Melissa Fundakowski, 38, does not remember a time when she lived without schizophrenia. She was just 4 or 5, she says, when the disease’s punishing symptoms surfaced — paranoia and delusional thinking among them.
They intensified, and by the time she approached her teenage years, she was repeatedly cutting herself. The first of many hospitalizations and placements followed.
“I had really bad delusions about my family, about my parents being mad scientists and out to get me by doing experiments on me,” she says. Believing that evil strangers were spying on her, she barricaded her bedroom window with fireplace logs. Depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder compounded her primary diagnosis.
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“We at Oasis have known Melissa for years and have seen her literally blossom,” he says. “She is certainly not ‘cured’ — most of us living with mental illness never are — but she is getting on with her life. Of critical importance, she has found a sense of purpose, a calling, to work with others living with mental illness. In this role, she brings hope and is a living, breathing, very real example of recovery in action. We see her as a model.”
Vickie Walters, The Providence Center’s associate director of residential and homeless services, says that since settling into her group home, Fundakowski “has been able to share her gifts with her peers, such as playing the piano during group activities. She has increased her self-confidence, independence and active engagement in the community by developing the ability to process and cope with her symptoms.”
The recovery model has proved so successful for people living with mental illnesses that the center plans to “dramatically” increase its peer-support staff, which now numbers about a half dozen, says Owen Heleen, chief strategy officer.
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