I Am Giving Up….. I Admit Defeat, I Have Failed

English: Angelina Jolie at the Cannes Film festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

His last girlfriend was a bipolar as well, but he met her when she was manic and at her most charming. I was neither manic nor depressed when he met me. I was surfing a gentle sine wave. I was riding my bike every day, swimming in the pool for the rest of the afternoon, I had a life that I had carved out for myself with a lot of hard work and introspection. I had friends. Good friends that I now do not have. I do not know if this is the illness biting me in the ass, or if her has me so isolated from every one that people just stopped coming around.

He judges me on a daily basis. Because he is arrogant enough to point out that women/girls in big cities take the time to fix their hair just so, and make their lips look like Angelina Jolie after a collagen injection. I do not want to look like that. I want to look like me, just enhanced. I do not want to look like Mick Jagger. But, he says that is what turns him on (thank you Internet porn for warping my husband.) It didn’t used to be an issue. But, I still continue to be held to standards of female beauty that I just do not agree with. I have achieved a compromise with the all important lip liner. I just have to say that if he expects me to try to turn him on, he needs to bathe more than once a month. Why should I bother trying to be a porno slut if he can’t even keep his hygiene under control? That turns me off, completely.

I have hit the point where I really do not care if I turn him on or not. I am comfortable with the way I look. At the risk  of sounding vain, I am not an unattractive woman. I know for a fact that I am beautiful. Both inside and out. Besides, having sex with him after nearly three months is going to feel like a one night stand. He’ll get up and go sleep on the couch, and I will fall asleep in the bed. It has been this way for months. He just refuses to sleep in the same bed with me. Oh well, benefit for me. I have less back pain than I did before  🙂 I can just feel my self losing faith in what is supposed to be a partnership, and a loving marriage. Granted, I can understand his position. He has inherited my anger and volatile temper along with a whole lot of hurt from life, in general. And, yes, I do lash out at him even though he has nothing to do with past issues, but the Internet Porn is all his doing. That is something he has done all on his own, and it has changed him from the man I used to know. He continues to view it for hours on end even though he knows that it hurts me and that I do not like it.

What happened to quid pro qou? He gives up some of the time he spends with the porn sluts, and keeps his hygiene up, and he might see a change in my attitude. but, as it stands now, nothing is going to change. i cannot change him, I can only change myself. And, he may not like that new self.  I am half inclined to go with my mom today to file divorce papers today. I have rarely admitted defeat before I try to succeed, but this marriage seems hopeless. I am the only one who has to change, I am the only one causing problems between us (ummm, hello, hours on the Internet looking at other naked women, and watching them do anything; that one’s on him.) It just isn’t going to work between us. He is a big city guy stuck in a Southwestern “town” (never mind that there are 750,000 people living here.) I am never going to be able to be what he has decided he likes women to look like. I am who I am, and I am what I am. I have no apologies for that, I do not regret anything that I have done or has transpired to make me who I am. What I think is sad is that none of this had to happen. He could have stopped the porn stuff, and he could have been less adamant that I look like a big city girl. I am not from a big city, and therefore, I do take care with my makeup, but I have never had anyone with such an adamant and unwavering attitude that I must look like the big city women. I am fine with the way I look. Other men seem appreciative. He’s the only one who is dissatisfied with the way I look. And that argument is part of a larger whole of dysfunction in this relationship. it really isn’t about lipliner, it is about appreciation, and he might get what he wants if he would just bathe more often. This whole argument is about two people not wanting to do what it takes to make this work.

I am not the only one who has to change, he has his own issues that he should be working on, not focusing on my mental health issues. He says that I spend all my time thinking about my “illness,” I can guarantee you that he spends far more time on it than I do. Having Bipolar Disorder has just become part of my life; he’s the one who is hung up on it, and mentions nearly every day. And using lip liner is not going to help. As I said before, why should I bother when his basic hygiene is so bad? Why should I turn myself into one of his “fantasy” women if he won’t keep himself clean? I am giving up. I admit defeat. I admit that this failed because I was too defensive, too abrasive, and not enough of a whole lot of other things. I just cannot do this anymore. This argument is about respect, and compassion/appreciation for the other party. I have tried. I have failed.

