 |
 |
|
|
|
|||
|
|||
 |
|||
Beating
her own mental illness
Sargent student hopes to share rehab experience
By David J. Craig
Lyn Legere remembers vividly the winter day in 1984 when her advisor at a mental health day treatment program in Boston refused to support her plan to become a paralegal. Legere, who has several psychiatric disorders stemming from sexual and mental abuse she suffered as a child, was living in a homeless shelter at the time.
|
 |
|
|
| Lyn Legere (SAR’04) says working toward a master’s degree at Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences has been instrumental in her own recovery from mental illness. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky | |
|
“He said I wasn’t ready for that kind of challenge and that
I should wait a year or two,” she says. “And I remember seeing
two paths in front of me -- I could go back to school or kill myself.
It was that simple, because I knew I couldn’t stay in that situation
for another year, feeling that kind of despair.”
Against her advisor’s recommendation, Legere entered a paralegal
program, secured student aid, and eventually finished second in her class.
She considers herself lucky to have managed it: there have been plenty
of times in her 49 years, she says, when she would have collapsed in the
face of such discouragement.
“For most of my life I’ve been surrounded by feelings that
my life had no purpose,” says Legere (SAR’04), now a graduate
student at Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. “And
clinicians who played dream regulator by telling me what I could and couldn’t
achieve did me no good. Those who helped me gave me hope, rather than
yanking it out from under me.”
Not a chance
It is easy to understand why therapists might underestimate Legere. Addicted
to drugs and alcohol at age 13, she has been in and out of mental institutions
since she was a teenager and has attempted suicide dozens of times --
a “poor communication strategy,” she admits wryly. She has
been diagnosed with, among other things, schizophrenia and borderline
personality disorder, conditions widely believed to be irreversible, although
recent research indicates otherwise (see below).
Her bulky clinical file is sharply at odds with the intelligent, socially
astute persona she presents when she is doing well. Smiling easily, she
speaks with wisdom about her psychiatric problems and has a fresh sense
of humor, casually quipping about her time “in the nuthouse”
and poking fun at herself for having a blocked-out memory of a lengthy
period following a botched electroshock treatment: “A friend mentioned
us seeing Elton John in concert, and I was like, ‘We saw Elton John?
Damn it! I wish I could remember that!’”
Legere has had on-again, off-again success at ordering her life since
leaving her severely abusive suburban Massachusetts home at age 17. She
kicked drugs that year and earned a bachelor’s degree in music at
UMass-Boston, although she continued to cling desperately to alcohol until
she was 28. After becoming sober in 1981, she held responsible jobs for
periods as long as a year or two, including a paralegal position helping
people secure Social Security benefits.
But all the while, Legere remained prone to long, devastating breakdowns.
Clinicians, true to convention, tended to prescribe treatments -- mainly
medication -- aimed only at stabilizing her symptoms, she says, rather
than offering her tools to actually improve her life.
“I think the borderline personality disorder diagnosis was a death
sentence,” she says. “I would walk through a therapist’s
door and he or she would have decided already that I wasn’t going
to get better. That was certainly the message I always got.”
Better late
That changed in 1995, when Legere began treatment with a therapist at
the Trauma Center at Arbor-HRI Hospital in Allston, Mass. “My therapist
didn’t accept that I was beyond hope,” Legere says. “And
she told me that while she would be there to help me, the responsibility
for my recovery was mine. That’s when my recovery took the biggest
turn in my life. All of a sudden I felt I had been given this great power.”
Legere’s progress has been far from seamless since working with
the Arbor-HRI therapist, whom she still sees regularly. In 1998, after
the death of her brother, she suffered her worst breakdown ever -- losing
her job, home, and possessions, and against her therapist’s recommendation,
enduring shock therapy sessions that stripped her of her identity and
her ability to remember people and places for almost a year.
Even after the breakdown, she says, her therapist was encouraging, referring
her to Sargent College’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation to
do volunteer work. The center, which operates on the premise that given
the right support people with mental illness can reclaim their lives,
provides training in life and work skills. Legere, who at the time had
never heard of psychiatric rehabilitation, was deeply moved by the center’s
mission.
Today, back on her feet and living in Brighton, she is working toward
a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling at Sargent and is
determined to work at an institution such as the Sargent center. She would
like to train clients, as well as other mental health professionals, in
rehabilitation techniques. Knowing “there are no guarantees”
regarding her own health, she sometimes worries that she may suffer another
crash, but her dedication to furthering the cause of psychiatric rehabilitation,
she says, has given her life a new focus.
“It breaks my heart a little bit that in all the years I was struggling,
no one told me recovery was possible,” she says. “Rehabilitation
is such a great complement to traditional treatment, but it seems to exist
in this little cocoon outside of the medical establishment, and I want
to do my part to get the word out about these types of services.
“I’ve always felt that if I could somehow use my experience
in a positive way, it would make it not quite so bad,” she continues.
“I can’t tell you how much I love the work I’m doing
here.”
|
11 October 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations