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

Authorities found Salerno's Toyota — keys still in the ignition — at a state park. Inside the car was a note penned by the doctor.

"Stay alert!" it read. "Their relentless pursuit requires your constant vigilance!"

Jamie Peachey

Dr. Mark Salerno

Jamie Peachey

Michelle Bloss and Mark Salerno of Recovery Innovations of Arizona

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

Salerno left his phone and wallet behind in his unlocked vehicle and started walking.

Authorities used helicopters and dogs to find Salerno within a day, almost 20 miles from where he had left his car.

Reporters swarmed into the area. One woman, a psychologist, had seen Salerno wandering through her backyard.

"It seems he was a very lost soul," she said. "I hope he gets help."

What Salerno got was a plane trip back to Arizona and another cell, this time for violating probation.

"The saga of Dr. Mark Salerno continues," Joe Arpaio told reporters. "I sent him a bill last time around and he's going to get another one."

Salerno was incarcerated for a few weeks, first in solitary confinement and later in the general population.

County prosecutors sought a prison term of up to two years, but Judge O'Toole turned them down. The judge, now retired, noted that Salerno had been suffering from severe depression and a schizoaffective disorder that can trigger an array of manic symptoms, including hallucinations and paranoia.

The judge reinstated Salerno's probation with orders to perform even more community-service work and sent him home.

By then, the doctor already had surrendered his medical license.

"They didn't know what to do with me," Salerno says of the state medical board. "I didn't have substance abuse problems and I wasn't violent. I was sick, and I just needed to get better."

But "getting better" was a monumental task — with no guarantee of success.

Unable to make mortgage payments, Salerno sold his home in Carefree shortly before the bank foreclosed on it, which provided some financial cushion.

"It's not that I was homeless," he says. "Everyone equates the mentally ill with the unemployed homeless, but it cuts across the board. I was a doctor who couldn't practice medicine, and a human being who had a long way to go to get back on my feet."

Salerno was not a well man in 2003.

"Fearful of people, extreme irritability, really depressed," is how he describes his mental state at the time.

The doctor spent endless hours in bed staring into space — later memorialized in that story "told" by Luke, his loyal dog.

(Luke, by the way, had been cared for by Salerno's then-wife during the doctor's absences.)

As time passed, Salerno says, "I became more afraid of never getting out of the house again than of all the shame that was out there. A lot of people would say, 'Don't I know you?' I thought everyone had seen me on TV getting pulled out of the [car] trunk, the crazed doctor."

Salerno calls this the "bumps-on-my-head tops-of-my-shoes" period, meaning that he kept his head down whenever he went out. Eventually, Salerno had to find work, no small task for a middle-aged man with a felony record and ongoing mental issues.

His probation officer told him that a bread factory was hiring, but Salerno learned that felons weren't being considered. The doctor then attended a weeklong training program run by a cutlery company.

"I was, like, I'm not ready for this level of humiliation," Salerno recalls. "I thought, 'Do you have to get so low that you are selling knives to your family and friends?'"

He held out a while longer.

In April 2004, Salerno caught a break.

A vocational rehabilitation specialist working for the state mentioned Salerno to Lori Ashcroft — executive director of the Recovery Opportunity Center (the training and consulting wing of Recovery Innovations).

Dr. Ashcroft had a job opening for a teacher at the center, and the specialist suggested that she interview Salerno.

"Mark was in a completely hopeless state of mind when he first came in," Ashcroft recalls. "I really don't know how he drug himself out of bed to get there. But I looked at his résumé and thought it might work. A mental illness doesn't scare me. I've had to deal with that myself."

Ashcroft says she offered Salerno a job on the spot, thinking it would be a really good — or a really bad — hire.

"I asked him when he could start," she recalls. "He said, 'Are you kidding me? Tomorrow?'"

Ashcroft says Salerno soon won over new colleagues and students.

"I wasn't healed by any means — that's a lifelong process — but having a purpose to get up in the morning again was huge," Salerno says.

In 2005, Recovery Innovations (then META Services) moved Salerno to a counseling gig in Peoria, where he still works.

"I have been able to give meaning to my own experiences by helping other people," he says. "For me it's about the meaning. I don't buy the 'purpose' stuff because that means you were destined for something. I really don't think I'm that important."

Salerno often rode his bike back and forth from home to work daily, 171/2 miles one way. He says he did the trek for two reasons — the price of gasoline was rising, and he needed the workout, both physically and mentally.