During the past six years, Barbara Markwood has helped more than 120 people with mental problems return to the mainstream workforce. Markwood, a case manager at the Regional Assessment and Training Center, wins the respect of her students because she conquered her own mental illness.
In 1990, Markwood wanted to die. The former newspaperwoman had lost everything to depression and psychosis. Her 5 foot 8 inch frame was down to 77 pounds, and Markwood was bedridden, unable to move. She heard voices continually, taunting and terrorizing. Life, Markwood says, held no hope. She wanted to end it all.
Once a publisher, Markwood had been reduced to life in a locked hospital ward. It was there that she attempted for the third time to take her life. Again she was not successful.
“That was when I hit bottom,” says Markwood, 60. “I felt like I had failed at life, and I had flunked at ending it. I had nowhere else to go. I was angry and yelled at God, `Fine. Do your thing! I quit!’ I was at the end of my own resources, and that was actually when the healing began. I had been going along in one direction and came to a dead end. I knew I was dying, and I came face to face with my Creator. It was then that I realized my life was a gift, that there was a meaning and a purpose for it. For me, it was regeneration. Now I see that I had to let go of my pride.”
That awakening kernel of faith, Markwood says, brought her new hope. Then her psychiatrist said the words that sent Markwood down a path to recovery.
“My doctor was an angel. I had always feared medications and refused to take them. But one day he told me that he was not trying to change me, only to restore me to who I really was. Those were the magic words, and I began accepting treatment,” Markwood says.
“I started taking my medications, and finally the voices in my head began to grow quieter. Then one day, I realized that they weren’t there anymore. Hearing voices is terrifying. It’s a constant type of self-torment, like demons of self-hatred. But the powerful anti-psychotic drugs I was given really worked for me, and that should be a hope to others.”
Although finding the right medications to treat mental illness is not always easy, Markwood says, her treatment plan met with eventual success.
“After I got on medication, I told my doctor that I’d always had an idea of how I was supposed to feel. And that now, for the first time in my life, I felt it,” she says. “It was so exciting.”
Markwood’s psychiatrist told her that her mental illness was most likely a combination of factors, including heredity, the body’s neurochemical balances and her situation.
Markwood knows that people wonder how a successful businesswoman could end up with psychiatric struggles.
Her slide into depression and eventual psychosis began in 1984. She had divorced in 1978 and was a single parent to her four boys. Struggling to provide, Markwood entered the newspaper business, working her way from a proofreader to assistant publisher of a weekly in Gunnison, Colo. After several years, she decided to start a weekly newspaper.
“Starting up a paper and parenting four school-age children was tough,” Markwood says. “I was completely dedicated, first to my boys and then to my job. But this time was the beginning of my despair. I started to lose it when the boys began to grow up and leave home. I was thrilled that they were going on with their lives, but it was difficult to face the fact that I was going to be on my own. I just pushed those feelings down.”
By the time her three oldest boys had left home and her youngest was 15, Markwood began fearing the empty nest and being caught off-guard by her own feelings regarding this change in lifestyle. Around that time, her business failed. The combination sent her over the edge.
“My youngest son and I arranged to have him stay with another family, and then I left town. I went to Phoenix and worked restoring Navajo rugs. I was in decline, but I didn’t know it. Finally, in 1990, two of my sons brought me back to Colorado. They were worried to death about me, but I couldn’t communicate with them. I couldn’t tell them why this was happening.”
She had seen a psychiatrist in Phoenix, but Markwood’s depression continued to worsen.
“I couldn’t eat because I had an aversion to food. Eventually, I collapsed and was hospitalized, dying of starvation.”
Because Markwood had no insurance, she was seen and then discharged. She eventually wound up at University Hospital in Denver. Emergency measures there saved her life, but she spent more than a month in hospital lockup. It was then that Markwood hit her lowest point and had the spiritual experience that turned her life around.
“Spirituality was a part of my recovery. When you go through this type of thing, you wonder what you are here on this planet for,” Markwood says. “What I had to develop was a primary relationship with God. Secular understanding of mental health is based on self-esteem issues. But for me, self-esteem was a given when I acknowledged that I was created in the image of God.”
