Woog’s Earth: Creator attracts on childhood in Westport for inspiration

To set sensible scenes, novelists generally investigate their settings. For his most current perform, Paul Backalenick did not have to. The 1968 Staples Large Faculty graduate has put in much of his profession in and close to psychiatric hospitals. He’s received a master’s diploma in counseling, and labored on the administrative and technology sides too.

But some of his most memorable early several years ended up suitable below in Westport, at Hall-Brooke Medical center. He has not employed any of all those occasionally odd, often instructive ordeals in “Carrie’s Magic formula,” a whodunit about a teenage psychiatric individual with a terrible secret, and the struggles of a 1980s suburban couple as they attempt to assistance and understand their daughter — at the very least, not precisely. Still they opened Backalenick’s eyes to the entire world of mental sickness, and the many types of treatment for the large range of people afflicted by it.

Backalenick grew up “pretty sheltered” in what he calls “the lily white, liberal world” of Westport. His father Monthly bill was a professional artist his mom Irene was a gifted author. (Now in her 90s, she nonetheless provides poems.) Paul’s composing was motivated by Staples teachers like Dick Leonard. He was a psychology concentrator at Brown College. The summer right after sophomore 12 months, he got a position at Corridor-Brooke.

The facility on Long Loads Road — now St. Vincent’s Professional medical Heart — was initially a sanitarium. By the early 1970s it was a psychiatric clinic running with some non-traditional ideas. Its “community approach to mental health” philosophy meant that non-clinical staff members associates participated in treatment conferences. At just one, the head of a device contrasted Backalenick — the “good Paul” — with a client who had the exact identify. He was the “bad Paul.”

A custodian “danced with and romanced” female people, Backalenick claims. A schizophrenic boy and very depressed female socialized with Backalenick at his parents’ household. “That was not thought of abnormal,” he notes. He also fashioned a guitar band with a former Staples classmate, who experienced experienced a psychotic crack and was in the hospital.

As opposed to most psychiatric hospitals, Corridor-Brooke admitted clients instantly — not immediately after staying medicated very first in an unexpected emergency home. Whilst most clients were “typical frustrated suburban housewives,” Backalenick claims that others had been “very, really disturbed.” One was more manic and disturbed than a veteran psychologist had ever viewed.

Some patients ended up treated with electroconvulsive remedy. Backalenick noticed the amazing outcomes that had on their behaviors and personalities.

This was the Brown student’s first practical experience with a psychiatric healthcare facility. When he worked at “better” destinations — which include two non-public kinds in the Boston area — he recognized that Corridor-Brooke’s philosophy and cure regimens ended up not regular.

Right after far more than a 10 years, Backalenick attained an MBA from Boston Faculty. He moved to the administrative aspect of health care, getting an IT marketing consultant for Andersen helping hospitals prepare their technologies investments.

In 2000 — melding his technological and creative sides — he commenced his own company. Nexxite available graphic arts, web design, programming, branding, marketing and advertising, e-commerce and IT consulting products and services to shoppers. In 2018 he bought his internet firm. “I know, that helps make me audio like Bill Gates,” he laughs.

Backalenick — who experienced edited a literary magazine at Brown — turned his awareness to crafting. His first novel, “Development,” was a multi-layer secret weaving alongside one another three stories about hopes, goals, frustrations, disappointments, adore and redemption. Set in Westport in the early 1970s, it advised the tale of a man mired in an not happy marriage, disconnected from his two teenage daughters, paralyzed in a mid-stage vocation, and deep in debt. It earned exceptional opinions, and impressed “Carrie’s Magic formula.”

“Mental wellness is one of the most complicated constellations of challenges in human character,” Backalenick notes. “Brain chemistry, parenting, the environment — they all influence it.” In spite of greater awareness staying paid to mental illness above the several years, cure “still has not come as considerably as we’d like,” he claims. “Look at the advances in heart surgery. But you can not just do a brain transplant and ‘fix’ an individual.”

Continue to, culture has come a prolonged way from when Backalenick entered the subject. Some folks who were being institutionalized in condition hospitals were being “never heard from once again.” Even so, he problems that also lots of psychiatric individuals have been deinstitutionalized — despatched to the streets of metropolitan areas — with no abide by-up care.

“It’s a aggravating enterprise,” he admits. “It’s so challenging to define ‘success.’”

It may perhaps be much easier as an writer to define the phrase. Ebook sales are a single evaluate so are evaluations. “Development” bought effectively and acquired a lot of praise. “Carrie’s Secret” — printed on July 4 — appears to be perfectly on its way to replicating that feat.

Suitable now, Paul Backalenick is marketing his next novel. The Westport Library has been in contact about an visual appeal for its mystery reserve club. If it’s are living — not Zoom — most likely he’ll swing by his outdated Corridor-Brooke stomping grounds on the way in excess of, just for a glance.