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October 4, 2003
(from the Front Page section) 
By KEVIN O'CONNOR Staff Writer
When counselor George Nostrand talks about mental illness, he starts with the story of a man who swallowed a stomachful of pills. It was 10 years ago. The man woke in a hospital, only to be slapped by the voice of an aide. “You took enough medication to kill three or four people,” the aide said. “You could have died. The question is, why didn't you?” Nostrand has reason for recalling the moment word for word: He was the patient in the bed.
Nostrand, 30, is an employment counselor for Vocational Opportunity Works, a branch of Rutland Mental Health Services that matches clients with interested businesses. But a decade ago, the lifelong Vermonter was in need of help himself.
Nostrand can point to statistics: One in every five families in the state deals with some sort of mental illness. But he knows perhaps the best way to make his case is to tell his story. “The only way we are going to combat stigma,” he says, “is to talk about things.”
Nostrand's story starts with his father, a Bellows Falls lawyer of the same first name. Dad was studying law in St. Louis, Mo., when he met the woman who would be his wife.
“My grandfather told my father, ‘You can marry my daughter, but you must finish law school before you have kids,'” Nostrand says before laughing. “That just didn't happen. I ended up being a law school baby.”
The year was 1972. Dad helped Tom Salmon win election as Vermont governor that fall, then graduated and joined the Democrat's law practice. Son, for his part, went to a public elementary, then a private high school. He excelled academically, enjoyed football, skiing and lacrosse. His senior year, however, was anything but superlative.
“I was isolating myself, not able to sleep well, visibly unhappy about a lot of things.”
Most people figured it was just the stress of applying to college, anticipating leaving home…I got progressively worse, sometimes just crying for no reason, being extremely despondent.”
Nostrand thought of suicide. His parents didn't know what to do. They hoped for the best as their son applied and won acceptance in 1991 to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., to study architecture. That summer Nostrand's friends swam in the freedom between high school and college. “I didn't go out, didn't see anyone, didn't do anything,” Nostrand says. “I was spending my time in my room, really not communicating what was wrong. I don't think I knew what was wrong. Yeah, I had some problems, I had some issues, but they were problems and issues that any 18-year-old struggles with. They didn't add up enough to make me feel as bad as I did.”
Nostrand felt too weak to pack for college, so his parents did it for him. He sums up their hope: “Get him there, get him set up, and he'll adjust.” But just days after driving him over, they were driving him back. Nostrand figured he was on his way home. His parents, however, said they were taking him to the Brattleboro Retreat.
To people unfamiliar with southeastern Vermont, that may sound like a spa or spiritual center. Having grown up close by, Nostrand knew it had more to do with mental illness. But he knew nothing about that, so his impression of the institution was one of mystery, rumors and a recurring thought: “That was where crazy people went.”
“I remember my mom saying at one point before I went to school, ‘If things don't come together for you, we're going to bring you to the Retreat,' and I thought that was a joke. I didn't consider myself crazy.” But Nostrand was in a dorm room one day, the psychiatric hospital the next. He doesn't remember exactly what happened at school to spark the change. “I really couldn't function very well. I think I had a roommate — I don't even remember. Some of this stuff has been lost in the shuffle.”
Nostrand knows just before college he tried to cut his wrist and slept with a gun under his bed.
“I don't know whether it was loaded, but if it wasn't, I had bullets in my room.”
Nostrand was shutting down. Psychiatrists diagnosed him as depressed.
“I wish they had another word they could use instead of ‘depression.' Clinical depression is so much more intense. It's really completely different. Using the word ‘depression' really minimizes it.”
The 18-year-old started on prescribed medication, then stayed at the Retreat a month.
“I was still very depressed when I left there.”
So why did he?
“Insurance ran out.”
That can happen even to a lawyer's son. And so Nostrand was packed up again, but not for college. This time he was sent to live in an apartment at his grandmother's house in nearby New Hampshire.
“She said, ‘You can't sit home and think about all your problems.' She knew I should be doing something. So she took me down to fill out a job application at McDonald's.”
Soon Nostrand was wearing a synthetic-blend uniform and serving up Egg McMuffins on the morning shift. The former private school student found it quite a change — a welcome one, too.
“Even though it was what many people consider a real lowly type of job, it got me out of the house, thinking less about my problems, meeting new people, doing some different things, and feeling better about myself. Having that job was definitely a turning point for me.”
Nostrand worked at McDonald's a few months, then moved to another job at a firm that sold and serviced copy machines. “I had gotten back into feeling ‘normal' again, so I wasn't good at following my medication regime and I didn't really like doing the therapy …”
And so the next autumn brought another fall. He found himself in a hospital, again depressed, again diagnosed, again departing after another month.
The cycle continued. Another job — this time at a fish wholesaler — another slide, and, in 1993, another trip to a hospital.
“It was a Friday. I was done with work. I didn't even go cash my paycheck. I knew what I wanted to do. I drove home. I had written a cryptic suicide note. I had been stashing pills. I took like two or three, four vials. Lots, lots of pills. Initially, I got kind of a rush. I had really done it.”
Soon Nostrand began to doze off.
His roommate was supposed to be away. Instead, he returned. Nostrand found himself thrown in a car, shouted at and shaken in hopes of keeping him awake.
“I remember seeing the sign for the hospital, and that being the last thing I saw.”
Nostrand pauses.
“I woke up like a day and a half later.”
Lying in intensive care, he saw intravenous needles in his arms, heard talk how doctors had pumped his stomach.
“I was really angry — I was alive.”
A hospital aide saw it differently.