What On Earth Is Wrong With Some People? (Warning: This Post Is Very Angry And Graphic)

Federally-supported gun violence intervention program (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By now, most people in the country have heard about the horrible school shooting in Connecticut. I just cannot help but wonder (pardon my french) WTF?!?!?! An elementary school with children aged 5-9 years. This mass shooting phenomenon seems to isolated to the United States, and before anyone pulls out the old, worn out, and tired arguments of the NRA, let me say, Stop. Just Stop. Before You say something stupid like people kill people, not guns. Guess what? People with guns kill people. It is not hand to hand combat; it is some psychotic individual who has acquired a weapon either legally or illegally that is the “people” they are talking about. Sure, guns are just pieces of metal when unloaded, but loaded, they become something else altogether. Do we really want people who are psychotic and delusional to have access to these weapons? NO!!!!!

I cannot become a police officer in my city because of my Bipolar I diagnosis. The reason being is that I would not be allowed by City and, perhaps, State law to carry a firearm. That just makes rational sense. I have Bipolar I with Psychotic Tendencies as well as PTSD. People do not want people like me to be able to carry firearms. I have had psychotic episodes where I could not perceive reality as it was, I could only perceive it the way my chemically debilitated and saturated brain would allow me too. I can become violent when in these states, the PTSD does not help either. I am a paranoid person sometimes, and I break from reality during these paranoid events. There is a reason why I do not own any firearms. There is a reason why many people should not own firearms or even have access to them. Some people are mentally unbalanced, they are off their meds, they have no diagnosis and they flip out for the first time, and this is the result.

The biggest shame is that most of these mass murderers commit suicide after doing great bodily harm and emotional damage to others. They are never prosecuted for their crime against not just our society but all of humanity. So, for all you 2nd amendment supporters, just stop and think about what has happened due to your adamant campaigns to keep guns available to the public. Children, not adults that have some life lived behind them, but, children who had nothing but life ahead of them. Do NOT pull out the old, tired, erroneous, and fallacious arguments about “people kill people, guns don’t kill people.” Yes, they do. If you really have an urge to wreak some havoc, virtually any person in this country can wait the five days to get the weapon, and then proceed to use it against people. That is people killing people WITH a gun. Without the gun, people do not die. Children are not gunned down at school. And, do NOT pull out the argument about an unarmed citizenry is at a disadvantage to an armed government. Because, frankly, a hell of a lot of people do NOT own a firearm, and even if you do, do you really think you could take on the Army, the Marines, the National Guard? Militias may be great in number, but they certainly do NOT represent the average, thinking citizen. If the government wants to go after us, they will, and they will have greater firepower than any militia or group of survivalists. So, that argument holds no water. None of the NRA’s arguments hold water. How many people have to die because of gun violence before they get the point?

If you really just absolutely have to harm someone, choose a personal method so you have to look your victim in the face while you are killing him/her. Stab them, strangle them, bludgeon them with a baseball bat or a brick wrapped in a towel. Then, at least, you have had to exert yourself. And, it is personal, not the impersonal killing that comes with gun violence. You do not have to touch a person to kill with a gun, you do not have to see their face as they die, you do not feel their life slipping away (yes, I know this is morbid train of thought); you can kill people from your car shooting into a house. Just ask the people that live in the inner cities, whose children are in gangs, whose children choose an “easy” life of violence over the more difficult path of pulling one’s self up and out.

It seems that it is only when this happens in mainstream America that gun violence hits the news. Yes, it is terribly sad and horrifying how many children died, but there are people, children and teens who grow up feeling lucky to just get home from the store without getting shot by either a stray bullet or the bullet from a rival gang member’s gun. There are children being buried every day due to the accessibility to guns of all types. My city has a large gang problem, and a few years ago, a three year old girl was killed by a bullet meant for her brother who was an active gang member. They have stopped reporting gang violence here because it is simply so common that it is no longer news. But, mothers and fathers are burying their children every day around the United States because of the availability of illegal firearms, and their willingness to use them. 

