SAN ANTONIO • “This is like a miracle,” said former San Antonio College (SAC) student Roy Trey Hummel. “I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen.”     Seated in the SAC Catholic Student Center (CSC), Hummel was referring to the display of his art there Sept. 19-23, along with that of current SAC student Marisa E. Medina and former SAC student Denise Valdez.
    The unique aspect of this art exhibit was that it marked Mental Health Week at the SAC CSC and the three artists involved all suffer from forms of mental illness. Their art works express their experiences in dealing with these mental disorders which, while not curable, are manageable.
    Hummel and Valdez have been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, which causes unusual mood shifts. Medina’s condition is schizoaffective disorder, a combination of mood disorders and schizophrenia.
    The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that more than two million American adults have bipolar disorder. A similar number suffer from schizophrenia, typified by hallucinations, delusions and disordered thinking. Both typically develop in later adolescence or early adulthood and can often go years before being properly diagnosed and treated.

    Medina and Hummel met with Today’s Catholic the week of their exhibition to share how their illnesses have affected their lives and informed their art. The two became acquainted five years ago in a student development class at SAC, neither being aware of the other’s condition until they found themselves in the same waiting room at a mental health facility one day. They have since become fast friends, helping each other through the rough times.
    Hummel, who currently takes 13 pills a day to stabilize his condition, noted that he has rapid cycle bipolar mix. “That means I have mood swings throughout the whole day, back and forth,” he said, “so it’s very difficult to know what’s next. You have one episode and then you don’t know when it’s going to come again.”
    He explained the episodes are caused by brain seizures which cause him to fluctuate between deep depression and manic euphoria. They trigger visual and auditory hallucinations as well.
    With medication, these symptoms can be kept under control and Hummel has come to accept this as an ongoing part of his life. The medications do cause side effects and concerns, however. “I think about my liver, my kidneys, my heart,” he said, “but I know without those medications I would not be stable and I would not be a very productive citizen.”

    Medina has also taken numerous medications during her course of treatment. “I’ve gone through so many medications because a lot of mine have had really bad side effects,” she said. One that was supposed to help her overcome depression caused her to become suicidal instead. Another gave her tremors. “One time I couldn’t stop shaking,” she recalls.
    She noted that between 90 to 99 percent of homeless people suffer from mental illness, such as schizophrenia. Their condition is exacerbated by lack of proper treatment for it and no one to look after them.

    The medication Hummel currently takes makes him drowsy and causes slurred speech. He also developed a heart condition because of one medication, almost having a heart attack when given too large a dose. “Medication affects each person in a different way,” he said. “The medication that works for me may not work for Marisa.”
    “I know a lot of people who are young, their 20s or in the teenage years,” said Medina, “who, since they don’t understand, make fun of people who are mentally ill.” It disturbs her that a friend whose condition causes her to shake is made fun of by her college classmates. “They just don’t understand,” she said. “I wish I could tell people or explain to them about our mental illness. That way they would understand. When people do that, it just makes things worse — and it hurts.”

    Hummel noted his illness became so serious at one point he had to undergo shock therapy, something he feels is antiquated. “My depression and my psychosis were so severe that the only thing they thought would help me was shock therapy,” he related. “I went through six treatments — and I don’t really know if it worked. I know that it has erased a lot of my memory.” In fact, five years of memories were irretrievably lost. “And it is not really what I wanted to erase,” he added.
    In addition, the shock therapy brought on severe headaches and confusion. “I would go home and would not know where I was at, who I was, what was going on,” he said. “I was like a zombie.”

    It was Medina, a fine arts major, who inspired SAC CSC campus minister Joseph Liedecke, Jr. to organize the art show. She had initially taken art classes in high school at St. Francis Academy. “At first I wasn’t actually sure I could do works of art,” she said, “but I loved working with everything from pastels to oils and water colors. It was a lot of fun.” She continued to pursue artistic endeavors, branching out into everything from realistic sketches to abstract and linear drawings. She does fashion design as well and became a fine arts major at SAC two semesters ago.
    Hummel, on the other hand, has had no formal training as far as his paintings and it was a ceramics class he took two or three years ago that started his artistic flow. He notes that bipolar persons are often very artistic and highly intelligent.
    A water color kit given him by his sister sparked his entry into painting. Instead of doing the realistic subjects in the kit, he would flip the sheets over and paint his own impressionistic abstractions.

    Painting soon became an outlet for him, helping to reduce his stress and anxiety.
    “Painting was a way for me to show my emotion and get through my pain,” he said. “It’s a really good coping mechanism to go ahead and paint your feelings.”
    When painting, he focuses on color schemes rather than drawing something. “I just go by my soul and my heart,” he said, “and I just let my fingers and my hands flow down the canvas. I really don’t know what it’s going to look like when it’s over.”
    Hummel, who started out as a music major, plans to pursue further education in art now. He had received a scholarship to the Southwest School of Art and Craft, but a downturn in his illness at the time caused him to be hospitalized and he had to forgo the scholarship. “But I plan on going back,” he said. Next in his plans is an adult education course in water colors. Currently he works in water colors and acrylics.

    Medina began to explore her mental state through her paintings after telling Liedecke about her anxiety attacks and frightening dreams of being chased by devils, both effects of her illness. He suggested she confront these fears by painting them. When this proved too disturbing, she began to portray herself fighting and overcoming the evil encountered in her dreams instead. She sees this as “giving hope to people, that I can overcome, in a way, my illness — or just manage it.”
    Hummel too considered painting the terrors in his dreams, but felt it would make these experiences even more real. “Bipolars’ auditory and visual hallucinations are very negative,” noted Hummel, “very commanding. Some of the schizophrenics I’ve met enjoy their hallucinations, but I, as a bipolar, do not enjoy them at all. I find them to be very disturbing.”

    During his hallucinations, he would believe the television or songs on the radio were talking to him, commanding him to do things. Three times these voices drove him to attempting suicide, twice resulting in a weeklong coma.
    Once the voices instructed him to overdose by taking 120 of his pills. “They didn’t think I was going to make it,” said Hummel. “God saved me that day. That’s when you know you have a purpose, whenever something like that happens and you come out of it alive.”
    Realizing the pain he had put his mother through made him determined to never attempt such a thing again. “But whenever you hear hallucinations that are telling you to do that, you don’t think of the consequences,” he said.

    “It’s so hard because you’re feeling so bad at the time,” said Medina, who has also experienced suicidal episodes. “When I’m feeling so bad, I feel like I’m dying,” she said. “I feel like I’m trapped and I can’t get out, I can’t escape. I feel like it’s going to be there forever.”
    She continued, “But the thing that keeps me going is I think to myself, even if I’m feeling bad, ‘I can’t do this to my mom. I can’t do this to my parents. I can’t do this to my friends, and also, God.’ Whenever I pray, that does help me,” she added.
    “And you have to think that, ‘OK, in a little bit I’m going to be OK,’” said Medina. “You might feel the worst right now, but in a little while — maybe not in a short while — but later on, you’re gong to be feeling better and it will pass.”

    Hummel uses various coping mechanisms when the forces within him begin to take control. “If I’m depressed, I’ll listen to music that is uplifting,” he notes. “And if I’m manic, I’ll turn off the lights and listen to really slow music. I’ll have lavender oil that I put on my skin and I smell it. ... That’s how we make it, day by day — coping mechanisms.”
    Both Hummel and Medina have undergone extended hospitalization at times due to their disorders. Medina recalled one particularly devastating four-month hospital stay necessitated by severe delusions and credits her guardian angel with getting her through it.
    Hummel concurs with her on this. “I have a guardian angel that guides me and protects me,” he said, “because there’s been many times when I should have been dead and, through God’s grace, I have not gotten hurt.”

    Thirty percent of the proceeds from sales of the artwork at the CSC Mental Health Art Show was donated by the artists to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. “You’ve got to give back,” said Hummel. “I’m fortunate for what I have. I have food on my table. I have a place to live. I have insurance that pays for my medications, pays for my hospitalizations.
    “There are a lot of people out there who don’t have what I have,” he said, “so it’s good to give back.”