Wanda Ramirez likes to draw faces with hairstyles, no bodies attached. She calls it doodling. Her recovery specialist calls it art.

“She’s an artist,” the specialist, Laura Gwinnell, said with a nod.

Ms. Ramirez, 51, was uncomfortable with the compliment. She laughed shyly and rolled her eyes. She draws, she said, “when I’m at my wit’s end.”

Ms. Ramirez said in a recent interview that she found it difficult to talk about her struggles, fearing judgment. “It’s not been an easy road,” she said.

When she was 26, she learned she had schizophrenia. At the time, she did not even know what the word meant. During her episodes, Ms. Ramirez said, she would hear confusing voices and a constant bell-like clinking. She was hospitalized so frequently that sometimes just a week separated the stints, she said.