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Friday, June 24, 2016

The REAL Threat to Public Safety is Marginalization

Over and over, we're hearing about the problem of 'mental illness.'  Those of us who have been diagnosed are considered in need of special surveillance.  In the eyes of the public, politicians and quite possibly you, we are a potential threat and a danger to the safety of good, law-abiding Americans everywhere.

However well-intentioned, I can't begin to tell you how dangerous - literally dangerous - attitudes like these and the policies and programs advanced to enforce them are to the very interests that average Americans want to protect.  The problem with this kind of thinking is intuitive to most of us who have been there.  However, coherent, thoughtful responses have been, sadly, few and far between.

Part of the issue is probably the intuitive appeal.  In simple fact, a lot of us who scare others (abuse power, damage relationships or manifest aggression in some way) either have a pre-existing mental health diagnosis or someone eventually gives us one.  So far, so good.

On the other hand, if you really want to get down to causes and conditions, you have to get one thing. As Matthew Cooper pointed out in a related article on this topic that appeared in Newsweek several months back: Correlation is NOT causation.  ‘The sun doesn’t come up because the rooster crows, even if they happen at the same time.”

Another way of saying:  To understand the connection between psychiatric labeling and violence, we have to go deeper than that.  To be sure, fish that fly together often fry together.  However, that doesn't mean that being fish made them fly, much less that it made them fry.

To make meaningful sense of things, you have to understand a variety of things about fish - their relationship to the environment (they want food) and human beings (they make good food).  Only then, can you intelligently make sense of the associations.

A long way of saying that the deeper connection with between psychiatric labeling and public safety, from my observation, has little to do with chemical imbalances or genetic predisposition.   A far bigger contributor are the public attitudes about people who are considered 'different.'  We are labeled and excluded because of our presumed difference from dominant culture norms in socially undesirable ways.  The result is a lifetime of social exclusion and marginalization and the impact this has on the human hearts, minds, bodies and spirits of those of us so labeled.  The effect is ever-expanding in modern society as increasingly vast numbers of us are being identified, then labeled socially undesirable and excluded and marginalized by the culture we live in. Once siloed in this way, there is increasingly little access to meaningful recourse and increasingly little hope of escaping our socially assigned destiny as cultural 'others.'

The result is actual, predictable, measurable.  There are outcomes that a society with the will to perceive and understand could tangibly appreciate and comprehend.

While this is not the only explanation - no difficult social issue has only one - I think it is an important piece of the puzzle.  More than any other single explanation, it holds promise for addressing the public safety and policy concerns that are being raised in modern times.

Here is why:

1. Marginalization not only follows psychiatric labeling.  It routinely precedes it.  


It's now well known that 90% of the public mental health population are 'trauma survivors.'  Equally, important the same is true for other groups -  substance use, corrections, homeless -  that society sees both as 'problems' and as groups with a propensity for violence.

The reality for those of us in these groups is that, almost invariably, our marginalization preceded our so-called 'problem' nature.  From childhood, we were already dealing with heavy duty stuff like abuse, neglect, domestic violence, sexual predation, discrimination, bullying, poverty, homelessness, disability, adoption or foster care, marginalization or prejudice against our families of origin, etc. Moreover, when these things happened to us - not because of us or anything we did -  all too often the rest of society put its head in the sand.  Even worse, we were shunned for just for being in these situations.  A lot of time, people with power who were supposed to change things actually betrayed us.  They turned around and labeled us the cause of the social judgment that was careening our way.

2. The social consequences of widespread marginalization are drastic and dire.  


Literally millions of us are being treated as if our needs (and lives) do not matter.  The message we get - and not just from 'perpetrators' but from upstanding community members and society at large - is that we have no worth, we do not deserve to belong, and there is no room for us in the world community of human peers.  This kind of marginalization is happening everywhere and every minute in all kinds of relationships and in all outposts of society - families, friendships, neighborhoods, schools, churches, workplaces, agencies, offices.  It is even happening - and perhaps most painfully - in the very organizations and institutions - that society has set up to help 'problem' people like us.

