By Sue Poole
The whole world is
our hospital
Wherein if we do well
We shall die of
The absolute paternal care
That will not leave us
But prevents us everywhere. - T.S.
Eliot in "East
Coker"
If reliability is the
litmus test of true science, the DSM IV [Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual, the standard reference text listing so-called mental illnesses]
flunks.
Research by Robert Spitzer and others has shown that psychiatrists seeing the same patient at different times agree on Axis I [major "mental illness"] diagnoses 54 percent of the time, making any diagnosis suspect and raising serious questions about unexamined psychiatric authority to force human beings into high-risk therapies involving electricity and dangerous drugs.
The agreement rate
for Axis II (personality) disorders was 66 percent, meaning that 34 percent
to 46 percent of psychiatric patients are probably assigned mistaken labels
and then treated based on discretionary judgments of psychiatrists who
cannot even make the same assessments of the same patients after years
of training and clinical practice.
When therapists observed the same patient simultaneously with opportunities
to compare notes and impressions, the agreement percentages rose to 78
percent for Axis I categories and 61 percent for Axis II.
There is a caveat. The percentages in the simultaneous studies were skewed
by a number of factors. Seven out of 25 diagnostic categories considered
got a 100 percent agreement rate..helped along by the fact that no more
than five patients were observed in any sample. Indeed, in three samples,
only one patient was observed.
The next highest inter-rater reliability rate that helped produce the
overall percentages was 90 percent for 33 patients identified as having
substance abuse problems...hardly a behavioral category even a lay person
could mistake in comparison with other choices. The assessments of the
unmistakable behaviors served to boost reliability substantially.
The power of suggestion may have also been a factor, since the psychiatrists
who observed the same patients at the same time were able to influence
one another's choices. Categorical subsets of the major DSM classifications
were never a subject of inquiry in the studies, so the abysmal inter-rater
reliability rates for subcategories containing finer distinctions can
only be imagined.
In reliability research, if inter-rater agreement is poor, it is doubtful
the categories represent anything in reality. On the flip side, a low
reliability index may mean the categories are valid but the therapists
have poor diagnostic abilities.
In the DSM studies, either conclusion is manifestly up for grabs. So,
despite the American Psychiatric Association's claims of scientific rigor
in a "three-stage empirical review," we are left doubting that many of
the categories are real...or even that they are accurately described or
evaluated by competent clinicians.
Based on inadequate and substandard science...and in the absence of documented
field trial methodologies and results...psychiatrists have full discretionary
power to prescribe radical and patently hazardous drugs and electrical
interventions for sets and subsets of behaviors (not proven diseases)
about whose validity even psychiatrists cannot agree 30 percent to 46
percent of the time.
Yet the public, the politicians, the lawyers, the judges issue no challenges
and raise no objections to this problematic of psychobabble undergirded
by special interest agendas and the arrogant presumptions of what is,
essentially, a special interest group determined to consolidate power
for purposes of profit and prestige.
Without empirical evidence and documented case studies proving the categories
are, in fact, diseases, the only logical assumption remaining is that
some patients in distress respond favorably to certain drugs which psychiatrists
are empowered to administer by force despite the absence of unbiased and
reliable research concerning their long-term effects on the brain and,
by extension, the physical. ,behavioral and psychological well-being of
those coerced into chronically ingesting them.
The power of suggestion
is always a danger when subjective evaluations are under way. A study
by Maurice Temerlin and William Trousdale illustrates the dangers of shared
professional impressions, the power of suggestion working in society at
large and of training that conditions therapists to look for behavioral
aberrations where none may actually exist. The study results underscore
the perils of walking into a therapist's office for help with problems
in living or even to express curiosity about the therapeutic process.
Temerlin and Trousdale had a professional actor visit a therapist asking
questions about therapy as though he were simply interested in making
an informed decision about it. The tape was shown to undergraduate students,
law students, psychology graduate students, practicing psychologists and
practicing psychiatrists. The groups were asked to assess the man using
a menu of disorders or the category "healthy, normal person."
The authority figures who showed the tapes - a psychologist and a law
professor - remarked casually that the person on the tape looked "neurotic
but is actually quite psychotic." The group of psychiatrists was told
that two psychiatry board members had heard the tape and determined the
man was psychotic although he appeared to be only neurotic. Three other
groups were also recruited to perform assessments. One group was told
the man was normal and healthy. Another received no suggestion at all.
The third was told the tape portrayed a personnel interview.
For the third group, the interview had been removed from a clinical to
a business setting. Not a single member of any of the last three groups
diagnosed the man as psychotic. Significant numbers of the first five
groups did. Not a single psychiatrist chose either "neurotic" or "healthy,
normal person." All the psychiatrists, influenced by secondhand opinions
of prestigious colleagues, perceived the taped subject as suffering from
an array of serious mental disorders.
The study demonstrates that therapists are often influenced by their training and by their colleagues' opinions (e.g., the patient's psychiatric history) to look for the abnormal even though it may not be manifest or present. The consequences evince a kind of herd mentality at work in circles of professionals who ought to be mature and intelligent enough to make independent judgments, especially when they hold people's reputations, child custody arrangements, adoption eligibilities, livelihoods and liberties in the palms of their hands.
The power of psychiatric suggestion operates on the same principles throughout society at large, effectively cutting mental patients off from the legal, political and community resources they need to defend themselves against malpractice, reckless disregard, mistreatment from misdiagnosis and wrongful imprisonment.
Meanwhile a somewhat
misinformed society rejects the voices of psychiatric inmates, patients
and ex-patients who have had their personalities mangled and their bodily
functions impaired by the arbitrary and unwarranted -- often involuntary
-- administration of drugs and therapies calculated to control behavior
rather than to cure legitimate and well-defined diseases.
Thomas Scheff, author of "Being Mentally Ill," says mental illness
may be more usefully considered as a social status rather than a disease
since the symptoms are vaguely defined and widely distributed and the
definition of behavior as symptomatic is usually dependent upon social
rather than medical contingencies.
by Walter Shwe
Recently in the news there have been many stories about changing the laws that govern the involuntary commitment of mental health clients.
Some people believe
people who do not recognize they have mental health issues should be treated
nevertheless. On the other hand, some people believe that clients make
decisions no better or worse than you or I.
One of the principles our country was founded on was the right to "self-determination",
to make our own decisions within certain boundaries. We cherish this ideal
to such an extent we give most people wide latitude most of the time to
make their own decisions. In many cases people are allowed to make decisions,
good, bad, or even potentially reckless, without interference.
Flying a small plane in bad weather without instrument training could
be considered dangerous. Every day we weigh the risks involved in our
actions. In essence, mental health clients are asking for the same right
to make what some may call 'bad decisions'.
People who are not mental health clients make unwise decisions all of
the time. No one is asking that they be involuntarily committed. Voluntary
humanistic services, such as supportive housing, vocational services,
and self-help, should be emphasized as much as medication. I am living
proof that a wide array of voluntary services does work. By becoming an
advocate, I transformed my life.
Walter Shwe
Davis, California
For those interested in gaining insight into the real tragedy of someone who has been diagnosed with a mental illness, this excerpt comes from the depths of the soul of Pat Deegan, Ph.D., a woman who's been there, whose experience is a reflection of the experience of thousands.
