Dancing for Independence and Dignity

Drs. Fehr and Glowinski, Dancing with the Stars St. Louis

I have never watched dancing with the stars.

It's not that I don't love dancing; it's that I don't love watching television.

So, it is with some trepidation that I accepted a very generous invitation to attend Dancing with the Stars St. Louis last night, with my husband Jim.

Jim is worse than I am: he does not watch television either and our only experience watching a dance show together was years ago, in Las Ramblas, Barcelona. We watched fantastic flamenco dancers passionately rendering emotional stories without any words (I thought). Jim did not think that the dancing made any sense...whatsoever.

But we both agreed that we should go to this Dancing with the Stars event in support of the unique and important Independence Center.

I first heard about the Center a few years ago when the Washington University General Psychiatry residents started rotating there. I was very excited that they could be exposed to an educational model based on rehabilitation much beyond acute psychiatric treatment.

Between battling stigma, the varied opinions of everyone about mental illnesses, a health care system still built to better address non-mental than mental disorders, dealing with the paralyzing effect of some mental symptoms and the dwindling resources and support that often follow years of mental illness, it is no wonder that many seriously ill individuals have difficulty engaging or committing to treatments and spiral out of the core of society: un- or under-employed, under-achieving and piling up the soul crushing consequences of illness on top of the illness itself.

Enter the Independence Center and the likes, which espouse a model based on the restoration of human dignity and confidence. Organized like a clubhouse, the Center provides a hearth to rewarm the disconnected and marginalized. It offers support for healthy lifestyles (excercise, nutrition) and guidance to face the terrifying prospect of trying to integrate or re-integrate the work force. Emblematic of its Philosophy, patients at the Center are not called as such: they are Members.

So what about the dancing? Well, if like me you find fundraising parties fundamentally boring as parties go (lots of sitting and listening), last night was wonderful.

The principle is simple: wealthy and/or well-known members of the St. Louis community are asked to consider dancing to help raise money for the Independence Center. Each is paired with an excellent dancer/coach of the opposite sex. Everyone is, knows or loves someone with a mental illness at some point, so it's not hard to convince famous people that they would be doing this for a good cause. There is something else about famous people: they tend to be used to the spotlight. It is mesmerizing to watch those previously "non-dancers" after several months of efforts, hammily demonstrating the transformation that they voluntarily espoused for a good cause. It is a physical transformation of course: grace and effortlesness replacing forner stiffness. More importantly it is a psychic transformation: many of those people now talk openly about the importance of reducing mental illness stigma.

Somehow, it all parallels and echoes and then joins very successfully the transformation that happens in the lives of the Independence Center members. This was articulated by radiant Independence Center member and contestant Sheila last night, when asked what it meant for her to dance for this event: "It makes me feel that there are still good people in this world".

So, yes, last night was wonderful.

 Even Jim agrees.

Till Later,

Anne