She cried. Loud, gulping, heaving sobs that would not stop.

If Leslie Dickerson could make it 10 minutes tear-free, it was a major feat. In 1999, the Waterbury resident was picking up the pieces from a mental breakdown that struck two years earlier and robbed her of her job, her home and her sense of worth.

"I have never seen anyone cry that much or that constantly," said Meghan Maxwell, an employee at the Mental Health Association of Connecticut. "Leslie's pain was an obvious, tangible, brutal thing at all times. She didn't smile or laugh for at least the first year that I knew her."

Dickerson's breakdown was so complete, she forgot how to type and sing, two activities she once did skillfully and easily.

"I felt incredible hopelessness and despair," said Dickerson, who was diagnosed with severe depression and post traumatic stress disorder. "I would just think of one thing and it would set me off like a switch."

Ten years later, Dickerson, 56, lives in Stratford and considers herself fully recovered from mental illness. She credits the Mental Health Association of Connecticut and her faith in God for overcoming her pain. While many people with mental illness are ashamed of their disease, Dickerson wants to motivate others to seek recovery and return to work.

"Mental Health Association of Connecticut would not give up on me," Dickerson said. "If they hadn't helped me, I would be sitting as a vegetable."

The statewide nonprofit, which is headquartered in Wethersfield and has offices in Waterbury, advocates for mental wellness through various programs, services and public policy initiatives. (See related story on Page 2G.) Dickerson came to the organization's Independence Center in Waterbury in 1999.

There, she met Maxwell, who helped her regain her computer skills and confidence. The center caters to people with psychiatric disabilities by providing them with instruction and support in education, employment and social skills, among other areas.

Meanwhile, Dickerson underwent electric shock treatments, multiple hospitalizations and many hours of therapy. Later, she battled breast cancer and developed a rare Parkinson's disorder that may be linked to her psychiatric problems.

"She really is remarkable to have come through what she has told me has happened in the past," said Dr. Julie Rosenbaum, Dickerson's doctor in Waterbury for the last six years. "She has amazing fortitude and perseverance."

Growing up in Vermont, Dickerson was one of seven children in a family she describes as dysfunctional. She said she has made peace with her parents for problems that belong in the past. She said she began cutting herself around age 12, a syndrome which would dog her for many years. A petite woman with short wispy hair and wire-rimmed glasses, Dickerson rolls up the sleeves of her royal blue business top to reveal neat lines of faded white scars. When she was 14, her mother committed her to a mental institution, where she remained until she was 19.

"It was a hellhole," she said. "They are not what they are today, which is still not great. But we didn't have clients' rights back then."

While institutionalized, she said she was heavily sedated and misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. When she was released, she married, had two daughters and said she found Christ. She moved to Connecticut in 1983 with her children and divorced their father. She became a medical transcriptionist at OptiCare in Waterbury.

"I worked feverishly and loved my job, but things began to happen," Dickerson said, alluding to flashbacks from her youth. She made it a priority to get her girls out of the house. Both daughters, who are now in their early 30s, were about to embark on mission work with their church anyway.

PTSD and psychotic episodes put Dickerson in and out of hospitals over the next few years, and she was eventually referred to the Independence Center. Later, she hooked up with a sister program, Choices Work Services, and got a part-time job at the Northwest Regional Mental Health Board. She attended business school for one year thanks to a scholarship from the Mental Health Association of Connecticut.

"To someone who spent her teen years in a mental institution and did not have the chance to graduate or mingle with other classmates, this was indeed a joy and served perhaps as part of my recovery," she said.

While most people with mental illness lead normal lives, Maxwell said Dickerson's "joyfulness, abundant hope and connectedness to her family and friends and church and larger community" is unique.

"With or without mental illness, the determination to wring every last drop of beautiful out of life is a rare thing," Maxwell said in an e-mail. "Having to travel as far as she did to get there is nothing short of amazing."

Dickerson no longer takes antidepressant or anti-psych medications, and she works as a peer engagement specialist for Mental Health Association of Connecticut.

In that role, she assists clients in activities that foster recovery and skill-building in education, vocation, social life and daily living.

"My first day working, they (clients) were getting their morning meds and I realized that they have what I wanted 40 years ago," she said. "They have an alternative to being in a hospital or a mental institution. They can live to the best of their abilities."