The damage is deep and destroys not only individuals, but the very fabric of community relationships that otherwise would and could be protective.  What you learn as a vulnerable person growing up in a social context like this is that human beings are NOT a resource.  You learn not to go for help, not to trust the help you get.  You learn, time and again in your deepest, darkest hour, that human beings make things worse, not better.  

You learn you are alone.  That it is your problem.  That if there is going to be relief you need to find it yourself.  That if there is a problem you can only count on yourself.  That other human beings are worthless when you really need them.

  • End of asking, end of new information, end of learning from others about the issues that are most important for human beings to make sense of.  
  • Enter drugs, alcohol, addiction, sex, avoiding, distracting - anything to kill the pain of being alone and having no other outlet for feelings and problems that no human being should have to deal with alone.  
  • End of loyalty, affection, compassion for the rest of humanity.  Where were they, where are they, when you really need them...?  
  • Enter violence and crime and getting what you need to feel better, do better, escape by any means possible.   

3. The practical effects of widespread marginalization make society predictably unsafe for all concerned


The practical effect of mass marginalization is that millions of human beings are growing up in a constant state of fear and threat.  This fear and threat impacts people on two levels.  It is not only about the emotional pain and hurt of social exclusion.  To be sure, it is emotionally devastating to live day in and day out with the constant awareness that the community you live in - if not actually out to get you - would be at best indifferent and quite possibly happier if you did not exist.

But that's barely the half of it.  If you haven't been there, it's hard to appreciate what it means on a gut human level to try to live and survive when no one you know gives a sh*t whether people like you live or die, have a place to live, enough to eat, clothes on your back, etc.  The effects this produces on human bodies - not just hearts, minds, spirit - is drastic and dire - and not only for individuals but for the communities and society as a whole.

To understand why this is, consider the human survival response.  This response is not abnormal, it is not a pathology.  It is the universal, self-protective reaction that comes up in all of us when, in our lives, we are pushed too far:


  • When the stakes are high and the options low.  
  • When threat, fear and pain reach the breaking point. 
  • When there doesn't seem to be a peaceable or friendly way out.


Human beings in this space become hyper-focused on threat.    Our singular focus is to limit damage and make it go away.  Until this happens, we stay continually on guard.   Defending against potential loss is paramount and all-consuming.

We don't eat, don't sleep and don't get good rest or good nutrition when we do. Energy and resources shift from brain to brawn.  New learning is next to impossible.  Mental and psychological development become nil.

Thinking, when it does occur, is binary and reductive.  This is the place of live or die.  Conscious thought stops and sheer instinct takes over.  Even in human beings who might otherwise think about consequences.  Even in citizens, friends and neighbors who might otherwise be inspired to care.

It is a desperate place where reasonable people can no longer think and compassionate people no longer care. What matters here is self-preservation.  The choices that follow reflect this concern.

The world through this lens looks incredibly simple:  Friend or foe.  Predator or prey.  You are actively for me, or else against me.  If you want to live, make up your mind.  Declare your loyalties now.

Imagine living here for a lifetime, getting no relief.  Ever.  Because for some of us, it has always been this way.  There is no other awareness, because there never has been another way to think or be.

That is the social justice state of America for far too many Americans today.

4. This is where the violence becomes predictable. 


Violence in these circumstances is a matter of statistics and odds.  It is no longer a matter of individual morality of self-discipline.  It is not about bad actors who need to learn how to calm down and 'act appropriately.'

To the contrary, to navigate this frightening space -  nature, in her wisdom and kindness - gives us three basic tools: fight/ flight/ freeze.  A lot of people flight or freeze.  They run, they hide, avoid, distract, do anything, by any means available. The urgent point is to escape the threat, its consequences, or even the awareness of being threatened.

Those of us who react this way tend to stay under the radar.  Out of sight, out of mind.  We don't come to much concern unless our passivity causes others to have to pick up the slack.  In the face of conflict, we are the ones who disappear. We live to see another day. Passive in the face of even the most egregious abuses of power, we tend to be preferred by the dominant social order.

