Philanthropy Today
Philanthropy Today
Morning Star, Inc on the GMCF Community Hour Episode - 196
Doncha McDonald shares how Morningstar's unique peer-led approach transforms lives by creating power balance among those with mental illness. Through her personal journey with schizoaffective disorder, she reveals how finding purpose through community support was more healing than medication alone.
• Morningstar's "secret sauce" is that everyone who works there has lived experience with mental illness
• Doncha struggled with delusions for years, including symptoms of anosognosia—the inability to recognize one's own illness
• Depression was more painful and dangerous than delusions for Doncha
• Connecting with others at Morningstar who had mental illness helped her develop self-love and purpose
• EMDR therapy has helped address underlying trauma behind depression
• Morningstar offers free daily groups and activities at their location by Goodwill on East Poyntz
• Success stories include individuals moving from homelessness and addiction to stable housing and family reunification
Visit morningstarmentalhealth.org to learn more or arrange for Doncha and Richard to speak at your organization about mental health.
Philanthropy Today is brought to you by the Greater Manhattan Community Foundation. In this episode we feature a recently broadcast segment of the GMCF Community Hour, as heard on NewsRadio KMAN. Back with the GMCF Community Hour here on NewsRadio KMAN. It is a big day around here because we have the CFAs tonight, the Community Foundation Awards at the Hilton Garden Inn, with doors opening at 530. Looking forward to having many, many a Manhattanite joining us, and there will be a number from out of town will be coming from our partner communities as well. Our next segment is about Morning Star. Doncha McDonald is our guest. She is a co-executive director and shout out to the other, co, richard Stitt, who's a little under the weather, wishing him well today and a speedy recovery, but it's a delight to have you. I get you all to myself today.
Speaker 2:Hi, happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we are going to learn a little bit more about Morningstar. I think you're one of the best kept secrets in town.
Speaker 2:I wish we weren't a secret. We try to not be a secret, so I'm glad we're here. We're always looking for new members. We're a small nonprofit and we work with people with mental illness. Everyone who works at Morningstar has a mental illness, which is sort of our secret sauce, because it creates just like power sharing and power balance. There's no like expert and like problem child dynamic.
Speaker 1:You know you use the word power sharing and empowering. Yes, it's something that I think probably would be a a good aspect too yeah, it is empowering and we're a great community.
Speaker 2:We become like a family and people really transform. We have seen so many miracles, so stop by and see us, find out more about us. We're not scary. I think we're a little mysterious to people, because that's not a bad thing. Well, because to work there and most of our volunteers also have a mental illness, so we keep this power sharing balance.
Speaker 1:But I think, since we don't have a lot of sort of community volunteers in and out, I don't know yeah, well, I know that you've had, um, you kind of risen up from the ashes with morningstar, because, and and tell me the story about how you and richard you talk about co-executive directors and kind of co-founders well, richard, richard and stan wil okay.
Speaker 2:Stan is our board president. He was our board president when we started and then he was just a member for a while. Now he's been the board president again, so he and Richard really got it off the ground and I came about 10 years later, but I've been there for 10 years.
Speaker 1:Did they give you a cake?
Speaker 2:I don't think we pinpointed the actual date.
Speaker 1:We'll make one up, just like everybody else does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's been great for them and their lives. They're both people with lived experience of mental illness and had a lot of challenges. I had challenges. I couldn't tell reality from imagination on and off for five years.
Speaker 1:Because you've had schizophrenia.
Speaker 2:It's schizoaffective is what I'm diagnosed with Okay.
Speaker 2:And my primary symptom was delusions, like I thought the cia was watching me. Well they are. That's the crazy things. If you want to dive into that, find a lot of validation on the internet. But I thought you know people would be looking at their phones in public places and I was sure they were recording me and what were spies, and just it went on and on and I had a symptom called anosinusia. It's not that well known, but it's when you really cannot see your own illness. You just cannot see it. Everyone told me something was wrong from every corner of my life and I could not hear it. It wasn't denial, which is also a thing people with mental illness suffer from. It was just like a symptom. My mental illness was not being able to see. I had a mental illness.
Speaker 1:I think one of the wonderful things I like about visiting with you and Richard both is your openness, Because you know, we all know, that mental health, mental illnesses, have had this spell cast upon them and the word spell is appropriate there because many have felt over the years that you know there was witchery involved or something like that. But there is that stigmatism that goes with mental illness. And let's drop back a little bit in your personal history. What was the turning point for you To get better? Get better To recognize that you had this condition and you knew that something wasn't right for me the actual losing, the delusions.
Speaker 2:Taking the meds I never had a turning point. I would sit to osawatomy, the state hospital. I was there a month and I thought I was in like a I don't't know I was around me with CIA agents, that I was in witness protection. I did not believe I was in a mental institution. I thought everybody was faking being mentally ill and I was spitting out my medicine for a month.
Speaker 1:That's counterproductive Back.
Speaker 2:And then, finally, a nurse came up to me and said you know, we've been finding your medicine in the garbage and if you don't start swallowing it, we're going to have to give you a shot.
Speaker 1:Oh, so the CIA was watching you spit your medicine into the trash.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but actually I wasn't spitting in the trash, I was spitting it in the toilet. So they were lying, so I was right and they were wrong.
