RACISM IS NOT A MENTAL ILLNESS by Laura Pogliano

Racism is not a mental illness.

Mental illnesses are organic brain disorders outside the influence of parenting and environment. They are neuro-developmental illnesses that cause serious impact to normal cognitive function and impair the synapses in the brain that send messages.

Racism is a learned hatred response to “other.”

Serious mental illness should not be compared to racism, assholianism, selfishness, or greed. People with serious mental illnesses are typically super nice people who are scared to death of what their brains are doing and telling them. I refuse to let racists be called “mentally ill.” They’re selfish, ugly assholes. Big difference!

If racism were a psychiatric illness, it would respond to medical interventions and it doesn’t. The “cure” for racism is understanding. The cure for mental illness is non existent: the symptoms are only abated by therapies and medicine.

Calling hateful goons mentally ill does a great disservice to the suffering mentally ill we step over every day on our sidewalks. Their lives are cut short by brain disease and they’re already disparaged enough in our culture.

Laura Pogliano is a mental illness advocate. Her son, Zac, died in 2015 at age 24. He suffered from serious mental illness. Read Laura’s post, “ZAC, MY DARLING SON,” in the August 2017 archives.

I FEARED HE'D BE BLOWN TO PIECES by Deborah Harper

Jared was my second son born into our family of two boys in 1991. He was a quiet child, deeply intuitive and sensitive, musically gifted, and athletic. A boy full of life and funny faces and stories. He always made us laugh. Our Jared.

As he approached his junior year in high school, life began to take twists and turns that led us to seek help. The hope was always that help was just an appointment away. Then, as Jared became an adult at the ripe old age of 18, privacy laws separated us. I was behind an immovable glass wall, unable to reach him. HIPAA stood guard like a heartless warden of his declining mental health. The nightmare began, and evolved into multiple chapters of heart-wrenching sadness, agonizing decisions, and defeating barriers.

March 12, 2018: My boy needs continuous prayers. He’s been in a group home for three years. I had to make him homeless in order to make him eligible for residential support. He spent seven months in a respite bed, above an overdose crisis lock-up treatment center in the worst area of Worcester, Massachusetts, waiting for a bed in a group home.

This past year, Jared grew more depressed over his circumstances and wanted desperately to return home. He began self medicating with alcohol. The house set up a protocol to call an ambulance if they believed he was intoxicated. The ambulance brought the police and, because Jared suffers from paranoia and schizophrenia, he didn’t believe the police were real police. They grabbed him, he pulled back, and they proceeded to beat the daylights out of him. They beat him so badly he had to be taken to the hospital.

North Hallway, Position 8 —  A bed with a confused, hungry, and lost young man could be found in that hallway on a gurney. His illness, schizophrenia, was treated like a crime. His ride to the hospital began with a knee pressing into his neck, and tight cold wrings that left behind purple shadows of remembrance on both wrists. He was surrounded by at least six or seven other hallway-mates. They also bore the markings of a war-torn life battling the disease that we treat as dirty. I saw dirty hair, dirty clothes, and listened to dirty mouths. Whispering and cries were the audible clues they were suffering. No one was offered a drink of water. I observed avoidance. Did I detect annoyance?

Twenty long hours in that hallway waiting for the next step. This was a crisis — so many in need and so few helpers and healers. I was there for him, but no one showed up for any of the others. The lost and neglected souls of the North Hallway.

After the hospital, Jared was locked up at a Worcester police station and bail was posted. He had to appear in court to be charged with assault on police. When he arrived at court, they put him in lock-up all day. The judge heard his case at 4:30 p.m. He ruled that Jared was a danger to himself (drinking) and others (resisting police). They sent him to a Plymouth, Massachusetts, correctional facility for a mandatory 90-day rehab. This rehab required that he live in a cell, wear an orange jumpsuit, and be treated like a criminal.

My son tried calling me, yesterday, and it took four minutes to set up an account to pre-pay $1 per-minute to talk to him. By the time I did that, he’d hung up. I could barely breathe.

The grief and feelings of helplessness are indescribable. The mentally ill are so drastically mistreated and misunderstood. There are no beds available in genuine rehab places because of the opioid crisis. The only places left are correctional facilities.