On the other hand, flight and freeze have their limits.  In a social world of flighters and freezers, nothing ever changes.  There is no effective counter-voice.  The powerful take more power.  The rich get richer.  The compliant become more pliable and plied.

Thankfully, however, flight and freeze are not all we have as a human race.  Some of us will fight.  Even when threats do not seem immediate to others.  Even when, for others, these are are not matters of life and death.

This is not pathology, it is human diversity.  It is good and necessary.  It ensures not only the survival of the human species, but also protects the quality of our collective lives together.

While few people recognize this, the existence of social fighters keeps the rest of us safe and able to sleep at night.  We count on them and we need them.  They virtually assure the following:  When things get bad enough - or stay that way for long enough - some fighter, somewhere, is going to break the tension.  They are not going to run or hide.  They are going to face the facts and take the problem on.  

Hence, far from being a frustrating, inappropriate burden on the rest of humanity, the human 'fight' response - and those who wield it - serve a valuable, necessary social function.

5. Crisis meets 'opportunity'.


Given natural human diversity, the overall incidence of the human fight response and its the underlying social function, the occurrence of violence is a predictable statistical given.  When you push enough human beings far enough for long enough, some fighter, somewhere is going to speak up, rise up, take the problem on.

And that is exactly what social dynamics like marginalization, exclusion and oppression guarantee.   Yes, there will be flighters and freezers who make it appear that the circumstances are tolerable to those in the subjected class.  But those of us who are fighters will be worthy of our name.  Even if it's life or death.  Even if we take everyone, everything, the whole world down with us.

For better or worse (and, by all appearances, evolution and natural selection has voted that it is for the better) that is the nature of the human fight response.  Rather than retreat, those of us who are fighters will go after, take on, the very things that scare us.   So, for as long as oppression and marginalization exist, you can bet your bottom dollar, that somehow, somewhere a fighter will rise up and attempt to tell the listening world, by any means necessary:

 This is wrong!   The damage is far from negligible, the treatment far from enjoyable and the deference seemingly being expressed is in fact a bald-facecd lie.  

We are the 'lone wolves' of modern society.  We are doing what fighters do.  Consistently.  Across marginalized groups.  We are standing alone and taking on the threat.   Because someone has to.  And because the gentle, more conciliatory spirits - those of our kin who are the flighters and freezers  - have totally ceded the field.

For this reason  - and this is really important for the dominant culture to get:

You can't stop violence by marginalizing human beings.  You have to grapple with the shadow side of humanity.  You have to find a way to understand, transform and meaningfully include the human differences you most fear.  The more you reject about human beings, the more you violence you are likely to get.  The fighters and fight instinct inherent in our kind will ensure that no important aspect of our humanity gets left behind. 

6.  Force and drugging away differences is not the answer


Once you understand these things, the problem with force and coercive approaches becomes pretty clear.  Force, by nature is threatening.  It scares people and also increases marginalization.  Factor these things into the equation, along with the predictable, statistical fact of the human fight response. The result is a never-ending, forever-escalating cycle of exclusion-related trauma and the predictably reactive survival responses that pretty much explain how we have gotten to where we are with these issues in the world today.

I also want to say a word about drugs.  Many, many people I know have said to me that drugs cause, not alleviate violence.  What makes sense to me is that drugs-based approaches are dangerous.  They introduce a new, potentially destabilizing variable into a situation that is already precarious and fraught with potential danger.  At a minimum, the effects of drugs are unpredictable.  They diminish the mental resources available to make meaningful human connections and can actually cause the very harms they are intended to alleviate.  Moreover, the social judgments inherent in prescription (who gets drugged and who doesn't) exacerbate social differences and solidify, rather than heal, relational disparities between human beings.

Given the context and history of social exclusion, by far the safest response is to try to make a human connection.  More than anything else, what has has worked the most for me is to reach out, to risk, to share vulnerability --  to try to bridge the gap, to put our hearts and hope on the line and be willing to 'identify in' as they say in 12-Step circles.  This kind of self-sacrifice - of laying down power and privilege, of leveling the social playing field between human beings - is the place where miracles can happen (openings, insight, breakthoughs that go both ways).

