Byline: HARVY LIPMAN State editor It's a long trip from where Edward Knight was to where he is. -
Edward Knight is using his personal experience to help others to recover
Where he was for much of the '70s and early '80s inside New York's mental health system, a diagnosed schizophrenic checking in and out of mental hospitals, periodically homeless, a onetime college professor reduced to doing odd jobs.
Where he is now is at the head of efforts to reform New York's mental health system.
``There's insight you get from madness which you only get from experiencing it,'' Knight says.
Like thousands of other people with schizophrenia, Knight managed to overcome his illness through a combination of medication, therapy and stress reduction and by using his experiences to understand what a critical role people who are mentally ill can play in helping each other recover.
``If I have experienced severe anxiety and tell you what I have done (to overcome it), you're much more likely to believe you can do it than if a professional tells you,'' Knight says.
Knight is co-chairman of a subcommittee appointed by state Health Commissioner Barbara DeBuono to help design a managed-care system for Medicaid. But long before taking on that challenge, Knight had spent much of the past decade almost single-handedly convinced the state's mental health bureaucracy that people with serious mental illnesses not only can help each other, but that they must be involved in setting up any mental health system that's going to work.
Sitting in his Albany office, Knight very much resembles the college professor he once was. His quiet conversation instructs and stimulates the mind. Nothing about him fits any of the stereotypes about those with mental illness. But getting to this point in his 53 years of life has been a painful journey.
His illness surfaced in 1968, …
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