Congress Investigates "Mental Illness and Brain Disease":Talk of "Research and Education" Where Simple Civility Take Precedence and PriorityOn Thursday, June 29, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health conducted an airing of mental health issues entitled "Mental Illness and Brain Disease: Dispelling Myths and Promoting Recovery Through Awareness and Treatment," which was notable in that both Republicans and Democrats spoke up for the kinds of issues that mental health advocates and associated service agencies have been supporting-- to a degree-- for some time. A major point of the discussion in the Subcommittee seemed to be that program-money needs to be increased for research and education re mental health issues. While I am not in favor of turning-off the "spicket" of money that goes into mental health investments like these, I would like to present the case-- as does psychiatrist Dr. E. Fuller Torrey-- in Out of the Shadows: Confronting America's Mental Illness Crisis, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, New York, 1997, p. 195 et seq. -- that such "research and training" money is often spent on psychological/behavioral exotica and not on genuine chronic mental illnesses like schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder, bipolar disorder, or manic-depression.I would even argue that while basic research needs to be done on the chronic mental illnesses, what is really needed is enhanced courtesy, decency, and credibility of the mentally ill, as meted on an individual-per-individual case. Clearly, the threshold of public awareness about mental illness is clearer and more-accurate than it has ever been previously; all that needs to go in tandem with this enhanced awareness is good-manners and equity and fair-dealing such as it may be deserved.To me, a public-relations campaign is in-order to clear up the misconceptions surrounding the overweening characteristics of the greatest portion of the mentally ill, many of whom, now with improved psychotropic medication and a modicum of support in the "social safety net," are able to re-enter the communities in which they live quite successfully, even hold-down responsible jobs and act as "pillars" and leaders in the neighborhoods in which they live. This tends to go unspoken, unpressed, thus "unsung," due to the culture-of-silence surrounding mental illness and the fact of being mentally ill.Instead, and I do not hesitate to say that this minority of the mentally-ill-cohort is not a distinct part of our motley presence in society, we have the mentally ill who present a danger, particularly a danger to others... the "bad apples" and "bad actors" who tend to get all the "press" about the mentally ill and thus color the public impression of what "we" are like. It is therefore of utmost importance that the mental health consumer-- who might as well call herself/himself a "mental patient" as having to be so so so "patient"--consider her/his behavior to be a kind of ambassadorship, in an "asylum" that has been granted by the society in which we live in lieu of the old "asylum" which meant life-confinement, hardly any different from imprisonment, now a by-gone aspect of mental hospital deinstitutionalization.It might even be that such a public-awareness campaign could take place "from the grass-roots," without the fiscal investment of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health-- and from what I can read from press releases that tightness-of-money in any event seems in the offing. If what I am proposing can take hold, mental health consumers en masse can turn out to lobby, blog, "bulletin-board," "spread-word-of-mouth advertisements," with hardly more federal investment than what took place yesterday (Thursday) in Congress, talk, talk, talk, in solemn assemblies which has the great advantage of creating press releases.But I read that these days, blogs are the hottest source of "news," op-ed, and plain editorials: to establish a blog, a mental health consumer need do no more than I, which would be to do the proper steps with "Blogger.com," http://www.blogger.com. Alternately, she/he could make "comment" to this blog, or to its companion web-log "Bipolar in Louisville," http://www.bipolarlouisville.blogspot.com; barring that -- in the interest of short time or PC skills-- one could contribute to an online Internet mental health discussion group, like the exemplary "HealthyPlace.com," http://www.healthyplace.com. None of these "Web-solutions" cost any money per se, for if one cannot afford a computer in these United States, one can-- as a well-behaved mental health consumer or well-behaved anyone-- go to a public library and do all/any of these things.There is a certain wisdom-- whether I or anyone would hesitate to admit it -- to the Conservative ideology of self-reliance in this country, for this country's "favors" and "charities" have often been back-handed at best. The mental health consumer who senses that services-will-be-cut-and-will-dry-up is not being delusional or morbid; she/he is almost-certainly being reality-centered. It is therefore mentally healthy for "us" to assume that we shall have to manage on our own, with less, and with more cost to ourselves, as an aspect of the new requirements of living independently as a mental patient in the community. To some extent, we shall have to be on our best behavior, and also to an extent, we shall have to take care of mental health consumers who cannot take care of themselves as those better-functioning; and to the least extent, we shall support the irresponsible mental patients who commit mayhem and cause the great commotions which blight