Jefferson Awards

• Apr 30, 2008 7:51 pm US/Pacific
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  Spanish Support for Families Facing Mental Illness

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Spanish Support for Families Facing Mental Illness

Jefferson Award Winner: Luisa Perez

Reporting
Kate Kelly

Eighty-year-old Luisa Perez has lived with mental illness in her family for over twenty years. Two of her six children suffer from schizophrenia. Her son Mark died earlier this year. Her daughter Connie still struggles.

"It's horrible," Luisa says. "Nobody that hasn't gone through it (knows) what it is, when you see your child acting like they're acting, to be taken in and say they're mentally ill, it's just devastating."

At first diagnosis, Luisa contacted the Santa Clara County Chapter of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. With their help, she learned everything she could about brain disorders.

"I started going to the support groups and then to the conferences," she adds.

But she was surprised to discover she was the only Spanish-speaking person in the room.

Luisa explains, "I thought, my goodness! All this information and it's not getting to my people! It's not filtered down to us. I knew that this need was great."

So fifteen years ago, Luisa started leading NAMI support groups in Spanish, as well as classes to educate Spanish-speaking families whose children suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and other major mental illnesses.

Working out of her home office, which was once her son's bedroom, Luisa is never far from the memory of what families endure. Her walls are lined with photographs. Her shelves are filled with pamphlets and bilingual books -- training materials for her classes.

Amparo Munoz attended the classes and support groups for help with her own mentally ill son .She says the families talk of the latest treatments, new medications, and resources.

"They gave me a lot of support, a lot of sharing of what they had gone through," says Amparo. "These people have had the same problems with children."

Now Amparo is educating others and credits Luisa with empowering the Latino community.

"She's the one who has kept us going. She is the foundation. If it wasn't for her, we probably wouldn't be here."

Luisa says, "We're trying to make them understand that it's just an illness, like diabetes or like cancer or like any other, that there is treatment."

So for fighting the stigma of mental illness with education, and offering decades of support for Spanish-speaking families, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Luisa Perez.

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)