LYNNFIELD — After her daughter’s mononucleosis and encephalitis diagnosis blossomed into psychiatric problems, a doctor sat Patricia Lawrence down and gave blunt news.
“I was told, ‘Give up all your hopes and dreams for your daughter,'” Lawrence said.
Her response was short and to the point and it has ended up defining her life’s work.
“I went political,” she said.
Lawrence, who bought her Elliot Road home from her parents in 1972, has campaigned relentlessly since 1989 when doctors pronounced their verdict on her then-18-year-old daughter, Lauren Cerbone.
Her battle has not been against physicians, but against insurance companies, who refused to acknowledge links between physical and mental ailments and, at the time, provided only enough coverage for up to six weeks hospitalization.
That duration, Lawrence quickly discovered in her quest to help Cerbone, barely provided enough time to test one drug after another until doctors found one that worked. She researched insurance policies and founded a Lynn chapter of the statewide Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
She succeeded in getting Cerbone treatment at the former Lynn Hospital and her daughter became a state Department of Mental Health (DMH) client. The state designation, combined with insurance, provided Cerbone with sufficient insurance coverage to get treatment she needed, and for doctors to treat her with different drug combinations.
Winning a partial victory for her daughter was a starting point, not a stopping point for Lawrence. She hosted local Alliance meetings and invited speakers, including former Lynn Mayor Patrick J. McManus and former state Sen. Richard Tisei, to talk about mental health advocacy. She accepted every speaking invitation that came her way and, by 1995, Lawrence had been honored as a citizen of the year by DMH, the former AtlantiCare Hospital and local organizations.
Her advocacy took her to Washington D.C., where the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy talked to her about expanding insurance for the mentally ill.
Lawrence didn’t sit on her laurels. She teamed up in 1996 with the late Frederick E. Berry, the Peabody state senator and human services advocate, who helped Lawrence write insurance parity legislation establishing insurance equality guidelines for biologically-based brain disorders.
Lawrence fought for four years with Berry and former Boston state Rep. Byron Rushing by her side to get the legislation signed into law.
During that time, Lawrence brought her campaign to strip away mental health stigmas to police departments, where she talked to officers about mental illness and the Alliance’s work. She began visiting and documenting conditions in state hospitals.
She also launched a billboard campaign to publicize DMH and the Alliance’s telephone numbers under the logo, “Mental illness is a physical illness.”
“I went from one group to another and asked, ‘how much are you going to give me?'” she said.
She also kept up the fight for her daughter’s care. Cerbone endured multiple hospitalizations since her initial diagnosis, including one in August. But she also has worked with Lawrence on her advocacy campaigns and testified about her struggle with mental illness.
“Thanks to DMH, I have a say about where my kid goes and I will work to strengthen it until my last breath,” she said.
Former Gov. A. Paul Cellucci signed the parity legislation into law on May 2, 2000. Lawrence credited Berry with turning her goal into reality.
“Fred was amazing,” she said.
Lawrence is proud to see Lynnfield take a progressive approach to mental health care with work by A Healthy Lynnfield to connect the town with Interface, a mental health referral service.
“It’s a quite valuable way to give parents what they need,” she said.