the image of "mental patient" in the public's eye.An "all-fronts-attack" seems strategic for the general goal of raising-consciousness about mental illness and the value of the mentally ill in American society. At the same time, the mental health consumer movement needs to show real social cohesion, and real discipline, and real responsibility, all the while adhering to what Mohandas Gandhi called "The Truth-Force," i.e. the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing-But-the-Truth, as the basis for its social action. I would say that to date, the mental health consumer movement has lived far from these goals, more abiding in the realm of lick-and-promise to the genuine moral responsibilities of leadership, as well as ignoring unpleasant realities. This web-log will strive to make leadership in the mental health consumer advocacy movement a lived fact!--- Vernon Lynn Stephens E-Mail: freethink@bellsouth.net
In Dubious Battle:A Louisville MH Consumer Voices her Right to Refuse Anti-Psychotic Medication in a Voluntary Psychiatric HospitalizationI am a Louisville-local mental health advocate. Folks call me about mental health issues, especially about mental health social justice, in which I write and am keenly interested. Today, just as I had gotten back from my individual psychotherapy session at Seven Counties Services, a woman called me from the psychiatric ward of University Hospital on her cellular telephone wanting to know everything she could about the "right" (such as it is and gets practiced!) to refuse psychotropic medication, in this case on religious grounds.
Mental patiients in Kentucky have-- on "paper" at least-- the right-to-refuse-psychotropic medication. As a former mental health professional who believed in psychotherapy-first, and as a mental patient-patient, I often learned that in the pragmatic sense this right almost does not exist, as much as hospitals like to beautify the deeply-unpleasant but often necessary task of convincing a psychotic client-- sometimes by manpower and by brute-force-- to curtail this right-to-refuse in the face of an imminent danger to oneself or to others.
For me, the
forced decision to medicate me at Our Lady of Peace Hospital could have been -- as I look back on my life-- the very best thing that ever happened to me. It was done without the intervention of a court, and there probably were laws and court-decisions strong enough at the time to get some hell-bent, winnings-oriented lawyer to help me undo part of the humiliation of getting a shot of some major tranquilizer in the rear when I was insisting that my psychological problems-- during this first mania-- be handled by psychosocial interventions only. But that was in 1977, and in point of fact I came to appreciate that I had been inaugurated on my long career as a mental health consumer.
I am not very sympathetic with any schizophrenic or schizoaffective client or bipolar-with-psychosis who wishes either to refuse medication initially or to desist from maintenance psychopharmacotherapy without the cooperation of a supervising clinician or team-of-clinicians. Nor is the general public-- I trow-- a whit more inclined to validate the claims of a seriously psychotic individual who happens to want "no head-meds.," even invoking the Most Sacred Name of Jesus to justify this refusal. The
science supporting the use of anti-psychotic medication and mood-stabilizers is whelming in the conclusion that these chemicals are effective (and essentially safe) in treating acutre and chronic mental illness;
I do not wish to argue with what seem well-established facts.Nevertheless, mental patients
do have basic rights, some of which are in international accords, others in federal case-law and regulations, and some in state statutes. Here is what
Kentucky Revised Statutes has to say about the red-hot "right-to-refuse treatment":
KRS 202A.191(1)-- "Each and every patient hospitalized under this chapter shall have the following rights...(c) The right to refuse treatment subject to the provisions of KRS 202A.196... (g) The right to refuse intrusive treatment subject to the provisions of KRS 202A.196.KRS 202.A.196(2)-- "Upon the refusal of an involuntary patient to participate in any or all aspects of his treatment plan, the review committee shall examine the appropriateness of the patient's individual treatment plan. Within three (3) days of the refusal, the review committee shall meet with the patient and his counsel or other representatives to discuss its recommendations.KRS 202A.196(3)-- "If the patient still refuses to participate in any or all aspects of his individual treatment plan, the hospital may petition the District Court for a de novo determination of the appropriateness of the proposed treatment. Within seven (7) days, the court shall conduct a hearing, consistent with the patient's rights to due process of law..."I should hasten to say that, like so much in America, these are-- from my experience-- "paper rights." The mental patient who challenges the mental health staff in any way is likely to get some exceedingly rough treatment, and this is especially so where the all-too-familiar problem of the patient-refusing-psychotropic-medication is concerned. I know not at all whether my friend calling me today, who for religious reasons wanted not to take psychotropics, was afforded the letter-dot-and-tittle of the statutes just cited, but this is about par for the course. Hospitals are extremely high-handed in abusing patient's rights, and the whole process of mental hospitalization is inexorably humiliating, not the first place to go looking for shining examples of respect of human-dignity.
