Dr. Mark Salerno Is Living Proof That It's Possible to Overcome Mental Illness

"The cost to everyone has been enormous. With the way budgets for mental health have been cut in Arizona, we have had to figure out ways to make things work as well as possible. Working with people like Mark and others is one big way."

Salerno's positive place in that ongoing dialogue is remarkable.

Jamie Peachey

Dr. Salerno on the black shoe: “It’s had a life, that’s for sure.”

Details

Shadow Dwellers: A Series

What's the one image you took away from the Tucson shootings? We thought so. That mugshot of Jared Loughner is haunting. And for the world, it has become the face of mental illness in Arizona. Here, we know that's not true. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the story of what it's like to be mentally ill in this place cannot be told in a single photograph.

Tens of thousands of seriously mentally ill people live in Arizona. Some of them look just like you.

Other stories in the series:

Phoenix's Most At-Risk Homeless Find Their Way, Thanks to a Team of "Navigators", by Paul Rubin

Meet Raven, a Homeless Man with More Community Than Many of Us Have, by Paul Rubin

Why Did the Arizona Department of Corrections Put a Mentally Ill Man in Cell with a Convicted Killer?, by Paul Rubin

Mental Illness Hasn't Stopped Chris Shelton from Becoming a World-Class Boxing Historian, by Paul Rubin

Jan Brewer's Response to Jared Loughner: Slash More Than 35 Million in Services from an Already Beleaguered Mental Health System, by Paul Rubin and Amy Silverman

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More About

• Mark Salerno
• Today Luke
• Joe Arpaio
• Lori Ashcroft
• Mental Health

Just 10 years ago, Maricopa County sheriff's officials deemed him a high risk for suicide and strapped him for hours into a "restraint chair" at the Madison Street Jail.

Known by critics as the "Devil's chair," its leather belts and tight cuffs keep a prisoner from moving.

It is the same medieval device in which inmate Scott Norberg suffocated in June 1996. (Norberg's family later settled a civil lawsuit with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office for a reported $8.25 million.)

By the end of 2002, Salerno's life seemed ruined, if not over.

In his case, substance abuse never was an issue, nor was an urge to hurt anyone physically, other than (at times) himself.

Instead, Salerno suffered from a mental condition that caused him to lose touch with reality and endure ongoing mood problems.

Later, he wrote a short story that aptly described his state of mind after his major psychotic break.

Salerno called it "Not Today Luke."

Luke was his adored (now deceased) golden Labrador retriever. The piece was written from Luke's canine perspective, as his nearly catatonic master huddled in bed day after day, depressed beyond measure.

"Mark had been in bed for a long time now. I have howled at five full moons since we last took a hike. I remembered our trips to the mountain. We were both so fit and happy and moved gracefully and confidently over rough terrain. It was clear to everyone we passed that we felt I was the greatest dog and I knew he was the best master.

"I remember the day he took to bed. He must have come home from the hospital; he had a scent similar to the vet's office. He moved slowly and clumsily. He gave me a little pat on my head, but without the enthusiasm I had grown accustomed to. His voice was thick and slow and his 'Hi Luke' came out on a sigh and seemingly with great effort."

Luke tells the reader that he won't stop fetching his leash from the wicker basket every morning.

"I will continue to say, 'C'mon, Mark, let's go!' even though I cannot speak," the dog says. "I am the keeper of hope."

Another Luke, of Biblical fame, is the patron saint of doctors.

Mark Salerno grew up in a working-class home in Bergen County, New Jersey, the younger of two boys. His mother's parents lived upstairs in the two-family residence.

Salerno's father was a service manager for a firm that repaired elevators and forklifts. His mother was a homemaker.

"My parents were community people," he says, "and doing things for others was what they did. I knew from the youngest age that I had to do something, preferably for those less fortunate than me."

After high school, Salerno enrolled at a private Dominican college about 17 miles from New York City. He was able to pay for his schooling by carving out a job as a "housemaster" at the New York Institute for the Blind in the Bronx, where he spent his nights after attending college classes during the day.

The venerable institute included students who were blind and deaf, victims of a rubella epidemic in the mid-1960s. Salerno learned American Sign Language so he could communicate with the deaf kids.

He earned his undergraduate degree in education and seemed headed for a teaching career after completing his master's degree in special and elementary education at Boston College.

But in 1985, Salerno was accepted to the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He spent much of his residency working at an inner-city hospital with Boston children, and he knew pediatrics was it for him.

"I loved to treat children and help them heal," says Salerno, a divorcee with no kids of his own.

He worked as a pediatrician in the Boston area for almost a decade before moving to Arizona in the late 1990s for his then-wife's health.

After a stint with a pediatrics group, Salerno opened a one-doctor office at Tatum and Bell Road in North Phoenix. He attracted a devoted clientele of young parents with his direct and compassionate bedside manner and unusual round-the-clock approach to the job.

Beyond the call of duty only begins to describe it: Salerno gave his personal cell phone number (no answering service) to the parents of his patients and always responded as quickly as possible.

Later, after the doctor's name had been splashed across TV screens and newspapers, more than 20 parents sent letters to the judge in the stolen-car case, each saying that they wouldn't hesitate to let him treat their children again once he got better.

One addressed Salerno directly in her letter: "Don't let your missteps define you. Don't let others make you see only your mistakes. You need to see always what others know of you. A loving doctor, a person who remembers his little patients by name and greets them so. A doctor, a person who can immediately make a child unafraid."