By Mandy Catoe
4/9/17
Once, when Melanie Odom was at Clemson University, she thought she had discovered a mathematical way to predict the future, and that the government was coming to steal it.
As a professor was trying to get her some help, she was in an auto accident. She ran across four lanes of traffic, still clutching the sandwich she had been eating.
“Why are you fleeing the scene of an accident!” yelled a police officer at the scene. As he approached her, she began tearing the sandwich into little pieces and throwing them at him.
“I was so rattled and so scared,” Odom recalls. “I started speaking French. He backed up and seemed to figure out that something wasn’t quite right.”
The EMTs came, restrained and sedated her, and she woke up in a hospital.
Nearly 30 law enforcement officers sat on the edge of their seats at the Lancaster County law enforcement training facility last Thursday as Odom told her story. The weeklong crisis-intervention training was provided by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
“If you encounter a mental patient, an ounce of compassion will go a long way,” Odom told the officers. “Remaining calm is a huge deal. Those in an altered state of consciousness will pick up on calmness.”
The officers learned about various mental illnesses, community resources, body language and verbal de-escalation techniques to better deal with the mentally ill.
The state of South Carolina has been spending less and less on mental health resources in recent years, and officers are finding themselves filling in the gap.
“We are having to deal more and more with people with mental illness or mental disorders, and we need to be prepared to deal with those situations,” said Lancaster County Sheriff Barry Faile. “The Department of Mental Health is underfunded, and that puts a strain on law enforcement across the state.”
Last year’s statistics show the necessity of educating officers.
“County deputies responded to 251 mentally or emotionally disturbed persons in 2016 and transported 240 mental patients to a psychiatric treatment center,” said Major Matt Shaw, chief deputy at the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office. “The need for this training is real.”
Shaw attended the training in another county and asked that NAMI bring it to Lancaster.
“We want our officers to be safe, the public to be safe, and we want the person to be safe as well,” Shaw said.
NAMI officials on hand said that across the country, one in four adults have a mental illness and one in five children suffer from one.
“Do the math,” said Donna Breimann, state coordinator for NAMI’s Crisis Intervention Team (CIT). “In here with 29 officers, that means seven of you could one day develop a mental illness.”
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MANDY CATOE/The Lancaster News
Deputy
Davey Hendrix, Melanie Odom and Katie Jo Carter share a group hug after
the training seminar, where Odom and Carter shared their stories.
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Last week’s CIT training included law enforcement officers, detention center officials, and people with mental illness and their families. Seventeen Lancaster County deputies, four Lancaster Police Department officers and eight York County officers attended the training.
The first three days were filled with facts and numbers. The other two days made it real, with testimonies and role-playing. Chris Smith, Joe Timmons and Deborah Jennings, members of the Community Playhouse of Lancaster County, volunteered their time for Friday’s role-playing, reenacting real-life scenarios for the officers.
“I have friends in the Lancaster Police Department and the sheriff’s department, and they have these type situations on a regular basis,” Smith said. “The more practice they get in a safe environment, the better and safer they will be out in the real world. I am proud to assist them and proud of the Community Playhouse of Lancaster County’s role in this training.”
Thursday’s training put local faces on mental illness. Two mothers with mentally ill adult children and two mentally ill women shared their encounters with a broken mental health system and ill-informed law enforcement officers.
Odom told the officers about different bipolar disorders and brought them to life with detailed personal stories. She advised them that manic behavior can sometimes mimic drug abuse, with dilated pupils and slurred or altered speech. She encouraged them not to assume it’s drugs, but reminded them that the mentally ill often self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.
That often leads to addiction as the uninsured seek relief or those on prescribed medication look for alternatives with fewer side effects.
Bipolar 1 disorder
Odom, 34, has Bipolar 1 disorder. Her mental illness began at age 14 when she was diagnosed with generalized anxiety. Over the span of 20 years, she has been hospitalized at least 10 times. She once attempted suicide. She has been stable now since 2012.
Odom said she was the valedictorian of her graduating class at Chester High School in 2001 and earned a psychology degree in 2005 from Clemson University with top honors.
“My bipolar condition is characterized by mania and depression,” she said. “I sometimes have hallucinations, and my ideas come at warp speed with racing thoughts that I can’t control.”
Another face with mental illness was Katie Jo Carter, 36, who has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder with attention deficit and obsessive compulsive disorder. She said she has a nursing degree and hopes to return to school this fall to pursue a counseling degree.
Carter shared clues for the officers to look for such as hygiene issues. Ask the person when he last ate or had a good night’s sleep, she suggested. Above all, she said, be patient with someone in crisis.
“Sometimes you can’t even explain yourself, because you don’t even understand what is going on in your head,” she said.
Carter threw her “dirt on the table” and shared details of where her illness had carried her. Some behaviors occurred in a fugue state, a temporary amnesia. That often caused problems in her marriage. She developed an eating disorder in her teens and later coped with alcohol and drugs, which is common among the mentally ill, she said. Sadly, she told the officers, the best treatment for anxiety is marijuana.
Her most recent breakdown was sparked by sleep deprivation, exhaustion and stress. She encouraged the officers to ask questions about those key triggers. Like Odom, she credits NAMI and and her faith in God for her continued recovery.
Carter and Odom, both members of NAMI, have implemented the NAMI program “Ending the Silence” in York County middle and high schools. They matter-of-factly teach warning signs of mental disorders to raise awareness and remove the stigma of mental illness. They hand out business cards with signs of mental conditions and NAMI contact information, a suicide hot line, and a 24/7 crisis text line. Text “NAMI” to 741741.
Parents suffer too
Two other faces of mental illness were mothers of adult children suffering with bipolar depression and schizophrenia with paranoia. One mother, asking to remain anonymous, said mental illness affects the whole family and relatives can provide key information. She encouraged the officers to talk with family members of someone having a mental crisis.
Lena Wallace, who led the effort to bring NAMI to Lancaster, talked about her daughter who lives with a bipolar disorder and has attempted suicide several times. She told the officers she has two daughters with illnesses, one with juvenile diabetes and one with mental illness.
“They are equal,” Wallace said. “That is what mental illness is, a disease of the brain, and the stigma needs to be removed so people will seek help.”
Both mothers told the officers their worst fear was for a police officer to knock on their doors and tell them their child was dead.
A scheduled break followed the faces portion of the training. Rather than taking a break, most officers approached the presenters.
Deputy Davey Hendrix insisted on hugging Odom and Carter together.
Lancaster County Detention Center officer Stacy Hatfield said the training was very helpful.
“We deal with a lot of inmates who do have some type of mental illness,” he said.
“Life is difficult enough when you are incarcerated. It helps when you have people who understand what your issues are and will work with you.”
Odom has a semicolon and the word “grace” tattooed on her right wrist.
“A period marks the end of a sentence,” she explained, “and the sentence is your life. I have chosen to place a semicolon in my sentence and continue my story. And the word ‘grace’ represents that my story continues because of God’s grace.”
NAMI support groups meet
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) holds support-group meetings each month for adults living with mental health conditions and their loved ones. NAMI’s Connection is for adults living with mental health conditions, and NAMI’s Family Support Group is for their loved ones.
NAMI’s Connections and Family Support groups meet the first Monday and third Thursday of each month at First Presbyterian Church, 700 N. Main St., Lancaster. NAMI’s Family Support Group also meets each month from 7-8:30 p.m. in room 203 at Transformation Church, 8978 Charlotte Highway, Indian Land.
For details, visit www.namipiedmont.com.
Follow Reporter Mandy Catoe on Twitter @MandyCatoeTLN or contact her at (803) 283-1152.
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