“What is depression like? Tie your hands in front [of you] and put two ten pound weights on each leg, and then go through your day and try to do everything you need to do.”
Bipolar disorder has colored Rhonada’s life for 25 years. Her fiancé was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and his medications made him increasingly angry and violent. Their arguments grew red hot, culminating in a domestic violence police report. In turn, he filed a restraining order, evicting her from their apartment.
Rhonada was homeless, her prescription supply was dry, and her manic state was “off the Richter Scale.” A domestic violence safehouse referred Rhonada to the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless’ Stout Street Clinic where its mental health program provided medication and individual and group therapy.
For the first time, Rhonada cares for herself. She thrills in her community garden plot where she has planted eighteen 10-foot rows of “every vegetable you can imagine!” Thanking the Coalition staff, Rhonada feels that “the people who choose to work [at the Coalition] choose to work with the person who is the very lowest man on the totem pole in life. It’s awesome.”
The Stout Street Clinic mental health programs employ a holistic approach to treat patients suffering from mental illness, including psychiatric care, individual and group therapy, medication regulation, housing, and enrollment in the PATH program.