“Whatever you believe,” the aide said, “for some reason you lived through this.”
He asked the same question Nostrand did: Why?
This time Nostrand stayed in the hospital not one month, but two. Doctors eventually saw not only major depression, but also what Nostrand calls “the flip side” — mania.
“It's a highly excitable state. Your thoughts really speed up, and they keep going and going and going around and around and around. I've never done either, but an analogy I've heard is it's like you're on speed or cocaine 24/7, or on a train at high speed, but you can't get off. Everything becomes a blur.”
This begins as increased energy and enthusiasm, but can turn delusional and then psychotic.
“At extreme points I thought I could read people's minds, I had telepathy, I was connected with God. I barely slept. I was so intense I either pissed people off or wore them down. I don't remember everything I did, but there were certainly things that I'm not proud of.”
Nostrand was diagnosed with having what used to be called manic-depressive illness, what today is termed bipolar disorder. He finally began to understand why he was riding a roller coaster of emotions — and how he might stand again on solid ground.
By 1995 Nostrand found himself at a mental health day center drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and pacing hours away.
“At the time that was all that was expected of me.”
But his family expected more. They weren't satisfied with goals for stability. They wanted Nostrand to move forward. And so they pushed him to supplement his prescribed treatment with volunteer carpentry work.
“If I didn't have my family as advocates, I would never be where I am today. Work made me feel worthwhile because I could see I was accomplishing something, contributing to my community, and had a purpose. If you do feel you're needed, it gets the ball rolling.”
Nostrand tried everything from airbrushing to dishwashing to telemarketing before taking his current position five years ago.
“I've often joked with people that the reason I am an employment counselor is that I've had so much experience finding and losing jobs of my own. But the real reason is because I believe work is the most effective way to address self-esteem. Having something to look forward to, as well as the hope that things can get better, are crucial to successful recovery. Oftentimes, hopelessness can be more debilitating than mental illnesses itself.”
Nostrand not only counsels clients locally, but also speaks with professionals state- and nationwide. A slide show he recently presented in San Diego features the slogan “Work works!” and specific suggestions for the public.
“There are a lot of people who don't understand mental illness. They say ‘suck it up,' ‘look on the bright side,' ‘get over it,' or, worse, they just don't want to talk about it. The symptoms and characteristics of mental illness are all normal things. Everybody's happy, sad, angry, even delusional. With mental illness, emotions or behaviors are just in abnormal proportions. It's not anything I or anyone else asked for, it's not anything we did. It's a biological and chemical imbalance. Diabetes is the best comparison. If you don't have the right level of insulin in your body, you get sick. If you don't have the right level of serotonin or other chemicals in your brain, you get sick.”
Nostrand tells people who suspect they have a mental illness to seek treatment from a specialist and continue to care for themselves, even if they believe they're cured.
He says the public, for its part, needs to be aware rather than avoid. Nostrand appreciates people like CBS-TV newsman Mike Wallace, who recently came to a Vermont conference to talk about his own depression. He wishes others would focus less on confidentiality and politically correct terms.
“If we really want to make a difference, we need to stand up and talk about our problems, whatever they are, without shame so that we can educate people.”
Us, not ‘them'
For Nostrand, mental illness is a human rights issue, just like movements supporting women, blacks, and gays and lesbians.
“People with mental illness are disenfranchised and misunderstood. We need to identify people as people, and if we need to talk about their disability, we can talk about it as something that affects them, maybe is part of them, but is not ‘them.' How can we expect people with mental illness to behave and live normally if we don't treat them normally? It's easy to judge people by their history. Although we must take their past into account in treatment, we need to deal with them based on who they are today.”
And who they could be tomorrow.
“People who don't know my past might not find it surprising I have achieved what I have, but more than once my parents were told when I was sick, ‘He probably won't get much better, and will most likely only get worse.'”
Nostrand, however, is of a different mind.
“Being diagnosed with mental illness no longer means a person's life will only get worse. It definitely changes, but people have overcome amazing odds and accomplished great things, just as they can accomplish the small things of everyday living and working. Working in this field has been good for my own recovery, and has kept me on course. It is a constant reminder I need to take care of myself.
“I had a coworker who said, ‘I can't see you as one of them.' It's not ‘us' and ‘them.' In retrospect, mental illness for me has been more of a blessing than a curse. It has certainly altered the path my life has taken, allowing me to meet people and experience things I never would have. If somebody said you could go back to age 18 and college and study architecture, I wouldn't. Because as scary and horrible as a lot of the things were, it definitely gave me the ability and a unique insight to help other people. I used to get angry that people didn't understand or accept people with mental illness. Now I am working to try to do something about it.”
Contact Kevin O'Connor at kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com.
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Several Vermont organizations are observing October as National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
George Nostrand is an employment counselor for Vocational Opportunity Works, which connects people served by Rutland Mental Health Services with businesses looking for workers. Rutland area employers wanting to learn more can call 786-4935 or e-mail vow@sover.net.
The Vermont Division of Vocational Rehabilitation helps people with any and all types of physical or psychiatric disabilities find and maintain employment, often with the help of the Vermont Association of Business, Industry and Rehabilitation (VABIR), which aims to match workers with interested employers.
The division, which promotes itself as VocRehab Vermont, can be reached at 1-866-VRWORKS (1-866-879-6757) or www.vocrehabvermont.org. VABIR can be reached at 1-800-639-2909 or www.vabir.com.
Vermont also has a chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which offers information to people with mental illness and others with questions at 1-800-639-6480 or www.namivt.org.
© 2002 Rutland Herald and Times Argus