Why does it take a largely middle class, (please do not take this wrong) white school shooting to bring this violence to light? What about the nameless victims that fall to gang violence every day in the inner cities, and in the barrios? Why are they not mentioned? Is it because they are poor minorities, and therefore their lives are worth less than a middle class white citizen? I used to support the 2nd amendment, and believed that an armed citizenry would protect us against our government if revolution were to happen. Now I wonder: Who is going to protect us from each other? Yes people kill people, but people kill people using guns. I just honestly have to ask WTF?

I Hate Having Bipolar Disorder

Rethink Mental Illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I would like another diagnosis, please. I absolutely hate having manic depression. I never know how I am going to feel when I wake up in the morning. Some days I just want to stay in bed for days. I forget to bathe, wash my hair, and the thought of even attempting household chores is overwhelming. I never know when I am going to say something hurtful, or inappropriate given the nature of the situation. I feel as if I overreact to simple problems. Quite frankly, this illness scares me. I never know when an episode, either manic or, more often, depressive is going to occur. I am usually well into the episode before I recognize it for what it is.  

I think too much about how my emotions would go away if I were just able to build up the cowardice to end my life. But, I can’t do that. I have seen firsthand the effects that death by suicide cause in a family. When I was about 25, my then fiance’s sister committed suicide. The family was never the same. Everyone blamed someone else for not recognizing the warning signs. They were all there, mental illness, anorexia, alcoholism. But none the less, her father blamed her mother, her mother secretly blamed herself, her brother blamed both his parents and his dead sister. Everyone felt guilty that they hadn’t been able to stop her, but she had taken all the pills she took in the early morning while she was drunk and everyone was asleep. She said nothing until around noon, and by then it was too late, her mother and I took her to the nearest ER, and she couldn’t walk, stand alone, or function. She could not breathe on her own and was put on a respirator. She died around 8:30 that night when the aspirin she took finally stopped her heart. So, that option is a non-option even with the issues I have had as of late. 

So, yes, I would like a new diagnosis. This bipolar thing does not work for me. It makes me angry that I am set apart from so-called normal people just because my emotions fluctuate differently, and often, irrationally. It makes me sad because I used to be so functional, or so I thought. I probably was just stuck in delusion of efficacy in my life. Now, I have to have structure in my life: sleep at the same time every night, regular feedings, stable people (who can tolerate me). I have to be able to tolerate myself. When I was a teenager, it was much easier, I could chalk the mood swings up to hormonal changes. Now, I have no excuse. I have been labeled mentally ill, and it is up to me to manage my illness.

Being labeled pisses me off too. It is not like am Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: then I would have a completely different label. Honestly the whole thing about being labeled mentally ill just creates a bunch of misconceptions: you have to walk on eggshells around me (no you don’t, just give it to me straight,  am going to like or dislike what you say regardless of bipolar), everything I do stems from illness (no, it does not. Sometimes I am happy or sad or angry or whatever because that is how I am feeling at the moment), the illness runs my life (no, it does not normally run my life except when I am experiencing an episode). So may misconceptions. They make me angry, sad that people shy away from me, lonely, feeling abandoned, neglected, and truly unwanted.

Having a “mental” illness is so much different than having a “physical” illness like heart disease, or renal failure. For some reason people are less afraid of people suffering with medical problems. But, often, mental illness is medical and lies in a chemical imbalance in the brain. Once the right combinations of medications are found, and the person afflicted has a good therapist, and, in my opinion, a firm grounding in a faith that suits them, symptoms often fade and do not recur as often.

I sincerely believe that the “de-institutionalization” movement that started in the 1960’s has had an extremely deleterious effect on how people with mental illnesses are

The Madhouse (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

treated and viewed by society. Many of those who were completely stable in the rigidly regulated hospital environment were released to promised community mental health clinics. In most cases, these clinics were never built, so many psychotic people or people predisposed to psychosis were released on to the streets of the communities near the hospitals. They were not being treated at community clinics, and the wonder drug, Thorazine, was proving to be less than wonderful. It made the patient sluggish and had horrible side effects. So, people stopped taking it, and within days were psychotic again. Now that they are psychotic, and out of touch with the reality of their illness, are they going to know to seek treatment? No, because to them, their world is reality. So, they remain psychotic. Many state laws makes it impossible to involuntarily commit a mentally ill person, they have the right to refuse treatment. As a result, when many people think of mental illness, they think of the people who are homeless, and walk around having conversations with themselves (or they could be on their bluetooth, it is hard to distinguish these days 🙂 ).

