Students get rare glimpse into mental illness

“Coal before fire,” Andy says, meaning that black goes first in the game of checkers. Callie Blumberg has never played before, and Andy is showing her the ropes.

“The idea is to take control of the board,” says Simon, who has joined the table. Both he and Andy are members of Madison’s Off the Square Club, where Blumberg’s introduction to checkers is taking place. Managed by Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, the club serves approximately 150 folks with chronic mental illness each year, providing a safe haven for them to pass the time.

Andy (we’ll call him that, but it isn’t his real name) is a club regular. At this day facility for men and women, members can take part in a host of scheduled organized activities ranging from town meetings to softball. They can grab a meal — today’s lunch is chili, cornbread and beets. Or they can just hang out.

Or talk. Many members, Andy included, perhaps Andy especially, love to talk. This morning he’s conversing with Blumberg, one of the 19 students in Beyond Myth and Cruelty: An Overview of Serious Mental Illness, a special First-Year Interest Group (FIG) at UW–Madison. As part of the class, checkers novice Blumberg is required to volunteer about five hours each week to work with Off the Square members.

FIGs typically represent a cluster of three related classes, selected to more fully integrate curriculum for first-year students and also to break down the massive campus into manageable bite-sized portions. In addition to the main, “anchor’ course, Contemporary Issues in Social Work, the others in this FIG are Problems of Ethnic and Racial Minorities and Introduction of Psychology. About six students are working at Off the Square this semester; others have been placed at the Yahara House, YWCA, Safe Haven, Tellurian, the Gateway Community Support Project and Hospitality House. Regardless of the venue, the mission is the same.

“The idea is to interact with club members and get a feel for what life is like for them,” Blumberg says.

What life is like varies a lot, according to the club’s program manager Shawn Wiese. About 15 members have congregated early this morning, and most gravitate to the kitchen, where breakfast is available. In the back of the first floor is a smoking room. A vibrant mural, painted by a UW–Madison art student and depicting a mermaid gazing at the state Capitol, covers one whole wall. Outside, a garden is going to seed for the winter, but a few marigolds, petunias and, oddly, tomatoes are toughing it out in the early cold.

Upstairs are rooms currently “in progress.” One is dedicated to Ping-Pong and billiards; one is a crash pad for people with nowhere else to go; another is an office for members who also are staff. Wiese’s main office is here, and there’s also space for student interns like Blumberg.

It’s extremely rare for first-year students to do service as part of their course work. However, Mona Wasow, professor of social work and the lead faculty member for this FIG, believes there’s no substitute for it. The sooner students are engaged in it, the better, she says, and Wiese agrees.

“The minds of first-year students seem to be more open to these experiences,” Wiese says. “They don’t have many preconceived notions.”

“To place first-semester freshmen in the field is great! There are a number of wonderful readings we can assign, but only people who struggle with these devastating illnesses can teach students the most important thing for them to learn: that these are human beings who suffer and struggle, and that many of them are very brave,” Wasow says.

Andy, for example, is quite the athlete. He fishes, and is a catcher and designated hitter on the club softball team.

“I played softball in high school,” Blumberg offers, adding that she hasn’t played in awhile.

“I used to play on a city team, but I got kicked out,” Andy says. “I get kicked out of a lot of places.”

Blumberg, who usually comes to the club twice a week, works with Andy and other members both one-on-one and in groups.

“We sit and talk, watch television, play cards, sometimes check them off as they pay the 75 cents for lunch. I would say my relationship with the members is friendly. I think they feel comfortable sharing their stories and impressions with me, and I feel comfortable sharing mine with them,” she says.

Although it’s still relatively early in the semester, Blumberg says that she’s growing, intellectually, socially and politically, as a direct result of working at the club.

“I’m learning to be patient and to do the best I can to treat people at the club like anyone else,” Blumberg says. “I think it is horrible that the mentally ill often are ostracized. I would like to tell people in the larger community that the mentally ill are just like anyone else, except that they have a disease.”

Some of the students are planning to speak sometime this semester to Madison high school students about mental illness.

“The FIG students are becoming true advocates of the mentally ill,” Wasow says. “The students are becoming acutely aware of what is going on in one of the world’s richest countries, that there are so many homeless mentally ill without services, for example.”

Wiese agrees that money is exceptionally tight just now. If times were better, “I’d like the members to start and maintain an organic farm, and a cleaning service for the other properties” that he manages for LSS, he says. “That’s going to have to wait, though. It’s all we can do to take care of the day-to-day.”

In the year that he’s been managing the club, five staff positions have been reduced to two, but Wiese says that makes the contributions of interns like Blumberg all the more valuable. The fact that they are here as part of an academic class also gives their presence a different cast than a corps of volunteers from, say, a church.

“It’s an educational experience for the students, and they’re focused on the interactions between themselves and the members,” he observes. “Other volunteers might be more concerned with getting specific tasks done at the club.”

Wasow isn’t surprised at the success of this FIG. “I am deeply touched at how well the students are doing,” she says. “They are working hard, and they care. I think service learning is the way to go. If I had my way I’d have this kind of learning go from fourth grade to the Ph.D. level.”

Blumberg concedes that working at Off the Square has changed her. “I often find myself impressed with the knowledge members have, and I can easily empathize with their troubles,” she says. “Although it takes a lot of time out of my schedule, working at the club gives me a good feeling. It’s really nice to be doing something positive for the community.”

As mini-learning communities, this semester’s 13 FIGs are a component of the diversity-strengthening Madison Plan 2008. For more information about them, contact director Greg Smith at 263-6504 or glsmith@lssa.wisc.edu.