Two decades have passed since Dukakis, fresh off the campaign trail after her husband’s failed bid for the presidency, revealed what political figures or their spouses rarely divulge: a tumultuous battle with addiction and depression. The stunning announcement - and Dukakis’s subsequent openness about her struggles with recovery - helped forge a connection to others who struggle, and set Dukakis on a mission to help women with drug and alcohol addiction.

Now, as the Kitty Dukakis Treatment Center for Women marks treating its 1,000th patient, Dukakis’s devotion to addiction recovery persists, outside the limelight, but with no less passion.

“She opens up her Rolodex and writes to dozens of her friends to say this is important,’’ said Mary Nee, executive director of hopeFound, the homeless services organization that Michael and Kitty Dukakis helped establish 25 years ago and that now runs the treatment center. “But what is so powerful is that she has been willing to share her story.’’

In 1987, several months after Michael Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, began running for president, his wife initially announced that she had been addicted to amphetamines for 26 years but had been treated in 1982. Months after her husband lost the 1988 election, however, she checked into a Newport, R.I., residential treatment center because of alcohol abuse. She later recounted her struggles with addiction and depression, admitting that at low points after the campaign she even drank rubbing alcohol and hair spray.

Over the past 20 years, as she has been in recovery and undergone treatment, Dukakis has told her story widely and advocated for better public services for people who are mentally ill or addicted.

Dressed whimsically in a multicolored skirt on a recent morning, Dukakis walked through the center, which overlooks Franklin Park. . The Dukakis Treatment Center’s residential program, housed in Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, completed a remodeling project in December to liven up bedrooms where women stay during 28 days of treatment.

“Maybe I’ll have my granddaughter come stay here,’’ the 72-year-old Dukakis joked while looking at a room decorated with an Audrey Hepburn theme.

While her privileges and life in the public eye set her apart from the women at the center, she said she sees commonalities. “There are many stories that have the same theme, even though I have not been homeless,’’ she said, speaking carefully. “They are able to react to my story because there are parts of my story that are not different than theirs, the whole issue of shame, of pain we’ve caused other people.’’

Linda Henderson, a 56-year-old grandmother who went through the treatment center’s program, slept in parks and in abandoned buses for more than seven years before she entered the program last year. In May, she met Dukakis at a breakfast to launch the center’s latest initiative to improve the health and fitness of the women in the program. “She has such a gentle spirit,’’ Henderson said.

Her warm, gracious nature has long won Dukakis admirers. She is celebrated in much of the mental health community for her frequent speeches and appearances at public events, community centers, and group meetings.

“I admired that she would reveal her struggles with alcoholism and depression,’’ said Jeanne Boudreau of Wellesley, a peer specialist at Riverside Community Care in Newton and Norwood who says she has dealt with similar challenges. “Any time a person who is in a respectable position reveals that, it takes away some of the stigma.’’

But Dukakis’s ardent support of electroconvulsive therapy - a treatment she underwent for depression and wrote about in “Shock,’’ her 2006 book with journalist Larry Tye - has been controversial.

“Having shock treatment is stigmatized, and I don’t want to see it more stigmatized,’’ said Rachel Klein, 41, a Watertown resident who said she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, and is recovering from addiction. “But she presents it like it’s a magic wand. There is no magic cure.’’

Yet even Dukakis’s critics commend her for continuing to speak publicly about her depression and her addiction to alcohol and drugs. And her public leadership has persisted far beyond her husband’s political tenure.

“She says: ‘It’s not because you’re poor, and it’s not because you’re homeless that you suffer,’ ’’ said Nee, of hopeFound. “She says, ‘This is a disease and you need treatment.’ ’’