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As a child, Guy Kerr always felt he was different. He was creative, sensitive and had a tendency to retreat into his own world. But at 16, when a spirit came into his room and walked through a chair, he knew something more profound was going on.
“I was really freaked out by that vision,” Kerr said. “I became depressed and didn't feel like I fit into any category.”
At 18, Kerr found himself at an especially low point, wondering if communicating with spirits was a gift or an express ticket to society's fringe, where he'd be forever ostracized and alone.
“I moved back home before finishing college. I was confused,” he said. “I climbed up to the edge of a cliff and thought about jumping off. I asked, ‘What do I do?' Then it came to me. I told myself, ‘OK, I'm not like most people. Instead of jumping, I will simply view my life as an experiment lived by someone who's different.'”
From that point on, Kerr accepted his life would consist of walking in two worlds. In one world, he became a political activist, a scholar of psychology and art, and an accomplished architect who apprenticed for renowned architect Paolo Soleri. In the other, he would have ongoing relationships with the spirit world; for example a shaman who came out through his portrait and began coaching and scolding Kerr. His studies of Jung and the collective unconscious, along with his growing knowledge regarding the acceptance of spirit worlds in other cultures helped Kerr to slowly learn to appreciate his dual realities.
Today, 58-year-old Kerr, now a Nevada County resident, has a mission. He says his life story has given him a strong sense of compassion for those with mental illness, and those experiencing temporary “imbalance.”
A co-founder of the Spirit Peer Empowerment Center in Grass Valley, Kerr is not only an advocate of peer support for those experiencing a mental health crisis, but eager to change societal perceptions. He and Rich Stone, whose daughter is bipolar, are now leading the charge in Nevada County to create a respite care network.
“If people are not a danger to themselves or others, sometimes they just need a warm, nurturing place to go with no judgment,” Stone said. “We've looked at other peer counseling models and wanted to go beyond a drop-in center. Environment can be a trigger, sometimes a person just needs somewhere else to go temporarily, like someone's home.”
On Monday, Kerr and Stone led a meeting on the topic to bring attention to the idea with hopes of building a network.
According to Barbara Lindsay-Burns, executive director at the Spirit Peer Empowerment Center, the crisis team at Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital gets between 900 and 1,000 mental health crisis visits per year. Of those, about 25 percent end up going to a psychiatric hospital. Up to 60 percent are turned away with few resources.
Lindsay-Burns, Kerr and others are hoping to implement a more effective safety net for those with little support. Lindsay-Burns says the peer center gets regular referrals from SNMH's emergency room staff, psychiatrists, churches, physicians, social workers friends and family members.
“Respite care would be a great preventive measure,” Lindsay-Burns said. “It would allow hope before an end point. When people's needs are met, they're usually pretty happy, they calm down. That's not the case in a hospital, where you're removed from society.”
Beyond peer support, mental health advocates agree there needs to be more public awareness on the many types of mental illness. Many people who lack exposure to the mentally ill are afraid they won't have the necessary skills to cope with someone who is “off balance” in their home.
Mental Health First Aid
Fear is often the biggest stumbling block to reaching out, said Denise Harben, workforce and education coordinator for the Mental Health Services Act.
“We teach a class called ‘Mental Health First Aid” for the average lay person,” Harben said. “It's a 12-hour class that helps people understand and respond to signs of mental illness. You can get certified, just like CPR. It helps people feel more comfortable in a crisis, learn risk factors and warning signs.”
After gaining confidence and understanding from these classes, people who might've been scared now have skills and know what do to and know how to get back-up if they need it, Harben added.
“There is a lot of talk about how the government is over-extending itself and that people need to take care of themselves,” said Lindsay-Burns. “Well here is a perfect example and opportunity for people to step forward, educate themselves and extend a hand.”
Duped, drugged and institutionalized
In the late 1970s, Kerr, then in his 20s, applied to Harvard Architecture School. While traveling with his wife to Harvard with his paperwork, he said, he started seeing visions.
“My wife was supportive but frightened by my sensitivity and fragility,” he said. “By that time I was well within the next world and threw all my application paperwork in the trash once we got to Cambridge.”
Back at home, Kerr went to see a psychiatrist and one day, without knowledge of where he was going, he was driven to a psychiatric hospital and left there, he said. Kerr was in lockdown, unable to leave and given 800 mg of Thorazine, an anti-psychotic.
“In these places, you can't leave, you're isolated, you're not listened to, your mind is numbed and they give you a $6,000 bill at the end of a six-week stay,” he said. “But that wasn't the worst of it.”
The worst of it, Kerr said, is the stigma of being put into a hospital against your will. A place as far from nurturing as Kerr can imagine, and a place that forever labels you a failure, or one who is unwilling to cope. His forced-hospitalization was a pivotal life event, he said.
“I sure found out who my real friends were,” said Kerr, who was abruptly ousted from a prominent professional organization. “I experienced a real loss of social citizenship and began buying into the label society had given me. I'd been duped, drugged and institutionalized. The most destructive part was what I told myself. I began to mistrust myself and constantly questioning and mistrusting. I lost a whole section of my life.”
Kerr said his whole life might have turned out differently if he'd just had a safe, nurturing place to go during that time of mental and spiritual imbalance. Instead, going to a hospital compounded the problem, and he came away with post traumatic stress from the experience itself. It was a slow trip back to self-acceptance and living a productive life.
As for Kerr, he's still walking among two worlds, but now he wouldn't trade it.
“We're all on a journey and we just need nurturing and validation,” he said. “I accept my experiences as a path that's important to me. Some people just have a down episode in their lives every few years and need a place to go to feel taken in. Our measure of success in society needs to be changed. We need to learn that it's OK not to accept the cookie-cutter mentality of how a person should be.”
