I sent out postcards to national, regional and local mental health agencies and organizations asking people to write or call me if they were willing to share their experiences. This was almost ten years before e-mail. E-mail and the Internet would have made this so much easier. I thought I would get a few responses—maybe 25 if I was lucky. Imagine my surprise when 125 people responded. I sent them the first survey. I planned on three surveys with the first survey being very general questions that were designed to help me figure out the questions I would ask in the next two surveys. The responses were overwhelming. People wrote and wrote and wrote. They wrote in the margins, and on the front and back covers. They sent tape recordings. The stacks of surveys grew higher and higher and higher in my living room. I had an early computer, figured out a system and began compiling the data, a little bit at a time. There were no programs at that time to do this kind of thing. I went to a university that had a program that taught people how to work with people who had mental health issues and that did some research. When they saw what I had they laughed at me and said I should have asked questions and then given people choices like 5 would be a lot and 1 not at all. I said I didn’t even know the questions to ask and they wouldn’t even go there. They said I reminded of a woman who had done something similar and had all her responses on index cards in a shoebox. They thought that was really funny and laughed about it. I wish I could find that woman. That university is gone now. And the people who laughed at me are long gone somewhere too—I don’t know where—but I do know they are not part of the mental health recovery movement.
