It was a day I'll never forget January 31, 2005, when my son, Vince, who was 25, had a psychotic break with reality and became ill. My experience with mental illness was not great but I did have a long time friend with an illness and I was thankful I knew a little bit about it. I thank God Vince was willing to come to the Douglas Hospital, at which point after a long agonizing wait in ER, he was asked if he would like to stay. I'll always remember his words "Mom, I'm going to stay and chill out". I was so grateful he was agreeable and so the journey of healing began.

It was a time to explore this sometimes very unkind sickness. I tried to find out as much as I could about mental illness by going to workshops and talking to doctors and nurses.

I have had cancer twice but this illness was far more devastating than I could have imagined. It is so much more difficult to watch your son suffer silently through this.

I am married to Lou and have two other sons, one who is older than Vince and one who is younger. As a family, we all had such a hard time coping with this unknown illness.

In my search, I found quite a few resources - one being AMI-Quebec where we met wonderful dedicated people - one being Mike Santoro who was an inspiration of hope to us.

Today as I sit and write this on a beautiful sunny day in 2009 – yesterday we went and heard and saw Mike's Presentation of The 80/20 Project. This presentation was held at the Douglas Hospital before a whole auditorium in which he talked about living and recovering with a mental illness.

After this presentation, entertainment was provided and one of the artists was my very own son, Vince, who played two of his own compositions on the banjo. As I watched and cheered, I had tears of joy, that yes, it is a long road but it is filled with love and hope.

LET US NEVER GIVE UP!!!

Ann Antenucci
Written June 11, 2009

In response to Mike’s interest in my assessment of him, this is my view. Having known Mike since 20 some years, I have had the pleasure of witnessing some changes. In the course of my work life, I have dealt with many individuals suffering from chronic mental health problems, predominantly schizophrenia. Sadly, for the most part, the vast majority of these people are continually struggling to little or no avail in relation to the outside world. They have excessive amounts of difficulty in progressing on many levels that the rest of society tends to take for granted.

Mike is different. Here is a guy that although having been stricken with schizo-affective disorder in his early teens, he has an impressive amount of achievements to his credit. Though he had a rocky life in his teen years, it was due to his self awareness, maturity and perseverance that he has gotten to where he is now. After many painful years of refusing to face the reality that he would have this weighty problem for all his life, he finally fully embraced his illness and grew not in spite of, but somehow due to. It’s as if the illness was a wall hampering Mike’s progress in life which he somehow managed to channel the energy from it to help shrink that very wall to a more manageable size. In other words, because of the person that Mike is, he was able to convert (what to somebody else would have been insurmountable), into strength. In addition, Mike makes good use of his support network, never hesitating to get in touch with the appropriate or on occasion all in that network (doctor, community worker, sister, friends, etc.). By this action Mike is in essence nipping it in the bud before his difficulties overwhelm him.

To some, he could be considered lucky. But we all really know that you make your own luck. Mike has an amazing amount of energy and achieves a lot of good with it. He has a very organized and clear idea of where he wants to go in life, and he gets there.

It has been my pleasure and honor to have been working with Mike all this time and I hope to continue doing it for many more years.

John Stall
Social Integration/Placement Counselor
Forward House