Distress worsens mental illness. Mental health care is a system built on failure and supported by a nation that stigmatizes mental illness. It’s only recently recognized that we’re still in the dark ages when it comes to treating diseases of the brain.

January 19, 2019: Jared was just released from a 40-day imprisonment at a house of correction followed by a 35-day inpatient hospitalization at a state hospital. He had a psychotic break in late October while visiting me for a few days. He believed I was part of the KKK and pulled a kitchen knife out of the knife rack. He didn’t hold the knife up to me and I never saw what kind of knife he pulled. I called for help, reluctantly, because we had just had a three-year case dismissed for assault and battery on a police officer because he resisted them last time I called them.

The local police called in what is a called a STOP team, which I would classify as a SWAT team. Heavily armed men unloaded from vans and surrounded our house. They appointed me the negotiator and hooked me up to a speaker inside the house while a robot took photos inside the house. My small dog was inside with Jared. It was cold and raining. Every 45 minutes I had to stand three feet away from two men holding automatic weapons and one holding a shield and a taser. I was shaking like a leaf. I was luring my son into a trap. If he did anything threatening, I feared he’d be blown to pieces. Team members were in the woods, too. I could see little red lights coming from their weapons and helmets — a scene from Star Wars. The Ewoks in the woods. They evacuated my neighbors. It was insane.

After an eight-hour stand off, the police smashed a battering ram through Jared’s particle-board bedroom door that didn't have a lock, destroyed his room, stepped on his guitar, and arrested him. They charged him with attempted murder among three other trumped up charges.

I started a Go Fund Me campaign and borrowed money from my family to pay for a private attorney. The court appointed attorney was definitely not paying attention and cared very little about Jared's rights. 

The local newspaper wrote a story that made my son sound like a terrorist — I believe to justify the manpower that was brought to the neighborhood. Over 25 state police cruisers, 2 local police departments, and an ambulance surrounded my home and lined my street. I wrote to the paper and asked to tell my side of the incident. They featured me and my story on the cover on the Sunday edition.

Jared’s back at the group home. He’s stable. They’re working with him to keep him busy and going to therapy and AA.  I saw him yesterday. He was cleaning his room, lining up his shoes, hanging up his clothes, and tolerating my visit. In the past, he wouldn't want me in his space. This is progress.

Every day is a gift. I believe in God and the power of prayer. 

“You can always achieve the triumph of radical empathy (and understanding of the heart.)”

HAPPY PIC

Fall color in the snow…

Hope you have a good weekend everybody!

MY SON, WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA, REMAINS MY HERO - by Tamara Lee

I spoke with my son Elliott last night. He was a little discouraged that he spent his birthday and Christmas and New Year’s Eve in jail this year.

Elliott has one roommate who is there for allegedly raping a man at gunpoint and just had nine embellishments added. One is a RICO (racketeering) charge. Another roommate is there for allegedly murdering someone. His own mother is testifying against him for the state.

So here is my son, with schizophrenia, sharing a cell with two people most of us wouldn't want to share a neighborhood with and he’s still in good spirits. He’s not delusional at the moment and is in much better shape than he was last year at this time. The state’s providing him with his shots and on time. We’ve learned to take this day by day. Every night he calls me and I always pray for him and the other inmates I’ve gotten to know. Some write to me and some I buy things for because their families have abandoned them. My son has shown me a world I never knew existed. He has grown my heart in ways I didn't know it could grow.

Elliott is my Daniel who lives in the lion’s den. He lives with hardened criminals — some have killed multiple people — and he does it with no fear. He actually moves past no fear to sympathy and empathy for many of them. He gives them his commissary when they first come in, makes sure everyone has coffee, and helps them in any way he can. He surmounts his own pain to help others. I can't imagine what his life is like, and I can’t imagine how I would handle the situation but he does it with such grace. He amazes me with all he’s been through. He amazes me.

Elliot remains my hero — he’s still the bravest person I’ve ever met. Our children, with broken minds, are beautiful souls in so many ways. If only the world could see…

Read Tamara’s post on this blog, “One Day at a Time,” September 20, 2018, in the archives on the right.

