Press Room

MONTGOMERY -Ronald Brooks wears a bright yellow jacket, and in his large, dry hands, holds a black knit stocking hat, embroidered with the word "SECURITY."

The 21-year-old with cognitive disability -- he has the mindset of a 15-year-old -- has just come in from the cold. He lives in an abandoned apartment where there is no heat or running water. There are only other homeless people, crack addicts and prostitutes.

"They're all right there," he said.

Brooks is a former resident of Friendship Mission.

While overnight temperatures remain below freezing, he is allowed to sleep at the shelter as the cold makes it too unbearable, and dangerous, to stay in his small living space.

Somewhere between a fourth and a fifth of America's homeless are estimated to suffer from severe mental problems.

And because of these mental problems they have difficulty getting help. There are not enough mental health resources to provide them all beds, but their conditions often make it difficult for shelters to take them in.

The dangerously cold weather is the only reason Brooks has been admitted into the shelter on the Mobile Highway. It's not a common practice for the shelter to take in people with mental illnesses. Not with the erratic behavior they can bring with them.

"It's not so much not taking the mentally ill in, but you have these other guys ... you've got to take care of them," Tom Whitfield, the mission's director, said of the other shelter residents.

Although the National Institute of Mental Health said that only about 6 percent of America's overall population was classified as severely mentally ill in 2009, between 20 and 25 percent of America's homeless suffers from some form of severe mental illness, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Cynthia Bisbee said shelters aren't well equipped or trained to handle the special needs of people with mental illnesses.

If they are clients of the Montgomery Area Mental Health Authority, then they can qualify for permanent supportive housing, said Bisbee, MACH's interim executive director. She also is the executive director of the Montgomery Area Community Wellness Coalition.

"There are not nearly enough beds for that," she said. "They only have about 60 beds for permanent supportive housing for people with mental illness who are homeless.

"If they are clients there, they can be referred for an apartment, along with supportive service such as case management to help them remain in their housing."

The goal of the Montgomery Area Mental Health Authority is to make sure that no mentally ill people have to live on the streets.

"In many cases, we have to find group homes for them," said Henry Parker, the authority's executive director. "And we have our in-home intervention team that works with the homeless and find alternative means.

"There are shelters here -- Salvation Army and the Friendship Mission that do fantastic work in providing shelter for the homeless -- but they are not equipped to deal with the seriously mentally ill."

Being homeless does not make someone mentally ill, Parker said. However, if "you've had a home and suddenly become homeless, then the stress of being homeless and being depressed from losing your house can certainly lead into depression that needs to be treated by professionals."

When the Friendship Mission takes in people, "we don't really know their behavior until they get here," said Vincent Rosato, the mission's pastor.

"There's severe depression, schizophrenia. They burn their bridges with their families. If we bring (them) in here, it disrupts the whole system."

And they've handled them as best as they could.

One man rolled himself out into the middle of Mobile Highway in front of the Friendship Mission, Whitfield said.

"He was hiding his medication," Whitfield said. "He was trying to get hit by a truck.

"It usually takes a couple of days to determine if someone has a mental illness."

The mix of homelessness and mental illness affects a person's physical health -- the homeless neglect to care for themselves with adequate hygiene practices.

Rosato said one woman who regularly comes to the shelter for dinner is immoral: she pays for sex, doesn't bathe, and doesn't know how to clean herself after going to the bathroom.

"The toilet paper in her apartment is still in the wrapper," Rosato said. "She's the extreme -- she'll be sitting down and start beating herself."

Serious mental illnesses disrupt people's ability to carry out essential aspects of daily life, such as self-care and household management, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Mental illnesses may also prevent people from forming and maintaining stable relationships or cause people to misinterpret others' guidance and react irrationally.

That's what happened with Brooks.

Rosato said the problem is that the shelter doesn't understand Brooks, and Brooks doesn't understand Rosato and his staff.

"Do we love you?" Rosato asked Brooks.

Brooks looks up at Rosato and smiles.

"I won't say love, but certainly like," he answered. "Do you know why I say that? You'd have to be a stark-raving lunatic to love someone like me."

Brooks said if it wasn't for the Friendship Mission, "God knows where I'd be right now -- I'd probably be either dead or behind bars the rest of my life."

He said a lot of people misunderstand his condition.

Brooks' father died in 2002 of a heart attack. His mother is a paraplegic and it has been about three years since he last heard from her. Brooks was under the care of his grandmother until she died two days after Brooks turned 17.

He volunteers at the Hamner Hall fire station in Montgomery -- station No. 2 on Holt Street. While he attended several schools, he never graduated from high school. And he never has had a real stable life, having lived throughout the southeast -- Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia.

"He's 21, but it's like if someone says the wrong thing, and (he) wants to jump them," Whitfield said. "Ronald is still like the kid on the playground."

Brooks is one example of the mentally ill at the mission.

Jeannie Dowling is another.

The 49-year-old has been bipolar since she was 11. She describes it as becoming manic and then falling into depression.

"You're hyper, and you never shut up," she said. "You can't calm yourself down. You're a manic (depressive). You go from euphoria to depression and feel you have nothing to live for."

She said she had a family that would push and push her to the point where she couldn't understand, couldn't pay bills, "can't keep everything straight in your head. One minute you're over-cleaning, and the next, you're down."

Dowling married the week before she turned 16. After 32 years of marriage, her husband died two years ago.

She has been a resident at one of the Friendship Mission's two homes for women for about five months. She became homeless after she quit receiving her husband's Social Security checks when her 14-year-old daughter started living with Dowling's niece in Monticello.

With no extra check, there was no money for housing. What money she does receive helps with her medication. Without the medication, she becomes scared that other people will hurt her.

Aside from being bipolar, Dowling suffers from liver disease, injuries to her hips and knees sustained because of a car accident, and also COPD -- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung disease that makes it difficult to breathe.

As of Tuesday, Dowling had quit smoking for two days.

The biggest challenge with her being bipolar is dealing with her physical conditions. She has to be mindful of mixing the needed medications for her ailments.

"You don't want someone crazier than they are," she said. "God helps me now."

Dealing with the mentally ill at the shelter is challenging because there already is a lot of stress inside the small white building on Mobile Highway.

Rosato gets through every day by reading a passage from the Bible that talks about "the humility in the mind being the key to peace.

"That's the hope," he said. "That's what I read every day."

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