DISABILITIES

By Daniel J. Vance

Joanne Verbanic of Farmington, Michigan, has done more to educate the general public about schizophrenia than any other American. In the 1980s, in a courageous act, she put her personal reputation and job at stake by publicly “coming out.”

“I've had (a form of schizophrenia) since 1970 when I was 25,” said 66-year-old Verbanic in a telephone interview. “Back then, I was hearing voices and having delusions of grandeur and paranoia and didn't know what it was. The doctors called it a nervous breakdown.”

She didn't learn her true diagnosis until seeing the words “paranoid schizophrenia” by accident on her hospital medical chart five years after her first hospitalization. She was placed in a hospital psychiatric ward after trying to jump out of a moving vehicle. A voice on the radio had told her to kill herself, she said.

“In 1985, to help erase the stigma of having schizophrenia, I went on the Dr. Sonya Friedman and Sally Jesse Raphael television shows,” she said. Four months later, she placed a Detroit Free Press ad to announce the first meeting of Schizophrenics Anonymous (SA), which she helped grow to more than 170 chapters worldwide.

According to an SA website, a person with schizophrenia may have delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking and speech, withdraw socially and feel agitated. Most people affected show initial symptoms between ages 16-25. It affects perhaps two million Americans, including more than one-third of homeless adults.

While helping promote SA, she also worked for Ford Motor Credit and retired in 1997 after 14 years and five promotions. She was a stellar employee who tried hard to compensate for her disability and left primarily because of being legally blind from macular degeneration.

Currently, Verbanic is a Schizophrenia and Related Disorder Alliance of America (SARDAA) board member, the organization overseeing SA. One reason SA is desperately needed: When coming out, she lost friends and many people with schizophrenia do too.

To people diagnosed, she advised: “Be very selective to whom you disclose your diagnosis. I wouldn't necessarily use the word 'schizophrenia' (with people) but would call it a psychiatric or emotional disorder. Don't lie, but I wouldn't give out the (exact) diagnosis because there is so much stigma. It's not people's business to know your diagnosis.”

Even more important than joining a support group and finding professional help was regularly taking the right medication, she said.

Contact danieljvance.com [Palmer Bus Service and Blue Valley Sod made this column possible.]