Caramore’s 2006 Client Celebration Features Lee Smith

Caramore’s 2006 Annual Client Celebration will feature local, award-winning author, Lee Smith. Taking a break from her fall book tour, Smith will speak from first-hand experience in her talk The Working Man: How Caramore Helped My Son.

Join us as we listen to Lee Smith and celebrate the many accomplishments our clients have made over the past year—followed by a cake and punch reception.

7:00 PM
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Chapel Hill Bible Church
260 Erwin Road
Chapel Hill, NC

We hope to see you there. Please call us with any questions about the event at 919-967-3402. For more information on Lee Smith, please visit her website at www.leesmith.com

Thank you.

We appreciate all of the recent donations

When you donate to Caramore, you keep individuals out of hospitals, and in their communities—where they work, contribute to society, and begin to enjoy their lives again. We at Caramore feel good about that, and you should too. Your gifts make a difference in the lives of real people.

Caramore Community, Inc. is a 501(c) (3) private, not for profit organization and your valuable donation is fully tax deductible. We currently accept donations though the mail at our office address:

Caramore
550 Smith Level Road
Carrboro, NC 27510
919-967-3402

Please call us anytime with questions, and thank you again.

How lives get better around this place

The strength of the Caramore program is the length our staff goes to try and improve a client’s life. When we get evaluated as a facility periodically by Carf, they are always impressed by our “anything it takes” mindset to improve a client’s life.

But what is it to improve a client’s life?

Certainly all of our client’s are different and need to be evaluated differently. But we examine the following:

• The illness. First and foremost our client’s mental health treatment is paramount—this includes all prescribed psychiatric care.
  

• Overall health. Caramore believes that a sick body needs all the help it can get in adapting and gaining some equilibrium around deficiencies. We do not preach a cure for mental illness; rather, we encourage the gradual move towards a healthier lifestyle—beginning long-term cumulative habits of doing more things right than wrong. We want clients to see the results of healthier choices in the way they feel.
  

• A unique life. What are the particular circumstances of a client’s life? We know we have to work on practical survival stuff like working and bill paying, but how can we help them enjoy their life? What are the obstacles holding them back? How can we help them handle difficulties and frustrations? How can we help them be more adaptable? Do they have a good mix of interests?—neither being excessively active or inactive in any one thing? Are we paying attention to the dreams they had before they got sick? What are their dreams and motivations now?
  

This final category is very complicated and we as staff do not always agree on how to help facilitate a better life.

It can be very frustrating trying to rouse motivations and see progress amid mental illness, the complicated baggage of a life lived, experiences, family relationships, permanent delusions, immaturity, substance abuse, terrible decision making, dependency, sometimes learning disabilities, worsening of symptoms, and the trial and error of psychiatric medication—it all can seem overwhelming!

But that’s the nature of what we deal with. We have a remarkably long-term staff that prides itself on being creative and trying many strategies to improve lives. We don’t want to give up on anyone!

D. Cooley

Are people with mental illness dangerous criminals?

It sounds absurd to even say that, but it might be subconsciously believed that the mentally ill are dangerous if you only took in statistically-small-but-sensational news reports of worst-case tragedies.

More alarming are the statistics on the number of mentally ill currently in jail or prison. Psychotic and paranoid behavior is irrational, weird, and frightening, and when not understood or treated, can lead to incidents where the police are called—that part is not so shocking.

Fortunately the courts are beginning to understand the illness better and are attempting to respond appropriately.

Society as a whole however, is still slow to recognize signature behavior and slow to provide early intervention treatment. And this is most likely due to the stigma, myth, and ignorance of the illness that continues.

We at Caramore are fighting to overcome the old notions of stigma and shame. We’re here to help fight this disease and we do it with a completely structured program that mandates medication compliance and full participation in mental health treatment.

We have individuals in the program with some criminal background. It goes with the territory—it goes with the illness (until there are better early-intervention programs like this one). But we don’t have “criminals.” We have people who are sick and are doing everything they can treatment-wise to recover—treatment that overwhelmingly restores them to average, sane, rational functioning levels, just like the rest of us operate on. Those with old criminal records desperately want a second chance to show that what happened back then was not them—that’s not who they are. They need to be given a second chance and are very eager to start again.

Mental illness is being understood more and more and will one day be recognized on the same level as cancer and our other terrible diseases—diseases that require the same amount of heroism, intensity, and wisdom to fight it. The same compassion felt for the sufferers of those illnesses is already well overdue for those who suffer from mental illness.

D. Cooley