Drive On in County for Cancer Victims’ ‘Wellness Community’

Efforts are under way to establish Orange County’s first “Wellness Community,” a place where people with cancer would receive free psychological and social support.

The prime mover behind the effort is county Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, whose sister, Estelle Ullman, died two years ago of pancreatic cancer. Ullman had attended sessions at the nonprofit Wellness Community in Santa Monica, said to be the first facility of its kind not affiliated with a hospital.

“I wanted to do something in her memory and for the cause that helped her,” Wieder said. “It helped her. It gave her a quality of life in the few short weeks she had.”

The Wellness Community serves as a support group drawing on a professional staff and other cancer victims.

“Estelle told me that when a doctor diagnoses (cancer), you feel you have lost control of yourself and of your life and you feel you are a reject,” Wieder said. “People don’t know what to say to you. They don’t want to talk to you, not even your closest and dearest.”

Orange County’s Wellness Community is planned for a 6,000-square-foot building on land that its backers hope will be donated. Patterned after the Wellness Community established in Santa Monica in 1982, the facility will be a nonresidential complex of living rooms to serve as meeting places for its participants.

As many as 300 cancer sufferers a week use Santa Monica’s facilities, where they cope with their illness by meeting, talking and joking with one another. There is no charge, and the only requirement for membership is that a person be at least 21 years old and medically diagnosed to have cancer.

The Wellness Community is designed to supplement, not replace, conventional cancer treatment. It is unaffiliated with hospitals, religious or medical groups.

The program is based on the principle that cancer sufferers need not be resigned to death.

Participation in Recovery

“The key phrase is: If you participate along with your physician in your fight for recovery, rather than acting as a hopeless, helpless, passive victim, you will improve the quality of your life, and you may enhance the possibility of your recovery,” said Harold Benjamin, the founder of the Santa Monica facility.

According to Benjamin, medical studies have shown “that unhappy emotions depress the immune system and the immune system is the first line of defense against cancer.”

“We are just starting to learn that happy emotions enhance or bolster the power of the immune system,” he said. “Therefore, happy emotions may enhance the possibility of recovery.”

“No matter what’s going to happen, you are going to improve the quality of your life,” Benjamin said. “We give psychological, sociological and philosophical support to people who have cancer.”

Author Norman Cousins, who serves as honorary chairman of the Santa Monica facility’s board of directors, describes the Wellness Community as “the model of social and psychological care of the cancer patient, which must be an integral part of the recovery process . . . and which will soon be the norm throughout the United States.”

In Santa Monica, there are “seven licensed psychotherapists and seven licensed psychologist interns,” said Benjamin, an attorney who retired to found the nonprofit program and serves as its executive director.

Psychosocial Support

“We provide every method of psychosocial support for cancer patients which is approved by conventional medicine and conventional psychology,” Benjamin said.

A second Wellness Community was recently established in the Manhattan Beach area, Wieder said.

Orange County’s facility may be smaller than the original in Santa Monica, depending on the need, according to Wieder. A steering committee has been organized locally, and meetings with corporate leaders have been held to drum up support, she said.

Wieder said the organizers of the Orange County Wellness Community include Dr. Steven Armentrout, president of the Orange County division of the American Cancer Society; attorneys Paul Hegness and John Stillman; accountant Steve Mansfield and architect Ernest Wilson.

Backers estimate that about $150,000 will be needed to begin the operation, although the annual operating expenses may not run as high as the $450,000 it takes to run the facility in Santa Monica, Wieder said.

The steering committee has decided to apply for tax-exempt status while Armentrout explores forming medical advisory groups, she said. Orange County corporate leaders are being invited to join an advisory body and meetings are planned with potential donors of the land necessary for the facility.

“The first thing was to determine if there was any interest in the county,” Wieder said. “That response has been heartening. It’s just great. There’s a need there and our county should be served as well as Los Angeles County is.”

“I think we’re pretty much on the way. Orange County deserves the best. There’s a haven for people who have the need (in Los Angeles County). There is no place here in Orange County.”