In the case of the woman who called me, I have but her report to give. Fairness would require that I also give the hospital's side, which in any event I do not expect to come so I shall not name the hospital or otherwise identify it. But in my experience, mental hospitals
do lie about what they have done
vis a vis respecting a patient's rights. They lie and lie and lie -- apparently when they think they are in a weak legal position. What the patient who called me said was that
she refused medication, was forcibly medicated, then a mental-inquest petition to the Jefferson District Court was written on her. If this is true, in my experience, the hospital is in some legal jeopardy and thus will utter every kind of fiction to exonerate themselves on the matter. I SPEAK FROM BITTER EXPERIENCE, OF WHICH I SHALL CONVEY, EITHER IN THIS BLOG OR IN "BIPOLAR IN LOUISVILLE," http://www.bipolarlouisville.blogspot.com , the companion to this page, that one concerned with issues related to bipolar disorder.My advice to people like the woman who called me today is to
cooperate!!! Taking the medication can be considered a moral an ethical obligation, like obeying the law-of-the-land or the prudent instructions of a police officer or fireman. Simply put, society
does have the obligation to curtail the practice of many of our rights, particularly where we in the free exercise of liberties may harm ourselves or others. We mental patients are social animals, and to live fairly we should be expected to "play by the rules." As a practical matter, additionally, this same society has no patience and almost no understanding of the febrile issues of the deranged individual, who feels that Jesus/Buddha/Allah does not want her/him to take Thorazine/Mellaril/lithium/Zyprexa/Risperdal; the public instead would rather be rid of the mental health problem according to the old adage, "Out-of-sight, out-of-mind!"
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as a practical matter has quit taking mental health cases: this I knew and this the friend who called me to found out, painfully. The panoply of rights that were laid out in such federal case-law as
Wyatt v. Stickney and
Donaldson v. O'Connor from the 1970s and early 1980s have either been checked, altered, or-- as I am trying to suggest now-- ignored by baldface insincerity whenever investigators from Licensure, JCAH, or the state poke-around to find the basis of a charge that a patient's rights were violated. There are winner-take-all lawyers, who will work hard on a private basis to "win" a case, only to take almost all of the patient's monetary settlement. In point-fine, nobody seems to care very much if a mental patient's rights are even quite seriously violated, out-of-sight-out-of-mind it is, it is.
This is a mental health advocacy web-log. At the same time, practicing was Mohandas Gandhi called
Satyagraha [Sanskrit: "Truth-Force"], we shall endeavor to be balanced and present "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"... even when it hurts!!! I cannot say much in favor of a psychotic mental patient's right to refuse anti-psychotic medication, even when the motivation derives from the pure teachings of Jesus-of-Nazareth. While it in fact is difficult for me personally to make a strong connection between Jesus'
didache [Greek" "doctrine"] and the refusal of psychotropics by a patient in the mental hospital, it is nonetheless true that a patient exactly does have such rights, procedures for the abrogation of which require strict adherance to legal procedure. Let us hope that the psychiatric ward -- contrary to the report I am getting-- really has followed these procedures. Know the reality! We have to almost out-of-hand acknowledge that Kentucky, got an "F" on the delivery of mental health services, dead-last in the nation, on NAMI's "Grading the States" report which came out in March,
http://www.nami.org/gtstemplate.cfm?section=grading_the_states&lstid=679 . All other niceties about services for the mentally ill, including the accomodation for their civil liberties and rights, needs to be seen through this "optical" filter.
