Katie's Place Clubhouse to empower people living with mental illness

Aug. 27—SCRANTON — A budding nonprofit evoking the memory of a former city woman aims to provide vocational training, fellowship, a sense of belonging and other critical support for people living with mental illness.

Katie's Place Clubhouse, named after the late Kathleen "Katie" Shoener, embraces a model of rehabilitation manifested in more than 320 clubhouses in 30-plus countries. The nonprofit is in the process of securing a downtown Scranton location for the clubhouse, where members living with mental illness will develop job and life skills by working collectively and collaboratively to keep the operation running.

"We are classified as a mental health program but we're also a vocational program," Executive Director John Rosengrant said. "Really what we provide is ... hope and opportunities, and we place a strong emphasis on relationship building."

It's a mission Katie Shoener — a "beautiful, vibrant woman" who battled but wasn't defined by bipolar disorder — "would have been all over," her father, Ed Shoener, said.

Katie's battle ended in August 2016, when she took her own life at the age of 29. But the frank obituary penned by her dad quickly went viral, resonating with many for its emphasis that people grappling with mental illness are more than the conditions they bear.

That's evident amid the effort to establish the clubhouse. Its 29 founding members, all living with mental illness, are playing key roles, from planning, fundraising and social media promotion to policy creation.

"The really cool thing right now is that everybody who is participating in clubhouse activities is building this program," Rosengrant said. "They're kind of owning a piece of this program right from the beginning, and they're also learning administrative skills."

"The obvious benefit to this is that it gives decision making and control back to the ... member, and it shows them that they're valuable and they're needed and they're wanted as part of this program," he said.

It helps with self-esteem, said Tim Walsh, a founding member who lives with schizophrenia.

Once a physical clubhouse is established, it will adopt the concept of a "work ordered day," which emulates a typical workday. Members in different work units will be responsible for clerical, administrative, culinary and other duties, working alongside staff not as patients or clients, but as colleagues.

"One of the main things that clubhouses do is to help people succeed in their lives and in their work lives," Ed Shoener said. "Work gives people dignity. It gives them a sense of pride and a sense of purpose, and that was very much a focus of Katie's life."

In addition to vocational training and employment programs, the clubhouse ultimately plans to offer educational and housing support when needed. In a broader sense, it aims to destigmatize mental illness, foster human connections, prevent isolation, make people more comfortable asking for help and fill gaps in the mental health system — gaps Rosengrant said Katie Shoener's suicide demonstrated.

Her father expressed a similar sentiment.

"Katie's story is a reminder that you can live well with a mental illness, and you can live a fulfilled life like she did," Ed Shoener said. "But ... there's still gaps in the mental health care system, and someone like Katie should not die by suicide. Katie understood her mental health condition. She took it seriously, but yet, as I mentioned in the obituary, it wasn't enough."

We need to do better, he said.

Among other efforts, Rosengrant said the clubhouse will implement a reach-out system to check on members who aren't attending and may be experiencing isolation. Such a system is one of 37 standards of the nonprofit Clubhouse International that are consistent among all clubhouses.

Scranton Counseling Center serves as the auspice agency for Katie's Place Clubhouse, which receives some of its financial support from a separate nonprofit, the Katie Foundation. Launched after Katie Shoener's death, the foundation's goal is to shine a light on mental illness and end the stigma too often associated with it.

Individuals living with mental illness interested in becoming clubhouse members can email katiesplaceclubhouse@gmail.com. Information is available online at katiesplaceclubhouse.org.

The goal is to have a fully operational clubhouse by the end of the year, Rosengrant said.

"The members we have right now, they're building the program for everybody who is coming after them," he said.

Contact the writer: jhorvath@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9141; @jhorvathTT on Twitter.