Read Tamara’s blog, Health Mind Ministry. Click here.

Elliott working on a helicopter when he was a helicopter mechanic in the US Marine Corp.

WE ARE SO TIRED by Anonymous

My story began in 1984 when my son was born with his heart backwards. After four months, open heart surgery, and a stroke which showed no damage, we came home with the love of my life. All was well. Then my son stopped learning at about age four. At about age seven, he started to see things that weren’t there.

My son was diagnosed with OCD when he went to a children’s hospital for an extended stay. They gave him play corn for being good. I could only see him for a short time in the evenings. He’d never been away from us before. I stood it for a week and I made the doctors mad but we took him home.

He started special education but that didn’t last long. The teachers said he tried to stab another child with a pencil. Then he was home schooled. The teacher came by maybe 30 minutes on Fridays. So my son stayed home with me and played with art dust. If not doing that, he sat on the floor and played with his hands. When he got older and tried to start high school, they told him he would have to stay in a one-room special ed class.

We left our home that was paid for, and moved 50 miles to find a high school our son could attend. He’s 34 now and has had one run-in with the law. He spent a week in a behavior center. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. We moved from Texas to northern California to be near my older son so he could help us with his brother. We took him to Stanford Hospital to check his data and to see what’s really wrong with him.

Sorry for my going on and on. My husband will be 80 years old tomorrow and I am 71. We are so tired.

HAPPY PIC

Winter fauna.

Hope you have a good weekend everybody!

PLEASE GIVE YOUR LEGISLATORS A COPY OF MY BOOK, BREAKDOWN by Lynn Nanos

While I was working as a social worker on an inpatient psychiatric unit, I became disillusioned and shocked at the extremely high rate of readmissions by patients. Even though the typical length of stay lasted less than a week, it seemed as though I was caring for the patients on a long-term basis. Whenever they returned, we picked up where we had left off since they were last discharged. 

I learned if they followed through with the previous recommendations made by the psychiatrist, nurse, and myself. The recommendations included taking their prescribed medications, attending structured therapeutic groups, attending appointments with their psychotherapists, psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, and rehabilitative outreach workers. Sometimes they were expected to access government benefits, such as food and shelter, by completing applications.

I often encouraged patients to use their state-funded Department of Mental Health (DMH) rehabilitative outreach workers as much as possible. These workers were expected to help their clients access housing (e.g., 24-hour supervised group residential programs), vocational services, transportation, and outpatient treatment providers. And I listed these services whenever I recommended DMH and offered applications to patients. 

As I revisited the patients revolving through the door of our broken system in mobile emergency services, I caught a glimpse of how seriously mentally ill patients on inpatient might be worse off than when I was working there. Recently, a social worker and friend who works on inpatient psychiatry expressed her belief that DMH should be doing a lot more to resolve homelessness. I agree with her. Her patients tell her that their DMH case managers tell them, “We don’t help with housing.”

Really? Disillusionment sets in again. If they don’t help with housing, then what does DMH help with? Without supportive and supervised housing, seriously mentally ill people will inevitably have difficulty taking care of themselves, leading to further hospitalizations. Instructing your clients to go elsewhere for help with housing is not acceptable. DMH is supposed to care for and protect the most severely ill. Yet, they’ve fallen short. 

I wrote the book, Breakdown: A Clinician’s Experience in a Broken System of Emergency Psychiatry, to expose the injustices that I’ve seen in the field. Breakdown closely exposes barriers to patients getting the help that they need. The shortage of inpatient beds, increased rates of criminalization, overly restrictive involuntary hold criteria, premature inpatient discharges, and insufficient means to ensure that patients adhere to their outpatient treatment plans make for a broken system. Consequently, too many patients end up homeless, jailed, harming themselves, harming others, or even dead.

My book educates the public about the plight of those who need the most help. Increased awareness of a problem tends to inspire change. My greatest hope is that my book motivates people to advocate for legislative improvements of the system. Please tell your legislators about Breakdown and give it to them. 