Dr. Deegan's powerful testimony reveals how the mental health system has impeded patients' road to recovery by stripping them of their humanity.
"So much of what we were suffering from was overlooked. The context of our lives were largely ignored. The professionals who worked with us had studied the science of physical objects, not human science.... But no one asked for our stories. Instead they thought our biographies as schizophrenics had already been written nearly a century before by Kraeplin and Blueler."
"We were told to take medications that made us slur and shake, that robbed our youthful bodies of energy and made us walk stiff like zombies. We were told that if we stayed on these medications for the rest of our lives we could perhaps maintain some semblance of a life. They kept telling us that these medications were good for us and yet we could feel the high dose neuroleptics transforming us into empty vessels. We felt like will-less souls or the walking dead as the numbing indifference and drug induced apathy took hold. At such high dosages, neuroleptics radically diminished our personhood and sense of self."
Source:Resilience, Recovery and the Conspiracy of Hope
Recovery and the Conspiracy of Hope
© Patricia E. Deegan Ph.D. 1996
Presented at: The Sixth Annual Mental Health Services Conference of Australia and New Zealand.
Brisbane, Australia
Presented by: Patricia E. Deegan, Ph.D.
I would like to thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today. It is a special pleasure to be here in your lovely country.
I feel the theme of our conference is very important and in many ways reflects the main message in all of my writings. That theme is, "There is a person in here". In many respects, coming to know that there is a person in here is the easy part. Remembering to always listen for and to reverence the person over there - that can be the more difficult part.
Let me begin by telling you a little about the part of the country I live in. I live in the northeastern part of the United States that we call New England. Where I live, we have four very distinct seasons ranging from the bitter cold of snowy winter, to the muddy season of unfolding colors that we call spring, to the simmering days of summer right through to the spectacular unfolding of autumn when all of the leaves on the trees burst into bright yellows and oranges and reds and then fall to the ground leaving the trees naked and stark and bare.
There is always a lesson for me in the cycle of the seasons. I am always reminded that growth happens in a context and that in order for growing things to emerge, environments must change to accommodate that growth. One spring, after a long and icy winter, I wrote this: It is springtime and hope is everywhere. It is springtime and it feels like all living things are trembling into being, still wet and new and fragile and determined to put down roots and grow. I think of a sea rose I watched growing out at a beach near my home this past summer. It is a fragile and tender life, that sea flower. I love to see it. At dawn it moves in a slow upsway as it turns toward the morning star. That sea rose is a light seeker. It bends toward the light. It is a light-seeker whose roots reach way down into the darkness of the earth.
In fact, it was in darkness that his new life began. Way back in January and February, when the icy winds lashed across those dunes and the days were short and the light gave no warmth, even then, way down under the ground, this new life was waiting. Nobody could see it, nobody was there to witness it, and yet this promise of a sea flower waited. It waited in that icy darkness for the sands to begin to thaw. It waited for the rains to come and loosen the earth. And then, ever so slowly, it began to stir. Moving one grain of sand at a time, it began to grow. It did not grow straight toward the light at first. No. First its growth sought a downward course, reaching, stretching, blindly groping through shifting sands to find a solid place. A place to be rooted. A good soil to cling to and to be nurtured by. A home soil that could sustain it even in driving rains and tormenting winds. And then, having rooted itself in this way, the sea rose began its journey toward the light.
Poking through the darkness, that sea flower emerged tiny and lovely and insistent and courageous. On frail and trembling limbs, this small thing rose to a new life… That sea rose teaches us a lot about hope. It teaches us that hope emerges out of darkness. It teaches us that hope can grow in nurturing environments that allow one to become rooted and secure.
And I have come here today to celebrate the hope symbolized by that sea rose. I believe it is a spirit of hope that gathers us here together today. We come from the far corners of the world : from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Sweden, Ireland China and many other countries. We are direct service workers and administrators, policy makers and family members, service users and mental health professionals. Fifteen years ago you would never have caught us all in the same room together! Indeed, ten years ago we would hardly even speak to each other!
But here we are, gathered together - social workers sitting next to family members who are sitting next to policy makers, who are sitting next to case managers, who are sitting next to academicians who are sitting next to service users . . . What is going on here? Are the old rules being broken? Is the old order shaking a bit at the foundation? IS THERE A CONSPIRACY GOING ON?
I love the word conspiracy. It comes from the Latin "conspirare" which means to breath the spirit together. What is the spirit we are breathing together here today? It is a spirit of hope. Both individually and collectively we have refused to succumb to the images of despair that so often are associated with mental illness.
We are a conspiracy of hope and we are pressing back against the strong tide of oppression which for centuries has been the legacy of those of us who are labeled with mental illness. We are refusing to reduce human beings to illnesses. We recognize that within each one of us there is a person and that, as people, we share a common humanity with those who have been diagnosed with mental illness.
We are here to witness that people who have been diagnosed with mental illness are not things, are not objects to be acted upon, are not animals or subhuman life forms. We share in the certainty that people labeled with mental illness are first and above all, human beings. Our lives are precious and are of infinite value. And as we progress through this conference we will be learning that those of us with psychiatric disabilities can become experts in our own self care, can regain control over our lives, and can be responsible for our own individual journey of recovery.
And finally, as the sea rose teaches us, we are learning that the environment around people must change if we are to be expected to grow into the fullness of the person who, like a small seed, is waiting to emerge from within each of us. If we plant a seed in a desert and it fails to grow, do we ask, "What is wrong with the seed?". No. The real conspiracy lays in this: to look at the environment around the seed and to ask, "What must change in this environment such that the seed can grow?" The real conspiracy that we are participating in here today is to stop saying what's wrong with psychiatric survivors and to start asking: "How do we create hope filled, humanized environments and relationships in which people can grow?"
But before speaking further of hope and humanity, I want to share with you what it is like to be diagnosed at a young age with mental illness and to lose all hope. I want to tell you about the dark winter of anguish and apathy when we give up hope and just sit and smoke and drink coffee. For those of us who have been diagnosed with mental illness and who have lived in the sometimes desolate wastelands of mental health programs and institutions, hope is not just a nice sounding euphemism. It is a matter of life and death. We know this because, like the sea rose, we have known a very cold winter in which all hope seemed to be crushed out of us.
It started for most of us in the prime of our youth. At first we could not name it. It came like a thief in the night and robbed us of our youth, our dreams, our aspirations and our futures. It came upon us like a terrifying nightmare that we could not awaken from. And then, at a time when we most needed to be near the one's we loved, we were taken away to far off places. At the age of 14 or 17 or 22 we were told that we had a disease that had no cure. We were told to take medications that made us slur and shake, that robbed our youthful bodies of energy and made us walk stiff like zombies. We were told that if we stayed on these medications for the rest of our lives we could perhaps maintain some semblance of a life. They kept telling us that these medications were good for us and yet we could feel the high dose neuroleptics transforming us into empty vessels. We felt like will-less souls or the walking dead as the numbing indifference and drug induced apathy took hold.
At such high dosages, neuroleptics radically diminished our personhood and sense of self. As these first winds of winter settled upon us we pulled the blankets up tight around our bodies but we did not sleep. During those first few nights in the hospital we lay awake. You see, at night the lights from the houses in the community shine through the windows of the mental institution. Life still went on out there while ours crumbled all about us. Those lights seemed very, very far away. The Zulu people have a word for our phrase "far away". In Zulu "far away" means, "There where someone cries out : 'Oh mother, I am lost" (Buber 1958, p. 18).
