NAMI and ARTLife717:
Help for those with mental health disorders and their families
By DEBORAH E. LANS – HUDSON, NY
The Columbia Paper – Thursday, February 27, 2025
The truth is that no one by mental health disorders. Some are more serious than others, and some are manifested by substance use disorders. One in every five individuals (roughly 60 million Americans) lives with a mental health disorder at some time in his life, and the families of those individuals are inevitably affected as well. Almost 50% of all adolescents (13–18-year-olds) experience some form of issue, and 22.2% suffer what the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) classifies as a “serious” mental health disorder, meaning one that seriously impairs the ability to function. NIMH says that only two-thirds of those affected receive some form of therapy.
Two non-profits in Columbia County, one of which nurtured the other in its infancy, provide unusual services: the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the largest grassroots mental health organization in the country with more than 650 affiliates, has had a chapter in Columbia County since the early 1990s. About five years ago, NAMI Columbia County helped to start the Mental Health Awareness and Creative Arts Gallery, now known as ARTLife717.
NAMI’s mission is to help those with mental health issues and their caregivers. It is volunteer work led by people who have experienced mental health illness. Nicole Corey is NAMI Columbia County’s Board President and Heather Lloyd is a longtime board member. Ms. Corey’s youngest son was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 19 and spent years ping-ponging between homelessness and hospitalization until he finally found a stabilizing medication. He is now 54 and recently passed the state insurance brokerage examination — an indicator of how far his recovery has come.
Ms. Corey explains that when her son was first diagnosed, “I didn’t even know what schizophrenia meant, and I didn’t know where to turn.” Because of HIPPA privacy regulations, she also had trouble even getting information about her son’s condition and treatment. It is often in that time of crisis, when family members do not know where to turn, that they find NAMI.
NAMI’s Family Support Group meets twice monthly, on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month from 6–7:30 p.m., and they are free. The meetings are held at the Kinderhook Memorial Library but may also be accessed remotely for those who cannot be present. Lead by those who have experienced life with a family member who has a serious mental health illness, the sessions help caregivers to find coping skills, to understand the nature of mental health diseases and treatments and to weather the journeys (lengthy and often tortuous) people take toward recovery. Equally important, as Ms. Corey explained, a parent can share with others the process of “grieving the loss of the child you knew, the loss of expectations for him or her.”
Ms. Lloyd expands: “There is no two week ‘recovery’ from a mental health issue. You follow a path, and family members need to come to terms with the fact there is no quick and easy solution. Also, “the journey is not linear. Your child can drop off the map and a parent can be embarrassed and worried to death.” Having the support of those who have traveled a similar path is huge.
NAMI also runs a free Family-to-Family program, an 8-week, evidence-based course designed to help family members acquire caregiving, coping and communications skills, knowledge of psychiatric conditions and treatments, resources, and problem- solving techniques. Liz Hildebrandt, a consultant to NAMI who joined the interview with The Columbia Paper, said that when her child was first diagnosed, the Family-to- Family program literally enabled her to survive.
Like so many organizations, NAMI’s local volunteer corps was heavily impacted during Covid, and the organization is hoping to rebuild its numbers with a range of helpers — grant-writers, fundraisers, program facilitators, and those with administrative and outreach skills.
One of NAMI’s successful initiatives was its partnership with Brian Belt in the creation of what is now known as ARTLife717, a gallery located at 717 Columbia Street in Hudson. ARTLife717 is the “public- facing name of the Mental Health Awareness and Creative Arts Gallery,” a non-profit that offers an “inclusive space where everyone, anywhere on the mental health spectrum, can exhibit their work” and that also hosts classes.
Mr. Belt, himself a schizophrenic in recovery and an artist who creates digitally-stylized videos, was inspired to create a gallery to display the work of artists in recovery some years ago when he saw a piece of artwork displayed on Warren Street — a dress beaded with an array of psychiatric pills, one artist’s statement about the recovery process.
The gallery, now four years old, shows the work of some 60 artists in recovery, including many from outside the area. Exhibits are generally themed, and works are displayed with artists’ statements that speak to the interaction of the process of creating art and the artist’s mental health.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA), among many other expert groups, recognizes the value of working with and in the arts for those with mental health challenges. Various studies document reductions in anxiety, enhanced communications skills, and the lessening of isolation, among other effects. As Anja Eide, a participant in a class at ARTLife717 when The Columbia Paper was visiting, put it, creating art gives “purpose and joy” to the artist. Where many programs focus on problems and hard issues, creating art is rewarding and offers a healthy and welcome distraction.
Mr. Belt, now 59 and himself a certified peer recovery specialist, largely credits the PROS program, a state-sanctioned program offered locally by the Mental Health Association of Columbia Greene (MHACG), with his recovery. PROS creates personalized programs for those in recovery focused not only on medication and treatment but also on enhancing social and coping skills, employment support and other practical life needs. Mr. Belt also acknowledges his mother, who not only supported him through the years but also made a crucial donation that helped the gallery at its inception. Now, the gallery also receives support from the county, grants and donations.
