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Learning Center Reaches Out in Oakland

By Ji Hyun Lim

“Who Are You?”

Mental illness –Who do you think you are?

Depriving me of sleep

Persuading me to weep

Pleasure I cannot keep

An obstacle too steep

Woe to you when I get my ways!

You’ll regret the things you’ve done

I’ll be having lots of fun

Ever happy as the sun

GOD and I will be as one

— By Elliot Nuval

Poetry is more than just a form of expression for Elliot Nuval. The 34-year-old was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia 15 years ago. Words are what help him get through the day.

Left to right: Sandap Loc, Combodian Calworks group member reading her speech; Kris King the Center’s Site Coordinator: ACMHS staff member and family counselor Suon In; and ACMHS Board Vice Chair Leroy Morishita. Photo by Ji Hyun Lim.

“It’s cathartic,” said Nuval, whose condition has been stabilized by medication.

“It cleanses my mind to share some of my poems. Poems [help me] talk about what mental illness means to me, and how it affects me. I want to educate people through poetry.”

The Oakland-based Neighborhood Learning Center (NLC) supports people with multiple disabilities, such as Nuval, by offering peer support groups, computer training, craft activities and art therapy.

On May 30, the organization held a celebration in honor of its supporters and clients.

A pilot program of the Asian Community Mental Health Services (ACMHS), NLC is the brainchild of the former executive director, Alan Shin. NLC’s 250 clients receive services as often as three times a week. All have been diagnosed as “severely mentally ill,” meaning they have been hospitalized and are under medication, according to Connie Louie, clinical director of ACMHS.

Of ACMHS’s 3,000 clients, some 80 percent are on Supplementary Security Income. They range from children to seniors. The breakdown of ethnicity: 30 percent Cambodian, 27 percent Laotian, 19 percent Chinese, 17 percent Vietnamese, 2 percent Korean, 2 percent Filipino, 2 percent Japanese and 1 percent other. The ACMHS staff members speak 14 languages/dialects: English, Burmese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Khmuu, Cantonese, Mandarin, Toisan, Tagalog, Cambodian, Mien, Laotian and Malay.

Within NLC, there are two part-time staff members — the computer instructor Rod Lipka, and art teacher Kiyomi Price — and 10 full-time staff members.

“There is a need for the clients to move away from being a victim,” Louie said. “We don’t want them to come just for the medication and complain about the illness. We want them to do something about it.

“We give them self-esteem, the ability to produce... artwork; if they sell it and get part of the commission, they start to feel productive and good about themselves.”

But empowerment is difficult to achieve, especially with the stigma and shame about mental illness in Asian American communities.