And indeed, this is how far away it felt in the mental hospital. The road back home was not clear. And as we lay there in the darkness we were scared and could not even imagine the way out of this awful place. And when no one was looking we wept in all of that loneliness. But when morning came we raged. We raged against the bleak prophesies that were being made for our lives. They are wrong! They are wrong! We are not crazy. We are not like those other ones over there who have been in this hospital too long. We are different. We will return home and everything will be just the same. It's just a bad dream. A temporary setback. In time we did leave the hospital. We stood on the steps with our suitcases in hand. We had such courage - our youthful optimism waved like triumphant flags at a homecoming parade. We were going to make it. We were never going to come back to the hospital again.
Some did make it. But most of us returned home and found that nothing was the same anymore. Our friends were frightened of us or were strangely absent. They were overly careful when near us. Our families were distraught and torn by guilt. They had not slept and their eyes were still swollen from the tears they cried. And we, we were exhausted. But we were willing to try. And I swear, with all the courage we could muster we tried to return to work and to school, we tried to pick up the pieces, and we prayed for the strength and perseverance to keep trying. But it seemed that God turned a deaf ear to our prayers. The terrible distress came back and our lives were shattered once again. And now our winter deepened into a bone chilling cold. Something began to die in us. Something way down deep began to break. Slowly the messages of hopelessness and stigma which so permeated the places we received treatment, began to sink in. We slowly began to believe what was being said about us. It seemed that the system tried to break our spirit and was more intent on gaining, even coercing our compliance, than listening to us and our needs.
We found ourselves undergoing that dehumanizing transformation from being a person to being an illness: "a schizophrenic", "a multiple", "a bi-polar" (Deegan 1992). Our personhood and sense of self continued to atrophy as we were coached by professionals to learn to say, "I am a schizophrenic"; "I am a bipolar"; "I am a multiple". And each time we repeated this dehumanizing litany our sense of being a person was diminished as "the disease" loomed as an all powerful "It", a wholly Other entity, an "in-itself" that we were taught we were powerless over. Professionals said we were making progress because we learned to equate our very selves with our illness. They said it was progress because we learned to say "I am a schizophrenic".
But we felt no progress in this. We felt time was standing still. The self we had been seemed to fade farther and farther away, like a dream that belonged to somebody else. The future seemed bleak and empty and promised nothing but more suffering. And the present became an endless succession of moments marked by the next cigarette and the next. So much of what we were suffering from was overlooked. The context of our lives were largely ignored. The professionals who worked with us had studied the science of physical objects, not human science. They did not understand what the neurologist Oliver Sacks (1970) so clearly articulates: "To restore the human subject at the center - the suffering, afflicted, fighting, human subject - we must deepen a case history to a narrative or tale; only then do we have a 'who' as well as a 'what', a real person, a patient, in relations to disease - in relations to the physical. . . the study of disease and identity cannot be disjoined. . . (stories) bring us to the very intersection of mechanism and life, to the relation of physiological processes to biography" (p.viii).
But no one asked for our stories. Instead they thought our biographies as schizophrenics had been already been written nearly a century before by Kraeplin and Blueler. Yet much of what we were going through were simply human experiences - experiences such as loss and grief and shock and fear and loneliness. One by one our friends, relatives and perhaps even families left us. One by one the professionals in our lives moved on and it became too difficult to trust anyone. One by one our dreams and hopes were crushed. We seemed to lose everything. We felt abandoned in our ever-deepening winter. The weeks, the months or the years began to pass us by. Now our aging was no longer marked by the milestones of a year's accomplishments but rather by the numbing pain of successive failures.
We tried and failed and tried and failed until it hurt too much to try anymore. Now when we left the hospital it was not a question of would we come back, but simply a question of when would we return. In a last, desperate attempt to protect ourselves we gave up. We gave up trying to get well. Giving up was a solution for us. It numbed the pain. We were willing to sacrifice enormous parts of ourselves in order to say "I don't care". Our personhood continued to atrophy through this adaptive strategy of not caring anymore. And so we sat in chairs and smoked and drank coffee and smoked some more.. It was a high price to pay for survival. We just gave up. And winter settled in upon us like a long cold anguish. I'm sure that many of us here today know people with psychiatric disabilities who are lost in the winter of anguish and apathy I have just described. It is a time of real darkness and despair. Just like the sea rose in January and February, it is a time when nothing seems to be growing except the darkness itself. It is a time of giving up.
Giving up is a solution. Giving up numbs the pain because we stop asking "Why and how will I go on?". Even the simplest of tasks is overwhelming at this time. One learns to be helpless because that is safer than being completely hopeless. The winter of anguish and the atrophy of the sense of self that I am describing is a hell not only for the ones living it, but also for the one's who love and care for us: friends, relatives and even professionals. I have described what it feels like on the inside as it is being lived. But friends, relatives and professionals see the anguish and indifference from the outside. From the outside it appears that the person just isn't trying anymore. Very frequently people who show up at clubhouses and other rehabilitation programs are partially or totally immersed in this despair and anguish. On good days we may show up at program sites but that's about all. We sit on the couch and smoke and drink coffee. A lot of times we don't bother showing up at programs at all. From the outside we may appear to be among the living dead. We appear to be apathetic, listless, lifeless.
As professionals, friends and relatives we may think that these people are "full of excuses", they don't seem to try anymore, they appear to be consistently inconsistent, and it appears that the only thing they are motivated toward is apathy. At times these people seem to fly into wishful fantasies about magically turning their lives around. But these seem to us to be only fantasies, a momentary refuge from chronic boredom. When the fantasy collapses like a worn balloon, nothing has changed because no real action has been taken. Apathy returns and the cycle of anguish continues. Staff, family and friends have very strong reactions to the person lost in the winter of anguish and apathy. From the outside it can be difficult to truly believe that there really is a person over there. Faced with a person who truly seems not to care we may be prompted to ask the question that Oliver Sacks (1970, p. 113) raises: "Do you think William (he) has a soul? Or has he been pithed, scooped-out, de-souled, by disease?"
I put this question to each of us here today. Can the person inside become a disease? Can schizophrenia pith or scoop-out the person so that nothing is left but the disease? Each of us must meet the challenge of answering this question for ourselves. In answering this question, the stakes are very high. Our own personhood, our own humanity is on the line in answering this question.
Let me explain: Sitting in the day room, literally couched in a cigarette smoke screen, the profound apathy and indifference we may encounter in another person will challenge our own humanity and our own capacity to be compassionate. We may question whether there really is a person over there. In such an encounter Martin Buber (1958) would instruct us that the I - Thou relationship is challenged. If we relate to a person as if they were a disease then we enter an I - It relationship. The I-It relationship diminishes our own humanity. Of course, the great work that faces us is to hold the sanctity of the person as Thou, even when the person may be lost to themselves. That is the great act of compassion. To hold the personhood of a person even when they may be lost to themselves. This deepens our humanity or, to paraphrase Martin Buber - I become I by saying Thou (p.11).
