Overcoming Bipolar Disorder By Working Your Way to Mental Health


Even though I lived my youth when persons with mental illness for the most part were segregated out and ostracized from society in large and small "Total Institutions” known as Mental Hospitals or better yet Insane Asylums I as most other people living in the 50’s and 60’s of our last century in America were unaware of the massive situation that existed.

For the most part most people who WERE IDENTIFIED as having a major mental illness were shipped off to an institution and/or "cared" for at home by family members and were given mainly messages that they could not and WERE NOT expected to succeed in life nor ever engage in gainful employment for any length of time if at all.

One of the few exceptions to this national misunderstanding was and still is the ICCD Clubhouse Model of which Fountain House was the first one in America. The concept of the work centered day and working as therapy and just working for a living while having a mental illness truly was empowering for those lucky persons and of course this movement has swept the nation and the world since its inception in the 50’s and its blossoming in the latter part of the last century.

One of the newest and most successful clubhouses is in Pinellas Park, Florida and is called Vincent House after the famous artist and of course person with mental illness, Vincent Van Gough. Elliot and Dianne Steele who had mental illness enter their immediate family became determined to start and oversee a quality clubhouse in mid Pinellas County and that they have done.

Just this past Friday, I had the great pleasure to be at the groundbreaking for their most recent expansion project and witnessed this happening first hand. This momentous occasion was enjoyed by all and marked a milestone in my mind for the mental health movement.

We across the Bay in Tampa, FL are hoping to start a clubhouse and help the large population of persons with mental illness many of whom fluctuate from homelessness and substandard housing and incarceration in jails and prisons and short and not so short stints in Crisis Stabilizations Units and other mental facilities who basically have very little options on where to go and what to do.

It is hoped that the using the clubhouse model and helping persons with mental illness get real jobs and keep those jobs and help others to get jobs in a work ordered day and in the different work opportunities that the clubhouse and supported employment etc provide we can assist persons with mental disabilities to stand tall and to work interdependently and earn their way in life with or without government and other assistance programs.

Many of us from the last generation who either succumbed to our illness early in life or even later in life after having a somewhat successful or even not so successful work life are re-entering or entering the workforce for the first time with assistance from professionals and just using the same opportunities that are out there for everyone.

Having said this, I would like to share a part of my personal story.

FORTY JOBS IN FORTY YEARS
By: David S. Harkins d.b.a. DavidtheStoryTeller aka "TheStoryTeller"
thePirate

I have probably had Bipolar Disorder or Diversity as I like to refer to it since before birth (Populous & Populous The Bipolar Child), and in spite of this or because of this and my high IQ and strong drive and usually good natured and loving character and personality I was fairly successful in school up until I moved to Central Florida in 1963 just one month before JFK was assassinated. My parents soon divorced and I was pretty much free to "roam" and that I did during the 9th grade. The divorce was finalized my sophomore year of HS and I was a model student that year when I was temporarily stable and in control for the most part.

Just 1 years later after my father had moved my brother and myself to Tampa, FL to take over the day to day operations and be the Assistant to the Director of Properties and Industries at tiny Florida College in Temple Terrace, FL, my illness/diversity struck full blown and I was flying sky high after another lost basketball game when I was one of the team managers.

I was so mixed up and cycled from manic to depressed to dysphoric to mixed state that no one knew nor did I know who David S. Harkins truly was. I Was a Rock I Was an Island to quote the title to a pop/rock hit by Simon and Garfunkel of that era.

After Basketball season and after being the Basketball Team Varsity Manager I got my first real job that being a fast food worker and grill man at McDonald’s Hamburgers and I loved it. The excitement and the control I seemed to have and the rapport and teamwork and the social POSSIBILITIES unfortunately for me not fully conceived. There was Pat Boykins the young black woman I soon was giving rides home to after work at night and yes we did start -- smoking a little weed and talking about life and stuff and we remained virgin to each other. Oh one of my regrets in life was going to a job on the roof and losing track with Pat for ever.

My roofing days at Bill Shields Roofing Company the next summer with Eddie Daniels and Nate and Uncle Charlie and of Course Albert WOLFMAN Smith were fun days in the sun when I really felt like a man and had life by the tail and for the most part was illness and symptom free. And of course I didn’t know that I had a mental illness and I knew I was "different."

