The Need for True Consumer-Orientation in Mental Health:
Simple Marketing Orientation to a "Population Seen, Not Heard"
This entry will present a modest proposal: that the mental health consumer is to be "heard" as well as merely "seen" -- or "preached-to"-- for services, that a "consumer-centric perspective" be applied in the delivery of psychiatric services and in mental-health-advocacy. While I must admit that "the customer is not always right" in mental health-- there are certainly a minority of times when we need involuntary services-- the general orientation of all service-provision in mental health seems to be overweeningly: "Take this as prescribed, and come in for your next appointment"...alternatively, by certain would-be advocates "don't listen to the shrinks-- do this/that/the-other that WE espouse as alternative medicine." The real amount of feedback about what the "customer" in mental health wants seems to be minuscule, and often what is served-up is a reflection of numerous other public and agency and so-called MH-advocacy considerations having nothing to do with the comfort-level of those on the "receiving end" of service.
On the other hand, beginning with the "new vocabulary" in no small part stimulated by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) the terminology for "mental patient" has increasingly shifted to the expression "mental health consumer." We are now called "consumers." That is a usage that is nearly as polite now as calling people "gay" who used to be called, less-flatteringly perhaps, "homosexual." To this end-use, we witness a number of entities that purport to "serve mental health consumers," like "The National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse," He@lth.com's Website "Mental Health Consumer Connection," "The Texas Mental Health Consumers," "The Alaska Mental Health Consumer Web," "The National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations," "Pennsylvania Mental Health Consumers Association," "Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network, Inc.," "The National Empowerment Center," "M-Power"-- a Massachusetts organization-- "Recovery, Inc." may be cited in this connection-- and there is also a group called "NCMHPC: National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, Inc.," (to which I have been a sometime-paid-member... I say with pride and to express possible conflict-of-interest/affiliation.)
All of these by intent-- I say with numerous others-- are good, and the federal mental health and substance abuse agency-- SAMHSA-- professes profound support and encouragement of the work of these organizations. My purpose however is to stress another matter than the intent of these organizations, only their protocol(s). My words are NOT intended to be critical, but a "call for effective design." Again, this is not to suggest that mental health consumer/survivor groups have bad design, only that what they do could be re-directed in ways that would more-fully achieve the stated-goals/objectives these organizations profess.
To commence on this foray, I need to specify my own perspective/orientation/even-biases: I have been a mental health consumer now for the greater portion of my biograph; that I acquired the requisite credentials and worked in mental health professionally is really parenthetical to this discussion; but to the point I have been on the "receiving end" of services both by mental health agencies/professionals and by the organizations which are supposed to "advocate" for my/other-mental-health-consumers' needs-- like NAMI and the Mental Health Association (to a limited but finite extent) and Recovery, Inc. and KyMAP (a Kentucky mental health consumers' organization) and briefly the National Empowerment Center (in a side-connection to KyMAP.) While like all things this exposure has been a "mix" in all human aspects, I will have to posit initially that my experience has on the whole been more "positive" than "negative," and that everything I utter here is intended to be constructive and put-forward on the basis of still-limited information. In other words, I have no precise idea as to how ALL the organizations I have listed on this page "do their homework," only to what I have seen/heard/touched/"smelled" with the mental health consumer organizations to which I have been exposed do with the "design" and "consumer-service delivery" components of their activities.