That, in effect, was the solution proposed more than 7 decades ago by a world community still reeling from Nazi genocide, the atom bomb and World War II.  In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the peoples of the world proposed a simple, effective recipe for not only international - but also individual and community - well-being and peaceful relations.  They melded the personal and the political.  They proclaimed in unison at that time that the solution to our common problems was NOT surveillance, scapegoating, retribution or curtailing human liberties for the presumed majority good.  Rather, they declared with courage, in effect:
  • We are all members of a human family and should treat each other that way.
  • We are equal, everyone everywhere, in dignity and rights.
  • We are all endowed - intrinsic to our nature as human beings - with reason and conscience.  
  • Everyone, everywhere needs access to the means to make a living and support a family.
  • Everyone, everywhere has a voice and perspective that deserves the respect of our neighbors and inclusion in the communities where we work and live.
  • Our problem is fear, want and the social injustices and power abuses that prevent us from treating each other this way.  
  • The solution to our common problems - and the highest aspiration of our humanity - is to create a world where these simple rights and freedoms are accessible to all people, everywhere as equal valued members of a human family. 
In other words, it's a lot simpler, more staight-forward than you think.  You don't need an MD, a mental health license, or a degree in neuroscience to understand these problems or make an impact. You just need awareness of your own humanity.  You need to access your human decency and be willing to offer it to others.

It is not easy, it is not risk free. But it is worthy of the human spirit and the world we all are saying we want to live in.

I'm in.  How about you?

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Lived Experience Must Get A Fair Hearing

As we speak, Congress is considering sweeping legislation on public mental health policy.  (The Murphy Bill, HR 2646) Yet, to date, there has been no sincere effort to invite and seek to understand the worldviews of those of us with lived experience. At the very least - and regardless of what ultimately is decided - Congress has no business making any decisions about federal mental health policy until it hears from us. We are the citizens who are going to be the most affected by whatever policies they enact. We are going to personally suffer - or watch people and causes we have given our lives to suffer - if the politicians in Washington get it wrong.

Equally important, we are the only source of truly first-hand, insider information as to what might work and what probably won't. We are the ones with the actual skin in - who are living these issues, putting our heart and souls into finding solutions for these issues, and doing this work on the ground every day. Not just because we care, but because our lives and survival depend on it. We therefore are uniquely qualified to offer meaningful opinions - and to speak - with the full benefit of hindsight based on our own actual lived experience. There is no one else who knows better than us what has engaged and what will offend, what will save lives, promote resilience and make genuine well-being possible. Similarly, no one knows better than our community what approaches will hinder, cause harm, and only lead to more wasted dollars, effort, suffering and death.

In any political system worthy of the name democracy - and as a national body that dares to hold itself out as 'representative' - Congress simply has no business deciding national mental health policy without hearing from the peer community. That they would presume to do so - and without the slightest consciousness that our voices have been omitted - just goes to show how deeply ingrained the prejudice and social exclusion of our people has become.

So here's the basic message:
Before Congress makes any decisions about mental health policy, those of us who have lived with or survived a mental health label want real hearings.  Our voice must be heard. Congress must hold fair hearings.  Our elected representatives must actively invite and include our lived experience, views and expertise in the conversation. Anything less violates fundamental fairness and is terrible public policy.
Hearing from people with lived experience is critical not just in terms of literal message.  It is essential to correct the harmful public image that politicians and the media have propagated about our people.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people with lived experience around the country who are capable of testifying for our cause in a cogent, respectful articulate matter. It is critical to our cause not only for Congress and the media - but for the entire American public - to see this. Right now, the only images the public sees - ostensibly representing us - are what the news media feeds them of another mass shooting and the political speeches vilifying us that inevitably follow.  This may get votes.  It may sell advertising.  But it has nothing to do with who we are, what we stand for, or what we want as American citizens or human beings.  Shame, shame, shame on a nation that would decide the fate - and effectively act to segregate - of body of people it has never bothered to get to know.