However, when faced with a person lost in anguish and apathy, there are a number of more common responses than finding a way to establish an I-Thou relationship. A frequent response is what I call the "frenzied savior response". We have all felt like this at one time or another in our work. The frenzied savior response goes like this : The more listless and apathetic the person gets, the more frenetically active we become. The more they withdraw, the more we intrude. The more will-less they become, the more willful we become. The more they give up, the harder we try. The more despairing they become, the more we indulge in shallow optimism. The more treatment plans they abort, the more plans we make for them.
Needless to say we soon find ourselves burnt out and exhausted. Then our anger sets in. Our anger sets in when our best and finest expectations have been thoroughly thwarted by the person lost in anguish and apathy. We feel used and thoroughly unhelpful. We are angry. Our identities as helping people are truly put to the test by people lost in the winter of anguish and indifference. At this time it is not uncommon for most of us to begin to blame the person with the psychiatric disability at this point. We say things like : "They are lazy. They are hopeless. They are not sick, they are just manipulating. They are chronic. They need to suffer the natural consequences of their actions. They like living this way. They are not mad, they are bad. The problem is not with the help we are offering, the problem is that they can't be helped. They don't want help. They should be thrown out of this program so they can 'hit bottom'. Then they will finally wake up and accept the good help we have been offering."
During this period of anger and blaming a most interesting thing happens. We begin to behave just like the person we have been trying so hard to save. Frequently at this point staff simply give up. We enter into our own despair and anguish. Our own personhood begins to atrophy. We too give up. We stop trying. It hurts too much to keep trying to help the person who seems to not want help. It hurts too much to keep trying to help and failing. It hurts too much to keep caring about them when they can't even seem to care about themselves. At this point we collapse into our own winter of anguish and a coldness settles into our hearts. We are no better at living in despair than are people with psychiatric disabilities. We cannot tolerate it so we give up too. Some of us give up by simply quitting our jobs. We reason that high tech computers do as they are told and, besides, the pay is better. Others of us decide not to quit, but rather we grow callous and hard of heart. We approach our jobs like the man in the Dunkin Donuts commercial: "It's time to make the donuts, it's time to make the donuts".
Still others of us become chronically cynical. We float along at work like pieces of dead wood floating on the sea, watching administrators come and go like the weather; taking secret delight in watching one more mental health initiative go down the tubes; and doing nothing to help change the system in a constructive way. These are all ways of giving up. In all these ways we live out our own despair. Additionally entire programs, service delivery systems and treatment models can get caught up in this despair and anguish as well. These systems begin to behave just like the person with a psychiatric disability who has given up hope.
A system that has given up hope spends more time screening out program participants than inviting them in. Entry criteria become rigid and inflexible. If you read between the lines of the entry criteria to such programs they basically state: If you are having problems come back when they are fixed and we will be glad to help you. Service systems that have given up hope attempt to cope with despair and hopelessness by distancing and isolating the very people they are supposed to be serving. Just listen to the language we use: In such mental health systems we have "gatekeepers" whose job it is to "screen" and "divert" service users.
In fact, we actually use the language of war in our work. For instance we talk about sending "front-line staff" into the "field" to develop treatment "strategies" for "target populations". Is there another alternative? Must we respond to the anguish and apathy of people with psychiatric disability with our own anguish and apathy?
I think there is an alternative. The alternative to despair is hope. The alternative to apathy is care. Creating hope filled, care filled environments that nurture and invite growth and recovery is the alternative. Remember the sea rose? During the cold of winter when all the world was frozen and there was no sign of spring, that seed just waited in the darkness. It just waited. It waited for the soil to thaw. It waited for the rains to come. When the earth was splintered with ice, that sea rose could not begin to grow. The environment around the sea rose had to change before that new life could emerge and come into being.
People with psychiatric disabilities are waiting just like that sea rose waited. We are waiting for our environments to change so that the person within us can emerge and grow. Those of us who have given up are not to be abandoned as "hopeless cases". The truth is that at some point every single person who has been diagnosed with a mental illness passes through this time of anguish and apathy, even if only for a short while. Remember that giving up is a solution. Giving up is a way of surviving in environments which are desolate, oppressive places and which fail to nurture and support us. The task that faces us is to move from just surviving, to recovering. But in order to do this, the environments in which we are spending our time must change. I use the word environment to include, not just the physical environment, but also the human interactive environment that we call relationship.
From this perspective, rather than seeing us as unmotivated, apathetic, or hopeless cases, we can be understood as people who are waiting. We never know for sure but perhaps, just perhaps, there is a new life within a person just waiting to take root if a secure and nurturing soil is provided. This is the alternative to despair. This is the hopeful stance. Marie Balter expressed this hope when asked, "Do you think that everybody can get better?" she responded: "It's not up to us to decide if they can or can't. Just give everybody the chance to get better and then let them go at their own pace. And we have to be positive - supporting their desire to live better and not always insisting on their productivity as a measure of their success". (Balter 1987, p.153).
So it is not our job to pass judgment on who will and will not recover from mental illness and the spirit breaking effects of poverty, stigma, dehumanization, degradation and learned helplessness. Rather, our job is to participate in a conspiracy of hope. It is our job to form a community of hope which surrounds people with psychiatric disabilities. It is our job to create rehabilitation environments that are charged with opportunities for self-improvement. It is our job to nurture our staff in their special vocations of hope. It is our job to ask people with psychiatric disabilities what it is they want and need in order to grow and then to provide them with good soil in which a new life can secure its roots and grow. And then, finally, it is our job to wait patiently, to sit with, to watch with wonder, and to witness with reverence the unfolding of another person's life.
That sounds good but how do we do it? I have some very concrete suggestions as to how to enter into a conspiracy of hope and build communities of hope around people who have lost hope. First we must be committed to changing the environments that people are being asked to grow in. We must recognize that real change can be quite uncomfortable and sometimes I worry we will content ourselves with superficial change. I worry about new and catchy words like consumer integration, empowerment, clubhouse models and partnership. It seems to me that over the decades we keep coming up with all kinds of trendy words and names to call each other. For instance in the fifties it was the doctors and the patients. In the sixties it was the staff and the clients. In the seventies it was the providers and the consumers. In the eighties it was the staff and the members. Now in the nineties we have "shareholders" and the Managed Care Corporations.
Yes, the names we call each other have certainly changed. But I would argue that the fundamental relationship between those labeled with mental illness and those who are not, has remained essentially unchanged. There is a wise old monk who lives in the Nova Nada community, out in Kemptville, Nova Scotia. His name is Fr. William MacNamara. When talking about our attempts to bring about change, he says: "It's like we keep rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic but all we really achieve through this effort is a better view while going down."
That's the big danger of simply using the newest program designs and politically correct language. If we're not careful, all this will amount to is rearranging the chairs on the deck of a sinking ship. Somebody has got to say, "Stop! Wait! Forget the catchy words. There's a big gaping hole in this boat we call the mental health system and we are all going down with it!"
You see, I would argue that until the fundamental relationship between people who have been psychiatrically labeled and those who have not changes, until the radical power imbalance between us is at least equalized, until our relationships are marked by true mutuality, until we stop using barbaric practices such as restraint and seclusion while trying to convince people that such torture is for there own good, and until we recognize the common ground of our shared humanity and stop the spirit breaking effects of dehumanization in the mental health system, then that gaping hole will continue to sink the best of our efforts. The human-interactive environment of mental health programs and the community must change if people are going to move from just surviving to the journey of recovery. We must stop exercising "power over" the people we work with.