In other words, I think I am "in the belly of the beast" as a mental patient in Louisville. I am neither sympathetic with mental patients who expect the outlandish or with agencies who give outlandish services with the pretense of civility. Truly, the fray for betterment of the lot of mental patients is a "dubious battle."
--- Vernon Lynn Stephens,
Consciousness-Raiser
In Dubious Battle:A Louisville MH Consumer Voices her Right to Refuse Anti-Psychotic Medication in a Voluntary Psychiatric HospitalizationI am a Louisville-local mental health advocate. Folks call me about mental health issues, especially about mental health social justice, in which I write and am keenly interested. Today, just as I had gotten back from my individual psychotherapy session at Seven Counties Services, a woman called me from the psychiatric ward of University Hospital on her cellular telephone wanting to know everything she could about the "right" (such as it is and gets practiced!) to refuse psychotropic medication, in this case on religious grounds.
Mental patiients in Kentucky have-- on "paper" at least-- the right-to-refuse-psychotropic medication. As a former mental health professional who believed in psychotherapy-first, and as a mental patient-patient, I often learned that in the pragmatic sense this right almost does not exist, as much as hospitals like to beautify the deeply-unpleasant but often necessary task of convincing a psychotic client-- sometimes by manpower and by brute-force-- to curtail this right-to-refuse in the face of an imminent danger to oneself or to others.
For me, the
forced decision to medicate me at Our Lady of Peace Hospital could have been -- as I look back on my life-- the very best thing that ever happened to me. It was done without the intervention of a court, and there probably were laws and court-decisions strong enough at the time to get some hell-bent, winnings-oriented lawyer to help me undo part of the humiliation of getting a shot of some major tranquilizer in the rear when I was insisting that my psychological problems-- during this first mania-- be handled by psychosocial interventions only. But that was in 1977, and in point of fact I came to appreciate that I had been inaugurated on my long career as a mental health consumer.
I am not very sympathetic with any schizophrenic or schizoaffective client or bipolar-with-psychosis who wishes either to refuse medication initially or to desist from maintenance psychopharmacotherapy without the cooperation of a supervising clinician or team-of-clinicians. Nor is the general public-- I trow-- a whit more inclined to validate the claims of a seriously psychotic individual who happens to want "no head-meds.," even invoking the Most Sacred Name of Jesus to justify this refusal. The
science supporting the use of anti-psychotic medication and mood-stabilizers is whelming in the conclusion that these chemicals are effective (and essentially safe) in treating acutre and chronic mental illness;
I do not wish to argue with what seem well-established facts.Nevertheless, mental patients
do have basic rights, some of which are in international accords, others in federal case-law and regulations, and some in state statutes. Here is what
Kentucky Revised Statutes has to say about the red-hot "right-to-refuse treatment":
KRS 202A.191(1)-- "Each and every patient hospitalized under this chapter shall have the following rights...(c) The right to refuse treatment subject to the provisions of KRS 202A.196... (g) The right to refuse intrusive treatment subject to the provisions of KRS 202A.196.KRS 202.A.196(2)-- "Upon the refusal of an involuntary patient to participate in any or all aspects of his treatment plan, the review committee shall examine the appropriateness of the patient's individual treatment plan. Within three (3) days of the refusal, the review committee shall meet with the patient and his counsel or other representatives to discuss its recommendations.KRS 202A.196(3)-- "If the patient still refuses to participate in any or all aspects of his individual treatment plan, the hospital may petition the District Court for a de novo determination of the appropriateness of the proposed treatment. Within seven (7) days, the court shall conduct a hearing, consistent with the patient's rights to due process of law..."I should hasten to say that, like so much in America, these are-- from my experience-- "paper rights." The mental patient who challenges the mental health staff in any way is likely to get some exceedingly rough treatment, and this is especially so where the all-too-familiar problem of the patient-refusing-psychotropic-medication is concerned. I know not at all whether my friend calling me today, who for religious reasons wanted not to take psychotropics, was afforded the letter-dot-and-tittle of the statutes just cited, but this is about par for the course. Hospitals are extremely high-handed in abusing patient's rights, and the whole process of mental hospitalization is inexorably humiliating, not the first place to go looking for shining examples of respect of human-dignity.