Monday, June 20, 2016

How is Locking People Up Healing?

A message from the New Hampshire State Hospital from Dr. Alana Raqael Nancy May Hodgkins, Psy.D., LADC, sister, daughter, aunt and mother-to-be, woman, every woman and person who has being held against their will.  I am writing from where I have been held against my will since Tues 6/14.  

UPDATE:  7/20/16 - Alana Raqael was released from the New Hampshire hospital late last month.  She reports ongoing discrimination and maltreatment back in Vermont, including in with the housing run by her local mental health organization.  An related article about her ER experience was recently published in Counterpoint, a quarterly newspaper of Vermont Psychiatric Survivors

This is Nancy Raquels story from June 2016: 


Here are some questions I have for people of conscience everywhere:  
  • How is it in our culture we believe that locking people up is healing?  
  • Why do we believe that normal attempts to cope with trauma constitute a mental illness?
  • Why as a society do we think it is therapeutic to medicalize and dehumanize people who are going through hard times?
It's time for a change that utilizes courage and hope and builds on resilience, not fear. 

If I, a doctor, can almost lose her life, her sense of hope, her daughter, her home, her beloved dog, and most importantly faith in the present and future, and if this can happen to me it can happen to all of us.  I have had several experiences that I'd like to share within the past month.  I feel betrayed by my psychiatrist. Despite her long-standing and highly public support of mental health alternatives, my psychiatrist had me declared mentally ill and in need of care and commitment. 
As a consequence, I spent 9 days in the ER, where both my wrists were sprained - one by a guard, the other by a female nurse. I was lying in my bed quietly trying to eat my meal when the latter became enraged upon discovering that I had been trying to dial out the CEO of the hospital.  She ordered a restraint, while I was lying there quietly eating.  Six people surrounded me and four-pointed me to the bed.  I started screaming and then choked on my food.  Somebody said "she's choking', and the food came out of my mouth because I was coughing.  

The female nurse then accused me of spitting, so they put a hood over my face and covered my mouth.  I started hyperventilating from the fear and couldn't breath.  When I told them I couldn't breath, they said coldly, "yes you can.'    They ripped off my Pandora bracelet without unclasping it, causing a deep bruise.  They removed my wrist guard causing another sprain.  They told me to stop crying, which was ridiculous because they were traumatizing me.  They injected me with something that eventually knocked me out. 

I got disability rights involved and they advocated for me to go to Rutland.  The psychiatrist in Rutland wanted to release me because he didn't believe I was a danger to myself or others.  I told him to check with my former doctor because I was afraid that if he released me without her consent, she would simply have me readmitted.  The Rutland psychiatrist then called my former psychiatrist who said, in effect, "Yes, if you let her out, I'm just going to put her back in." 

We then shifted a previously scheduled an 'Open Dialogue' meeting where everyone involved could talk from Burlington to Rutland.  However, at the appointed time, neither of my doctors from Rutland showed up.  I was afraid to go into the meeting and face my former psychiatrist without their support, so I set off the hospital alarms in an effort to call attention to the matter.  When the call finally did occur, my former psychiatrist dominated the entire meeting, leaving little time or space for input from anyone else.  She declared me mentally ill and in need of services I didn't need.  She totally overlooked and ignored my real and stated needs.

I've been at the State Hospital in New Hampshire since last Tuesday. I already have a 5 inch long bruise on my upper leg. I've been force-medicated and had my wrist sprained in what they call a 'personal safety emergency', after which they locked me in a concrete block of a room with no stimulation.

I am not sure how they ever thought there was an emergency. I am not a danger to myself or others. I am not aggressive. My only actions have been to protect myself from the aggression of others.

I've had 2 'personal safety emergencies' already since getting here. Because of that, they've restricted my privileges and I can't go outside.

How am I supposed to heal in these circumstances. How is anyone? What about the Hippocratic oath of the medical profession of doing no harm ? What about helping people heal with courage, hope and faith?