This only produces unnecessary dependency and learned helplessness. Instead we must join with people like Dr. Jean Baker Miller (1976) and other scholars at the Stone Center at Wellesley College. Following their lead we must begin to think in terms of having "power with" or "creating power together" rather than having "power and control over" the people we work with. In this way traditional power relationships, which have historically been so oppressive for people with psychiatric disabilities, will change.
Specifically, this means we must stop using the phrase, "I judge this to be in the client's best interest" and instead ask people what they want for their own lives and provide them with the skills and support to achieve it. We must commit ourselves to removing environmental barriers which block people's efforts towards recovery and which keep us locked in a mode of just trying to survive. For instance, I would suggest examining the following questions: Are the people we work with overmedicated? Very often the apathy, lack of motivation, and indifference we observe is an effect of neuroleptics. Are we teaching consumer/survivors about this drug effect and helping them effectively advocate for medication changes and/or reductions?
The multinational drug industry is literally making a fortune through the sales of these drugs. Our priority is not to increase their quarterly profit margins. Our priority is to support people in their recovery process. It is not possible to actively participate in our own recovery process when we are in state of drug induced mental Parkinsonism, apathy and indifference. Are consumer/survivors in both community based and hospital programs involved in evaluating staff work performance? Who better knows how effective a staff person is than those receiving services from that staff person? Additionally, are we providing consumer survivors with the skills training and support to conduct such evaluations? Are program participants and hospital inpatients receiving peer skills training on how to participate in and effectively get what they want from a treatment team? Are we allowed to sit through the entire treatment--planning meeting and are staff committed to speaking in plain English so we can understand the conversation? Are there peer advocates who are available to come to the treatment planning meetings with us? Are there opportunities to meet prior to the team meeting in order to strategize what we want to get out of the meeting and how to go about presenting our ideas? Is there time to role-play speaking up and dealing with questions prior to the treatment-planning meeting? Are there separate toilets or eating space for staff and program participants? If there are, they should be eliminated. This is called segregation and creates second-class citizens.
Who can use the phones? Who makes what decisions? Who has the real power in this program? Information is power and having access to information is empowering. What are the barriers to getting information in the program? Do we understand that people with psychiatric disabilities possess valuable knowledge and expertise as a result of their experience? Do we nurture this important human resource? Are peer run, mutual help groups available? Are we actively seeking to hire people with psychiatric disabilities and to provide the supports and accommodation they may request? Have we created environments in which it is possible for staff people to be human beings with human hearts? Do we offer supervision or staff surveillance? Perhaps we could help create more humanized work environments if we sought to view working with people as a journey in which we both move and are moved by the people we seek to serve. Perhaps we could offer our workers what Jean Vanier (1988) calls "accompaniment". Accompaniment means offering to walk with our staff as they make that sometimes painful, sometimes joyous journey of the heart we call the "direct care relationship".
Directly caring. Ah! Now there's true change. Do we work in a system which rewards passivity, obedience and compliance? Is compliance seen as a desirable outcome? As a friend who is a consumer/survivor told me, "Tell those case managers that they have it all wrong. Tell them to stop saying that compliance is the road to independence". And indeed, compliance is not the road to independence. Learning to become self-determining is an outcome that is indicative of environments that support opportunities for recovery and empowerment. Have we embraced the concept of the "dignity of risk" and the "right to failure"? "
Chronically normal people" (CNP's !), or people who have not been psychiatrically labeled, are allowed to make dumb, uninsightful decisions all the time in their lives. My favorite example is Elizabeth Taylor who just got her eighth divorce. We might say, "She lacks insight! She is failing to learn from past experience!" However, when she embarks on marriage #9, no SWAT team of nurses with Prolixin injections will descend upon her "in her best interest". But just imagine if a person with a psychiatric disability were to announce to their treatment team that they were about to get married for the 9th time! People learn, and sometimes don't learn from failures. We must be careful to distinguish between a person making (from our perspective) a dumb or self-defeating choice, and a person who is truly at risk. Are there opportunities within the mental health system for people to truly improve their lives? Are there a range of affordable, normal housing situations from which people can choose a place to live? Is there work available?
A person who just recently went back to work after many years of hospitalization said to me, "What's all this talk about empowerment? I can tell you the definition of empowerment: "It's a decent paycheck at the end of the week". These are just some suggestions about how to create environments in which it is possible for people to grow. Then, as we build these hope filled environments, we must recognize that people with psychiatric disabilities do not "get rehabilitated" in the same sense that cars "get tuned up" (Deegan 1988). We are not passive objects which professionals are responsible for "rehabilitating". Many of us find this connotation of the word rehabilitation to be oppressive. We are not objects to be acted on. Rather we are fully human subjects who can act, and in acting can change our situation. We are not objects to be fixed. Such a connotation robs us of our own sense of autonomy and self-determination. It places responsibility in the wrong place. It perpetuates the myth that we are not and cannot be responsible for our own lives, decisions and choices.
The truth is that nobody has the power to rehabilitate anybody else's life. This is clearly evidenced in the fact that we can make the finest and most advanced rehabilitation technologies and programs available to people with disabilities and still fail to help them. As it is said, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink". Something more than just good services is needed. That "something more" is what I call recovery. The concept of recovery differs from that of rehabilitation in as much as it emphasizes that people are responsible for their own lives and that we can take a stand toward our disability and what is distressing to us. We need not be passive victims. We need not be "afflicted". We can become responsible agents in our own recovery process. That is why it is so dangerous to reduce a person to being an illness. If we insist that a person learn to say, "I am a schizophrenic", then in essence we are insisting that the person equate their personhood with illness. Through such a dehumanizing reduction the disease takes on what is called a "master status" in terms of identity. Thus when a person learns to believe "I am a schizophrenic", when their identity is synonymous with a disease, then there is no one left inside to take on the enormous work of recovery. That is why we must always help people to use person first language i.e., I am a person labeled with schizophrenia; I am a person diagnosed with mental illness, etc.
Person first language always reminds us that first and foremost we are human beings who can take a stand toward what is distressing to us. Each person's journey of recovery is unique. Indeed, each of us must discover for ourselves what promotes our recovery and what does not. Some of us find that intermittent or ongoing treatment is an important part of our recovery process. However others find that they no longer require mental health services and leave the system entirely (Ogawa, 1987) For some of us who have historically used or abused drugs of alcohol, or who have grown up in alcoholic families, or who have survived childhood sexual, emotional and/or physical abuse, participation in various self help and twelve step programs may play a vital role in our recovery process. Many of us find that social and vocational rehabilitation programs offer us unique opportunities and we use these services as part of our recovery process. Most of us find that developing friendships based on love and mutual respect is very important to our recovery. Of course, permanent, affordable and fully integrated housing is fundamental to the recovery process. Many of us find that participating in a spiritual community of our choice gives us the strength and hope to keep working hard in our recovery process. Finally, many of us find it important to participate in consumer/survivor run support networks and advocacy groups in an effort to help change the mental health system, to establish alternatives to traditional services, to make government aware of our needs, to fight for our full civil rights and to collectively struggle for social justice.
