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L.A. Mental Health Program Practices Art of Recovery

Ryan Faughnder |
February 4, 2011 | 12:56 a.m. PST

Senior News Editor

What’s immediately striking about Gary Brown’s paintings are the eyes of his subjects. The faces stare straight at the viewer, eyes agape and perfectly round with deep, dark circles around them. Even his version of the Mona Lisa has an eerie darkness in the eyes. 

The Lamp Art Project gives homeless an outlet
The Lamp Art Project gives homeless an outlet

Brown, originally from Louisiana, started painting in junior high school and continued working on his skills into adulthood. He used to paint for night clubs, making art for the walls and behind the stage. He’s also a musician.

“My cousin had a daycare center,” Brown said. “I had worked there, you know, with smaller children. I started doing it then. I started painting signs for people. If it wasn’t too complicated, they could come to my house, and I’d paint signs for ‘em.”

Brown still paints, but he has no studio. He is one of the many people diagnosed with mental illnesses who participate in the services offered by the Lamp Art Project, a non-profit organization that provides a studio and weekly art workshops for the homeless and formerly homeless in L.A.

The Lamp Community’s overall stated mission is to move the homeless and mentally ill into affordable homes and provide resources – such as mental health treatment and job counseling – so that they can live on their own in a safe environment.

Like many with mental illnesses, Gary Brown survives on $845 a month in Supplemental Security Income. That will go down by $15 under Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal, which will also slash Medi-Cal, on which mental health programs depend.

Also like many others, Gary Brown resisted the assistance at first.

“I actually didn’t want to get on Social Security,” he said. “I would prefer a job, but they said I had this mental illness that I inherited from my mother or my father’s side, and it was very serious, and that I should take the offer and the treatment. And it was about three years later before I really seen that I had a problem and where it came from. But now I’m accepting it.”

Counselors at Lamp help him work out a budget. His rent is about $500, which leaves $350 for other expenses, including the $20 he tries to send his son every month. He supplements his income a little by playing sax and drums at a church.

Professional artists around L.A. sometimes volunteer to help instruct at the workshops. The project’s organizers argue that creating art is “inherently therapeutic.”

“I was a drug addict,” Brown said.

His troubles with drugs and alcohol unearthed memories of his troubled childhood, during which he was molested, he said. That’s what set him off.

“I’ve been off ever since. But now they’re bringin’ me back,” he said.

His addiction and illness destroyed his family life, he said. He eventually lost his Louisiana home and came to Skid Row.

“Sometimes, it’s like you’re watching a horror picture, and they’re all coming for you, because they know they didn’t finish you off last time,” he said.

The Rand Corporation in Santa Monica recently hosted a panel discussion about new and advanced approaches to treating mental illness and highlighted programs such as Lamp Community and the Village in Long Beach, both of which offer a variety of assistance programs rather than the traditional, straightforward doctor-patient approach.

Before the discussion, Brown and others from the Lamp Art Project displayed their work on the patio outside the lobby.

One person out of every 17 in the U.S. has some kind of serious mental disorder, ranging from deep depression to schizophrenia, said Paul Koegel, an associate director at Rand Health and an expert in health systems.

The focus of mental illness treatment used to be on managing symptoms, he said. Relatively recently, recovery became the goal. This idea that, with the proper care and guidance, people with mentally disabled people can lead full and productive lives has become the “signpost” for the treatment of mental illness.

“The real issues are, how can people lead meaningful lives, how can they achieve their potential, and most importantly how can they have their own say,” he said.

Over the last 15 years, many changes have been made. Medicines are more effective and easier to take and treatment is more focused on rehabilitating patients so that they can contribute to society.

One issue facing the integrative models is that they cost more. Though they seem to work better, most people with mental illnesses don’t receive anything like that, said Alexander Young, a professor at UCLA and researcher at the Rand Corporation.

“They receive, at most maybe, some medication and some visits to a psychiatrist. They don’t have access to these other kinds of treatments.”

Funding is a major issue, and it will get worse if the proposed budget cuts pass. Almost all human services will feel some of the pain of California’s fiscal crisis, but, Young suggested, the difficulties are amplified in the case of systems caring for the mentally ill.

“It’s hard to know how to allocate the scarce funds in the system. And these mental health services have to care for people with very little money, so they can’t pay physicians very much,” he said.“So they bring in people who are very well-meaning young people, who want to do a good job but don’t often have a lot of training.”

“There’s not a lot of money, but there is a lot of opportunity to do a lot better with what we have.”

For Gary Brown, the art serves as an outlet – something to take his mind off his troubled past – but it’s no cure. “It helps, but you’re not gonna forget. You’re not gonna forget where they got you.”

Reach Ryan Faughnder here. Follow on Twitter here.



 

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