It does not help when I am distressed to be locked up, secluded, restrained, force-medicated, or cut off from the human race. What I need to heal is meaningful contact with other people. I need people's courage, hope, faith and support. I need friends and family and caregivers just showing up in whatever way they can. It could be a card, a dog, an inspirational quote, sending chocolates.

Despite all of this, I am not giving up. My artistic side is coming out here. I dance, I draw, I write poetry. When they lock me up in isolation, I draw words and images of courage, hope and love on the walls. Likewise, for others in this kind of situation, I encourage artistic expression, music, art, dance, whatever helps you heal.

This song inspires and expresses my spirit: Fight Song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo1VInw-SKc

I need us all as a community to take a defiant stance against locking people up and force medicating them as part of a healing process.

I also need your support, your good will and your solidarity here in order to survive. Peace to all. Please send chocolate, support, visit, call. If anyone has a IPOD they could donate to the hospital so we could listen to music, we need that here too.

My contact information is below:

Address:  NH Hospital, APS Building - Unit D, 36 Clinton St., Concord NH 03301


Please contact Anne Donahue with any stories on ER experiences.   She's doing an expose for the Counterpointthe newsletter in Vermont for psychiatric survivors, http://www.vermontpsychiatricsurvivors.org/counterpoint/.   

Other helpful numbers you may want to call on my behalf are: 
Please pass this on. I want this to hit the world - because if it's happening to me in little towns in New Hampshire - or in a supposedly liberal and progressive place like Burlington Vermont, it can happen everywhere. I know together we can all make a difference.

I'd like to end here with a quote that means a lot to me, that I wish the so-called healing professions would take to heart:
"What keeps relationships together is not what we have in common, it is the ability to tolerate, accept and embrace our differences."

In peace and solidarity,

Dr. Alana Raqael Nancy May Hodgkins, Psy.D., LADC, sister, daughter, aunt and mother-to-be

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Lessons I Learned From My Dad About Family

My Dad was gentle, faithful, kind.  I never had to worry about food or shelter because he had a good job and showed up for it every day.  He was a good teacher, and seemed to enjoy spending time with me.  I got the sense he believed in me and really liked me.

I largely took him for granted.  I was 30 before I began to realize the advantages that came to me in life because of his efforts.  Together with my mom, my father managed to create a sense of emotional, material and moral safety that, for me, went practically unquestioned during my formative, vulnerable years.

At the same time, the cost was not free.  He paid a price for his efforts – both in our family and in life at large.  He was long gone by the time I began to even guess at burdens he probably silently bore.

My dad was a local pediatrician.  He no doubt saw the challenges – frustration, distress, poverty, outright abuse – that families faced every day in the office.  He must have seen the unhappy kids, the overwhelmed parents, the failures to thrive, the bruises and the broken bones.

At the same time, our family wasn’t very socially conscious.  We tended to buy the dominant culture line that America was a level playing field.  At the supper table, nightly, we’d review the script:

We are lucky to be American.  We live in a land of opportunity. There are no limits to what you can achieve if you are motivated.  Everyone here has a fair chance. The only people who don’t succeed are those who don’t try. 

I learned to try very hard.  My family joked that I was ‘the little engine that could’.  It was my favorite story growing up.  I believed nothing was impossible.  You just had to work at it.
At first, my trying led to success.  Good grades, good performance, athletic and intellectual achievement.  By middle school I was studying 3 ½ hours a night.  In high school, I ran 6-12 miles a day.

At some point, however, trying turned on me.  I got obsessed with diet and body image.  Blew out my knees.  Burned the midnight oil for perfect grades.  Worried constantly about dying, being forgotten, not leaving enough of a legacy.

When my body and mind broke down, the only tool in my tool box was to ‘try harder’.  It didn’t work.  The vicious cycle wore me out.  The downward spiral was devastating.  Something in me broke that I have never really managed to recover from.