Just before I turned 21 a life defining incident happened. My mother, Grace Evelyn Myers Harkins Durden was murdered at the Winter Park Telephone Co Offices at the hands of her estranged second husband Eugene Durden a despicable man from Apoka, Florida and I have never recovered from that nor the deaths of both of my grandfathers and my dad Dawson Stanley Harkins, at 51 when I was just 23 years old. Bing bam boom and they were all dead and did the men suffer from cancer that evil and vile disease.

Well, Ahmad Jamal must have had me in mind when he wrote and performed his song Troubled Man and released it on his Jamalka Album in 1972 or 1973. I found it one night while lifelessly going through the albums at the old Sears store on Hillsborough and 22nd street (the now Irwin Tech) and just 21 blocks from where I presently work as a group facilitator for MHC in the Crisis Stabilization Units.

Yes, I was a very troubled man and I did go back to McDonald’s and Pat was gone and I then drifted after working for Canada Dry delivering soft drinks while my mother was still alive and then after the murder to the infamous Temple Terrace Industries Wood shop where I ran the large and small band saws and other wood working equipment and machinery to make Wood Cable Reels for General Cable and other cable companies in the 70’s. This was one of the worst time in my life and yet I met Shev Singh and Singh Singh the two Punjabi’s that worked at the wood shop.

After TTI came Florida Steel and being a QC Lab Technician until in 1979 I had a terrible episode of my illness while working in Jacksonville, Fl and I "escaped" back to Tampa and that is when I met Marsha and my first round of intense therapy. Marsha with her patience and good listening skills, that novel really helped sometimes now didn’t it Marsha, helped me get back in the game of life and eventually I entered the EIP program at FMHI research and teaching mental institution and "conquered on my own" my illness by securing not one but 2 jobs at various fast food restaurants and I was off to the races.

Within a year I was a salesclerk at the bookstore at USF and I met Charlotte my next mother figure and then onto Debra, the only real adult love of my life my XX-wife, whom I met at USF while working at the bookstore. Then it was onto the Registrar’s Office and upward mobility starting as a clerk and ending up as Senior Computer Specialist with a stint of one year as an Assistant Paint Store Manager and back to USF and in addition and conjunction with the office computer jobs the main on-site Test Administrator for the Standardized Tests like the SAT, ACT, GMAT etc. These truly were my 7 years of fat like the whole of Egypt and the Israelites experienced and then of course like all good Bipolar People are want to do I came crashing down in a ball of fire when I Debra had an affair after and during an extremely negative depressive episode and extreme financial hardship for our family, anyone say SAVINGS AND LOAN DEBACLE and how about you poor young couples today with what the Republicans and Wall Street and the Bankers etc left us to deal with?

Well, since that debacle and 2 divorces to the same woman and 2 wonderful children the past 16 years have been a roller coaster that seems to be finally straightening out.

My son is married now 3 years and is in the National Guard and my daughter gets married next month to Bruce the soldier that saves lives, a Medic, and I am grasping at my life again and looking forward to working a full-time job just in time to get off of SSDI (Social Security Disability) and work again and EARN at above SGA and truly be productive again. I hope at 57 going on 58 to work for another 10 years and earn a full SSA pension along with some investments and of course a company pension and hopefully have little grandchildren frolicking at my feet well into my nineties and we all know that persons with SPMI(Severe and Persistent Mental Illness for whatever reasons, mainly medical health reasons I firmly believe brought on by the harsh and powerful medicines we must take to stay ’mentally health’ contribute to the morbidity rate for us as a population according to the most recent, reliable and accurate research and information shows that we DIE at a rate of 50 to 200% quicker than persons without our illness -- go think.

The End

There is ALWAYS HOPE.
Jesus truly saves!
The next life must be much better don’t you know?
dsh
David S. Harkins or thePirate as he likes to call himself from time to time is the 2nd Vice President of NAMI Hillsborough and Past Vice Chair of NAMI FL Consumer Council and Past Chair and co-chair of the Hillsborough County Recovery and Resiliency Committee. He is a NAMI Trained and sought after PEER TO PEER MENTOR and a NAMI Connections trained Group Facilitator.
He resides in Mango/Tampa FL
DSH