Donna Robertson began her preparation for a career in mental health when she was a child, although it took her many more years to get there.
The 68-year-old Robertson, co-director of the Birch Tree Communities branch in Conway, said her father had bipolar disorder.
“He was diagnosed in the early ’40s with bipolar disorder — then it was called manic depression,” she said. “He was hospitalized a few times, and that was very rough.”
Robertson, who grew up in Conway, said she recalls when she was 5 or 6 years old going with her parents to her father’s psychiatrist appointment.
“I was very put off — I thought [the doctor] was being unkind to my father. I remember thinking he shouldn’t treat my dad that way,” she said.
Reflecting on it as an adult, Robertson doesn’t think the doctor was being mean.
“I think he was being very paternal — telling my dad what he should do. I can see that finger going,” she said, shaking her pointer finger.
She said her father, Earl Cummins, had a tremendous work ethic and was successful despite his mental-health struggles. He started Cummins Furniture Store on Van Ronkle Street in downtown Conway, which he moved to Court Street. His brother, Floyd, worked with him, then opened his own furniture store on Front Street.
Robertson said her father’s bipolar disorder developed after her parents married, and her mother, Lyndell, had trouble dealing with his illness.
When he was hospitalized, “she would absolutely collapse with depression, too,” Robertson said. “It was still a family secret because they were afraid it would hurt their business.”
Eliminating the stigma of mental-health disorders is just one goal of Birch Tree Communities, a residential treatment program for adults with severe mental illness.
“I always had the urge to help my dad. I didn’t know how until I was older,” she said.
Robertson wanted out of Arkansas when she graduated from Conway High School, and an uncle helped persuade her parents to let her attend Texas Women’s University in Denton.
She majored in fine arts and design. Although she was interested in the mental-health field, “I wasn’t mature enough to make that big splash,” she said.
During her first year of college, “we had an arsonist,” she said. Many fires were set in the dorm, “and I got tired of being interviewed by the FBI,” she said.
She and another student, who was from Fort Smith, decided they wouldn’t go back the next year. They went to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, and Robertson graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in textile design.
“We loved it there; I loved the Plains,” she said.
She got married and moved to Wisconsin, but she moved back to Conway in the early 1970s and worked in interior design in her parents’ furniture store.
“My dad had a final episode of depression that was really different than anything we’d seen before, and I got in touch with a psychiatrist. … He did such a marvelous job with my dad,” she said. “It turned out during that last hospitalization, they discovered he had pancreatic cancer.” He died just days later.
Robertson decided after her father’s death that retail sales and interior design were not what she wanted to do with her life. Her calling, something she had known deep down for years, was in the mental-health field.
In 1981, she started to graduate school at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway to get a master’s degree in psychology and has been in the mental-health field ever since.
“This is the place to be,” she said.
She worked for The BridgeWay hospital in North Little Rock and was in private practice for a few years before she started doing contract work for Birch Tree Communities, based on a recommendation from a friend.
“He said, ‘I think you’ll love their approach and the teamwork, the collaboration and the philosophy,’” she said.
She did love it, and in 1999, she became a full-time employee.
“It’s a very diverse team approach,” she said.
Robertson said Birch Tree employees have always modeled the belief that “good therapy and relationships are what make the difference.” That approach has since been proven scientifically, she said.
“It’s not, ‘You’re the patient, and I’m going to cure you,” she said. “We ask, ‘What do you need in your life? What do you want? What strengths do you have?’”
She said it’s surprising how many people don’t know their strengths, and she said therapists help clients identify those, as well as their talents, and give them courage, hope and respect — “things that have been depleted,” she said.
Birch Tree Communities has 11 branches in Arkansas. The Conway branch has two group homes in Conway and semi-supervised duplexes, as well as an apartment complex in Greenbrier that has 18 semi-supervised residents. About one-third of Birch Tree Communities’ clients live on their own, and “we go there to provide whatever level of service they might need. There are people we don’t see very often to people we see every day,” Robertson said.
Last week, Robertson had been to court to get an order for someone to be treated.
“If somebody is too ill to make decisions, you have to go and make the judge make the decision,” she said.
She also helps train paraprofessionals — staff people who work with clients on a daily basis “to help them weave through life’s needs” and help them develop coping skills so they can move out in the community.”
Robertson’s work in mental health was noticed by the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce, which honored her in December with one of two Women in Business Awards in the nonprofit category. The recipients were chosen by an out-of-state panel, said Brad Lacy, president of the chamber.
“That was such an honor; I felt very humbled,” she said.
Robertson said she enjoyed the atmosphere of the awards luncheon, too.
“I loved to see all the women and feel all the energy. It felt like a very powerful group of people,” she said.
Mental health is talked about more than it used to be, but it is “still kind of pushed to the back shelf,” she said. “What I don’t think people understand is Arkansas has an unusually large population of people with mental-health issues.”
Despite different theories, no one knows why that is true, she said.
“It’s sad — the state hospital is way undersized. We need a lot more beds.”
Robertson said she believes there is more mental illness today, which is exacerbated by substance abuse.
“A lot blossoms with the substance abuse,” she said.
“Society can’t deny the significance and impact of mental illness,” Robertson said. “There’s still a very harsh social stigma that’s still pretty rampant across America.”
People often fear people with mental illness, particularly when it comes to crime, but Robertson said “the statistics are absolutely no higher between people with psychological problems” and those who do not have a mental-illness diagnosis.
“Normal folks are just as likely to break laws and commit crimes as anybody else,” she said. Also, people with mental illnesses who are in treatment have a great support system that makes it less likely that they’ll commit a crime.
She said it’s important for people with mental illnesses to recognize the onset of an episode and “how stress levels can accumulate.”
“It’s the sense of helplessness that pulls people down” in their ability to cope, she said. “That’s why the team approach works so well, because helplessness is catching.”
Robertson said the clients with whom she has worked through the years have taught her a lot.
“Some of the most wonderful life lessons I’ve learned are from people who had mental illness: patience and acceptance, characteristics we typically admire and honor,” she said.
“Nobody stands in line and asks for these things — diabetes or a heart attack or mental illness. [The] symptoms [of mental illness] are different than a heart attack, but it’s just as devastating at times. If people could learn to see the real person that lives inside the illness, they’d see they have common goals. They want to go back to school; they want to raise their kids; they want to go on vacation.
“Inside, everybody is the same. Everybody has a heart, a soul and dreams. We’re just different in how we present it to the world,” she said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.