Although Markwood’s positive new attitude helped her take a step toward mental restoration, her physical recovery was another challenge.
“I was eating again and getting healthier, but I had to learn how to walk all over again. Then in 1991, one of my therapists recommended a new job-training program to me,” Markwood says.
The Case Manager Aide Training Program trains rehabilitated mental patients to be case manager aides for new patients coming into the mental health system. This novel six-month program, administered jointly by the Regional Assessment and Training Center and the Community College of Denver, qualifies graduates to become resource providers in human services. Applicants are carefully screened. Readiness and stability are important, although students may be in treatment and still displaying symptoms. For many, the training is an experience in recovery.
Markwood entered the training program in November 1991. Because she had lost everything during the illness, Markwood lived in a homeless shelter after discharge from the hospital.
The Regional Assessment and Training Center hired her when she completed the program. Since then she has been promoted to case manager, a position that makes her a combination counselor and adviser to the 20 students enrolled in each six-month program.
“An important part of what students learn in a program like this is resocialization. We help people return to the mainstream workforce after a major life disruption. Our students are trained and placed in employment with human service agencies,” Markwood says.
“I have realized that having recovered from mental illness is a credential for working with people who have mental health issues. Unless you’ve been through it, you don’t understand the terror and alienation that come along with mental illness. That empathy and support is important, as is the respect. In past treatment of psychiatric disorders, sometimes that respect for the patient was lacking. A case manager aide who has survived neurosis and psychosis can be a wonderful advocate for the patient.”
Markwood believes that she can be a role model and a source of hope to students going through the program.
“I’ve been in their place. I know there is a way out by taking responsibility for who we are and the gifts we have to give,” she says.
Much of Markham’s job is providing support one-on-one to the students.
“Sometimes there is a line into my office of students wanting to talk,” Markwood says. “Often they just tell me how they feel so that I can help them go through that and get beyond. A student recently told me how he had fallen again into depression over the semester break. There were times he couldn’t get out of bed. He was scared that he wouldn’t be able to finish the program. But I told him I knew exactly how he felt. I know how it feels not to be able to get out of bed, to be so depressed that you can’t even cross the street to buy a can of pop. I identify with their emotional state, but then I pull away from that to acknowledge that there is more to us than just emotions. I then go to the intellectual side of things and remind the student of his own choices and goals, sometimes discussing behavior modications. I’m a reminding factor for them. If I can do it, so can they.
“I want to show people that there is a way to move on, that you can learn the coping skills you need to lead a productive life.”
Markwood believes that stigmas on mental illness often keep people from talking about it or seeking help.
“Mental illness is terrifying,” Markwood says. “It’s like you wake up one morning, and your self is gone. I lost everything, including the most important thing: my mind. But I couldn’t talk about my illness because I was ashamed. I had a history of relative success before. You learn to hide what is not socially acceptable.”
Markwood believes that Americans are becoming more educated about mental illness.
“One in four people suffer from mental illness,” Markwood says. “It’s not so unique. Diagnoses continue to multiply. The National Alliance for Mental Illness is making great strides in advocacy and research. But many of those who have no experience with these types of illnesses have no understanding. They fear it, and stigmas come from fear. I was one of those people. I didn’t realize what was happening to me until I was so psychotic that I couldn’t admit it.
“Society’s understanding of mental illness grows each time more people disclose their struggles. To be blunt, it’s not just the low-lifes who are crazy. There are numerous professionals, highly respected leaders, who are publishing first-hand accounts of going through mental illness.”
Markwood feels blessed to have been given a second chance at life. Her life has been restored. She has a job she enjoys, and she is close to her family. She hopes to pass on that message of hope to the people she works with, as well as to others who struggle with mental disorders.
“I was a victim of my choices,” Markwood says. “I hope to pass on to my students that recovery of options.
“Someone once told me that if you want to get to the kernel, you have to break the shell. For me, mental illness broke the shell. Now I can just be me. There is a tremendous freedom in that.”