Any way, enough of my ranting and raving over the state of affairs for the mentally ill in this culture. I do that on a regular basis. But it just seems to me that we, as a culture, are afraid of the term “mental illness,” when in fact when properly treated, most people can live productive lives. This is not to say that symptoms can’t  arise, usually as a result of stress, and wreak some havoc. But, for the treated individual, this is far less likely to happen. most people know someone who has a mental illness, and is probably hiding it to avoid the stigma that goes with the label. It is the costume of normalcy that we are forced to wear, and I for one, can’t stand that. I have Manic Depression and that is what I have to deal with daily. I really wish more people would come out of their normalcy suits, and tell the world they have a mental illness, but this is who I really am. I am not my illness. My illness is just one part of me and who I am. Then, stigma would begin to reduce as more and more “normal” people realize they know someone with a mental illness. There are millions of us.

Another Rant About How the Mentally Ill Are Treated in This Country

Prison 2 (Photo credit: planetschwa)

I recently finished a memoir entitled Manic: A Memoir written by a woman named Terrie Cheney. Her experience with mental illness, manic depression to be specific, landed her in jail where she was denied her phone call to her attorney for almost 6 hours, was denied access to her medication (which she carried with her), and she was starting to cycle into full blown mania. So, they kept her locked in a cell for several hours at a time, and finally moved her to a “private” holding cell because she was so disruptive. While in jail, she was badly beaten by a female guard who was trying to “subdue” her, however, she was attempting to subdue her with a nightstick.  She was in jail for 14 hours growing more and more manic with each hour. She asked for her meds, they wouldn’t give them to her, they gave her sporadic access to the phone, and basically, treated her as if she were on something. If they had payed any attention at all, they would’ve realized, she wasn’t on something, she was off something; the medications that helped bring her down. She finally reaches her attorney, and is released. She, was very lucky, however. She could afford the high priced attorney. She was a high priced attorney herself.

Another instance of Bipolar mania had her convinced that her car was stronger than the tree in her yard, and so she drove into it. Totaling her car landed her in a psychiatric facility. That was one time. Another included the swallowing of handfuls of benzodiazepines, and stelazine while she was trying to work up the nerve and get rid of the anxiety she felt over telling her father that his cancer had spread; he had only months to live. She overdosed on those pills, and her exterminator found her on the floor barely conscious. When she awoke she was in four point restraints, and had to use the bathroom. A doctor and a bunch of residents came in to her padded room, and tried to convince her that she had attempted suicide. She hadn’t consciously done so, and she told the doctor she really needed to pee. He refused to let her until she admitted that she was suicidal. She did not believe that she was, and the doctor left without providing her with even a bedpan; she ended up peeing on herself. A nurse came in and changed the sheets, but left her on the urine soaked mattress, all the while berating her for doing what she had done. In order to get off that mattress and out of the padded cell, she finally told the doctor what he wanted to hear; yes she had tried to kill herself, but, no she wasn’t currently suicidal. The whole time she was in that room they kept her sedated with the “conventional” anti-psychotic haldol. This was only part of the experience of a manic depressive of means. Can you imagine how the down and out homeless are treated? 

