‘Enotis’ is Greek for unity, which more than metaphorically symbolized the support this mental health organization, founded by a recovering addict, offers. Maria Kostaki spoke to the organization’s staff about mental health and treatment in Greece.

Enotis’s headquarters seem alive. The staff is smiling, energy bounces off each cubicle wall, there’s a pleasant sense of urgency. You would never think that this is a non-profit mental health organization that deals with illness and drug addiction on a daily basis.

The story of Enotis, which was founded in September of last year, is special. Its founder, Michael Alexiou, himself a recovering addict, returned from a rehabilitation center abroad and found himself disillusioned by the lack of a system, structure, and support for people with mental health issues. Enotis was his answer, his attempt to create a support system not only for addicts, but for all people suffering from an array of mental health problems.
“Substance abuse, as we all know, is simply a symptom of a problem that lies beneath. It is not the root of the problem,” Alexiou explains. “Depression, anxiety, and stress, are what lead us to drugs and other forms of addiction. Whether it is to food, internet,
sex, or alcohol.”
Enotis swears by prevention. Go to a therapist before you go to a shrink. Find the base of the problem and treat it before suppressing it with prescription drugs and antidepressants. Prevent anxiety, depression and stress before they lead to substance abuse or violent behavior. Especially in times like ours. Economies are faltering, unemployment rates are skyrocketing, incidents like the Arizona shootings are becoming more and more frequent.
“We are taught to believe that everything can be solved pharmacologically,” Alexiou says. “That’s simply not the case. All that does is lead to more problems.”
Enotis’s scope is not only local because the problem isn’t local, it’s global. Over 450 million people suffer from mental illnesses worldwide. Close to three thousand people commit suicide on a daily basis. Currently, Enotis is heavily developing three main branches. Enotis 24, a twenty-four-hour helpline for immediate assistance and guidance. Alexiou says that at a time when he was looking for help, he’d called a rehabilitation center in the U.K., which claimed to have a twenty-four-hour helpline.
“The woman who picked up the phone was obviously asleep. Granted, it was three o’clock in the morning, but people don’t need help at noon. She promised to get back to me with information the next day and never did.”
Enotis 24 is designed to be available, and alert, at all hours of the day. Currently, it is limited to a twenty-four-hour phone-line service, but plans are in the making for a live online help desk, a concept that will definitely appeal to more people, as it will keep personal exposure to a complete minimum. The existing network of psychologists and social workers specializing in drug addiction take phone calls of anyone in need.
The second branch is Enotis Legal, which through a network of legal professionals provides pro bono legal coverage for people whose civil liberties are threatened, who are discriminated against, drug addicts in trouble with the law and unable to find counsel. It is a legal lobby group per se.
“People who have no money to protect themselves get locked up in jail and end up worse than they were to start with,” Alexiou says. “Of course, legal merit will be considered in each case. We’re not out to help drug dealers.”
Finally, there is Enotis Prevention. The Organization researches and designs prevention programs for universities, companies, government entities, and institutions. Currently, Enotis is in the process of submitting a proposal to a university to implement a big brother-type support program for all incoming freshmen. There is also substantial back and forth with European, Asian, and African governments as well as private development funds, where Enotis will train the doctors in its public sector, bringing them up to date with the side-effects of new prescription
medication, which is currently being prescribed rather blindly. Finally, locally in Greece, Enotis has taken an orphanage under its wing. Mitera (Η ΜΗΤΕΡΑ) is home to eighty-five orphans, newborns to nine-year-olds. A large number of the children suffer from mental illnesses. The non-profit recently sponsored and produced a television spot for Mitera to create awareness for foster parenting in Greece, a concept that is still greatly
overshadowed by the taboo of not having your own offspring and by the fear of the “burden” of adoption. Enotis has also created a “burnout” prevention program for its over-worked staff, and is designing an outdoor exercise and activity program for the children, who rarely go outside the orphanage’s grounds due to lack of public funding.
The mastermind behind the prevention programs is Jean-Baptiste Cauneille, also the vice president of Enotis. A French national, Cauneille met Alexiou at the rehabilitation center in Asia where the latter was undergoing treatment; Cauneille was the manager. Prior to that, Cauneille was employed as the communications manager of Saim Rha hospital in Chiang Mai, Thailand. There, he successfully lobbied to standardize PAP tests for women unable to afford private health care in delocalized regions of the country. A month after Alexiou completed the program, Cauneille moved to Greece as part of the “sober buddy” program, and quickly became a vital player in the birth of Enotis.
Cauneille speaks with a mature wisdom one can only hope to acquire by middle age: he’s twenty-five. But wisdom comes with experience, and he’s had plenty of it. His mother was the president and CEO of five hospitals in Paris.
“The passion to help people can become contagious,” he says, talking about how his career of choice has taken him from France to Ireland to China, Thailand, and now Greece. “You go wherever it takes you.”
Even though Enotis is only but a few months old, it has already faced quite a few barriers in developing its outreach.
“The greatest problem is the lack of understanding of the product,” Alexiou says. “There is a lack of structures that are able to provide mental health services. There is no clear legal regime, not even the legal right for someone from the private sector to set up a rehabilitation facility in Greece.
What Alexiou says is true. Drug prevention is controlled by a nationwide network of prevention centers, OKANA, under the umbrella of the Ministry of Health. It is the only organization that has the legal right to operate and monitor substitution treatment programs in the country.
Joanna Papas (name has been changed), a recovering heroin addict of over eight years, who has been clean for as many, has been in and out of seven rehabilitation centers–all abroad. Firstly, because the process of detox is illegal in Greece.
“Detox is the most important part in early recovery,” Papas says, “especially for heroin, which is during the first few days excruciatingly painful, alcohol, barbiturates, and all addictive pills, even for cocaine due to the depression that follows when one stops using. In either case, the withdrawal symptoms are so severe that most of the time detox does not last.
The treatment centers in Greece all work illegally as far as detox is concerned. They all work in strict collaboration with doctors in psychiatric wards who also risk losing their license so that they can help.

These doctors admit the addicts into psychiatric wards and supposedly treat them for psychiatric disorders. This is the only way addicts in Greece can go through detox,” she explains.
To be admitted into a rehabilitation center, the patient must be clean for three months.
Furthermore, addiction of any form is still taboo in Greece.

“Why? Simply because there is no education on the subject,” Papas says. “Most people in Greece think that drug addicts are only found in lleyways or abandoned buildings, laying on the floor with needles sticking out of their arms. They cannot believe that people like doctors, lawyers,  businessmen or other ‘normallooking’ people, who on the exterior seem to be up-standing citizens, could possibly be addicts. The same goes for alcoholics. Their image of an alcoholic is usually a smelly bum on the street with a bottle in his hand.”
Alexiou agrees, but takes it a step further.
“Nobody can blame society for the taboo that’s been created for addiction. It’s like blaming a person for not keeping an open mind,” he says. “Society is free to make their own choices about how they wish to treat an addict. However, most members of society would be in denial to the fact that they themselves don’t have an addiction or mental health concern that if left untreated, may, in certain circumstances, lead to an addiction or to an unhealthy obsessive compulsive behavior.”
Enotis is devoted to changing this. On a national level, they are determined to change society’s perception of addiction and mental illness. They are determined to make help more accessible and less taboo. Globally, the organization’s aim is to make mental health a priority for everyone.
But how feasible is this project? After all, the realm is huge and stretches from drug rehabilitation to suicide prevention to alternative mental illness treatment. Can all these issues be housed under one roof, no matter how optimistic, energetic, and ambitious?
“Mental health is multifaceted, applicable to all aspects of daily life,” Alexiou says. “The human mind is an uncharted and perplexing realm. We have to tend to individuals in need. Ambitious is a word that has no place in our vision.”