I think the vicious cycle wore my dad out too.  I don’t think he could keep up the illusion any more than I could.  In contrast to my childhood memories of an active, engaged man with an ever present – albeit a little sad – smile, the father of my adulthood was mostly withdrawn.  He didn’t talk much.  He still showed up, worked hard.  But in his free time, alcohol and TV sports seemed to have more appeal than human beings.  He voted from the couch.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about this.  How the spirit died in both of us.  My best guess is that we never quite recovered from the death of a dream.  We thought if you worked hard, tried hard, it would all work out.  It would come back to you.  All that hard effort would be rewarded and somehow create the feeling of being ‘enough’.

I don’t think it was any failing of my Dad’s – and possibly not mine either – that things didn’t work out that way.  I think there are a lot of American’s in the same boat.  And I think we are losing a lot of good people.  Fathers, daughters, mothers and sons.  People in every city and town who are willing to work hard, try hard.  Good people who would give everything they had if they knew, really knew, that their energy would come to something they felt mattered.  Or even better, would that gave back to them even a fraction of what they had tried to put in.

The problem  – from my perspective – is that we’re in deeper than that as a human race right now. We’ve been taught to put our energy in the wrong direction, so we are pissing it away.   The stuff we really want and need – the stuff that is worthy enough of our spirits to light the flame and keep the fire - actually has little to do with the material or social status we’ve been programmed to give our all for.  To be sure, those are things that make modern existence comfortable, arguably even possible. However, for so many of us I suspect, they aren’t the actual thing that makes it worthwhile.

What we’re looking for is something far more simple, basic than that.  We’re looking for family. Real family.  As contrasted with commodity.  The kind of human relationships where you’re not just a means to an end.  You’re not a just replaceable entity someone else plugs into their agenda for an 8-10 hour day.  You’re more than a way to produce pleasure or profit for someone else’s self-interest -- or even their version of the greater good.

To me, that kind of family – whether by blood or by choice  - means more than just material survival and physical safety.  We get to discover who we are.  We learn to see the world through each other’s eyes.  We care about each other insights, visions, dreams.  We lend our support and resources to the human being that each of us wants to become.  We hold each other’s secrets – or better yet make it safe to tell them – because we hold each other in our hearts in such a loving way.

I’m a lot luckier than many.  Despite our trials, my family of origin has continued to grow together. We’re really different people, which has cut both ways.  Our natural diversity has been the source of a lot of richness and creative possibility.  But it’s also required a lot of listening, learning and hard work all around to understand and navigate our various preferences, priorities and needs.  At the most difficult junctures it was really tempting to blame, shame or hide from the discomfort and each other. But to our credit, each of us has shown up for the task in our own way.

On the other side, it’s been way worth it.  We know and support each other as people, which is priceless gift to both give and receive.  

My Dad died almost 20 years ago.  I still talk with him a lot.  I my deepest darkest hours, I can still see him looking at me with love and affection.  I hope he still believes in me.  For my part, I hope I can contribute to this world in some way that’s worthy of his efforts and the vision of family he helped to inspire.

Friday, June 17, 2016

Have You Noticed the Two Americas in Mental Health?

In a 1967 speech at Stanford University, Martin Luther King described Two Americas.  While King was talking about the Two Americas of race and poverty, the operative dynamics of prejudice and oppression in mental health appear to be pretty much the same. 


As a case in point, there recently has been a lot of talk about the need for national policy and standards on mental health. Bills drafted, committee hearings, etc. So far, so good.  Yes, we all need to feel safer, healthier and more connected to ourselves and each other.  Undoubtedly, we have to find a way to stop violence and terrorism.  We also clearly need to address the trauma, exclusion, fear, confusion and desperation that so many Americans are facing, and which many of us think generates and perpetuates the very violence we fear.

On the other hand, en route to a solution, politicians and mental health experts would have us believing that there are two kinds of Americans.  One kind of American is 'normal' - rational, hard-working, well-intentioned. Such Americans have respectable values, make meaningful contributions and consider the impact of their actions on others.  They are knowledgeable of life and the task of living. They are capable of weighing costs and benefits, learning from experience and making socially responsible decisions.

Those who live in this 'normal' America are seen as deserving of freedom and capable of handling it. They have a right explore options, think for themselves, accept or reject expert advice. Their decisions in matters of reason, conscience and personal preference are respected.