To contact Staff Writer Cory Fisher, e-mail cfisher@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4203.
“I was really freaked out by that vision,” Kerr said. “I became depressed and didn't feel like I fit into any category.”
At 18, Kerr found himself at an especially low point, wondering if communicating with spirits was a gift or an express ticket to society's fringe, where he'd be forever ostracized and alone.
“I moved back home before finishing college. I was confused,” he said. “I climbed up to the edge of a cliff and thought about jumping off. I asked, ‘What do I do?' Then it came to me. I told myself, ‘OK, I'm not like most people. Instead of jumping, I will simply view my life as an experiment lived by someone who's different.'”
From that point on, Kerr accepted his life would consist of walking in two worlds. In one world, he became a political activist, a scholar of psychology and art, and an accomplished architect who apprenticed for renowned architect Paolo Soleri. In the other, he would have ongoing relationships with the spirit world; for example a shaman who came out through his portrait and began coaching and scolding Kerr. His studies of Jung and the collective unconscious, along with his growing knowledge regarding the acceptance of spirit worlds in other cultures helped Kerr to slowly learn to appreciate his dual realities.
Today, 58-year-old Kerr, now a Nevada County resident, has a mission. He says his life story has given him a strong sense of compassion for those with mental illness, and those experiencing temporary “imbalance.”
A co-founder of the Spirit Peer Empowerment Center in Grass Valley, Kerr is not only an advocate of peer support for those experiencing a mental health crisis, but eager to change societal perceptions. He and Rich Stone, whose daughter is bipolar, are now leading the charge in Nevada County to create a respite care network.
“If people are not a danger to themselves or others, sometimes they just need a warm, nurturing place to go with no judgment,” Stone said. “We've looked at other peer counseling models and wanted to go beyond a drop-in center. Environment can be a trigger, sometimes a person just needs somewhere else to go temporarily, like someone's home.”
On Monday, Kerr and Stone led a meeting on the topic to bring attention to the idea with hopes of building a network.
According to Barbara Lindsay-Burns, executive director at the Spirit Peer Empowerment Center, the crisis team at Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital gets between 900 and 1,000 mental health crisis visits per year. Of those, about 25 percent end up going to a psychiatric hospital. Up to 60 percent are turned away with few resources.
Lindsay-Burns, Kerr and others are hoping to implement a more effective safety net for those with little support. Lindsay-Burns says the peer center gets regular referrals from SNMH's emergency room staff, psychiatrists, churches, physicians, social workers friends and family members.
“Respite care would be a great preventive measure,” Lindsay-Burns said. “It would allow hope before an end point. When people's needs are met, they're usually pretty happy, they calm down. That's not the case in a hospital, where you're removed from society.”
Beyond peer support, mental health advocates agree there needs to be more public awareness on the many types of mental illness. Many people who lack exposure to the mentally ill are afraid they won't have the necessary skills to cope with someone who is “off balance” in their home.
Mental Health First Aid
Fear is often the biggest stumbling block to reaching out, said Denise Harben, workforce and education coordinator for the Mental Health Services Act.
“We teach a class called ‘Mental Health First Aid” for the average lay person,” Harben said. “It's a 12-hour class that helps people understand and respond to signs of mental illness. You can get certified, just like CPR. It helps people feel more comfortable in a crisis, learn risk factors and warning signs.”
After gaining confidence and understanding from these classes, people who might've been scared now have skills and know what do to and know how to get back-up if they need it, Harben added.
“There is a lot of talk about how the government is over-extending itself and that people need to take care of themselves,” said Lindsay-Burns. “Well here is a perfect example and opportunity for people to step forward, educate themselves and extend a hand.”
Duped, drugged and institutionalized
In the late 1970s, Kerr, then in his 20s, applied to Harvard Architecture School. While traveling with his wife to Harvard with his paperwork, he said, he started seeing visions.
“My wife was supportive but frightened by my sensitivity and fragility,” he said. “By that time I was well within the next world and threw all my application paperwork in the trash once we got to Cambridge.”
Back at home, Kerr went to see a psychiatrist and one day, without knowledge of where he was going, he was driven to a psychiatric hospital and left there, he said. Kerr was in lockdown, unable to leave and given 800 mg of Thorazine, an anti-psychotic.
“In these places, you can't leave, you're isolated, you're not listened to, your mind is numbed and they give you a $6,000 bill at the end of a six-week stay,” he said. “But that wasn't the worst of it.”
The worst of it, Kerr said, is the stigma of being put into a hospital against your will. A place as far from nurturing as Kerr can imagine, and a place that forever labels you a failure, or one who is unwilling to cope. His forced-hospitalization was a pivotal life event, he said.
“I sure found out who my real friends were,” said Kerr, who was abruptly ousted from a prominent professional organization. “I experienced a real loss of social citizenship and began buying into the label society had given me. I'd been duped, drugged and institutionalized. The most destructive part was what I told myself. I began to mistrust myself and constantly questioning and mistrusting. I lost a whole section of my life.”
Kerr said his whole life might have turned out differently if he'd just had a safe, nurturing place to go during that time of mental and spiritual imbalance. Instead, going to a hospital compounded the problem, and he came away with post traumatic stress from the experience itself. It was a slow trip back to self-acceptance and living a productive life.
As for Kerr, he's still walking among two worlds, but now he wouldn't trade it.
“We're all on a journey and we just need nurturing and validation,” he said. “I accept my experiences as a path that's important to me. Some people just have a down episode in their lives every few years and need a place to go to feel taken in. Our measure of success in society needs to be changed. We need to learn that it's OK not to accept the cookie-cutter mentality of how a person should be.”
To contact Staff Writer Cory Fisher, e-mail cfisher@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4203.
