Out from under an anxiety disorder, she now helps others

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Rita Howie, secretary to the principal of an elementary school, is the picture of efficiency in her high heels and burgundy pantsuit. As she talks, three different people come up to her with school-related questions, and she interrupts herself briefly to give them answers. She is clearly a take-charge person.

No one would guess that in the 1970s this woman was paralyzed by unfounded fears, housebound because she never knew when she would be overcome by panic, dizziness, delusions.

Howie was suffering from an anxiety disorder.

Today, mental-health professionals know how to diagnose such disorders, which include agoraphobia, panic attacks, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder or a combination of them.

Treatment usually includes cognitive-behavioral therapy and medication.

But back then, nobody seemed to know what to do. "Every two years I wound up in a psych ward," said Howie, of Chicopee, who is now 60.

She was given inappropriate treatments like shock therapy and put in a therapy group whose other members had mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Then, 26 years ago, Howie read an article in a local newspaper about a man with agoraphobia. He was afraid to leave his house — just as she was.

When Howie realized there was a name for what she had, it gave her hope. That same year, she volunteered for a yearlong research program on anxiety at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md.

She moved 400 miles away from her home in Springfield — where her husband had tried to make life easier for his housebound wife by building her a swimming pool — and plunged into a year of spinal taps, blood tests, infusions, placebos and double-blind studies.

Howie said she was scared the whole time, but of all the participants from out of state, she was the only one who stayed. "Some people stayed one day and left," she said. "I was too terrified to leave."

By then her marriage had collapsed. But she came away from NIMH with a diagnosis, a prescription and a vow.

"When I left, they told me exactly what part of my brain was affected," said Howie, "and they gave me exactly the medication I would be on for the rest of my life." It worked.

She had told her doctor at NIMH that if he could save her, she would devote the rest of her life to alleviating the suffering of others like her. "If you can help me," she said, "I will never give up. I will help as many people as I can. I will never let it go."

Howie was true to her word. Back in Springfield, she started a Panic Disorders and Anxiety Support Group with four people. "There was a time when Rita was the only thing out there," said Richard Lombardo, of Wilbraham, who attended the group 10 years ago. "And she was magnificent."

Lombardo was 39 and had just quit a stressful job when, lying in bed at night a week later, he was filled with panic.

"It surprised the heck out of me," Lombardo recalled. He said the key to controlling his anxiety was education, and Howie's group provided it. He learned to recognize and manage the physical symptoms of his disorder.

"When you're in the middle of this, you think you're never going to feel good again," said Lombardo.

One symptom of people with an anxiety disorder is their reluctance to take medication — they're scared to do it. They will take it for one day and stop. But Howie knows that medication can work, and she pushed people to take their pills regularly.

Now Howie is retiring from the group she founded. She's handing over the reins to others.

Not many people come anymore, she said. And that's good news, because it tells her that people with anxiety disorders have other resources.

"Now doctors are diagnosing it right away," she said.