OPINION NEWS FEATURE SOUND CHOW SCREEN OUTSIDE CULTURE


MAY 20, 2010 / THE SOURCE WEEKLY / 13


mention of, for example, a grandmother with schizophre- nia (which was the case in Dehnert’s family) could have been erased from the family history. Schizophrenia, however, is actually more common than


some might expect. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 2.4 million Americans (about 1.1 percent of the population) suffer from schizophrenia. As EASA and other programs like it make headway curtailing the symptoms of a troubling illness at an early age, there’s a chance that the stigma surrounding schizophrenia will dissipate. Stigma isn’t something Zach Dehnert is worrying about


right now. Rather, he’s focusing on his life – a life that was in disarray just two years ago. He’s a deftly sharp young man. He’s good with computers. He’s funny and he has an ingrained sense of wanting to help people. The trip to the Holy Land and that campground where that journey ended are far behind him. Now, he’s got plans. He wants to make his way through Central Oregon Community College and go on to eventually earn a four-year degree. He wants to hang out with his dog. He wants to have a life of his own on his terms and he doesn’t take a damn thing for granted and he hopes that attitude makes its way through to EASA’s other clients. “I don’t know, I think I show people that you can be in


SINCE ENTERING EASA, DEHNERT HAS TAKEN AN INTEREST IN COMPUTERS, CREATING THIS WORK STATION IN HIS HOME. continued from page 11


crosse field, having made his way onto his high school’s varsity squad as a freshman and serving as captain during both his junior and senior years. Dehnert was an all-state selection during his last two years in school and is still one of the highest-scoring players in his school’s history. There were signs, however, that while things were out-


wardly positive, his mind might be troubled. As a young child, Dehnert says he hallucinated and had an irrational fear of monsters. As he got older, he struggled with bouts of paranoia. “I’ve always been kind of a paranoid kid,” he says. The paranoia wasn’t enough to keep him from accep-


tance to the University of Oregon. But it was during his first quarter there that he began smoking marijuana, something that Dr. Williams says is known to amplify the symptoms of mental illness in young people. “When I started smoking pot it triggered something in


me and magnified everything, and, of course, it made ev- erything interesting. It made stuff like conspiracy (theo- ries) very real,” says Dehnert. His paranoia was compounded by his living situation,


which had him in the same house as an AK-47-toting co- caine dealer. He held down a job at a restaurant, but let schoolwork slip off his priority list. Eventually, he stopped going to class altogether. Within months, he was back liv- ing at home. He later got an apartment on his own as he began seeing psychiatrists, whom he says prescribed him hefty doses of drugs, including anti-psychotics, but did little else to help him. Dehnert’s 21st birthday was spent in rehab, where he


Institute of Mental Health, about 2.4 million Americans suffer from schizophrenia.


was sent after staying up for four straight days trying to maintain, at the time, what he believed to be “an amazing train of thought that was going to change the world.” He gave the appearance of being strung out on drugs, which, he said, wasn’t the case, but he was nonetheless sent to a drug rehabilitation facility in Montana. When the treatment was completed, he returned home


to Eugene. He knows now he should have been in a psychi- atric clinic rather than back at home, because 35 days later he began his trek to the Holy Land. Now, Dehnert gladly shares this experience with EASA’s


multifamily groups, a collection of clients and their family members who meet to openly discuss the programs. There are some family members who come to the informational


According to the National


meetings (which are offered in both English and Spanish) even though their children, siblings or relatives refuse to actively participate with EASA. That is the case with Jenny, who wished to use a pseud-


onym to protect her small business. Her 20-year-old son has been sitting in his bedroom for the better part of the past year and a half, which is about how long he’s been out of communication with his friends. He writes in his journal from time to time, but Jenny says he spends most of his time thinking and almost never communicates with his family. “I have a 16-year-old daughter who’s had to deal with this


as well and it’s been hard on her. It’s been a really tough thing for all of us,” she says. Jenny doesn’t know where she’d be without the EASA


multifamily groups, which help quell her frustration that results from the fact that there’s nothing she can do for her son. “There’s no laws that say I can make him take medicine.


There’s not a one law in Oregon that says that if your son doesn’t know reality you can step in,” she says. She’s right, given that he’s not shown himself to be a


threat to himself or others, it’s up to her son to make the decision to come to EASA, according to Oregon law. Dehnert hopes this will happen, and hopefully soon.


That is why he’s been going to Jenny’s house for dinner and engaging the young man whenever he has a chance – which recently resulted in a five-minute exchange between the two, a breakthrough Dehnert views as promising. Dehnert wants to convey some hope to the young man, which he sees as a way of giving back to those who helped him. “It’s like coming full circle for me. I began in this sort of


sickness and then I got out of it and then I’m better and I’m out being social and going to school and all this stuff,” says Denhert. Multifamily groups were developed by Dr. William R.


McFarlane, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont and a former director of research at the Maine Medical Clinic. This relatively new form of treatment al- lows not only for families to further understand the illness, but also to come out from beneath the stigma that sur- rounds this illness. As several EASA team members put it, this is a brain disease and is no different than cancer or dia- betes. The problem is, however, that cancer and diabetes aren’t something that people are necessarily ashamed of. Jenny’s husband, for example, has, at times, been over-


come with guilt about the fact that his son has been diag- nosed with schizophrenia, because the illness is prevalent in his family history. The shame and embarrassment sur- rounding the disease make it tough to treat, as evidenced by the fact that when Hayden-Lewis asks if the prospective client’s family has a history of mental illness, she takes the answer with a grain of salt, knowing that at some point, any


Early Assessment: From Australia to Oregon


Early assessment treatment of schizophrenia is a rela- tively new approach, but one that is gaining acceptance not only in Oregon, but around the world. EASA is just one program that has come into existence in the past few years, and many more are expected to soon follow. EASA is modeled after the Early Assessment and Sup- port Team (EAST) a program based in Salem and oper- ated by the Mid-Valley Behavioral Care Network, which serves Linn, Marion, Polk, Yamhill and Tillamook counties. The program began in 2001, which was when Ryan Met- lon was hired to head the program as a clinical supervisor. When EAST decided to implement the program, it was still a relatively new idea, but had already been tested on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. EAST (and most other early assessment programs in the US) is based upon a model developed in Melbourne, Australia, at the Early Psychosis Prevention and Inter- vention Centre (EPPIC). This program began in 1991 and is now considered one of the leading research and treatment centers in the world. The man who found- ed the program, Patrick McGorry, was not only a celeb- rity in the world of psychiatry, but his nation found his influence to be remarkable enough to name him Austra- lian of the Year in January. But closer to home, Melton and his EAST program have paved the way for regional agencies. Melton, who assisted the EASA team when the program was get- ting off the ground, is now considered an expert of sorts on this subject and was recently in San Diego consulting an agency that was looking to implement an early assessment program. Melton feels that his program’s results with young peo- ple have spoken for themselves. “Everyone who we caught in high school has either gradu- ated or is on the path to graduate,” says Melton, “Sev- eral people have graduated from our local universities and we even have some medical professionals who have graduated from the program.”


such a dark place and come out of that and be normal – whatever that is,” says Dehnert with a laugh. “You can be a functioning part of society and I hope people don’t forget about that.”


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