Click on link below to access Lynn’s book on Amazon:
Breakdown: A Clinician’s Experience in a Broken System of Emergency Psychiatry

MY FIRST 2019 VISIT WITH TRAVIS (BB8099) by Dede Ranahan

Sunday I visited Travis (BB8099) for the first time in 2019. It was a clear, like-spring morning, 59 degrees, and sunny. The roads from my house to Folsom Prison are back roads. I drove past ponds, weathered barns, horses, riding stables, vineyards, orchards, ducks, and geese. Cyclists were out solo and in groups. I wanted to keep driving on these roads. I didn’t want to stop my car to walk into a depressing cement building surrounded by wire fencing and spotlights. I didn’t want to deal with X-ray machines, guards, and clanging sets of locked doors. But Travis was waiting. And Travis is housed in the depressing cement building surrounded by wire fencing and spotlights. He lives with X-ray machines, guards, and clanging sets of locked doors every single day. I only had to stay for a few hours.

As I parked my car, a young African-American woman stepped out of the car next to mine. She was wearing an attractive orange tunic, black leggings, and stylish shoes. She looked pretty. The guards agreed. She looked “too pretty.” Her leggings were “too tight.” She had to leave. Later, I’d see her, again, visiting in white slacks.

Travis walked down the steps into the visiting area with a big smile. We hugged and then cut to the chase. He was looking toward the vending machines. “Do you want to get a sandwich, Travis?” A quick nod and we were off to the opposite side of the room. Our relationship’s evolving.

Travis asked about my holidays and I described my crab feed for my family. He asked about my book. He said his mom likes the white cover better than the blue or gray. I asked him how he was after his Abilify medication was stopped abruptly. “I had a tough month of withdrawal but I’m feeling better and I like my new psychiatrist better than the old one. She seems engaged. She seems like she cares.”

“I have a new cellie I really like, too. His name is Will but everybody calls him ‘Rooster.’ He’s Hispanic, 39 years-old, and grew up in Fresno. And you know something else? Rooster has one eye. When he was 16, he was playing Russian roulette with his friends. He shot himself in the face and destroyed his eye. But he’s a good guy. He’s a christian, and he tries to help others. We read the Bible together every night.”

I asked more questions about Rooster — how he got a gun at 16 (“I don’t know”), and if he has family somewhere (“Yes”)? “Rooster is a political junkie. He watches all the stuff about the wall and the shutdown and he wants to talk about it all the time. I tell him not to. The news unsettles me and I need to take care of myself. I don’t want to trigger my depression. I’m in prison and there’s nothing I can do to change things.”

I studied the visitors and inmates sitting around the room. One inmate, older with long grey braids, held hands and spoke softly with his female visitor. Another swept the floor, laughing and joking with people as he swept around them. He seemed friendly and so all-American. How did this young man come to be in here? In the highest security block for criminal offenders? I wanted to talk to everyone and hear their stories. Wishful thinking.

For two-and-a-half hours, Travis and I chatted and sometimes sat in silence. Comfortable silence. I found out Travis likes to play pinochle and I told him I play bridge. He wanted to hear about the game. He thought it sounded like a card game he’d enjoy.

“We put on a play this week in church. One of the inmates wrote it. It was about a prisoner, John, who was denied parole and how he handled it. I played my guitar and sang ‘I lift the Lord’s name on high.’ The play ended with a big, tall, inmate (John) singing a praising song to Jesus. Everyone was swaying and clapping their hands. Even the guards. They said, ‘We usually don’t have happy stories to take home and tell our families but today was different. Today we have a happy story to take home.’”

Travis changed the subject. “When I get out of prison, I want to get a dog. A lab. A puppy to cuddle with. More than a dog, I want a wife and family. I’m a grown man. I’ve left my mother’s house. That’s the hardest part of being in here. I see a beautiful woman on TV and say, ‘Oh man, I hope I get a second chance.’”

When it was time to go, Travis wished me a good month until our next visit. I told Travis I’d try to find a beginning bridge book to send to him. Other than that, there were no promises — Travis still has five years to serve out his sentence. For the moment, however, I sensed we were both grateful for his feeling better, for his new cellie, Rooster, and for an original, jailhouse play.

A gentle day. Sometimes gentle days must be enough.