In the case of the woman who called me, I have but her report to give. Fairness would require that I also give the hospital's side, which in any event I do not expect to come so I shall not name the hospital or otherwise identify it. But in my experience, mental hospitals
do lie about what they have done
vis a vis respecting a patient's rights. They lie and lie and lie -- apparently when they think they are in a weak legal position. What the patient who called me said was that
she refused medication, was forcibly medicated, then a mental-inquest petition to the Jefferson District Court was written on her. If this is true, in my experience, the hospital is in some legal jeopardy and thus will utter every kind of fiction to exonerate themselves on the matter. I SPEAK FROM BITTER EXPERIENCE, OF WHICH I SHALL CONVEY, EITHER IN THIS BLOG OR IN "BIPOLAR IN LOUISVILLE," http://www.bipolarlouisville.blogspot.com , the companion to this page, that one concerned with issues related to bipolar disorder.My advice to people like the woman who called me today is to
cooperate!!! Taking the medication can be considered a moral an ethical obligation, like obeying the law-of-the-land or the prudent instructions of a police officer or fireman. Simply put, society
does have the obligation to curtail the practice of many of our rights, particularly where we in the free exercise of liberties may harm ourselves or others. We mental patients are social animals, and to live fairly we should be expected to "play by the rules." As a practical matter, additionally, this same society has no patience and almost no understanding of the febrile issues of the deranged individual, who feels that Jesus/Buddha/Allah does not want her/him to take Thorazine/Mellaril/lithium/Zyprexa/Risperdal; the public instead would rather be rid of the mental health problem according to the old adage, "Out-of-sight, out-of-mind!"
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as a practical matter has quit taking mental health cases: this I knew and this the friend who called me to found out, painfully. The panoply of rights that were laid out in such federal case-law as
Wyatt v. Stickney and
Donaldson v. O'Connor from the 1970s and early 1980s have either been checked, altered, or-- as I am trying to suggest now-- ignored by baldface insincerity whenever investigators from Licensure, JCAH, or the state poke-around to find the basis of a charge that a patient's rights were violated. There are winner-take-all lawyers, who will work hard on a private basis to "win" a case, only to take almost all of the patient's monetary settlement. In point-fine, nobody seems to care very much if a mental patient's rights are even quite seriously violated, out-of-sight-out-of-mind it is, it is.
This is a mental health advocacy web-log. At the same time, practicing was Mohandas Gandhi called
Satyagraha [Sanskrit: "Truth-Force"], we shall endeavor to be balanced and present "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"... even when it hurts!!! I cannot say much in favor of a psychotic mental patient's right to refuse anti-psychotic medication, even when the motivation derives from the pure teachings of Jesus-of-Nazareth. While it in fact is difficult for me personally to make a strong connection between Jesus'
didache [Greek" "doctrine"] and the refusal of psychotropics by a patient in the mental hospital, it is nonetheless true that a patient exactly does have such rights, procedures for the abrogation of which require strict adherance to legal procedure. Let us hope that the psychiatric ward -- contrary to the report I am getting-- really has followed these procedures. Know the reality! We have to almost out-of-hand acknowledge that Kentucky, got an "F" on the delivery of mental health services, dead-last in the nation, on NAMI's "Grading the States" report which came out in March,
http://www.nami.org/gtstemplate.cfm?section=grading_the_states&lstid=679 . All other niceties about services for the mentally ill, including the accomodation for their civil liberties and rights, needs to be seen through this "optical" filter.
