About Ellie Jacobs

Elthea "Ellie" Jacobs spent far more time in the mental health world than she would have liked. She had the misfortune of having the time to observe the current practices of psychiatric medicine and develop many ideas for improving the prognosis of the mentally ill.

She was afflicted by multiple mental health problems and those specific problems are the focus of the help found at the Elthea Center.

Elthea’s Art

Elthea’s Life

Elthea’s Music (Beta)

Bernadette "Elthea" Cecilia Jacobs

July 2, 1998 - October 8th, 2019

Ellie Jacobs at Pasadena Villa, Sevierville, Tennessee July 2017

Elthea “Ellie” Jacobs was a precocious child with a sharp mind, clever tongue, and an impressive command of the English language. She had an assertive zest for life that sought to engage the world in all its challenges and surprises and an shameless love of inane puns.

She’d meet some challenges with a sense of independence others would call rebellious. She could run afoul of rivals and authority (parents and teachers) which placed obstacles in her way.

Those she befriended had a fierce, loyal champion by their side. Her sense of justice was adamant and her defense of her loved ones formidable.

Pressures from those she disagreed with and isolation from friends who loved her but avoided cross-fire brought her into a dark place of loneliness and crushing condemnation. She withdrew from family and society taking refuge with carefully selected friends.

Clinical depression visited her with long days of rest in bed with few breaks for simple life necessities. She’d enjoy dinners out and family vacations, but stayed home almost all other times.

She sought out help, resulting in receiving SSRI antidepressants for six months. At the time, psychiatrists were asking patients to wait eight weeks to see whether a particular drug showed benefits. (Today, two weeks is seen as adequate time to demonstrate positive effects.)

Her bedroom and the internet were her home. Tumblr, Facebook,and fanfic sites were where she could find approval for her artwork and stories. A cycle of social workers tried to help her reconcile her feelings of emptiness and abandonment. She started finding relief in naturally occurring pain killers released by her brain when she began to experiment with cutting herself. Her brain soothed her with these triggered opiates and she sought this comfort frequently and spent the rest of her life trying to avoid the need.

Hospital visits for suicidal ideation were followed by visits for suicide attempts. 10 or more other antidepressants would be attempted. A new, rudderless set of friends secured alcohol for her which she found additional comfort in, until its effects, too, waned from too much reliance. Anger from her depression with an unrestrained assertive personality brought increasing conflict with family. These “friends” also supplied her with marijuana and eventually a few samples of “mushrooms” and heroin.

Ellie met with some success, moving from home and starting a life as a street artist at Ocean City, MD after a brave psychiatrist (whose name I only wish I could share, if I but knew it!) prescribe the Tri-Cyclic antidepressant (TCA) that she and I had wanted her to try for three years. TCAs are not readily prescribed as they can be toxic and may provide depressed patients with means to kill themselves. Alas, Ellie did attempt suicide with her first TCA, Doxepin, when after she stopped taking it, due to the side effect of weight gain.

After the suicide attempt, she moved back to Montgomery County, Maryland. Since her slender figure was one of the few things she was proud of, she sought a drug without the side effect and she brought me spec sheets on TCAs which allowed me to hypothesize that Pamelor (nortriptyline) would also work. Largely, it did, and Ellie began selling art at a farmer’s market and taking a digital art class at community college, and dating.

She began experiencing side effects from the alcohol abuse culminating in severe gastritis after just two days of drinking. Her lease was not renewed and so she was required to vacate her apartment even as she recovered from the gastritis. Having used the alcohol as an appetite suppressant and still partaking of marijuana, she may have associated the nortriptyline with the Doxepin weight gain and she discontinued the nortriptyline.

Five days after quitting alcohol, marijuana, and her antidepressant, Elthea took her own life.

Elthea had moments of determination where she would study her illness and share with me ideas for helping people just like her. She drew up floor plans for a mental health hospital with multiple wings separated by diagnosis / symptoms where many hospitals group together patients with nearly nothing in common. Her hospital would not withhold electronic communication with the outside world the way most do. Her hospitals would provide talk therapy for patients rather than the same art therapy a group therapy sessions she encountered with every visit.

Staff at her hospitals would be instructed to treat patients with compassion and dignity where the mentally ill are commonly disregarded.

This was a young lady not without high hopes. With her passing, these dreams are badly jeopardized. I, her father, wish to bring some of what we learned to the attention of those in her situation, seeking help that consolidates the limited wisdom her doctors had combined with current research on the conditions she experienced including treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, borderline personality disorder, alcoholism, and self-harm addiction.

It is the goal of this web site to provide high quality information available on poorly understood mental health issues. While having no doctorate, eight years of study focused exclusively on a limited number of conditions can produce no small portion of useful content that even practicing professionals may find value in.

My ultimate goal would be to set up a network of suicide safety centers that provide safe accommodations for suicidal people to wait out the crisis, much as they do in institutions, but with the comforts of home, the company of guests, and help from caring staff with one on one time to truly listen and let patients feel heard. A place where good plans can be created to provide hope to those who find it in short supply.

I will gladly hear from others who would like to help create Elthea Center Safety Facilities, be it through monetary donations, offers of help staffing such locations, or referrals to medical professionals that might help with consultation in terms of effective medication that helps talk therapy work at its best.