In fact, I use the term recovery to refer not only to the process of recovering from mental illness, but also to refer to recovering from the effects of poverty, second class citizenship, internalized stigma, abuse and trauma sustained at the hands of some "helping professionals", and the spirit breaking effects of the mental health system. Indeed, self help and social action cannot be arbitrarily separated. At some point helping ourselves includes joining together as a group to fight the injustices that devalue us and keep us in the position of second class citizens. Recovery does not refer to an end product or result. It does not mean that one is "cured" nor does not mean that one is simply stabilized or maintained in the community.
Recovery often involves a transformation of the self wherein one both accepts ones limitation and discovers a new world of possibility. This is the paradox of recovery i.e., that in accepting what we cannot do or be, we begin to discover who we can be and what we can do. Thus, recovery is a process. It is a way of life. It is an attitude and a way of approaching the day's challenges. It is not a perfectly linear process. Like the sea rose, recovery has its seasons, its time of downward growth into the darkness to secure new roots and then the times of breaking out into the sunlight. But most of all recovery is a slow, deliberate process that occurs by poking through one little grain of sand at a time. As the sea rose teaches us, the work of growth is slow and difficult but the result is beautiful and wondrous.
We have chosen very difficult work. Sometimes I think we are a little weird for choosing this line of work. I mean, computers don't ask that we grow and the pay is certainly better. But we stick with this work and are faithful to it. Why? Because we are part of a conspiracy of hope and we see in the face of each person with a psychiatric disability a life that is just waiting for good soil in which to grow. We are committed to creating that good soil.
And so I celebrate you. I celebrate the strong and fiercely tenacious spirit of people with psychiatric disabilities. I celebrate the person within each of us. I celebrate hope. I celebrate our conspiracy. And I think we all deserve a round of applause. Thank you!
References Balter, M. & Katz, R. (1987). Sing no sad songs: The Marie Balter Story. The Balter Institute, Ipswich MA.
Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou (Trans. By Ronald Gregor Smith). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Deegan, P. (1992). The Independent Living Movement and people with psychiatric disabilities : Taking back control over our own lives. Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal. 15, 3-19.
Deegan, P. (1990). Spirit breaking: When the helping professions hurt. The Humanistic Psychologist 18 (3), 301-313.
Deegan, P. (1988). Recovery : The lived experience of rehabilitation. Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal XI (4), 11 - 19.
Miller, J.B. (1976). Toward a new psychology of women, Boston : Beacon Press.
Ogawa, K., Miya, M., Watarai, A., Nakazawa, M., Yuasa, S., & Utena H. (1987). "A long- term follow-up study of schizophrenia in Japan – with special reference to the course of social adjustment. British Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 758-765.
Sacks, O. (1970). The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales. New York, Harper & Row
Vanier, J. (1988). The broken body: Journey to wholeness. New York: Paulist Press.
Thomas
Hoccleve Complaint
Translation from Middle English by
Carl James Grindley
The following verse
libre translation or version of Thomas Hoccleve’s Complaint is based on
two editions of the text: Frederick J. Furnivall’s (EETS ex 61, 1892);
and John Burrow’s in English Verse 1300-1500 (Longman, 1977, pp.265-80).
After they brought in the summer wheat,
And the fall began misting the land over,
Robbing the trees of leaves,
Turning everything that was once fecund and green Into pale yellowness,
Dead and rotten under foot,
Change sank into my heart.
You must always remember
That nothing lasts forever.
There is nothing but change and variance.
No matter what family you’re born into,
What high-falutin’ social class, it won’t
Last, it’ll go.
One day you’ll die
Just like everyone else,
And believe me, no one is too strong,
Or too rich, or too horny, or too gay
For too long.
As for me,
At the butt end of November,
One night, in bed, all kinds of things started
Just a running through my head,
And I couldn’t get to sleep.
When you find yourself sick and beaten,
Deserted by fortune, then the clouds roll in
And dullness takes over,
The sun abates and dark rain
Pours over you, you practically swim in misery,
And lose all delight
in living.
Well, that’s how it was with me.
I got this pain in my chest
And it grew and grew and grew until I had to do something,
I couldn’t hold it in anymore,
Or save it up for senility,
So to prove I still had a pair, I burst out into song:
here endythe my prologe • and folowythe my complaynt.
God has this habit of paying little visits,
You can see him at it almost every day,
Some people lose the best things, others
Just their problems; well He didn’t forget me--
Think about my wild infirmity,
Subject of much gossip and common knowledge,
Which had cast me out of myself.
No big secret indeed,
My story was on everyone’s lips,
And my friends worried, so much so,
That for my health
Not only did they swear to go on pilgrimages,
But actually went on them, some on horseback, some on foot,
Bless them all, they just wanted me to be well again.
But although the substance of my memory
Went out to play for a while, as it were,
God in all His virtue and glory
With all of His might and grace
Made it return and flit back into my skull-box.
This was November 1st,
And it was a full five years ago.
And ever since that day,
Praised be the good Lord,
My brains and I have been this close,
But although I’m back on top of things,
Saved by the good Lord himself,
I’ve been living like a burning man,
In great torment and misery.
For although I knew my wits were back home again,
No one gave me the benefit of the doubt,
Or had the time of day for me.
All my old friendships were shaken off,
Put away, and I was dissolute and alone,
And with no one to talk to or be with,
I became a stranger to all.
Heartache and torment!
I’d be walking past Westminster Palace,
And in the vast crowds of London
I’d see my old friends’ faces fall:
People who used to be so close.
Heads turned away,
And it was like I was invisible.
If I may quote for a minute from the good book:
“They that saw me without fled from me.”
Whatever that means,
and, “I am forgotten as one dead from the heart.
I am become as a vessel that is destroyed.
For I have heard the blame of many That dwell round ‘bout.”
Did people think I’d gone deaf?
“That boy ain’t right. Sure he looks right and acts right,
But it’ll come back,
And at his age you can’t be too sure no how.”
I could hear what they were saying,
And their words filled me with fear and trepidation.
“It’s getting hot again, Old Thomas will be barking mad soon.”
But the seasons passed,
And their words stayed words. Thank God for that.
Thank God for every summer month
And every hot day.
What happens, happens;
Every person’s future is an unexplored country,
And it’s unadulterated ignorance
To believe anything else.
Nobody knows how God works,
And if He’s going to visit,
You’ll never know how, why, where or when.
For the longest time I was like everyone else;
After all, no one expects wake up alone in the woods,
But the Lord can and will do what He wants,
He can take your health and send sickness,
And no matter how good you feel today
Don’t be too sure that it’ll last:
“The good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away.”
God puts up with a lot,
And when you least expect it, He acts.
So keep your eyes open,
Because those of us with clear enough heads
Can see the world’s change and mutability In all sorts of ways.
Enough of that.
Let’s get down to business.
They said I looked like a wild bull,
Crazed of expression,
Holding my head from too high,
Overbearing and proud in the brain,
Like a six point stag,
Reasonless and useless,
Without serenity or seriousness.
Some easy wandering existence indeed!
They said I was bolting like a doe,
Starting at the slightest thing,
Completely out of my mind, brain sick.
Others had my feet waving to and fro,
Or my eyes dancing around every
Corner of every room.
