BANGOR – March 30 was a special occasion for Winterport resident and activist Nancy Grimes. She received the Acadia Dorothea Dix Mental Health Advocacy Award for 2004.

“I was really surprised that they chose me,” recalled Grimes, 62. Forty people attended the presentation, including the executive director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Maine, Carol Carothers, and Bangor chapter board members.

As president of NAMI Bangor Affiliate, Grimes had obtained a $5,000 Haskell-Stetson grant, which helps projects in the Bangor area, and started a family education workshop. Any mental health agency, church or public concern may contact Grimes to set up an appointment regarding the family education workshop.

The Bangor program has a support group that meets every week, which Grimes oversees with two other women. She advocates for mental health funds and services and provides education to families dealing with mental health issues.

Acadia board of trustees Vice Chairman Sally Arata introduced Grimes as the 2004 award recipient. Her closing comments included an experience related to her by Acadia Hospital clinician Terry Melanson, with whom Grimes works closely.

“A family that was at the hospital one evening became very distraught about dealing with a mentally ill parent. The spouse, the ill parent and their three young children were referred by an Acadia team on the unit to a NAMI support meeting. Nancy was surprised and a bit overwhelmed by the grief of this family, as well as the fact that the support group was meant for adults.

“Nancy and her associate, however, rose to meet the challenge with compassion and caring. They took the children to another room and helped them understand mental illness and supported them. They also helped the children’s ill parent, who just had been released [from the hospital]. During the next few months, the spouse who was the caregiver was given the education and support that was needed to help the children and the ill parent. The family made an effort to let Terry know how much they appreciated the caring and support received.”

Grimes researched Dorothea Dix’ life and incorporated that information in her speech. She was eager to share what she learned about this remarkable woman.

“She was the first NAMI person,” Grimes pointed out.

She learned that Dix, once a Hampden resident, had grown up poor. Her mother suffered from depression, and her father was an itinerant minister and alcoholic. Beginning at age 5, Dix was made to stitch his religious pamphlets for several hours a day.

“She did not have a happy childhood,” Grimes said.

Dix’s health was fragile and after a bout of illness she went to Europe to recover. While there, she stayed with a family who raised her awareness of conditions in jails. Dix returned to the United States and visited jails and almshouses throughout the country, noted the conditions under which the mentally ill were forced to live, wrote up reports of her findings and contacted governors and legislators. Her work took her into other countries, including Japan and Russia, and she even went to the Pope to report the conditions she’d found in Italy.

“She was pretty amazing,” Grimes said. “I will definitely model myself after her in the future.”

Grimes is all too familiar with how mental illness affects patients and families. Her son had a mental illness that she feels started manifesting itself during his childhood. He was diagnosed in 1996, but is now deceased.

One of Grimes’ goals is to establish a crisis intervention training program in the area. The program would train first responders such as police and ambulance crews to deal with people with mental illness. Such training results in a significant reduction in the number of violent interactions between first responders and those with mental illness, Grimes said.

For example, in the Portland area in 2002, out of more than 400 interchanges between police and people with mental illness, only one involved violence, she said.

The focus of NAMI’s mission is “education, advocacy and support,” Grimes said, adding that mental illness affects one in five families.

“This is global and throughout America,” she said, adding that information is based only on illness that is reported.

To learn more about NAMI Maine, visit http://me.nami.org, or call (800) 464-5767. To obtain information about support groups, education programs and workshops for the Bangor area, call Nancy Grimes at 223-5686.