In other words, I think I am "in the belly of the beast" as a mental patient in Louisville. I am neither sympathetic with mental patients who expect the outlandish or with agencies who give outlandish services with the pretense of civility. Truly, the fray for betterment of the lot of mental patients is a "dubious battle."
--- Vernon Lynn Stephens,
Consciousness-Raiser
In Dubious Battle:A Louisville MH Consumer Voices her Right to Refuse Anti-Psychotic Medication in a Voluntary Psychiatric HospitalizationI am a Louisville-local mental health advocate. Folks call me about mental health issues, especially about mental health social justice, in which I write and am keenly interested. Today, just as I had gotten back from my individual psychotherapy session at Seven Counties Services, a woman called me from the psychiatric ward of University Hospital on her cellular telephone wanting to know everything she could about the "right" (such as it is and gets practiced!) to refuse psychotropic medication, in this case on religious grounds.
Mental patiients in Kentucky have-- on "paper" at least-- the right-to-refuse-psychotropic medication. As a former mental health professional who believed in psychotherapy-first, and as a mental patient-patient, I often learned that in the pragmatic sense this right almost does not exist, as much as hospitals like to beautify the deeply-unpleasant but often necessary task of convincing a psychotic client-- sometimes by manpower and by brute-force-- to curtail this right-to-refuse in the face of an imminent danger to oneself or to others.
For me, the
forced decision to medicate me at Our Lady of Peace Hospital could have been -- as I look back on my life-- the very best thing that ever happened to me. It was done without the intervention of a court, and there probably were laws and court-decisions strong enough at the time to get some hell-bent, winnings-oriented lawyer to help me undo part of the humiliation of getting a shot of some major tranquilizer in the rear when I was insisting that my psychological problems-- during this first mania-- be handled by psychosocial interventions only. But that was in 1977, and in point of fact I came to appreciate that I had been inaugurated on my long career as a mental health consumer.
I am not very sympathetic with any schizophrenic or schizoaffective client or bipolar-with-psychosis who wishes either to refuse medication initially or to desist from maintenance psychopharmacotherapy without the cooperation of a supervising clinician or team-of-clinicians. Nor is the general public-- I trow-- a whit more inclined to validate the claims of a seriously psychotic individual who happens to want "no head-meds.," even invoking the Most Sacred Name of Jesus to justify this refusal. The
science supporting the use of anti-psychotic medication and mood-stabilizers is whelming in the conclusion that these chemicals are effective (and essentially safe) in treating acutre and chronic mental illness;
I do not wish to argue with what seem well-established facts.Nevertheless, mental patients
do have basic rights, some of which are in international accords, others in federal case-law and regulations, and some in state statutes. Here is what
Kentucky Revised Statutes has to say about the red-hot "right-to-refuse treatment":
KRS 202A.191(1)-- "Each and every patient hospitalized under this chapter shall have the following rights...(c) The right to refuse treatment subject to the provisions of KRS 202A.196... (g) The right to refuse intrusive treatment subject to the provisions of KRS 202A.196.KRS 202.A.196(2)-- "Upon the refusal of an involuntary patient to participate in any or all aspects of his treatment plan, the review committee shall examine the appropriateness of the patient's individual treatment plan. Within three (3) days of the refusal, the review committee shall meet with the patient and his counsel or other representatives to discuss its recommendations.KRS 202A.196(3)-- "If the patient still refuses to participate in any or all aspects of his individual treatment plan, the hospital may petition the District Court for a de novo determination of the appropriateness of the proposed treatment. Within seven (7) days, the court shall conduct a hearing, consistent with the patient's rights to due process of law..."I should hasten to say that, like so much in America, these are-- from my experience-- "paper rights." The mental patient who challenges the mental health staff in any way is likely to get some exceedingly rough treatment, and this is especially so where the all-too-familiar problem of the patient-refusing-psychotropic-medication is concerned. I know not at all whether my friend calling me today, who for religious reasons wanted not to take psychotropics, was afforded the letter-dot-and-tittle of the statutes just cited, but this is about par for the course. Hospitals are extremely high-handed in abusing patient's rights, and the whole process of mental hospitalization is inexorably humiliating, not the first place to go looking for shining examples of respect of human-dignity.
