Meet the Mental Health Workers at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center
Jakob Coleman, a 24-year old certified nursing assistant and President of AFSCME Local 1825, starts his workday early at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor. At 6:45 am, he and his coworkers gather for their morning report where they share information about their patients from the past few days. They discuss patients’ moods, how they’ve handled medications, how they’ve slept and eaten, if they’ve had any violent episodes or psychiatric emergencies or if they're thriving.
“We have to know our patients very well to build a staff/patient rapport that is therapeutic and necessary to help the patient feel safe and secure,” said Coleman. “My favorite part of this job is seeing our patients’ progress from the beginning all the way to the end. You see people at their absolute worst. You see them sick, unmedicated and in a really rough place in their lives. But then you build trust with them and you help them get better and go back to their families, their jobs and out into the community where they continue to live their lives. It’s really rewarding to see that we’re making a difference in these people’s lives.”
Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center, formerly known as the Bangor Mental Health Institute, is one of two state-run psychiatric hospitals in Maine. The 52-bed facility provides inpatient and outpatient care to both voluntary and involuntary court-committed patients with severe mental illnesses in the eastern two-thirds of the state.
The facility opened in 1897 as the “Eastern Maine Insane Asylum” (long before such terms were widely considered offensive and stigmatizing to people with mental illnesses) in order to ease overcrowding at the asylum in Augusta. In 2005, it was renamed after the Hampden-born Dorothea Dix, a pioneering 19th century advocate for indigent people with mental illnesses.
For Coleman, working at Dorothea Dix is a family tradition. His grandfather worked there for over 30 years as the head of maintenance and electrical engineering. His mother has been an employee there since 2003.
“It’s a good and honest work," says Coleman. “It’s a secure job where you’re going to have an income with enough retirement benefits to be able to retire and live on. That was a huge thing for me.”
Disappointed with prior leadership of his union, Coleman decided to run for local president in 2020 on the condition that his mother Stacey Coleman would run for treasurer. Both candidates won and now the mother and son work together as a team, making union business family business.
Jakob Coleman says the most challenging parts of the job are the hours, short staffing and physical dangers certain patients pose to staff when patients having severe psychiatric episodes. He said the work environment has been particularly difficult during the pandemic as the staff has had to stay socially distanced while they work long hours sweating under masks, gowns, gloves, goggles, hairnets and booties. Making that transition was stressful for a lot of patients because they weren’t used to seeing staff dressed like that. While the psychiatric center went for months and months without an outbreak, when COVID did hit, several employees had to go out on sick leave due to infections and quarantines, causing staff shortages.
But despite some of the challenges, Coleman says he hopes more people will start applying at Dorothea Dix for several positions that are open because it's a rewarding union job.
“I don’t think a lot of people know that you only need a high school diploma and they don’t think they’re qualified for it,” he said. “It is surprising how much you learn on the job that’s similar to customer service. We are a form of customer service in a way.”
Coleman said his goal as President is to build power in the union by encouraging all members to get more involved and share their experiences and priorities with each other.
“It’s really important for us to have a union because it helps give employees a voice,” said Coleman. “But in order to have a strong union, I want everyone to feel a little more connected at our place of employment. Yes, we all work at the same place but what else do we share in common? I want everyone who has an opinion to speak it and if that one person has the same opinion as someone else we could all talk about it together and get something we all need.”