This year, Jesse Sanchez was hired to manage the gallery. A graphic artist who worked in New York City, Mr. Sanchez moved to Greene County to support his parents. He knew no one in the area. He connected with the PROS program and now teaches several classes there. He met Mr. Belt two years ago and was excited by the gallery concept. He sees the process of creating art as a way of self-exploration and communication and, thus, as an aid to recovery. To him, the product is less important than the process.
Mr. Sanchez has designed the gallery’s logo and its appealing, calm and clean look, and he has conceived the line-up of exhibitions, the next of which is a “Freeform Doodle Show,” which will run from March 8 to May 3. The show will feature “art that has no specific plan or intention. Work that evolved naturally and allowed the artist to reconnect with the joy of making art without expectation.”
G. Brian Karas is “from a family of artists.” He is a prolific children’s book illustrator. His son, who “has a serious diagnosis,” creates works with chains, aligning with his fascination with medieval weaponry and armor. Mr. Karas volunteers with the gallery as his way of “giving back” to NAMI which gave him support when he and his family moved to the area six years ago. To him, those in recovery come to see things differently when they work in the arts, as do the gallery- goers.
More information about NAMI can be found on its website, namiccny.org. More about ARTLife717 and its exhibits can be found at stigmafree.art.
Gallery hours are Wednesday noon‑5 p.m., Friday 1 p.m. —6 p.m., Saturday noon‑6 p.m.
To contact reporter Deborah Lans, email deborahlans@icloud.com
COPAKE—His journey from the darkness of mental illness to the light of recovery will be the subject of a presentation by Brian Belt at the Roeliff Jansen Community Library, 9091 Route 22, September 12 at 6:30 p.m.
The presentation is sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Columbia County. His mother, Alice Belt of Copake, serves on the organization’s Board of Directors.
The Columbia Paper recently sat down with Mr. Belt, 47, of Hudson at the Rev Café on Warren Street to get a preview of his presentation.
Mr. Belt says up until a certain point his life was “normal.” He grew up in the Midwest, moved east, graduated from Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, Westchester County, and went on to study at Pomona College in California.
He had “problems with alcohol” since he was 14 and by his early 20s had been in rehab a couple of times. In his early 30s from 1998 to 2000, he had a wife and son and was living in Eureka, CA, where he was a case manager working with teens and adults with mental illness in a locked-down psychiatric unit.
Four years later in 2004, he had a nervous breakdown in Thailand and in 2007 was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The events leading up to the breakdown and continuing until his final return to the U.S. are the stuff of X-Files, said Mr. Belt. He recounted a scenario involving his then nine-year-old son, whom he believed had fallen into the hands of political extremists in Thailand.
He described having lost his sense of identity and reality. He threw away his passport and became lost in the jungle, literally. He was thrown into a psychiatric ward in Chiang Mai. He consumed bottles of whiskey “to snuff out his thought process” and fell out of touch with his family. Several weeks passed, his family hired the Pinkerton Agency to track him down and he eventually returned home with his father, whom he believed was a CIA agent who could give him the answers to his questions.
That was not the finish of Mr. Belt’s foreign travels, not the last of “being thrown in and out” of psychiatric wards or the end of his attempts to “drink his thought process into submission.”
But things did begin to look up about three years ago when he found his way to the Hearth Community Residence in Philmont, where he met Don Webber, his teacher and mentor. Diagnosed with major depression himself, Mr. Webber not only helped Mr. Belt deal with his mental illness but set him on the road to recovery.
Among the tools his mentor introduced Mr. Belt to were Personalized Recovery Oriented Services (PROS) classes offered through the Mental Health Association of Columbia–Greene Counties, Inc.
Dealing with a range of topics from coping and living skills to anger management, the classes are completely optional and helped him move forward, Mr. Belt said.
So much so, that Mr. Belt taught a 12-week session on the History of Mental Illness for which he completed extensive research and lesson plans. The course covered the chronology treatments, humane and inhumane, beginning with Hippocrates through the Middle Ages, exorcisms, asylums, Salem witchcraft trials, hypnosis, psychiatry, shock therapy, Eugenics and psychotic medications such as thorazine.
He currently teaches a PROS class on the Recovery Movement, which encompasses all current schools of thought on mental health and mental illness.
Mr. Belt also leads an outreach effort once a week at Columbia Memorial Hospital to bring the message of hope and recovery to those newly admitted to the hospital psychiatric ward.
The work he is doing is at the forefront of the recovery movement, he said.