I am now reading a book titled Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness. His son experiences a psychotic break in his senior year of college. His son is in his late teens/early twenties when most mental illness will present in the form of a psychotic episode, a manic episode, or a severe depressive episode. (For my self, it was a severe depressive episode unlike any I had previously experienced; something was very wrong). His son is given the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder and put on anti-psychotic medication which he refused to take calling it “poison.” His son was convinced there were secret messages hidden in signs and movies, particularly Oliver Stone’s Heaven and Earth. His parents tried to have him held in a psychiatric facility after having taken him to the emergency room. They were told nothing could be done because he was an adult, and he had the right to refuse treatment if he so chose, that that was the law. He couldn’t be forced to take medication, not could he be forced into a mental health facility. It was only after he was arrested for breaking into a neighbor’s house and taking a bubble bath that he was taken to a psychiatric unit on a 72 hour hold. He could, however, still refuse treatment. So, his behavior became more and more odd. His father came up with the idea that since he had been arrested it proved he was not safe; that he was, in fact, a danger to himself and others. The argument worked. His son was being charged with two felonies in relation to the break-in. So, he took his medication for a couple of days, and got sort of right in the head. The idea was that he would be booked on charges but then released to his parents so he could continue the day program he was in. The only stipulation was that he had to continue his medication and the program, and he could plead to one felony count. What was unfortunate about this was that the state Law of Virginia prohibited ex felons to work at specific jobs, and one of them was the occupation his son had just finished school for. So, all his hard work in college was washed away in the blink of the eye known as mental illness.

His parents managed to get him to voluntarily commit himself after being put in a mental hospital following another episode (he still wouldn’t take the medicine that he considered poison; his father even tried hiding it in his food). There was even a commitment hearing which was a joke because the longest they could hold him for as a voluntary patient was five days after which he could walk right back out. His insurance company was after the hospital to release him because once stabilized all their little charts and graphs said that he could continue his recovery at home or in an outpatient program. Don’t even get me going on the HMO’s in this country who play God and Doctor, and decide what the patient needs which commonly overrides the doctor and even plain common sense. I could go on for hours on that subject. His father, a well known journalist called the insurance company that was trying to kick his son out of the hospital, and informed that he used to work for the Washington Post, knew Mike Wallace, and that he would be calling both to do an expose on their company policy regarding mental health. The insurance company backed off. 

All of this prompted his father to begin looking into what really happens to the mentally ill in this country, and what he found is not pretty. He began calling around to different courts and jails to find out what the laws were in that state. He finally settled in a section of Miami where there was a judge that was active in the Mental Health reform movement, and met the psychiatrist at the local jail which housed quite a few mentally ill inmates. He states in his book that it took the doctor approximately 19 minutes to do rounds and talk to all the people considered suicide risks. There were 92 people on the psychiatric floor. The author writes: “That was 12.7 seconds per inmate.”

Around the turn of the 20th century, the mentally ill were housed in a similar manner. Naked, or with nothing more than rags for clothes, they were held in the jails and

Abandoned Psychiatric Hospital 5 (Photo credit: spokospoko.org)

prisons often with far more people than a cell can hold. A reform movement began after a woman named Dorothea Dix saw this for herself and began a movement to build State Mental Hospitals. The states responded under pressure to do exactly that. However, conditions in the hospitals were not much better than the jails and prisons. The movement continued until some left wingers thought that the conditions in the hospital were so horrific that as long as these patients were stabilized, why couldn’t they be released back into society? Bless the left wingers, they really thought they were doing a good thing by releasing these patients. So began the de-institutionalization movement, and the state hospitals began to shut down. This was in the early 1960’s.

Well, guess what happens when a mentally ill patient forgets to take their medication? The destabilize. They become incapable of holding a job, having a home, taking meds on a regular basis, etc. They do not know they are sick again. This lands them in the streets, homeless and ill, where they are picked up usually for some minor infraction, but sometimes for more serious offenses. We are back where we started; housing the mentally ill in our jails and prisons. And the laws permit this by not requiring more hospitalization, the HMO’s are complicit in that they start asking that people be released after a couple of days on an inpatient ward. They figure using their little graphs and charts that it takes about that long to “stabilize” someone. I know from personal experience, it takes a hell of a lot longer than that. And, that is if the patient is med compliant.

