ROME, Ga. (AP) - Randall Ware was still a teenager in 1983 when he started attending Jacksonville State University, a star athlete with dreams of making it big.
However, those dreams would be dashed, as the mental illness he continues to battle today made its first manifestation. Not long after his freshman year, the East Rome High School graduate would go on to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, setting off a lifelong fight with the condition that has ravaged his mind and produced formidable obstacles.
But, at 53, Ware has achieved what many others with mental illness struggle with - finding a job. For almost two years now, he has been working at Hobby Lobby, a place he has tremendous pride in working for due to its focus on Christian values, he said. This is no small feat considering that roughly 80 percent of people receiving public mental health services are unemployed, according to a 2014 study by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“I’ve come a long ways and I’m hoping to do more,” said Ware, who stands tall above the 6-foot mark. “I’m thinking I’m about well now. I’m doing good every day. I go to work. It’s hard work, but I try to help everybody. I always try to take care of people.”
Ware is one of the thousands with mental illness who have been helped by the supported employment program from the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, according to Lavi Luca, who works with the Governor’s Office of Disability Services Ombudsman.
“The department delivers this service through 22 providers located throughout the state,” she said in an email. “Georgia’s investment in supported employment has removed a barrier for people living with a mental illness, helping them have the opportunity to lead a normal life.”
Barbara Glanton, a supported employment supervisor for Highlands Rivers Health, has worked with Ware through the program for about three years, but she has known him far beyond this period.
“They write their own treatment plan, and we just work with them to fulfill it,” she said.
Ware was a young man with a bright chance at a career, greatly skilled as an athlete in basketball and baseball, which was shattered by the onset of the mental illness, Glanton explained.
Ware’s first psychotic episode stemmed from the drug use that filled the environment of the campus. He had smoked some hash, which caused his mind to draw a blank and his insides to hurt, he said.
Glanton said that the “evil diagnosis” was incubated by the drug use, perhaps setting the condition off.
Ware came back home after leaving JSU, Luca said, and after several school transfers, he made the basketball team at Miami Dade College. But, once again, Ware said the environment swirling around him was filled with drugs, particularly cocaine.
“Family issues coupled with the challenge of learning to manage his mental health prompted Randall to leave Miami without graduating from college or having any realistic prospects of playing professional sports,” Luca said.
Ware has gone through many “unexpected turns and dead ends,” said Luca, including serving time in prison, which didn’t allow for proper treatment, from an incident with friends in 1988. Since that time, Ware “would access every entry point of the state behavioral health system, including multiple hospital admissions and outpatient treatment through Highland Rivers” - even being a patient at Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital before it closed in 2011.
Through Glanton and the supported employment program, Ware was assisted with creating a resume, conducting mock interviews and role-playing different workplace scenarios, Luca said.
“Randall has a big personality and an even bigger heart,” Luca continued. “He thrives when he feels like he is helping people.”
Overcoming the challenges of mood changes and the trouble of having in mind what he wants to do but just not being able make it happen, Glanton said, will be the struggle of Ware’s life, reinforcing the need for support. “For him, every day is a hope for a better day than the day before,” Glanton said. “You just never know your mood.”
Ware has his own apartment, and these days is focused on keeping his finances together, paying the bills, finding a gym and taking care of his mother, he said. He has a message for others dealing with mental illness: “They can make it. They just have to put their mind to it (and) take their medicine, get their rest and try to do a good job.”
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