| Q&A AT THE HELM Last month, the San Luis Obispo-based non-profit Transitions-Mental Health Association celebrated its 40-year anniversary. And, for 27 of those 40 years, JILL BOLSTER-WHITE has been at the helm as the organization’s executive director. She stopped by the office recently so we could get to know her on a personal level, as well as learn about mental health as it relates to our local homeless population. Here is some of what she had to say… Okay, Jill, let’s talk about where you grew up. I was born in Pasadena, California. And, so, I’m third generation, actually, Los Angeles County native. My grandfather went to L.A. High, and my dad went to John Muir High in Pasadena. But I went to high school in San Marino, which is the home of the Huntington Library, if you’ve ever been. So, yeah, when you grow up in a place like San Marino, you don’t really feel like you’re in Los Angeles. It doesn’t have any Hollywood impact. It’s not part of the industry, and it’s a much more East Coast feel I would say, and pretty affluent. I definitely grew up surrounded by people who were professionals. The question wasn’t, “Are you going to college?” It was, “What did you get on your SATs? And how is AP English going?” And, what were you like as a kid? Bossy, I think. [laughter] Yeah, I mean, I think I was always a pretty confident and in-charge kind of a kid. I know my older sister said that I always acted like the oldest even though I wasn’t the oldest. I was always pretty happy and positive. And my life, my upbringing and everything, I think, was all pretty positive. My parents were professional sports fans and I hated it. I would bring my Nancy Drews, or whatever book I was reading at the time, to sit through all of the Dodger Games. My sister is still upset with me about it, telling me I missed so much history. She says, “That was the golden era of the Dodgers!” It was Ron Cey, Mike Scioscia, Rick Monday, and all these guys. Apparently, I missed a lot of good baseball. So, how did you end up in San Luis Obispo? I went to Cal Poly, and while I was there, I got a job babysitting for the woman who started Growing Grounds Farm, Barbara Fischer. The program was initially designed for people coming out of state hospitals with severe mental illness who needed to integrate back into the community. There was some mental illness in my family growing up, so I had seen first-hand the effects it could have; I decided to volunteer at the farm. While I was playing around with the idea of going to law school, a full-time position became available at the Mental Health Association. I was hired and then two years later, the executive director retired, and I was promoted to take over that position. I was just 25 years old at this point, so I went back and got a master’s degree and did some other courses. That was 27 years ago. All in, I’ve been with the organization, which is now called Transitions-Mental Health Association for almost 30 years. Is it true that most of our homeless population suffers from mental illness? The conventional wisdom is that about 30 to 40% of people who are homeless have a mental illness. It’s usually a combination of factors. And substance abuse is more prevalent even than mental illness, actually, although they can often go hand-in-hand. Generally, with mental illness, there is a genetic propensity to it, and then an environmental event or a series of events which precipitates it. So, it could be stress. It could be a breakup or a divorce, going off to college, being in the military. It could be taking a substance that creates that trigger in the brain. We usually see mental illness onset between the ages of 16 and 30, so it’s right during adolescence and early adulthood when you are going through all these chemical and hormonal changes. And, yes, that’s usually the time people are experimenting with drugs and alcohol. So, that’s why it’s been so difficult to identify a direct cause, because the question becomes: What’s the cause and what’s the correlation? What else do we know about the root causes? Many of them come from the foster care system, so they are not tethered to a family system. They don’t have a place to go, and they don’t have access to a family system that they can rely on. You know, I think about how I went off to Cal Poly with my parents’ station wagon full of all sorts of stuff, and I always knew that they were there to catch me if something happened financially or otherwise. That’s not the case for most of our homeless population. Now, with all of that said, we do have services available to them here and I think it is so important to connect them to those programs. That’s why I don’t recommend giving people money; I don’t even recommend giving them food. Because the more we can point people to services, to the food bank, to social services, that really is the most helpful thing, the kindest thing to do. <strong>SLO</strong> <strong>LIFE</strong> 36 | <strong>SLO</strong> <strong>LIFE</strong> MAGAZINE | JUN/JUL <strong>2019</strong>
Help. I have a problem. Can you hear me? Hello? Love Let Karen help you hear what you’re missing. Call us today for your consultation 805 541-1790 www.KarenScottAudiology.com JUN/JUL <strong>2019</strong> | <strong>SLO</strong> <strong>LIFE</strong> MAGAZINE | 37
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