‘We need each other’ NAMI PBC’s 40-year journey

By Joel Engelhardt

The simple words spoken in 1978 still hold true today: “We need each other.”

They were spoken by Lydia Meisner, a retired fourth-grade teacher who came to South Florida in 1975 with her husband, Phil. The Meisners found themselves in need of help for their daughter, Stefanie, who had schizophrenia.?

The Meisners along with Dr. Hal and Joyce Friedman, were among the founders in 1978 of the Family/Friends Support Group under the sponsorship of the Mental Health Association of Palm Beach County.

The group’s formation merited a short notice on Page 10, Section C, of the Sept. 21, 1978, Palm Beach Post-Times. But five years later, on the actual day of Friends’ formal birth, no news story captured the moment.?

On Jan. 10, it will be 40 years since the Family & Friends Support Group became official, filing papers with the state to incorporate as a not-for-profit.?

Within a year, the name would change to one more familiar to today’s membership: the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Palm Beach County, a meaningful shift to stewardship under the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which formed in 1979.

“What makes this group so different,” the 1978 Post-Times story said, “is the fact that the focal point is on the adult mentally ill, whereas today most of the focus is on juvenile and geriatric mental problems.”

The group’s goals, the story went on, are to educate the public about the problems of people with mental illness and to provide one-on-one support for those confronting mental health issues.?

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Spawned Jeff Industries

In its initial years, Friends opened a group home for women in Delray Beach, called the Steffie Meisner House after the Meisners’ daughter, who had died at age 31. The group was instrumental in creating Jeff Industries, a now-independent workshop that employs those with mental illness in skill-making jobs.

The local Alliance, though, would scrape by for years on a shoestring.?

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Ellie Siklossy first began to volunteer with the Alliance, she would join Dr. Friedman, a dentist, his wife, Joyce, and other volunteers for several hours a day at the Alliance’s Lake Worth office on South Dixie Highway.

“People came to NAMI desperate for help,” said Siklossy, who later served six years as board president.?

The medicines available then rarely worked. Doctors lacked understanding of mental health conditions. Parents came to the office wracked with guilt that they may have caused their child’s illness.?

“Our message was you’re not alone and also you’re not the cause of your child’s mental illness,” Siklossy said. “This is an illness of the brain.”

Siklossy, who remains a committed NAMI PBC supporter, was president in March 1999 when the Alliance formally changed its name to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Palm Beach County Inc. That name stuck with only a slight change until 2018 when it became what it is today: NAMI Palm Beach County, Inc.

Journey of Hope

Siklossy also was one of the first two local teachers of NAMI’s Family-to-Family program, then called Journey of Hope.

She went to Tampa to learn the 12-week course directly from its creator, Dr. Joyce Burland, a clinical psychologist affiliated with NAMI national.?

“That was a big breakthrough. Nobody was teaching these kinds of things to anybody. It was a wonderful course. Presenting all that was known about the two toughest illnesses: schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”

By 2007, the program had reached 150,000 family members. More than 7,000 volunteers had completed the three-day, 26-hour training.

Around that time, the Alliance hired its first paid executive director, David Gersh. Siklossy recalls the names of directors who followed: Mary Andrews and Barbara Harmon.

In the early 2000s, volunteers again ran the agency, with board members Eileen Trainor, Curtis Russ, Cristina Andreoli and Liz Downey keeping the office going.

From its founding president, Irving Tuchfeld, and later Dr. Friedman, others who presided over the NAMI PBC board were Jean Draper, Beverly Weil, Dorothy Kelleher, Eileen Trainor, Liz Downey, Cristina Andreoli, Manny Kushner, Kelly Everson and today’s president, Cheryl Checkers.?

In 2012, the board had enough money to return to a full-time, paid director and selected Downey, who served until 2015, when Marsha Martino moved from the board to the executive director’s seat. Starting in January, Katherine Murphy will be the newly anointed chief executive officer.

Luncheon sparks growth

When Downey started as a volunteer in 2006, she said the agency’s budget stood at $31,000. When she left nine years later, she said, it had surpassed $500,000.?

Downey’s first fundraiser was a $30-a-plate mystery dinner that drew enthusiasm but not much money. And then came Margaret Donnelley.

“She turned it around,” Downey said. “We could not have done any of that (growth) without her. She was a godsend.”

Although Donnelley never joined the board, she brought an influx of money and prestige to the agency with an annual luncheon that started at $50 a plate for about 80 people in 2012 and has grown to 370 people packing the Marriott West Palm Beach ballroom to the point where the hotel won’t allow more tables to be added.

The December 2022 luncheon raised more than $250,000.

The successful luncheon shows community support, which helps NAMI secure grants from local family foundations, Donnelley said. The money supports peer counseling and mentorships and Family-to-Family programs, all part of the agency’s spending that now reaches $800,000 a year.?

A second large fundraiser, NAMIWalks, began in 2013 with a walk in partnership with Broward County before becoming a Palm Beach County-only event the next year. The walk at John Prince Park in November featured more than 500 participants and raised $100,000.

Donnelley, who grew up in Palm Beach County and attended Lake Worth High School, said she works to help NAMI not for the organization but for those affected by mental illness.

"These people matter to me," she said. “I care about services that make a difference and NAMI gets this right. That is why I am associated with them."

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Joel Engelhardt is a NAMI board member and longtime news reporter and editor. He runs a news website covering northern Palm Beach County, called OnGardens.org.