I heard all these whispered words,
But kept my peace.
My heart said: If I answer back, Or in any way behave badly,
Then this crowd would run me out of town on the rails,
And I’d be further ruined,
So it’s best just to return home.
Answering back would have been pointless,
I’d lost the key to my tongue,
And anything I could have said
Would have been deemed worthless,
So I made my way home,
Drooping and heavy and all woebegone,
I had nothing and no reason for gladness.
But because they talk and gossip,
I worked hard to fashion normalcy,
And maintain my composure;
The shame and fear of it all struck me hard:
It was like I was drowning in my own sweat,
Damper than any river,
And at once both frosty cold and fiery hot.
And when I got home, and found myself alone And in my own room,
I struggled to the mirror,
To see if it was my face that stared back,
Or some other guy’s, some one not quite right,
Some vision that through
Cunning and force I could dispel.
Many times I dashed to that mirror, thinking,
If I can only hold this shape, keep this pose,
Then they won’t know,
They won’t suspect,
And the happy look and the calm style I’ll adopt will be no offence
To them. I don’t think anyone can,
As the story goes,
Truly see their own faults,
And why should I be any different?
But what shall I do? Which is the best way
To bring some peace?
I can only pledge to do my best.
I don’t get mad anymore,
Wellness has inflicted a sort of peace on me,
And instead of anger and impatience, I am easy and soft,
suffering all wrongs
And offences in silence, rather than to lash
Out and hear them say ‘See how he has collapsed again.’
Once I was walking back from the office, from Westminster,
And my mind was ablaze,
And I thought, what an idiot I am,
Beating this sidewalk endlessly with my feet,
Labouring on in sweat and anxiety,
And only obtaining heaviness,
Because they won’t forgive me.
But on the other hand,
If I don’t show my face in public,
They’ll say I’m too scared or too insane.
This isn’t me being paranoid by the way, this is the truth.
Oh God, because my spirit was restless, I sought rest,
but I found nothing,
Except ready trouble at my hand.
I’m not about to rain on anyone’s parade,
If someone wants to be the King of the Moon,
That’s their business and vice versa;
Anyhow it’s the concrete things that count,
That whole ‘judge not’ sort of thing,
And you apply it to deeds, not to shades of lipstick,
Or at least that’s what the good book says.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck,
What more proof can there be? It’s a duck.
See? My rationality is fully intact,
And yet I know what people think
When I walk past. (They think I’m nuts!)
You tell me if it’s the truth.
You see, the clothes don’t make the man,
You can’t judge someone on appearance,
You can’t tell whether their wits are sound or sick
During something like a brief encounter,
And even if someone once had a hard time of it,
You can’t assume that they still suffer;
Why don’t you just talk with ‘em and find out the truth?
I mean--and I know I’m being pretty basic here,
But I am a vulgar man, without a doubt
Ignorant and free from sophisticated logic,
Yet I have some common sense,
I’m not as thick as people seem to think I am,
Mary Mother of God and sweet Jesus willing--
Only deeds can be the proof of words.
Say someone falls into drunkenness, Do you think they’ll stay drunk forever?
Of course not, even if they get really blasted,
Unable to speak or walk a straight line,
So drunk their brains get ripped out of their heads
And buried in a bottle, sooner or later
They’ll sober up.
Therefore, even though my mind went on a little holiday
Far away from home, it returned;
God sucked the poison out of my brain
The poison that had infected and ‘wilded’ me.
God the almighty, King of all Physicians,
See how He giveth the sick medicine,
And relieveth them of their pain.
Let’s get on with it. God knows, though,
Many people look and act like real geniuses,
But when you get down to it, a lot of them
Are nothing but the finest class of idiot.
And others may look like absolute morons
But once you get past their appearances
They reveal themselves as being regular brainiacs.
At any rate, the debate regarding my appearance
Is no longer between me and my mind,
Though, as you know, we once had a bit of a
Falling out. My fault really; I was never all that well-
Educated, or prudent or rational:
A genius doesn’t wear my boots.
But this much is true: whatever brains I did have
Before I became unsettled--
And I never was that smart, mind you--
Praise be to Jesus-- I’ve got it all back; yet they say
The exact opposite.
This is the cause
Of my latest bout of misery and true sorrow.
Since my luck has changed for the worse,
It’s high time for me to creep into my grave.
I mean, how can I
live without joy?
I can have no
happiness in my heart,
And if I open my mouth,
men say I rant and I rave.
Since there’s nothing for me now but woe,
I might as well be dead. Farewell prosperity!
Adieu good fortune! I’ve been struck off your list.
And now, since no one will ever talk
To me again, adios all, I’ve turned in my uniform
And been transferred from the team.
Good-bye good times, good-bye good luck.
But, you know, If I keep ragging on myself like this,
I’m just going to end up buying more trouble.
Why should I make matters any worse?
Since God gave me back to myself,
Why should I care what anyone says?
I’ll suffer them all and leave myself alone.
Sometimes, though, when I meet those people
Who still doubt that I’m well,
And who still see me as a rack of sickness,
I hear them wish me all the best,
And gladness and joy fills my spirit,
And their little tendernesses cheer me up.
Bless them all, I find life worth living.
But those sorts of folk do have a problem,
And that is that they can’t see the whole me,
And even though I pass by in heat and cold,
Neither loud nor still, they still suspect the worse,
A dark cloud obscures their eyes--
Dull sky, bare banks, hardly a boat to be seen--
Leaving them only with doubt.
Folk sometimes approach my colleagues, as it were,
My fellow scribes in the cold bowels of the Privy Seal,
And corner them, asking, Is old Thomas ill or well,
And no matter what anyone says,
Their replies are seen as lies,
And held in little value.
This troubled life has gone on too long,
And although I’ve often wished to twist in my skin,
I’m whole again, my own best friend,
And as long as I’m alive I’ll never be hungry again.
I don’t care no how,
Let them say and think and dream what they want.
by Pat Risser
Recovery is a fairly new concept in mental health. In today's public mental health system, most of the emphasis is on "mental illness" and not on "mental health." As clients of the public mental health system, we find that the emphasis is usually on our "disability" rather than our abilities.
Despite this negativity from the system, many consumer/survivors have recovered. What does this mean? To recover something means to get something back that has been lost or misplaced. So, if consumer/survivors recover, just what is it that they recover and what was lost in the first place?
I contend that what we lose is ourselves. I believe that most of us enter the system as trusting souls seeking help for some emotional problem. We enter with a lot of expectations. First of all, we are brought up in this culture that teaches us from birth to trust doctors and to believe in doctors' ability to heal us. We enter into the relationship with the doctor with a belief that we are ill, sick or broken somehow and with an open faith that the doctor can heal us. We often place ourselves at the mercy of the doctor to make us well. This belief system causes us to elevate the doctor to a position of authority and in the process we place ourselves in a position of subservience to that authority.
The first thing we are told is that we are indeed ill and that we will never recover. We are given a diagnosis or label that comes to define us. We surrender our personal power to the authority of the doctor and we grow accept that we are hopeless, helpless and powerless to do anything to effect the outcome of our "illness." Our identity subtly shifts to that of being a mental patient instead of trusting and believing in ourselves and our own personal power to heal. It is distressing to me, every time I hear a person introduce themselves as their psychiatric diagnosis.
