Mason Mental Health Day Treatment Program

Linda Ward, Coordinator

Mason Mental Health's Day Treatment program, as befitting a rural  program,
had a large vegetable garden. They not only sold fresh produce to local supermarkets;
but donated vegetable to the local food bank (see news clipping).
The staff pictured are Steve Polzin holding a watermelon, Barb White in the
lavender blouse, and coordinator Linda Ward, seated in front. To protect
confidentiality, client's faces have been covered with cutouts from a magazine.

Mason Mental Health had day treatment program began as an experiment, which ultimately failed, and which developed into a model  treatment program under Linda Ward who was hired in 1979. The earlier program included intensive group therapy which was central to its experimental component. Unfortunately this did not succeed. It was run by Michael Teixeira, then a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Michigan State University. He attempted to apply the theories of Bertram Karon, Ph.D., a professor and a researcher in a very active form of psychoanalytic treatment of schizophrenia, to our chronic clients.

In my own limited experience I had dramatic success applying these methods in my treatment with two clients who I thought were schizophrenic as they had carried that diagnosis for many years and through frequent psychiatric hospitalizations.

I believed we could do the same thing with our own day treatment clients, most of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Over time, I saw little positive change in the day treatment clients and then realized that the clients I succeeded with had been misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, and their apparent delusions and hallucinations were really manifestations of dissociation caused by childhood trauma. Therefore I changed the methodology of the program and hired new staff.

Linda Ward came on board and developed a humanistic program where the emphasis was on relating to the clients with empathy and warmth, while working with them to establish mutually acceptable and realistic goals. Staff were always willing to reach out to clients during times of crisis and physically go to where the clients needed them to be, whether it be a group home or the public library where one of them might be having a panic attack.

Because the town of Mason was uniquely accepting of our clients, many of whom lived in group homes there, a hallmark of the program was its success in involving our clients in community life. Jackie Lawrence deserves much of the credit for this. She began working for the program as a secretary, but before long it became obvious that the clients were drawn to her and vice versa. She had an extraordinary knack for outreach, politics, and community relations. As soon as we had a vacancy, I hired her as a mental health worker and she has been an energetic anchor for the rural aftercare program in Ingham County ever since.

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