I could go on and on and on about how this country treats the mentally ill. The politicians and HMO’s would never dare deny a heart patient access to medical care, nor would they not allow a diabetic their insulin. So, what the bleep makes mental health such a huge freaking issue? Is it because it involves the brain? Is it because people are inherently afraid of “going nuts?” We are not nuts, crazy, bonkers or any of those lovely terms that are used to describe someone with an organic, medically treatable disease. Manic Depression, Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, all of these are treatable and people who are treated can become functioning members of society. So, we are a little different than the average person. Who gives a flying F&*^! The mentally ill should be treated with the same respect and dignity as everyone else. There are a whole host of people some famous and others not so much who have suffered from or do suffer from some mental illness. This country recognizes alcoholism and drug abuse as treatable diseases, so what’s up with the mentally ill being so scary? I had better stop. I am getting angry.

More of Letting Go: Morrie's Reflections on Living While Dying ~ with a scathing and long commentary by songtothesirens on the state of help for mentally ill people in the US

On Acceptance: Morrie writes ~ “Acceptance is not passive-you have to work at it by continually trying to face reality rather than thinking reality is something other than what it is….People with great faith in God or strong spiritual ties may be more accepting of what goes on here and now because they know that this is just a temporary stopping place to the next world, so to speak…..Acceptance is not a talent you either have or don’t have. It’s a learned response……You may not be able to change your medical prognosis, but you can control the destructive emotions that can subvert your mental and physical health.”

Especially true of Bipolars who tend to isolate ~ Morrie on Maintaining an Active Involvement in Life: “Be occupied with or focused on things and issues that are of interest, importance, and concern to you. Remain passionately involved in them…… I tend to think that we do have core self. And that the more you know about who you are, the more actively you can be involved in the world around you……the self means nothing outside the context of community or meaningful contact with other people.” ~ Morrie Schwartz

For example, I have been a passionate and keen diarist since I was 12 years old. Writing is one of my greatest loves, and I have continued to do it for many, many years. It gives me pleasure, and is something I know I can do well.  Starting this blog about a month ago is an example of this; it mixes two of my passions in life ~ writing and destigmatizing mental health issues. I write to live. It allows me to go back and take an objective view of my reaction or response to a situation, and then allows me to re-evaluate what I could have done or said differently, or if, in that particular situation, there really was no other option. In essence, writing takes the emotions, puts them into words on paper or a computer and “removes” them from you so you do not feel them as intensely. This allows you to be a more objective observer of yourself. 

As  person living with Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, and Panic disorder, I have a subjective view of mental illness since I obviously battle my moods everyday even though I am a “treated” Bipolar. Writing about my experiences with these illnesses makes that view objective, and I am able to look at them as part of me, but not the whole of me. I can see where my reaction to something minor may have been out of proportion, I can see when my moods have control of me, and when I have control of my moods.

The Diatribe Against this Countries Healthcare and Social Services Programs:

I am all for speaking out and talking about mental illness because, for some reason unbeknownst to me, it is “scarier” than a lot of physical ailments. I wonder if it is because the “common” view of mental illness is that homeless guy on the street ranting and raving to no one in particular? Or if it is scary because it involves the mind of which doctors and researchers know very little? Maybe, it is because one of people’s biggest fears is the unknown, and there is nothing about humans more unknown than the brain? Maybe, it’s that fear of ending up like Aunt So and So who went “nuts” and killed herself? I do not know, I am speculating. All I do know is there is this irrational fear of mental illness. They say that someone is “touched” (a nice way of saying crazy or nuts), they say he/she is different than everyone else. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it is people’s fear of the unknown and the different. However, you never really can tell (aside from the obvious cases) when a person suffers from mental illness, they could work next to you, and you wouldn’t know it. What is truly needed is open, objective, honest, and  intelligent discussion about mental disorders of all kinds. 

You cannot know anything about which you turn a blind eye the way most people do to the raving homeless man. You do not know his life story. He may have been a CEO who first lost his job, then his home, then his family, and now he’s out on the streets with paranoid schizophrenia. He may have been managing it since he was a teenager (the time when most serious mental ailments first present), but all of his losses combined to be one big trigger that sent him over the edge. He no longer has health insurance, so medication is beyond his reach. He is so lost in his own reality that it is unrealistic that unless someone intervenes on his behalf, his access to Medicare is limited, his access to treatment is non-existent because he doesn’t know where or who he is. How is he going to fill out the forms needed to get on Medicaid/Medicare in order to treat his illness? He cannot very well do it himself. So, he remains scattered on the street, homeless, alone, scared, and sick. 