Asked if he thought of his recovery as fragile, Mr. Belt responded in a follow-up email: “Life in general is fragile–tomorrow I could be walking down the street then a gust of wind put a fleck of dirt in my eye–temporarily blinded while I try to rub the dirt out of my eye–I might stumble into the road and get hit by a car… this actually almost happened to me.”
Mr. Belt said he cannot claim credit for bringing himself to his current state of recovery, but believes a “higher power,” his mentor and his mother are responsible.
“I do credit my mother for helping my ass out, she never gave up.”
Gallery’s art helps healing
HUDSON—It’s where mental health and/or substance abuse recovery information and resources unite with creativity.
This place is a more than a dream, in fact the first fundraising exhibition presented by the Mental Health Awareness and Creative Arts Gallery opens at Camphill Solaris, 360 Warren Street, Saturday, February 16 from 4 to 6 p.m.
The exhibition features six artists who are in recovery from mental health and/or substance abuse problems. Attached to each artist’s display will be a brief bio-narrative of their recovery story.
One of the artist’s statements reads:
“I have suffered from OCD, anxiety, and depression for most of my 47 years. In 2011, after becoming deaf in right ear and years in a tumultuous relationship, I sought professional help. They’ve helped me with different approaches and coping skills toward life. In 2014, I moved to Catskill from downstate NY. For the first time in my life, I took up Art. Water St. Studio in Catskill has helped me grow from drawing stick figures to painting abstractly in acrylics, watercolors, fabric mediums, and mixed media. Art has been the best therapy for me.”
Also at the exhibition will be a table staffed by a person in recovery and stocked with pamphlets and other educational and resource information for those seeking recovery support.
The idea for the combination gallery/mental health and substance abuse recovery resource came from Brian Belt, 53, of Hudson, a graduate of the Personalized Recovery Oriented Services (PROS) program offered through the Mental Health Association of Columbia–Greene Counties, Inc. He went on to teach mental health recovery-related classes he designed and developed as a volunteer. He is now a certified peer specialist in the mental health field, is qualified to teach a wide-range of mental health topics and for seven years has run a peer support group once a week at the Columbia Memorial Hospital Psychiatric Unit to encourage patients there to try out the PROS program that helped him reach his current level of advanced recovery.
Mr. Belt also creates digital artwork that will be among those showcased at the initial gallery event along with a brief bio-narrative about his own recovery story from schizophrenia, schizotypal personality disorder, and substance abuse disorder.
Mr. Belt’s journey from the darkness of mental illness to the light of recovery was the subject of an August 2013 story in The Columbia Paper, “Once ill, now he helps others recover.”
Mr. Belt said by phone this week that he got the idea for the Mental Health Awareness and Creative Arts Gallery after seeing an exhibit suggested to him by someone associated with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Columbia County.
When he reflected on all the creative people he knows, all the mental health service consumers and providers and community resources he has connected with throughout his recovery process and outreach efforts over the past nine years, he thought there must be some way to combine them all.
And the place should be somewhere on Warren Street, which he describes as “a stunning location both aesthetically and culturally.”
Mr. Belt said by email that Warren Street is home to restaurants, coffee shops, art galleries, clothing stores, and “amenities that attract not only wealthy weekend tourists but people of all types who enjoy the relaxed, casual yet elegant environment.”
Over the past several months Mr. Belt has assembled artists and more than 20 volunteers to help him put together an initial fundraising exhibition.
The Mental Health Awareness and Creative Arts Gallery now has corporation status and is in the process of filing for 501c3 nonprofit status. Its mission is “To assist those with mental health and/or substance abuse problems to improve their health and wellness, live self-directed lives, and strive to reach their full potential by providing community resource information that can help with recovery efforts. As well, to create solidarity within the community so that channels of loving communication can manifest among people of all types by means of public sharing of creative work by those individuals in recovery from mental health and/or substance abuse problems.”
“By getting mental health and substance abuse problems in the forefront, we can normalize how the community thinks about mental illness and snuff out the stigma,” he said.
“Participants will be living examples that recovery is possible no matter how serious the mental health diagnosis and/or substance abuse problem they may have,” he said, adding that spotlighting “these individuals will show that hope for recovery exists for anyone whether they suffer with serious mental health and/or substance abuse problems or they are personally involved with someone who does. It will let the participants feel they are special and worthy human beings deserving of community respect and love.”
The project goal is to gather enough funds to open its own space, said Mr. Belt. “Once complete, our own gallery center will act as a space for consumers of mental health and/or substance abuse services who are in recovery to showcase their art, writing and creative skills to the public and provide an informational base for people affected by mental health and/or substance abuse problems to give them hope, guidance, compassion and potential solutions for helping themselves or loved ones to take steps towards recovery-based endeavors.”
Donations to the Mental Health Awareness and Creative Arts Gallery may be made by check at the opening exhibition or by PayPal on the Facebook page listed below.
To learn more about the Mental Health Awareness and Creative Arts Gallery visit: