Lyle Lexier likes to practise speaking French - and Spanish and German and Hebrew and even a few words of Hindi. At 52, he could pass for an absent-minded professor if you met him in a hallway or even stopped for a brief chat.
"High-functioning autistic," he says by way of explanation. "Autism is a developmental disorder that impedes my ability to have social skills. So sometimes I have bad manners. I'm bad at facial recognition."
Lexier has learned to ask people whether he's met them before when he offers a handshake, one of many small coping skills that help him navigate a world he perceives differently than most of us.
"It's bad to treat disabled peopled as children or criminals," he says, summing up what he wants others to know.
"Those are good words to use," he adds, nodding.
He'll be taking that message to a national conference on health and developmental disabilities, organized by in Vancouver on Nov. 15 along with his friend Julie Huber and her housemate, Ed Kaufmann.
The panel, organized by Alanna Hendren, executive director of the Richmond's Developmental Disabilities Associaion, will tell conference delegates - doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists and caregivers - about their experiences with "dual diagnosis," which, in their case, is a developmental disability coupled with mental illness.
For Lexier, who lives on his own with the help of a disability pension, it has meant taking medication for depression.
Although he completed an arts diploma at the college level and a degree in computer science and Spanish at Simon Fraser University, he later found it too stressful to meet - and miss - deadlines when he got a job as a computer programmer.
"I'd feel stupid."
For Huber, a 37-year-old with a winning smile, dual diagnosis means taking a cocktail of prescription drugs to treat a bipolar disorder which overlays her autism.
"I have a hard time processing information," she explains over lunch at her group home. "It just takes me a little longer to think sometimes."
She's lived at Worthington House on Vancouver's east side for the past seven years, and has transformed from an agitated, tearful young woman obsessively hauling around bags and suitcases to a cheerful regular at public art classes offered by a nearby community centre. "I'm highly capable of doing different things. I'm a very caring person and I do a lot in the community," Huber says. "I just want people to treat other people the way they want to be treated."
At 74, Kaufmann is not only the oldest member of the panel, but also a remarkable survivor.
Shuttered in his family home in Vancouver as a child, he made the rounds at B.C.'s mental institutions until the age of 43: Riverview in Coquitlam; Tranquille in Kamloops; Beaver Lodge in Oliver.
His diagnoses include epilepsy, personality disorder, delusional disorder and bipolar disorder. He was classified as psychotic at one time and his record says he has hit staff in the past. That doesn't happen now.
"You're like a rainbow of roses," he tells a visitor. He lands a few kisses before staff members remind him to calm down.
He's stooped now and wears a hearing aid; his words are difficult to decipher at times.
"They locked me up in a cubby hole for 15 years ... I had shock treatment ... All that was wrong with me is I had epileptic seizures," he says.
What's it like to be in an institution? "It's bad. It's bad. It's very bad because they beat you up. They mistreat you. They treat you like a kid when you're not.
"I feel good in this home." Kaufmann has lived at Worthington House since it opened in the mid-1980s, when it was the only group home in the Lower Mainland to take people with both developmental and psychological problems.
There are still few places that do.
He can't say too many kind words about its manager of 20 years, Karen Rooney. "I love her, terribly a lot."
Rooney says Kaufmann sometimes lays on the flattery pretty thick to further his own ends, but, she adds, his charm is undeniable.
"He should write greeting cards ... The first day I met him, he said 'I didn't know angels flew so low.'"
Kaufmann's biggest fear is losing support from Community Living B.C., a Crown agency funded by the B.C. Ministry of Social Development.
It's been reducing the number of group home spots in recent years due to budget restraints, putting residents on edge and leaving their families to worry over what happens when they're no longer around to advocate for their relatives in care.
"I can't cope on my own," Kaufmann says. "I don't know how to handle myself."
"I can't live without support. I can't live with-out security."
Hendren of the Developmental Disabilities Association and panel organizer, says the tragedy of the situation is that there are so few places for people like Kaufmann to go.
Families, no matter how well-intentioned, can fall apart under the strain of their care.
And then there are the people with an untreated mental illness on top of an undiagnosed learning disability.
"What happens is there is no place to go, so they end up in jail," says Hendren.
The conference from Nov. 15 to 17 is chaired by Dr. Robin Friedlander who heads programs on mental health and developmental disorders at the Vancouver and Fraser health authorities and the department of psychiatry at the University of B.C.
For more information, go to www. interprofessional.ubc.ca/ HealthAndWellbeing.
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