone in Oregon’s years-long, ongoing effort to replace antiquated, unsafe psychiatric facilities with a modern 620-bed hospital.

Dozens of run-down hospital structures have been razed, remodeled or put into mothballed status during the project.

The first 104-bed section of the replacement hospital, called Harbors, opened in January.

OSH Superintendent Greg Roberts said the advent of Trails sets the stage for the third and final patient move into the new hospital. Plans call for the entire 870,000-square-foot facility to be fully operational by early next year.

“As you know, today was the big move to Trails — the second in a series of three patient moves into the new facility,” Roberts said Tuesday in a message to the hospital advisory board. “I’m pleased to report the move went very well overall.

“So far, the patients seem very pleased with the new building and happy with their new rooms. As we settle in, I believe we’ll find the new building a great improvement over the old one, with more treatment space and smaller staff-to-patient ratios. The new facility is much more therapeutic and enables us to provide a wider variety of treatment options.”

Jones was among 174 patients on Tuesday who exited the crowded quarters they had occupied in an obsolete 1950s-era structure, called the “50 Building.”

She won’t miss the bleak, five-story structure. Her blunt assessment of its flaws: “Archaic. Crowded. Intrusive.”

Patient belongings were shifted to the new facility on Monday. A series of bus rides transported patients Tuesday morning from the 50 Building, located north of Center Street on the sprawling OSH campus, to Trails, which is south of the east-west city arterial.

Jones said patients on her unit, Ward 50I, became antsy as they waited for their turn to move.

“Let’s get this done,” she said about the overall sentiment.

After eating pizza for lunch in Trails, Jones, 50, talked about her favorable impressions of the facility. She also described how 18 months of treatment at OSH has put her on a path to recovery.

“Wow, when I got here I was ill,” she said. “I was very, very depressed, suicidal, antisocial, not motivated to do anything.”

Jones linked her progress to medication, therapy and support from hospital staffers and fellow patients.

“I haven’t been suicidal for several months,” she said. “I’m very social … I look forward to each day. I’ve come a long way.”

With the shift to Trails, Jones now occupies a private room, providing her with “a greater sense of personal space.”

“For me, that creates a calming effect,” she said.

Robale Garbaba, 24, moved to Trails from hospital Ward 50F, a unit in the 50 Building that often housed more than 30 patients. At times, four or five patients would be jammed into rooms designed for two, he said.

Despite subpar conditions in the 50 Building, Garbaba said some patients came to accept it as their home, and they had a hard time dealing with the move to Trails.

Though impressed with the modern features of Trails, Garbaba said the facility “feels a little more sterile” than the 50 Building. And he predicted that it will take time for patients to adjust.

“Things are changing very fast and in a good way,” he said.

Patient Richard Laing, an outspoken critic of the hospital, said departures from the 50 Building were long overdue.

“It’s a terrible place,” he said. “It’s a 60-year-old building. It sucks. They should have closed it down 20 years ago.”

Laing’s first take on Trails: “The building is excellent. It’s state of the art. But nothing has changed. Same old staff, same old patients.”

From the Salem Statesman Journal, August 4, 2011

The Oregon State Hospital has named a new chief medical officer, the highest-ranking clinician at the Salem psychiatric facility.

Dr. Rupert Goetz, 59, was selected after a nationwide search. He will lead the hospital’s clinical departments, including psychiatry, psychology, social work, medicine, rehabilitation, nursing and recovery services.

Goetz is scheduled to start working at OSH on Monday. His base pay is $20,000 per month, or $240,000 annually.

The hiring of a new chief medical officer fills a key position that has been vacant since late last year, when Dr. Mark Diamond stepped down.

Goetz will report directly to OSH superintendent Greg Roberts.

READ – OSH press release on Rupert Goetz

“Dr. Goetz brings a wealth of experience and expertise to a very important position here at the hospital,” Roberts said. “I’m confident he will provide strong leadership necessary to keep the hospital on the right path as we strive to improve patient care and move toward patient-centered treatment.”

The push for improved patient care has been spurred by an ongoing five-year federal investigation into alleged violations of patients’ civil rights.

