Sue England

Although it is the second marriage for both and comes in middle age, Sue England and Lew Yip looked like love-smitten kids just starting out in life when they wed in June.
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Sue and Lew met there on her birthday in May 2001 - her first day at the Easter Seals' New Beginnings, a rehabilitation program for the chronically mentally ill.
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Today, Sue is communications manager for Merced Housing.
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Along the way, Sue was hospitalized three times and experienced crushing losses - jobs, money, her home, custody of her daughter, precious time out of her life.At one point, she struggled to hold on to a job while experiencing hallucinations.

"It was like living in two worlds," she recalls.

Despite the stigma surrounding it, she and Lew are willing to talk about their struggles with mental illness because they want others to know there is help - New Beginnings, services from area mental health organizations, spiritual support from churches.More importantly, there is a real chance for recovery.

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Originally from Cincinnati, Sue has degrees from Indiana University in telecommunications and costume design.She was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1988, when she was 33.A crisis in her marriage and the stress of working in a college theater department threw her into a depression.A manic episode followed.She was hospitalized for a month and had delusions of being "up there with God and Mary and Jesus."Because she was over-medicated, she was in a coma for a time.

Sue recovered, but had another break with reality in 1998, after her divorce.At the time, she was in another demanding position - the editor of a small-town newspaper.

"It was a hard lesson people with mental illness learn," she says."You're feeling good and stop taking your medication."

She was in the hospital for a week and given a prescription of Haldol, an antipsychotic.Among the "crippling" side effects, she remembers a shuffling walk, jitteriness, stiff neck and vision problems.Being on Haldol, she says, is "like moving through Jell-O."

"The only thing I could do was take long walks with my dog Dakota, and I think she was actually walking me.My dog was my support."

Sue lost her newspaper job, but after recovering, she found one in public relations at a San Antonio college in 2000.For nine months, she did her job while believing she had telepathic powers and experiencing hallucinations at her computer.Finally, she checked herself into the hospital.

"That movie `A Beautiful Mind' depicts it pretty well," she says."The floor is yanked out from under you when you realize that what you perceive as reality is not reality."

It was then that a physician made what she thinks is her true diagnosis, schizoaffective disorder, which has features of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - delusions, hallucinations and manic and depressive episodes.There were problems with her antidepressant medications - one turned her into a "zombie," she says.Again, her work suffered, and she lost her public relations position.

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But rehabilitation came at a steep price for Sue.Unable to work, she had to sell her house so she would have money to live on during her months in New Beginnings.Worse, she had to give up her beloved Dakota when she moved into an apartment.

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It wasn't love at first sight for Sue and Lew.
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Romance blossomed last fall when the two took in the food and fun at Wurstfest in New Braunfels, where Sue then lived.

"I asked her if it was OK to hold her hand," he recalls, grinning."When I let go, she grabbed it tighter.I told her I hadn't felt this way since high school."

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Marriage can be stressful for chronically ill people like Sue and Lew, Gonzalez says, but her program has a pretty good success rate.
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With her present mix of medications and better awareness of the "red flag" symptoms of her illness, Sue doesn't think she'll have another full-blown episode.But she is realistic.As much as she loves journalism and costume design, she can't work at pressure jobs again.She believes in full disclosure on the job and more education about mental illness for employers.