In the case of the woman who called me, I have but her report to give. Fairness would require that I also give the hospital's side, which in any event I do not expect to come so I shall not name the hospital or otherwise identify it. But in my experience, mental hospitals
do lie about what they have done
vis a vis respecting a patient's rights. They lie and lie and lie -- apparently when they think they are in a weak legal position. What the patient who called me said was that
she refused medication, was forcibly medicated, then a mental-inquest petition to the Jefferson District Court was written on her. If this is true, in my experience, the hospital is in some legal jeopardy and thus will utter every kind of fiction to exonerate themselves on the matter. I SPEAK FROM BITTER EXPERIENCE, OF WHICH I SHALL CONVEY, EITHER IN THIS BLOG OR IN "BIPOLAR IN LOUISVILLE," http://www.bipolarlouisville.blogspot.com , the companion to this page, that one concerned with issues related to bipolar disorder.My advice to people like the woman who called me today is to
cooperate!!! Taking the medication can be considered a moral an ethical obligation, like obeying the law-of-the-land or the prudent instructions of a police officer or fireman. Simply put, society
does have the obligation to curtail the practice of many of our rights, particularly where we in the free exercise of liberties may harm ourselves or others. We mental patients are social animals, and to live fairly we should be expected to "play by the rules." As a practical matter, additionally, this same society has no patience and almost no understanding of the febrile issues of the deranged individual, who feels that Jesus/Buddha/Allah does not want her/him to take Thorazine/Mellaril/lithium/Zyprexa/Risperdal; the public instead would rather be rid of the mental health problem according to the old adage, "Out-of-sight, out-of-mind!"
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as a practical matter has quit taking mental health cases: this I knew and this the friend who called me to found out, painfully. The panoply of rights that were laid out in such federal case-law as
Wyatt v. Stickney and
Donaldson v. O'Connor from the 1970s and early 1980s have either been checked, altered, or-- as I am trying to suggest now-- ignored by baldface insincerity whenever investigators from Licensure, JCAH, or the state poke-around to find the basis of a charge that a patient's rights were violated. There are winner-take-all lawyers, who will work hard on a private basis to "win" a case, only to take almost all of the patient's monetary settlement. In point-fine, nobody seems to care very much if a mental patient's rights are even quite seriously violated, out-of-sight-out-of-mind it is, it is.
This is a mental health advocacy web-log. At the same time, practicing was Mohandas Gandhi called
Satyagraha [Sanskrit: "Truth-Force"], we shall endeavor to be balanced and present "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"... even when it hurts!!! I cannot say much in favor of a psychotic mental patient's right to refuse anti-psychotic medication, even when the motivation derives from the pure teachings of Jesus-of-Nazareth. While it in fact is difficult for me personally to make a strong connection between Jesus'
didache [Greek" "doctrine"] and the refusal of psychotropics by a patient in the mental hospital, it is nonetheless true that a patient exactly does have such rights, procedures for the abrogation of which require strict adherance to legal procedure. Let us hope that the psychiatric ward -- contrary to the report I am getting-- really has followed these procedures. Know the reality! We have to almost out-of-hand acknowledge that Kentucky, got an "F" on the delivery of mental health services, dead-last in the nation, on NAMI's "Grading the States" report which came out in March,
http://www.nami.org/gtstemplate.cfm?section=grading_the_states&lstid=679 . All other niceties about services for the mentally ill, including the accomodation for their civil liberties and rights, needs to be seen through this "optical" filter.
In other words, I think I am "in the belly of the beast" as a mental patient in Louisville. I am neither sympathetic with mental patients who expect the outlandish or with agencies who give outlandish services with the pretense of civility. Truly, the fray for betterment of the lot of mental patients is a "dubious battle."
--- Vernon Lynn Stephens,
Consciousness-Raiser