New treatment programs coincide with phased construction of a new $280 million hospital complex on the OSH campus in central Salem.

On Aug. 16, more than 200 patients are scheduled to move into “Trails,” another wing of the new hospital.

Goetz is no stranger to Oregon’s mental health system.

From 1985 until 1995, he worked at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, including stints as director of psychiatric emergency services and director of ambulatory psychiatry.

Goetz later worked as medical director for the Clackamas County Mental Health Department.

He left Oregon in 2003 to become medical director at Hawaii State Hospital.

Goetz also held administrative posts in Hawaii’s mental health system before he left the state in July.

Working in Hawaii, Goetz “faced many challenges similar to those here at OSH,” Roberts said. “He has an excellent understanding of what recovery should look like in community mental health and how important it is to consider trauma when caring for psychiatric patients.”

Taking on a leadership role at Oregon’s main mental hospital prompted him to return to this state, Goetz said.

“I couldn’t resist the opportunity to return to Oregon to help make mental health recovery real for patients, staff and the community,” he said.

Dr. Rupert Goetz
New job: chief medical officer at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem
Age: 59
Annual salary: $240,000

Experience: More than 30 years in the medical profession, starting as an emergency room physician and family practitioner; psychiatric residency at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland; administrative positions at OHSU, including director of psychiatric emergency services; medical director for the Clackamas County mental health department; medical director at Hawaii State Hospital; medical director for the Adult Mental Health Division of the Hawaii Department of Health.

From the Portland Tribune, July 14, 2011

Portland hospital at vanguard of national mental health movement

Henry Linebaugh, holds a knife he sleeps with because it makes him feel safe. Linebaugh is a former patient of the Oregon State Hospital in Portland and Salem who says peer counseling saved my life.

The 65-year-old Linebaugh, a former patient of the Oregon State Hospital, went downstairs and yelled at his neighbors before remembering what peer recovery specialist Scott Snedecor taught him.

“The noise made me crazy,” he recalls. “No, it didn’t make me crazy. I chose to lose control.”

Prior to his commitment, Linebaugh tried to hang himself three times at the state penitentiary, his 14-year home after a 1995 child-abuse conviction. Snedecor, a survivor of mental illness trained to serve as a fellow in arms to current hospital patients, is the only staff member who reached him, according to Linebaugh.

“I don’t believe the Salem hospital helped me a damn bit,” he says. “All they did was house me. When I got to Portland, Scott gave me hope. Him and his simple jokes. He knew what I was going through. He’d been there.”

The relationship between Snedecor and Linebaugh is at the center of a national movement to implement the peer-on-peer recovery model. Proponents of the peer counseling ideology say that survivors and sufferers of mental illness touch patients’ lives in ways that doctors and therapists cannot.

In other words: if you’ve been there, you understand.

Greg Roberts, superintendent of the Oregon State Hospital since August 2010, wants to create a department of 25 specialists like Snedecor, the first entire department of peer counselors in the country.

He appointed a department director last week, bringing a system depicted as lobotomy-happy grotesquerie in the 1975 film classic “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” to the modern edge.

Many Portlanders don’t know that the quiet gray building at Northeast Second Avenue and Wasco Street is home to nearly 100 patients battling mental illness. Oregon taxpayers mostly foot the hospital’s operating cost — $166,464 per patient last year, or $35 million per biennium drawn from the state’s general fund.

This is where Snedecor became the first peer specialist in the Oregon system. This is where change is happening.

“There’s nothing more powerful than a person saying to another person, ‘I made it. You can too,’ ” Roberts says.

No stranger to shambled bureaucracy, Roberts came to the Oregon job from his role heading New Jersey’s hospital system.

“He’s knows what to do. He’s not fooled by middlemen and bureaucracy,” says Jason Renaud, cofounder of the Mental Health Association of Portland.

Renaud and his colleagues at the organization campaigned against the Salem hospital after learning that the remains of more than 3,000 patients were kept there in a storage closet.

“Things are changing in Oregon, and that’s a good story to tell,” he says.

