http://www.northernlakescmh.org/blog/2007/10/01/ernest/
I live in the woods near Roscommon, Michigan, in the upper part of the Lower Peninsula. I am 62 years old and lived as a hermit for 12 years. I am now a consumer of Mental Health services served by Northern Lakes Community Mental Health (NLCMH). I came out of the woods to get back into society around seven years ago. I started volunteering for the Crawford County Sheriffs Department as a Certified Victims Advocate which later dissolved, then went on to volunteer in the mental health system, and have not turned back to living as a hermit.
Let me tell you a bit about my life and how I came to be a hermit in the first place. I was raised in Rochester, Michigan. A somewhat happy life but had a father who was an alcoholic and a very loving mother who was beaten by him. I have an older brother and sister. I started realizing I was developing a mental illness when I was 20 years old. I first entered the mental health system in 1965. At that time the basic treatment was with drugs and psychoanalysis, the ones of choice at that time were Stelazine and Thorazine. Both of these drugs just controlled the problem but would not give lasting treatment. You were put in the mental health system and discharged after a maximum treatment of 20 times, no matter if you were stable or cured or not. This was a revolving door for me. Mental Health Parity did not exist then (Parity is the equal medical treatment of physical and mental illness). I did not get the appropriate diagnosis or medication to let me return to a good way of life. I was hospitalized on four different occasions with the same result, still not stable. Because of my poor physical and mental health my families suffered the consequences of this problem.....
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