When Jonathan Denhart was discharged from the psych ward at Austin Oaks Hospital last year, he was prepared to be back very soon.
“I had never heard about this, but they told me they might give me the structure and purpose I needed once I left,” he said. “I had to give it a shot.” Denhart is one of over 100,000 people who are discharged from mental health hospitals every year in Texas, according to ay, and face multiple barriers to successfully transitioning back into the community. The biggest challenges are a lack of suitable housing, limited financial resources, issues with daily living skills, involvement with the criminal justice system and a lack of confidence or sense of purpose.
“I think the main problem we deal with is that most people don’t know we are even here,” said Jennifer Cardenas, executive director of Austin Clubhouse, which helps around 1,300 people per year. “We are here to show people that you don’t have just to sit at home once you are released from the hospital, you don’t have to just sit at home and do nothing. You can have a life again.”Abdul Majid Badini looks back on his life, regretting the first time he picked up drinking alcohol.
“I started to hallucinate and was paranoid. I thought I was being controlled by the KGB. I was mentally sick, and when I wasn’t drinking, I felt pain all over my body,” Badini said. “A lot of people, once they are released from the hospital, don’t trust themselves to go back to work or too ashamed to be with friends or family,” she said. “This leads to isolation and oftentimes just makes things worse.”Step-down programs became popular in the early 1990s when states transitioned from housing people in state hospitals to offering services in community-based mental health centers.
“In high school, I often ate lunch in the special education classroom instead of the cafeteria because a lot of the regular students didn’t understand what I was going through or thought I was faking,” she said. Membership is open to anyone over 18 who has a mental health diagnosis and is following a treatment plan with a clinician. The services are free, voluntary, and lifelong, paid for through public and private grants, corporate donors and a state contract.