INTERIVEW WITH JEANNE SONVILLE

Jeanne Sonville, paychiatric, nurse and foun selor, is a founder and former Director of the Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland. She is presently the Clinic Coordinator and Director of the Free Clinic's Drug Abuse and Mental Health In this second part of a three-part Program. conversation with Jeanne, she talks about the early days of the Free Clinic, some of the people who worked there, and their influence on the development of practices, procedures and philosophy of the Free Clinic.

When did the Free Clinic open on Cornell?

June 1, 1970. We received funding from our original proposal. We also had the blessings of Mayor Stokes' Administration of Justice Coordinating Council. They were interested in treatment rather than punishment for drug problems. Mayor Stokes even issued an edict that was posted in all police cars that they were not to patrol Cornell Road near the Free Clinic. The theory was that people who needed treatment would not seek it if they saw the police there.

What kind of treatment was available at this time? At this time there was none if you're talking about treatment for hard narcotics.

What type of treatment was available at the Free Clinic?

We treated heroin withdrawal symptomatically and used intensive counseling. We treated tearing of eyes, running noses and abdominal cramps with lomotil, and the anxiety, restlessness, sleeplessness with phenobarbitol over a ten-day withdrawal period. We decided we would not use methadone. • Methadone was just in the experimental stages at the time and there was a pilot program at Metropolitan General Hospital for 50 people. Some of the street people involved with the linic were really doing their homework and said, "Methadone is only one molecule different from heroin. What do you want to do trade in one addiction for another?"

The volunteer doctors didn't know a thing about street drugs. Every night before clinic, John Scott and Jim Young (Director of Drug Education at the Free Clinic] gave orientations to our doctors about street drugs and helped them with the diagnosis and

"...bad acid trips and heroin overdoses were just were just being dropped off at our door...

treatment. They also did talk-downs for patients on bad acid trips. At that time bad acid trips and heroin overdoses were just being dropped off at our door, on the front lawn, or in the back parking lot. Some of them we just accidentally discovered. People would take a chance and leave them here rather than at a hospital emergency room. They knew the hospital would call the police and maybe have them arrested for "withholding information". For certain, the addict would be arrested, even before receiving

treatment.

What other types of treatment were available at the Free Clinic?

When we opened we had medical and some mental health, and shortly we had dental care. From the beginning, we saw a lot of teenagers for birth control and unwanted pregnancies. That's when everybody became 21 if they could pass for 21, or else they became "18, self-supporting, and living away from home," so we could provide treatment.

What were you doing at the Clinic then?

When we first opened, I was the only continuity of care as far as medical and paych went. Many nights I was the head nurse, the only lab tech, women's

Page 6/What She Wants/December, 1978

...

看

BIEDRTA SJAU ÷1

counselor, and psych counselor. Pretty soon, fortunately, we had enough volunteer nurses, intake and psych people so that I could devote my time to birth control and problem pregnancy counseling.

This was before abortion was legal? Yes, but sometimes we knew a doctor. certainly used our psychiatrists to help get legal abortions for those who could afford it. Many times our role was just bridging the gap between the young woman and her family. Then when New York opened up, if I remember correctly it was 1971, we had a place to refer people.

You mean, if they had money?

Oh, but we were always hustling money. We got them there. Half of my paycheck went to New York. We established a women's fund, which was the fastest sinking, dying fund anyplace. Sally Tatnall, Debby Hamolsky, Lisa Satz and myself got together with Planned Parenthood and the clergy to form a coalition. The clergy had been doing problem pregnancy counseling for some time. The coalition didn't last long because we were too avant garde for Planned Parenthood. When they meant teenage, they meant legitimate 18-year-olds. They weren't going to dirty their hands with the 15. and 16-year-olds we were seeing. If anybody that age appeared at their place they sent them 2 doors up to the Free Clinic. We were their dumping ground.

What was this coalition working towards?

Teenage birth control, and problem pregnancy counseling for all women, including teenagers. We all left when it became evident we were talking a different. language from Planned Parenthood. We felt we needed something to take its place, so Sally Tatnall, Barbara Teppan and Peg Morse, who was head of our Women's Counseling at the time, put in a women's hotline in Sally's house. This was the beginning of Cleveland Women's Counseling. They soon expanded it to divorced women and homosexuality, which certainly was a much broader scope than Planned Parenthood was going to deal with.

Around that time, I started some women's self-help sessions at the Free Clinic, but it was much too early. I was trying to teach women self-vaginal and self-breast exams to really get them in touch with their bodies. To teach, self-breast examination, I would lie down on the middle of the floor and strip to the waist. Some women couldn't even tolerate that I would expose my body in front of them. Or, if they tolerated that, I would ask the women to demonstrate self-breast examination for me, and some women would just sit there and say, "I can't touch myself there.'

Suzy Harris, who had just started nurse's training, and I put together a before and after questionnaire, We found that the 29-, 30and 51-year-old women who came to us, most of whom were married and had a couple of children, had less information about their bodies and how they functioned than the 17-, 18and 19-year-olds who came in for the group. It surprised me, only from the standpoint that it was unbalanced. The attitude of the medical profession for so long had been, "It might be your body, but only we know about it, and only we can take care of it, so you aren't privy to any of this information." As a result, people were just interested in getting what they came for and splitting, and it became evident that we were going to have to force information onto them. Because we'd opened up the classes and nobody came, it became policy that before anyone 'saw the doctor, they'd have to sit in on a group session. We immediately incorporated the principle that the patient should have the same information the doctor has, and I think it has worked out well. I don't know what's happening with the doctors, but 1 know for a fact that it's had some impact on the patients.

During this time (in 1971] we were working with Dr. Ellis here in Cleveland trying to get the VD Jaws changed. We were running back and forth to

das das DEBLOOD

by Gail Powers

Columbus and eventually laws got changed at the state level. Eventually the drug laws got changed too, so there would be no recrimination coming down. With that came the right for the young person to confidentiality. Some people still won't use the Public Health Service because they're afraid of a lack of confidentiality. It took a long time for some people to accept that people were not going to knock on their door at home.

So then the basic philosophy of the Free Clinic was compatible with your own personal philosophy? That there be no eligibility requirements for those seeking care, that there be complete confidentiality, and that there be as much education and information giving as possible?

Definitely. It had to be that way. And that everybody be treated with the same amount of

Janet Century

human dignity that we expect to be treated with. Yes, I would like to think that I was influential in helping to make that policy. I know I was. I just felt it was time the fifth-class citizen be afforded the same treatment everybody else had.. And, for so long I felt health care was a right, that it had been so warped, that it had been withheld from the people who needed it the most. I still feel that way. I also felt the need to treat the whole person.

By treating the whole person, do you mean providing as comprehensive bealth care as you possibly could?

Yes. A lot of the programs we have now evolved from that idea. For instance, the Women's Counseling Program evolved almost immediately. even though our initial proposal never said a word about it. It was because of the influx of unwanted pregnancies from sexually active people with no access to birth control. Our greatest danger of being closed down really came from irate mothers who were snooping in their daughters' drawers, or in their pocketbooks. We used to get as many as ten phone calls a week from mothers threatening to take us to court. I would say to them, 'Aren't you grateful that your daughter is intelligent enough to do something to protect herself, as long as her choice has been to become sexually active?" It would take a while for them to accept that their daughter was sexually active before she came to us.

Was there any emphasis in the Women's Counseling at that time on finding out if these women who were sexually active were being so outof their own choice? That that's what they really. wanted to do?

Yes. There was a lot of focus on personal choice in our women's counseling. I think one reason was

continued on page 13