I can't count the number of times I've heard someone say, "I'm a schizophrenic," or "I'm a manic-depressive." In essence, people lose their identity as a person and their diagnosis becomes their identity. This subtle shift occurs in such tiny increments that it's often not noticeable. No therapist (in their right mind) would be so blatant that they'd say, "I'm the professional and you're JUST a mental patient so therefore, 'I' know what's best for you." However, this attitude bombards mental patients sometimes hundreds of times a day. The effect of these micro-oppressors is an eventual brainwashing that erodes any self-confidence or self-esteem that may be present. Eventually, we lose hope and we lose our sense of self as we resign ourselves to our new identity as a mental patient.
We go along with whatever "treatment" is suggested or imposed, without question. More and more, our lives revolve around our identity as sick or mentally ill until our lives are consumed in that identity. We no longer have feelings like everyone else. If we are too happy, we are manic. If we are too sad, we are depressed. If we have difficulty concentrating, we are schizophrenic. We go to hospitals because we're incapable of directing our own lives and we go to day treatment because we no longer fit anywhere else. Our lives become centered around the drugs we have to take. We measure our time in increments of 15 minutes because that’s how long it takes for a ‘meds’ appointment. We break our days into increments centered around our medications – pills in the morning, pills in the evening and the in between pills with some to be taken with food. We measure our calendar in terms of the 6-week increments between ‘med’ appointments and one of the major goals or our 'treatment' is compliance.
It is this loss of our 'self' that we recover. In the recovery process, we learn to reclaim our selves. In recovery, we regain our sense of self-esteem, self-worth, self-value, self-determination and our autonomy as unique and wonderful individuals. This isn't an easy process. We must often overcome not only our own internalized sense of oppression but we have to overcome the attitudes of the providers in the system, the psychiatrists, our family, friends and loved ones who have also come to view us as mental patients. Stigma and discrimination are hard to face but, face them we must – both those that are internal and those that are external. Often the first step in recovery is that we have grown tired of our limited and powerless identity as a mental patient. Sometimes, we’ll see one of our peers do something to assert themselves and it causes a twinge in us, making us wish to do the same.
We may simply challenge or question in a small way. With this assertion on our part, we not only take a tiny step to reclaim our self identity but, we start to shift the power imbalance so that the doctor or others in the system aren't on quite so high of a pedestal. It doesn't matter whether we lower the authority figures from their elevated status or whether we raise our own status. What matters is that we begin to see ourselves as more equal, as more of an individual instead of as a mere mental patient. We may notice that others can have a bad day, an off week or even a down month while we, experiencing the same feelings, are described in terms of negative symptoms. We may uncover long dormant yearnings for similar dreams as others. We may find that within ourselves, we've grown tired of being limited to "supported housing" or "supported employment" and we may start to desire owning our own piece of real estate or actually having a career.
When we first try to assert our self, we are usually met with great resistance. We may acquire new labels such as "treatment resistant" or "non-compliant" to attempt to force or coerce us back into a subservient role. The more "institutionalized" we are, the harder it may be to assert ourselves. The more we've come to rely on others to take control of our lives, the more difficult it may be to "recover" our sense of self. We may find that others like ourselves are helpful in our recovery process. We may find that we want the same self-confidence that others have found and we may seek out peer support. We may recall that being strapped down in seclusion or restraint and being treated condescendingly as a small child wasn't very helpful. We may realize that those who helped us most to remain sane in insane institutions were our fellow inmates and we might start to develop relationships with others who help us feel better about ourselves and who support us in our tentative steps toward independence.
I have three children and I helped them to learn to ride a bicycle. I did the usual thing of running alongside while holding onto the back of the bicycle seat. Eventually though, I let go. I ran the risk of my children falling and skinning their knee or worse yet, cracking their skull. However, I knew that the result would be an increased sense of independence and freedom so I let go. However, the system, family and friends treat us as though we need them to hold onto the bicycle seat of our lives forever. They do this in the name of love and fear that we might skin our knees or crack our skull. However, this "safety net" is not love. It is abuse and it's part of what holds us back and keeps us unhealthily dependent.
As mental patients, we are almost totally dependent upon others. This unhealthy dependence harms us. We grow complacent and we expect as little from ourselves as we can get away with. However, if we remember back to childhood, we can again find ourselves. We are born with the ability to hope and dream. We must get in touch with those hopes and dreams that have sometimes lain dormant for a very long time. We may start to recall what we wanted to be when we grew up. We may rightfully start to ask what if anything is standing in our way of still pursuing those dreams. In losing our self-identity, we likely developed a fear of being independent. We may be receiving SSI or other help from the system. This help may keep us dependent and we may be afraid to surrender those 'benefits.' However, it may help our perspective if we recall our life as teenagers.
As teens, we likely had a home, food, clothing, shelter, transportation and perhaps even an allowance. Why would anyone want to give that up? Why would anyone want to go out into the rat race and interact with coworkers who are jerks, bosses that are even bigger jerks, fight traffic, be forced to rise and shine every week day, just to receive a check that mostly goes to paying bills and out of which Uncle Sam takes a huge chunk? The reason is that we naturally crave and cherish our freedom. If we can get in touch with those cravings, we can counteract our fears and start to overcome our unhealthy dependency. We can actually choose our own course toward freedom and independence and the happiness that brings.
We have the right to fail and to make mistakes. That is how most people learn and grow. We may learn to accept all aspects and different parts of ourselves and find that they are part of what makes us unique and valuable people. We may discover that if we hear voices, it's okay. We may not be able to interact with our voices in a loud and belligerent manner in a crowded grocery store (or we’ll likely be hauled off to the nearest psych emergency unit) but if we do it quietly in our own home, we no longer get labeled as being sick or ill or different. We may not be able to be naked in a public park in the middle of the day or while walking down main street but, we can give in to those desires in the privacy of our own home or in special nudist parks. We may find other ways of coping with our differences that, as long as we don't get into other people's “space” doesn’t end up with us locked up or forcibly medicated. We may find that we can do and be all that we want to be if, we learn to cope with our feelings in ways that don't invade other people's "space." We may, in the process of recovery, find that we want to return to school or pursue meaningful work. We may uncover our ability to hope and dream again and we may actively start to work toward making those dreams become our reality. Our human spirit is, to me, not something religious. It is that sense of purpose that drove Beethoven to write such beautiful music even though he was deaf and his ears would never hear the sounds. As our identity became that of a mental patient, our spirit was battered by people around us, our families, friends and the system. We received the message that we were hopeless.
As that spark of remaining spirit starts to recover, we rebel against the despair that others thrust upon us. Our spirit finds inspiration and hope and dreams that once lay dormant or new dreams become a driving motivation. We no longer allow ourselves to be unmotivated and trapped in a role of unhealthy dependency. We cherish the thought of freedom and self-determination. We grow stronger with each step we take. Over the course of time and usually with the help of others, we struggle back from the darkness of being an overly dependent, sick, ill, mental patient and we recover our selves. We find that we yearn for an identity that is more than a psychiatric label and a bottle of pills. We recover our sense of self-confidence, self-esteem, self-assurance and self-motivation. Recovery isn't an easy process but, its rewards are many including freedom, independence and the ability to hope and dream. Recovery is possible!