Government in this America is seen as a servant of the people.  Assistance, if any, is voluntary. Support, if any, is taxpayer-oriented and consumer-driven. The importance of listening to what people want and need is understood.  The right to refuse is a given.

Pretty much everyone wants to live in this America.   It is a model for mutually respectful human relations that inspires and begets more of the same.

There is another America, however, where the rules are totally different.  Citizens are herded into this other America based on a perceived need for mental health treatment.  We are seen as incapable of surviving safely in a free society or as lacking the capacity for socially responsible decision-making.

Once there, normal legal protections are thrown out the window.  Authorities decide what is best for us. Rights and freedoms are stripped away based on institutional opinion.  Compliance is expected. Normal appeals to reason and human decency do not apply. Resistance, disagreement, honest statements of discontent are met with the show of force. We are locked up, drugged, secluded, restrained, electro-shocked, operated on against our will.

Decisions - even minor ones like what to eat, when to go to bed, what to watch on TV, what to wear, whether we can write an email, see our kids or give a friend a hug - are made by those 'in charge.' The fate of our lives - where we live, who we live with, whether we can parent, work or communicate with the outside world -  is decided not based on personal attributes, interest or effort, but by other people's opinions of our merit and worth, rendered behind closed doors, about us without us.

Almost no one wants to live in this other America.  For many of us, it the anti-thesis of America.  It is a nightmare, a hell on earth. It brings out the worst in human beings and perpetuates the very negative outcomes that mental health services are supposedly funded to cure. The natural human desire to escape such controlling surveillance is what inspired the American dream of freedom in the first place.

Yet, the federal government is now considering a law that despite its friendly name ("The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, HR 2646) would reify these two Americas.  In terms of parity with other social justice issues, the proposed mental health legislation is tantamount to Congress passing a law saying, 'Yes, we believe poor people or nonwhites should live in segregation.  That is all they are capable of.  We are washing our hands of them. They are a different class of human, not worthy of the rights and dignity that others enjoy. The best our society has to offer - and the only option we will offer in the face of outcomes we don't like and pain we don't want to experience - is coercion and control.

As fellow human beings, it is up to us to consider these issues and make principled choices.  As always, freedom is not free.  Perhaps, as a nation, we are no longer willing to do the work we need to do as a people to stay a free society. Perhaps we are just too tired, too demoralized and too burned out to deal with it any longer.  Perhaps the dream is dead, and the time really has come to cede our free will and moral responsibility to the institutions, experts, the pills, procedures and coercive strategies that are being billed to us - individually and collectively - as the only option.

If so, let's admit to informed consent and be honest about it.  Here we go, here's the statement, in blaring, shameless, bold-faced print:

We the Normal Majority of the United States of America hereby decide that honoring the human and civil rights of citizens labeled by psychiatry is either not practical or just too much effort. Accordingly, henceforth, we abrogate their personhood and agree that it is ok to deal with them in any way that will make the rest of us feel better off.  It's all we have the energy or national will to do.   If that's you, tough luck.
That was the Nazi solution.  That was the thinking that justified slavery.  Essentially, it's ok to sacrifice the rights of some groups so that other groups will be better off.  

However, if that seem untenable to you, as it does to me: LET'S FIGURE OUT A WAY TO KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE.  There has to be one.  Do you - or anyone you know - really want to settle for the kind of world we've been creating...?

That's the purpose of this blog.  For my part, I'll come here every day, search my conscience, and try to write something meaningful that seems to me to be part of a solution.  If this inspires you please join in.  

Also, if you like you can join us nightly for a living conversation at the Peerly Human conference line. Dial 331-205-7196 or click uberconference.com/peerlyhuman.   This is a space is committed to finding and offering accessible, meaningful, coercion-free alternatives to the mental health system as usual.  Our hope is to create a living, vibrant online community that feels like human family, advances human rights and is there for anyone in need.  We're a long way off from that, but little by little we can get there.  Our current schedule of calls and topics is here:  http://right2bu.blogspot.com/2015/11/virtual-drop-in-crisis-respite-weekly.html