So much despair

Portland was the host city of the peer counseling ideology’s roots with the Insane Liberation Front, a group of ex-patients and advocates founded in 1969 by Tom Wittick, Dorothy Weiner and the legendary Howie “the Harp” Gelp. It was the first documented coalition in the crusade that’s sometimes called the C/S/X movement — C/S/X stands for Consumer/Survivor/Ex-patient.

“We know stuff the professionals don’t,” says Wittick, 61, who lives in Southwest Portland. “We don’t like people interpreting everything for us. Like, ‘Oh, you’re crazy and you should be in a halfway house.’ I don’t appreciate that.”

When Wittick was 26, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized. He believes his diabetes is the result of medications he didn’t want to take.

The state system is catching up to the peer revolution, but community mental health care in Oregon already sparkles with programs offering peer-delivered services. Portland Hearing Voices, Project Able and MindFreedom International are a few of the notables.

David Oaks, executive director of MindFreedom, advocates for patient choice in medications.

Oaks took his last dose in 1977 after five hospitalizations during his time as a student at Harvard. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, forcibly drugged and ordered to sit in solitary confinement.

“There’s so much despair, and then you’re committed, and here are your choices: drug, drug, drug, drug or drug,” Oaks says.

Employing survivors of mental illness to treat peer sufferers is a cost-effective solution, according to Oaks.

“I call it a win-win-win situation,” he says. “You take someone who’s been through hell but isn’t necessarily degreed or licensed. You train them, and both the patient and the trainee are helped. Plus society gets to see the positive faces of people with psych labels.”

Jerry Weller, a specialist at the Portland hospital, is one survivor who believes he benefits from helping patients.

The 46-year-old ex-combat veteran is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His worst memories of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, he shares, are the charred bodies everywhere and burnt limbs that dropped when he moved the corpses.

“I’m not the same since I came back,” he says. “Being around sick people reminds me to take my medication and keep structure in my life so I don’t end up here.”

Guiding peers

Peer relationships like the bond between Weller and his patients or Snedecor and Linebaugh are the buzz of the psychiatric industry, and the movement is gaining recognition.

Gina Nikkel, a major supporter of Oaks and a power player in the Portland world of mental health care, was appointed in late June to the directorship of the National Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health. Nickel wants the foundation to generate research supporting the success of peer services.

“I think the peer model is absolutely crucial for a huge number of reasons,” she says. “First of all, it works.”

According to Marsha Linehan, the founder of dialectical behavioral therapy, peer counseling can only be viable if backed by research like the science Nickel hopes to produce.

Linehan came out as a survivor in early June, telling friends, family and professionals about her suicide attempts. Her disclosure was detailed June 23 in The New York Times.

“If the state wants to provide evidence-based treatment, then the training and competence required in research studies should also be required by the state,” Linehan says. “Otherwise, it’s like saying we know brain surgery is effective, so we’ll have peer counselors provide it.”

But compassion is simple.

“My goal is to bond with people,” says Snedecor, the only peer recovery specialist at the Portland hospital. “I’m here to help guide them through this place and get them out.”

Snedecor tries to meet regularly with all of the patients at the hospital, but he admits that he’s stretched thin. Roberts’ plan to create a department of peers is the right idea, he says.

“You can only do so much when your paycheck comes from the state,” he says. “I can’t go to everyone’s treatment meetings. If someone’s yelling and screaming, maybe I can’t work with that person. I don’t have time, really, to spin my wheels here.”

Snedecor’s own struggle with mental illness is his motivation for helping others. He was committed to the Dammasch State Hospital in Wilsonville twice, when he was 19 and 26. His diagnoses were schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

“It makes him my brother,” says Raymond Suell, a 40-year-old from Texas living at the Portland hospital. “We’ve had some of the same treatment.”

Suell’s hands shake when he describes his past on the streets. “I was cold. My pants were wet. I didn’t know where to go. I was depressed. Do you know what that’s like?”

Snedecor does. “I’ve been messed up all kinds of ways,” he says. “I’d go lie down in my room all day to try to escape. I’d go to the beach and instead of enjoying it I’d go lie down in my room. It was horrible.”

