BRIDGES' program cooking up life skills for those with mental illness (with videos)

Duncan Scott/

Rita Boerner of Painesville mixes the ingredients for a chocolate fudge cake she will bake in a crockpot. Boerner recently completed a six-week class series offered through BRIDGES. The Mental Health Consumer Empowerment class helps adults with mental illness become much more adept at a core set of life skills.

Painesville resident Rita Boerner enjoyed the companionship that she found while at the same time learning to improve some of her life skills.

Boerner has become quite skilled at basic cooking and prepares meals for her husband Roy and her son Shawn when she can.

One of her specialities is to prepare cakes in a crockpot, including a delicious-looking chocolate fudge variety. In fact, she makes cakes for her neighbors to help them out when she can.


Boerner recently completed a six-week class series offered through BRIDGES: Mental Health Consumer Empowerment, based in Perry Township.

The program helps adults with mental illness become much more adept at a core set of life skills, such as to budget, shop, and prepare meals.

Vicki Pavicic of BRIDGES hatched the idea for the life skills program that Boerner completed and she teaches the food management skills classes.

"Very often, people with mental illness will live with a parent or family member until they're well into adulthood," she said. "So imagine that for the first 30 years of your life, someone else fixes you breakfast, lunch and dinner every day."

Pavicic said that means someone else does the budgeting and the shopping, along with the preparation and the cleanup chores.

"Then something happens -- the death of a parent for instance -- and you're suddenly faced with the realities of needing to live more independently," she said. "But for your whole life, you've never dealt with basic food management issues. It can be overwhelming, and there are lots of ways lots of things can go wrong."

Support, learning with others

Boerner was diagnosed with deep depression after her mother and grandmother both died about 10 years ago. She is a client at BRIDGES and credits the agency for helping her to recover.

"Finding BRIDGES and going out with people has helped me a lot," Boerner said.

Other students in the class included Loriann Faust of Willowick, Laura McIntosh of Painesville, and Ed Trevena of Mentor.

"I learned how to cook better, I've been on my own since I was 25," said Faust, 39. "It's better preparation and I want to be happy and someday prepare meals for another person."

Trevena had never cooked before taking the class. Now he has ambitions to learn to make a stew, chili, and even a steak with mushrooms.

"I never knew how to do that at all before the cooking class," he said. "I'm learning to cook so I can be on my own someday."

Faust said the program was an eye-opener because no one had the patience or time before to help her learn how to cook.

She knew how to cook a little before when she lived on her own, but the course was a good refresher.

"It's a big challenge trying to learn new things," Faust said.

Pavicic said the classes cover nutrition, smart shopping, budgeting, kitchen hygiene, food preparation and safety.

She uses some creative teaching methods to help get her points across.

To illustrate the importance of keeping raw poultry juices away from the rest of the food during preparation, she crafted a "chicken" by stuffing a plastic bag with paper, and squirted liberal drizzles of chocolate syrup on it to represent the juices.

Pavicic then went through the motions of prepping the bird -- in the process getting the brown goo on her hands, cutting board and utensils.

Next, she started prep work on the rest of her imaginary meal, thus imparting an easy-to-grasp reminder about how easily raw poultry juices can contaminate towels, silverware, refrigerator door handles, and vegetables.

Money issues are another significant component of the program's curriculum.

Pavicic wants her students to clearly understand that they can get more for their money when the buy fresh, as opposed to pre-made components or frozen meals.

She also counsels them about making their available food dollars last longer.

"Many of these folks are, of necessity, on public assistance," she said. "Simply put, if you're relying on food assistance benefits and you're not being careful about your food spending, you're going to end up with nothing to eat by the end of the month.

"Likewise, if you're frequenting fast food establishments, you're wasting precious available food dollars," Pavicic said.

Much of the lesson plan for the classes is developed specifically for people with mental illness.

"For example, we teach our clients to be very aware of how their medications can impact kitchen safety," she said. "If you know a certain medication tends to make you drowsy, then you shouldn't leave something on a hot stove or in the oven after you've taken it because there's a possibility you might fall asleep and cause a fire."

Important outcomes

The program received collaborative support from the Lake County Alcohol Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services board and the Lake County General Health District.

A grant from the Health District gave students who complete the classes a kitchen kit that includes a slow cooker, frying pan, toaster, measuring spoons and cups, a meat thermometer, potholders and oven mitts, a few basic cooking tools, and some cloth shopping bags.

Pavicic also provided the students with a three-ring binder they could use that was full of information from much of what they learned in the class.

The grant came about after ADAMHS Executive Director Kim Fraser, a member of the Health District's ACHIEVE Wellness Initiative, noticed how compatible the two programs' missions were.

"I think this is a wonderful example of community partners recognizing and leveraging an opportunity," Fraser said. "The dollar investment is minimal, and the outcomes are very important."

She said one of the local mental health system's mantras is that the definition of wellness needs to include physical and mental health.

"One of the saddest statistics I know is that a serious mental illness often equates with a dramatically shortened life span -- 25 years in many cases," Fraser said. "So teaching people with such illnesses more about nutrition, and helping them understanding how food choices -- good ones and bad ones -- can impact their health is very worthwhile."

Pavicic, who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, said teaching the classes also is rewarding for her.

"I just love it when I get reports from my students about their kitchen success stories," she said.

"We had a male student in the class -- every time I'd see him I'd ask if he had cooked himself anything that day. For weeks he'd look down at his shoes and quietly answer 'no'. But I kept encouraging him. Then one day I spotted him and he was absolutely beaming. He couldn't wait to tell me that he'd cooked himself an egg that morning."