Has anyone ever thought to talk to a person with an OBVIOUS mental illness; I am not talking about the ones that are easily hidden like treated Bipolar, Borderline Personality Disorder, situational and chronic depression, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, etc. I am talking about the ones that cannot be so easily hidden even when treated like the Schizophrenic spectrum, the Oppositional Defiance Personality disorder, the Anti-Social Personality disorders, the Schizoaffective disorders. The ones that make people seem strange and weird, and sometimes, frightening. A lot of these people want to talk because nobody WILL talk to them, ask them about their day, if there is something they can do for them, or even get them to a state agency where a social worker can serve as a liaison between the sick person and the System. I do mean to spell that with a capital “S.” 

If someone or a group of people were willing to help these people get the care they need by getting them to a person who can help with the Medicaid/Medicare forms, can help them get into shelters rather than having the police round them up on very cold nights. A lot of homeless, mentally ill people will deliberately get arrested during the winter so they will get fed, and a warm place to sleep. That is not right or just. It only takes one person to make a difference in someone’s life. If a person or a group formed for the specific purpose of helping the mentally ill (many are homeless BECAUSE of their illness and lack of treatment) could get the homeless and mentally ill to an agency designed to help people in this condition do the paperwork they need to get treatment, get disability benefits, get food stamps, etc. 

Cities with the help of State and Federal government funds could build housing strictly for the mentally ill, the residents would pay rent in accordance with the amount of their benefits (a sliding scale), there could be caretakers there whose job it is to make sure that people living in these subsidized apartments take their medication, that they use their food stamps (EBT/SNAP program card) for food, and not for illicit street drugs (drug and alcohol abuse are often co-morbid with mental illness), and that those who can function in a menial job (like being a janitor or a custodian at an office building) get jobs, and that they do not kill each other. Mentally ill people, especially schizophrenics and schizoaffectives can be violent even when treated. So can Bipolars if their illness is serious enough, especially during Manic phases when the person may or may not go psychotic from lack of sleep.  Having something meaningful to do, like a job (or writing this blog), does wonders for a person’s outlook about themselves, and tends to make them want to stay on medication, want to maintain their functioning status. Although, with some of these illnesses, people are unaware of what they are like when un-medicated and not functional. People who consistently fail to meet these expectations would be asked to leave.

 I am not creating a Utopia for the mentally ill, here. Residents would have to maintain themselves, and their apartments. There would be inspections. I realize this may be an invasion of privacy, but it happens all the time in the “real” world when a person rents a property.  They would have to stay on medication, see their doctors regularly, pay their rent on time, feed themselves with their benefits, there would be a zero tolerance policy for drug and/or alcohol use unless medicinal marijuana is ordered by a legitimate physician (and if the person with the prescription was found sharing his medicinal marijuana, he/she would be warned that this is the only time they will be warned otherwise back out they go), maintain their work status, if applicable. In other words, do not take too many sick days unless you truly cannot function. I am not a Nazi. Sometimes, and I can attest to this, the meds just do not work for some reason, and your disease jumps up and bites you on the ass, and you have no control over it. So, employers would have to be carefully screened for compassion toward the mentally ill, and to allow for periods of time away from the job for the mentally ill just in case their illness becomes “active.” There could be a list of employers willing to take on the functioning mentally ill; kind of like employers that hire ex-cons so they can fulfill their parole conditions. There is/was a facility like this in Albuquerque, New Mexico about 7 or 8 years ago. I do not know if the program was stopped or not. 