Clay Woodward of Southeast Portland, another patient in the group that Snedecor leads on community outings every week, claims Snedecor doesn’t take the time to talk with him.

“I don’t know his name. I didn’t know he’s dealt with mental health issues,” says Woodward. “All I know is he takes me on these escapades. But I guess that’s better than living in some cockroach motel.”

A man of his word

Snedecor created the peer specialist position in 2003. A social work veteran, he approached hospital administrators with the idea and was hired part-time at first.

“I’m the pilot program for Salem,” he says.

The Salem hospital was once a house of terror, according to many patients. Woodward’s brother Greg, who was committed there in the ’80s, remembers the handcuffs.

“They would put me in cuffs and take me places. I don’t think they talked to me ever,” he says.

The Salem campus is where 22-year-old client Matthew Kirby works as the facilitator of the Consumer Council, what he calls “the patient political body.”

He submitted a proposal to Roberts last November, asking him to amplify patient voice in the hospital. Roberts created the Consumer Representation Workgroup, headed by Kirby.

“I was skeptical at first but completely impressed by his rhetoric,” says Kirby. “As it turns out, he’s a man of his word.”

Kirby and Roberts walked side by side through downtown Portland this May in a parade hosted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Granted conditional release in 2009, Kirby is still waiting at the hospital for a bed to become available in a group home.

Comfortless waiting is a component of many patients’ experiences. Becky Demarest, 51, who also lives at the Salem hospital, just went through training to become a peer specialist, and though she loves her work, she longs to be free.

“What I miss most is the stars in the sky,” Demarest says. “I miss being able to see the streets and the mountains and cars.”

But Linebaugh, living alone in his one-bedroom unit, wishes he weren’t a member of the real world.

The medications he takes don’t seem to help. He tries to calculate his dosage: 12 to 15 pills twice a day, he thinks.

“You’re the first person I’ve talked to in six weeks,” he says quietly. “I sleep with a knife. It’s comforting. I’m so tired of life, and the nights get long. I rock back and forth.”

He holds his arms close to his torso and demonstrates his anxious midnight tic.

Phone calls from Snedecor and occasional dinners with him, Linebaugh says, are his anchor.

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From Oregonhealthauthority.net, May 25, 2011

In the adjoining picture, from left to right are Greg Roberts, Superintendent of the Oregon State Hospital, Matthew Kirby, Oregon State Hospital patient and advocate, and Richard Harris, Assistant Director of the Oregon State Addictions and Mental Health Division. Our two cents: this picture would have been unimaginable five years ago.

Oregon State Hospital staff and patients raised more than $13,000 for the National Alliance on Mental Health during the ninth annual NAMI Northwest Walk along Portland's waterfront.

“Not bad for our first year,” said team captain, chief of medicine Brian Little. OSH had the single most successful fundraising team, even beating the corporate sponsors. “I’m so proud of everyone who turned out to support the important work of NAMI.”

Oregon State Hospital staff and patients raised more than $13,000 for the National Alliance on Mental Health during the ninth annual NAMI Northwest Walk along Portland’s waterfront.

“This is a great example of everyone coming together for a common purpose,” said OSH Superintendent Greg Roberts. “NAMI is one of the hospital’s most important partners, supporting us in our continuing efforts to improve patient care and strengthen our relationship with family members. It’s fitting that we turn around and support them by walking in this event.”

Hospital employees donated their own time to participate. They solicited donations from friends and family to raise money for local support programs including education, research and advocacy involving schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and severe anxiety disorders.

The hospital also made arrangements to ensure patients were a part of the event.

“It’s huge to raise awareness and counter the social stigma faced by people living with mental illness, especially for those of us who are institutionalized,” said Matthew Kirby, a resident of one of the hospital’s transition units. “It’s historic what OSH has done, not only by raising all of this money, but also by facilitating client participation. It’s really indicative of the culture change taking place at the hospital that administration is following through with its promise to promote hope, safety and recovery, as well as wellness and community integration.”

To learn more about the NAMI Northwest Walk and how to support people living with mental illness and their families, visit the NAMI website.