You can read more about my visits with Travis. They’re listed in the Archives on the right.
Travis looks forward to receiving mail. You can write to him at this address: Travis Christian
BB8099
B-5-229
California State Prison-Sacramento
P.O. Box 290066
Represa, CA 95671

HAPPY PIC

Winter butterfly.

Hope you have a good weekend everybody!

ROCK BOTTOM IS NOT DIGNITY. HELP US by Julie Fast

There is much confusion around mental health and when someone will ask for help. I often hear this: "He will get help when he is ready," or, "She will finally say yes to meds when she realizes the damage bipolar is doing to her life." 

No. This is not how it works with SMI — serious mental illness. 

Mental health is not addiction. The idea that a person has to hit rock bottom before they will ask for help is one that might work for alcohol and drug abuse — but it never works for SMI. Here is why: 

1. Most people with SMI have a lack of insight (anosognosia) that comes and goes depending on our symptoms. I fight this lack of insight regularly and I'm someone who has enormous insight as compared to others. If I suffer with lack of insight, imagine what it's like for people who haven’t spent the past 20 years on management. 

2. Denial is not a part of SMI when a person with SMI is really sick. Denial implies that a person knows what is happening, but chooses to ignore the signs. For example, a person with a severe alcohol dependency might have total knowledge that if he keeps drinking, he is going to ruin his liver, but he keeps drinking despite this knowledge. There is no judgement here, but this is denial. In SMI, a person can have teeth rotting out of their head, long, dirty fingernails, matted hair, and a sleeping bag for a bed and still say, “There is nothing wrong with me. You are the one with the problem.” 

There is no rock bottom for us as rock bottom requires self-awareness that is simply not available when we are sick. 

Don't expect this from someone with SMI. Those of us with bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia need people and a society to make decisions for us when we are too sick to ask for help. Without this, our rock bottom is death. 

3. The whole idea of individual rights is skewed when it comes to SMI. The idea of rock bottom is based on the idea that individuals are always able to make a choice about life or death situations. I completely, and I do mean completely, disagree with this and believe in society over the individual when it comes to mental health treatment. We are not in our right minds when we are sick. The concept of individual rights doesn't apply to someone who is not in his or her right mind. 

If you love someone with SMI, you have tough decisions to make. Waiting until that person sees the light, knows they need help, asks for help, or finally hits rock bottom means you might see the person you love lose everything or die. 

Get involved, change HIPAA, think of our society and work with me to get help for people at home and on the streets who are too sick to get help. I hope that people at the ACLU, people in the anti-psych movement, and those who believe in individual rights above society rights can see that the world this creates is not sustainable. 

I want society to make decisions for those of us with SMI. I believe in required mental health treatment, anti-psychotic shots, and safe places for people with SMI to live. 

We can work together to create long term treatment facilities and homes for people who are ill. They were called asylums for a positive reason — a place of refuge. We need them again. Rock bottom is not dignity. Help us. 

The situation in these photos is what led me to write this piece. I was in my car and looked over and saw a man fall and hit his head. He then threw up. No one else stopped and I questioned if I wanted to get involved. Portland, Oregon is completely out of control when it comes to homelessness. The majority on the streets here are seriously mentally ill. 

I stopped and helped the man. I knew not to touch him, but I talked to him and said I was calling 911. The dispatcher asked me to see if he was alive and asked me to stay until the paramedics showed up. I found out that his name was Scott and he was 30.  He was living on the street. I could see his garbage bag with a CD player and his shoes. As I talked to him, he rolled in a ball under his shirt. 

When help arrived, they didn’t look at me, thank me, talk with me, or give me any indication that they needed information from me. They are so used to this that they acted as though someone who looked like he was dying on the street was normal. I’m not judging them. Just observing how truly terrible it is in Portland. 

The young man tried to punch and kick the paramedics and they said he had to calm down. He finally did and accepted help. The cost of this one incident will run in the thousands of dollars. The hospital will not be able to do anything due to HIPAA laws and Scott will be released back to the street in a few days. I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw him again today. 

I have to cut my emotions off from my work. That is what I did in this situation. I turned off my heart and let my mind do the work that was needed. Someone had to help and this time it was me. 

Note: Julie is a writer at BP Magazine for Bipolar and a blogger at Psychology Today.