Christina Jasberg, who has struggled with schizoaffective disorder and takes medication to cope with her illness, will be honored today with the Daniel Moreno Recovery Award.

james s. wood / arizona daily star

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Christina Jasberg's symptoms began when she was a freshman at the University of Arizona — alternating between a depression so deep that she could not get out of bed, to having a manic energy that kept her up with racing thoughts for three and four nights in a row.

Sometimes she would dissociate and feel as though she was watching herself from outside her body.

To complicate matters, she was malnourished from anorexia and severely bulimic, vomiting six, seven and eight times a day. After one particularly difficult stretch of sleep deprivation and self-hatred, she broke apart a razor, took the blade to her outer arm and cut a bloodied line. Rather than pain, she felt relief.

"I was so scared. I drove to my therapist's office at 7 in the morning and waited. He said I needed to go into the hospital," said Jasberg, who was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder — a disease characterized by a combination of symptoms of schizophrenia and an affective mood disorder such as major depression or mania.

"That was the beginning. I've been in the hospital more than 60 times. There was a time when I was going in every two weeks."

Jasberg, now 32, hasn't cut herself in six years. She works 40 hours per week helping others with mental illness at Tucson's La Frontera Center, and is an advocate for the mentally ill on national, state and local levels. She lives on her own, and in her spare time likes to write and do artwork.

Today the Southern Arizona chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness will honor Jasberg with its first Daniel Moreno Recovery Award.

The award, to be presented at a banquet at Hilton Tucson El Conquistador Golf and Tennis Resort, is named for the son of chapter president Susan Moreno. Daniel Moreno died at age 23 in 2005, shortly after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

"The (award's) whole purpose was to reduce stigma and create awareness of recovery from serious mental illness — so many people don't know that exists," Susan Moreno said.

Moreno said Jasberg was selected from a finalists' pool of 11 people, who all have stories of recovering from the debilitating effects of mental illness. They share those stories as part of their recovery process. Jasberg stood out, Moreno said, because of her courage and perseverance in getting treatment.

"There is hope, and Christina signifies the resilience it takes to recover in an environment where it is sometimes difficult to get the right treatment," Moreno said.

Jasberg says the doctors and nurses who treated her often were not encouraging. She spent time in Palo Verde Hospital, University Medical Center, Kino Community Hospital, Sonora Behavioral Health Hospital and the Arizona State Hospital in Phoenix. She remembers crying a lot. She was restrained, put in seclusion.

"I'd get home from the hospital and a week later it would all start up again," she said. "I was a complicated case, and I remember the message I got was that I'd be doing this for the rest of my life. I felt like a walking dead person. At one point I was on 12 different medications."

Jasberg says most of what she remembers of her life between ages 18 and 26 is a blur. She tried electroconvulsive therapy and lots of antipsychotic medications. One made her shuffle when she walked and caused weight gain. Another resulted in tardive dyskinesia, an involuntary twitching of the mouth that left her drooling and feeling humiliated. She was so low-functioning that at times her mother had to brush her hair.

Her mother, Carol Jasberg, a Tucson Unified School District teacher, said it was a far cry from who her daughter used to be — a young woman who graduated in the top 10 percent of her class at Rincon High School, and who loved to dance and act in school plays.

Carol recalls one of the most heartbreaking moments, when she and her husband, Keith, also a teacher, were out to dinner with Christina. Christina, 21 or 22 at the time, was heavily medicated and staring at her plate. A group of young women about her age were at a table nearby, laughing and obviously having a great time, Carol said.

"I was so wishing she could be with them."

At home, Carol had to watch her daughter closely, even while she showered, to make sure she didn't cut herself. She and her husband became accustomed to taking their daughter to the emergency room.

"It was hard to look very far into the future," Carol said. "But one thing about Christina was that she always kept going forward. She would readjust her goals. She talked about being a doctor, but then when it became difficult to stay in school, she'd decide to do something else.

"We are so proud."

What strikes Christina Jasberg now is how much she hated herself for her illness. It became a vicious cycle and the cutting worsened, culminating in 2001 when she used two utility blades to slice so deeply into her left arm that she nearly cut the muscle. She required more than 40 stitches and became afraid she was going to accidentally kill herself.

That was the last time she cut herself, she said.

With the help of her parents, Jasberg found a treatment center outside of Chicago called SAFE Alternatives, and was there for a month in 2001. Determined to get well, she worked on her recovery for seven or eight hours a day. She did art therapy, role playing, group and individual therapy and essay-writing about her illness.

Upon her return from Chicago, she began psychodynamic therapy, a time-intensive, analytic form of therapy that seeks to bring the unconscious into conscious awareness.

She became certified as a "Recovery Support Specialist" — someone who helps others with mental illness and substance-use disorders with recovery. She got her own apartment and began working at La Frontera. Currently, she helps those in recovery find and keep jobs.

"After she got her job at La Frontera she began to be a voice in the community," said Beth Stoneking, an assistant professor in the UA's Department of Family and Community Medicine, and also director of its RISE program — Recovery through Integration, Support and Empowerment.

Stoneking and Beverly McGuffin, senior program coordinator for RISE, have watched Jasberg flourish since she went through the RISE certification program. That's why they nominated her for the award she's receiving today.

Jasberg has been a speaker for the United States Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association, and each year helps organize an art show to showcase the work of people with mental illness. She volunteers for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, sits on a local coalition that aims to remove the stigma of mental illness, has testified about mental illness to the Arizona Senate and served on a gubernatorial advisory council on rehabilitation. She also does her own artwork, and wants to finish her bachelor's degree and write a book.

McGuffin, a registered nurse, first met Jasberg eight years ago when Jasberg was in the throes of her illness. She says Jasberg is not only letting people know it's OK to talk about illnesses of the brain, but also is teaching the behavioral-health community that people with even severe mental illness can vastly improve their lives.

Though leaders in psychiatric rehabilitation like William Anthony of Boston University have been saying since the 1990s that recovery from serious mental illness is possible, not everyone has heard the message, she said. Recovery can have various meanings, but typically it means growing beyond the devastating effects of mental illness and developing new purpose in one's life. By focusing on patients' talents and strengths rather than their limitations, behavioral health providers are finding success.

"We in mental health, nursing, however you want to categorize it, we've always had such low expectations for recovery from serious mental illness. We've never expected them to recover and they've bought right into that. If we don't hold out hope, then who does?" McGuffin said.

McGuffin said Jasberg, even when she was extremely sick, always had charisma and determination. She's also had tremendous family support. Her parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, siblings and nephew will all be at the El Conquistador today when she receives her award.

Jasberg is still on medication — Abilify, Effexor and Klonopin. She also still suffers from delusions, often feeling like she's experiencing déjà vu. But she's learned to recognize her delusions and separate them from her real life.

"I'm not symptom free. But I do feel like I'm a part of society, and that I lead a productive life," she said.

"My goal is to put a face to mental illness, to remove the stigma. This is the road I had to travel. I used to be embarrassed of the scars on my arms and want to get plastic surgery. But now I see them sort of as battle scars. I think of my life, what I've been through, as a blessing.

"I survived and now I'm able to help people."