Okay, a quick Google search indicates there are programs out there, but once again, they are State run and require forms to be filled out, documentation to be brought in. Now, I am a high functioning Bipolar, and I have applied for housing assistance before. The packet of stuff to fill out is 10 pages long, and I did not understand half of it (and I have a college degree.) How do they expect that the average mentally ill person is going to be able to cope with that without some help? One of my biggest pet peeves is that the way our government (both State and Federal) appears to be designed to “let” people fall through the cracks, and then still be able to turn around and say, “Well, they could have taken advantage of X,Y, or Z program…” NO, they could not, because some group of not mentally ill people designed the programs to be difficult for even a non-mentally ill person to understand. I do not know how many times I went back to the Housing Authority in Albuquerque because they needed some other documentation of something. I personally think they make it up to annoy people, but imagine if you are mentally ill, and trying to deal with all of this red tape? You’d get lost, agitated, irritated, confused, and this is IF you are being treated. Anyone else who is not under a doctor’s care would be completely stymied by the way the system is set up. It is not “user-friendly” by any stretch of the imagination.

The seriously mentally ill need advocates, people to stand up for them, people to help wad through the muck we have created to be the “Social Services” departments on both State and Federal levels. If a person is lucky, they will be a high functioning ill person like myself who can slog through all the crap on their own; although this is not to say I do it with a smile on my face because even my meds do not make me that happy. But, a seriously ill person is going to need a caretaker, some form of mediator between them and the System. Otherwise, they will become one of the millions who cannot get what this country has set up to help them. 

The reason I say that it is time for open, objective, honest, and intelligent conversation in this country regarding mental illness is that first of all, many people suffer from some form of mental illness on a scale of severity, secondly, our programs designed to help the mentally ill or disabled are impossible to understand or access (unless you are an attorney or a politician), thirdly, there is such a stigma surrounding mental illness that nobody wants to talk about it like they are afraid its contagious (I assure you, it is not), fourth, the whole benefits system for the mentally ill and/or disabled needs to be completely dismantled and redone. I mean, people with debilitating illnesses unable to get social security benefits without an attorney, or being denied the first couple of times you apply. That is just, pardon my french, fucked up. Obviously, they need the benefits or they would not have applied (HELLO), they have provided adequate documentation for the benefits, and they are DENIED! Oh that just pisses me off! That’s what the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Income programs were set up for. People with disabilities that prevent them from working. Believe me, a lot of us are incredibly bored and sad because we can remember working, and feeling productive. We do not really want to be on disability. 

The name really says it all: disability. Take a minute and think about what that word means to you….. to me it means incapable, unintelligent (many, many mentally ill people are highly intelligent), unable to do something, not productive, non functional. Do you see how even someone who is mentally ill herself can come up with labels to define the mentally ill?  Now imagine that spread out to the people who are not mentally ill, and lack the compassion and empathy to even try to understand what it means to be mentally ill….. I can think of one person right now off the top of head who thinks they understand but they have such a poor understanding of what it is like and how tiring it is to try to be “normal.” I have loaned this person a book, one of the best called An Unquiet Mind: a Memoir of Moods and Madness written by a psychiatrist with Manic Depression who works at John’s Hopkins. I wanted him to see firsthand what it is like to be Bipolar, and able to function at a very high level. I do not know why I am disappointed. I never really expected them to read it anyway. When I came home from the hospital about a month ago, I brought him material on Manic Depression and Depression from the NIMH, and I do not know where that ended up. I didn’t really expect them to read that either. I do not know why I expect anything from this person. it’s like clapping with one hand; all it does is stir up the air a bit. I do not know why I expect them to read anything related to learning about my multiple diagnoses. It is like if they do, then it becomes more real, and they can no longer blame all of my behavior on my illnesses. They have to blame me sometimes. Because I have learned one thing about being mentally ill: IT DOES NOT DEFINE WHO YOU ARE!!!! You are you, your illness just makes you “mentally interesting.” Saw that on the web the other day, and really liked the description  🙂 

The medication helps, but I have deliberately kept the doses right at therapeutic so I don’t feel over medicated like I was for a long time, and like many people still are because they have not learned how to stand up for themselves yet. It is vital that you advocate for yourself. If you can’t, find someone who can, a friend, parent, someone!

So, that’s my diatribe for the day. People, get over yourselves, the mentally ill are just like you and everyone you know. Their lives are just more challenging. You wouldn’t be afraid of an autistic child or a child with Down’s Syndrome, so it is time that you stop believing that ALL mentally ill people are violent, lazy, stupid, scary or any other adjective you can think of.