Speaker 1:But somehow they knew.
Speaker 2:They knew I wasn't getting better. And then I started swallowing my medicine and three days later the delusions were completely gone. It was a little gradual, but on the third day I woke up and I was like I don't need to think about this anymore, I don't need to evaluate the evidence. I was obviously mentally ill and none of this was true. But the big change I had had a six-month period earlier where I didn't have delusions and knew that I was mentally ill. I still wasn't taking my meds, but I was incredibly depressed and I thought my life was over and I wouldn't leave the couch. I wouldn't do anything. I thought there was no hope for me. I was very suicidal. I could barely hold a conversation.
Speaker 2:So the difference was when this period came about, where I was taking meds and the delusions was gone, I found Morningstar and it gave me purpose and hope. I found a. There was a peer supporter at Ossawatomie, someone with mental illness who ran groups and worked with us and she gave me a lot of hope, told me about Morningstar and it really changed my outlook and my life and the self-hatred and all that stuff where I thought there was just no hope for me and I had no self-respect or self-love. But with Morningstar I could see that all these other people with severe mental illness had worth, had lives, had individual personalities. They weren't all the same and so by bonding with them and loving them I was able to love myself. So it was a total different, because without morris I might not be here. Because it's one big shock to come out of five years of being sort of a character screaming on the street. Sometimes you know that messes with their identity a lot.
Speaker 1:You talk about. You know the depression aspect. That's fairly consistent with people that are challenged with mental illnesses, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, depression can be on its own or it can be part of a lot of different things and sort of the internalization of this. It's just devastating to get such a serious diagnosis to your identity and you know, we all are raised in the same culture that teaches us things about people with severe mental illness. So we internalize that, we believe we are that and yeah, so that just getting the diagnosis itself can be very depressing. But also many people suffer from depression alone and that can be very serious. And I do tell people the six months I was really suicidally depressed was much worse and more painful than the four and a half years I was delusional Really. Oh, yes, so much more. When I was delusional I was like the center of attention. I had all these schemes.
Speaker 1:You were the party paper, weren't you?
Speaker 2:Down in Agueville making friends. Well, that was you, yeah, in Agueville making friends. Well, that was you. Yeah, being really outgoing and telling people updates about what was going on with the spies and yeah. So the depression really was much more painful, yeah, and dangerous, well, you know.
Speaker 1:What was your secret to moving from the depression, moving on from it?
Speaker 2:Well, that bout that was sort of in the middle of the delusions. I think the changing of the seasons helped. It started to get nicer weather and honestly I just became delusional again Really, and so that was.
Speaker 1:Kind of balanced it out.
Speaker 2:It didn't balance it out. I just was in an imaginary world that I had things to do, I had worth, I was the center of the universe in my own head, and so I just fell into my delusions. But my delusions weren't hopeless like the depression was, so in a way the delusions might've saved my life. It was a good shift at that time out of the depression, because every day I woke up with that depression, not wanting to be alive and that was 10 years ago.
Speaker 1:How are you now?
Speaker 2:Good, I struggle with some complex trauma and I'm working on that with a good trauma module, emdr, which is eye movement, something, something and you think about a traumatic event and you move your eyes back and forth and it really reprocesses reprocesses your trauma in a way that just talk therapy never worked for me. It really changes how you look at things. You get new perspectives. Things that don't feel like they're in the past become the past. You know, some traumatic events feel like they happened yesterday or they're happening now, but through this therapy, yeah, it's been helping. So that's been helping my depression. That's been helping my depression.
Speaker 1:And it probably also is helpful when you see people that come into Morningstar and interact with each other including you, oh yeah and know that there's that commonality and there also is the potential for positive end results.
Speaker 2:Oh, there is, there, absolutely is. I used to do a jail group, do a support group in jail, and there's some people I met in the jail who were self-medicating with substances illegal substances, homeless, very delusional and psychotic, and one individual in particular. She's got a stable housing, she's sober, she's on meds that take care of her symptoms so she doesn't have to self-medicate, she's united with her family. It's just a completely different life through Morningstar.
Speaker 1:Real successes. Do you do some public speaking? I mean, do you talk to groups, churches, all kinds of things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do public speak, Richard and I. We're a good team and we would love to come and speak to churches yes, any organization that will have us. That's part of our mission is to reduce the stigma and educate. But I think I should talk a little bit about morningstar more just a little bit.
Speaker 1:We're running a little short on time okay, we just.
Speaker 2:We have groups and activities every day, everything's free. We're on east points by goodwill and academy. You can stop by and tour and get to know us and, you know, build a better life and you have bingo nights oh yes, we have bingo saturdays, everybody. We have a party on our board meeting day.
Speaker 1:We have a a party with food and bingo that everybody loves if you want to find out the website, it's morningstarmentalhealthorg, and Donsha Richard would love to come and visit with you and share more about the work that you're doing. Thanks for the contributions you're making to the community, because I know that that it's highly impactful.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, continue good wishes. Thank you so much. Donsha McDonald is her name. She's co-executive director of Morningstar Inc. We're going to take our final break of the show. Vern's going to step back in and provide us some updates on some things that are going on. We may talk a little bit about the CFAs tonight. Yeah, we will. We'll be back in a moment here on KMAP.