My contribution is based on an utterly-simple proposition: that if WE are mental health "consumers" then the same principles generally-applied to consumer "marketing" (which of course need not-- by any stretch-- be by necessity a commercial endeavor) apply: we need to regard what is the prevailing model for this well-established discipline as a "learning experience," and to perhaps instruct on how a "consumer-orientation" in general is accomplished "outside of our fold." Now "marketing" is a well-established discipline-- and I know from exposure to the language of the mental-health groups that the inspiration for the term "consumer/consumerism" herein derived from the argot of the marketing specialists in business. So I shall spend a moment of the reader's time limning the basic concepts of marketing, before examining my witness to what-the-consumer-movement-means-in-mental-health:
We read in the (instructive if incomplete) article on "Marketing" in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia that marketing consists of "a social process which satisfies consumers' wants." In further elaboration, this source suggests that service-agencies have three additional requisites-- 'people, process, and physical-evidence-- that are in-addition-to those four required in a endeavor which has a productive orientation (the four-- which are needed for all orgs including the not-for-profits-- are 'product, pricing, promotion, placement'-- the "four--basic-- Ps"): thus we can speak of "the seven Ps" of good marketing for not-for-profit/service-rendering organizations in mental health. The specific requirements for proper marketing-orientation are: 1. determining customer/consumer need-- which by whatever valid method can be termed marketing-research (see "Marketing Basics," in Free Management Library ) ; 2. effort need to be made-- especially in not-for-profit/service-delivering agencies-- to do "customer/consumer service" as an essential part of the enterprise (see "Basic Guide to Nonprofit Program Design and Marketing," from the last-mentioned source here.) By adhering to this customer orientation, I hear Scott Carson, President and CEO of the Boeing Corporation (making aircraft) say that a business that thrives finds such input absolutely essential ( source: Mr. Carson speaking in a broadcast over "The Research Channel," this day-- Wednesday, October 31, 2007, at 2:00 p.m. EDST.)
To what degree do the sundry "helpers" or "would-be helpers" maximize the consumer-orientation in their "consumer advocacy"? My response is tripartate: 1. the State agency -- principally Central State Hospital-- with whom I have dealt has very-little-if-any-consumerism about it-- here one is expected to "just shut up and take it"; 2. the community mental health center-system (CMHC) that serves me-- "Seven Counties Services" in this region-- provides a surprising amount of opportunity-- through simple suggestion to the staff, opportunity to attend and participate in Board meetings, and -- when all else fails-- appeals to the Agency Ombudsman; 3. the agencies which are supposed to "advocate" my rights (don't want to be nasty-- they are listed above, though) have yet to ask (my/essentially-anybody's) consumer-evaluation/opinion about much of anything: instead the appeal is to the family of the consumer (which inevitably WILL have its own bias/heuristic-of-availability which sometimes will differ from that of the consumer/client) and occasionally to special-interests -- "crackpots" and "vitamin people" and "squeaky-wheels-in-mental-health," rather than to US-- THE CONSUMERS THEMSELVES.
This makes the mental health so-called advocacy groups to skew heavily toward what-minority-interests-want, not toward the prevailing-reality-for-all/every-other-mental-health-consumer/client/service-recipient. TO THIS DAY there are voices in "consumer-advocacy" -- such as elements of those in NAMI and the National Empowerment Center-- who would put-forward for schizophrenics and schizoaffectives a megavitamin therapy with niacin and vitamin C when these have CLEARLY demonstrated not to be effective ( see review, "Megavitamin and Orthomolecular Therapy in Psychiatry," American Journal of Public Health 64(4):410, 1774 ; ALSO Entrez PubMed abstract for "Megavitamin and Dietary Treatment in Schizophrenia: A Randomized, Controlled Trial," by K. Vaughn and N. McConaghy, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 33(1):84-88, February, 1999.) This is NOT to say that there are no dietary/food-supplement-additives useful for any psychiatric conditions, for clearly vitamin thiamine is essential for treating (alcoholic) Wernike's/Korsakoff's syndrome, and the omega-3 fatty acids are beginning to show some promise for the treatment of major affective disorder, for example. But to "rally troops" around the lie-- here that vitamin C and niacin "cure" schizophrenia -- is very-close to popular deception. Similarly, to claim-- as do exponents in the National Empowerment Center-- that taking psychotropic medication by "consumers" is optional-- when ever-so-abundantly-evidence-lies-in-the-contrary-- comes pretty close so promulgating pseudoscience to a cohort that needs-nothing-but-facts-and-reality as its guide. "Recovery, Inc." also comes close to hoodwinking mental health consumers by having hardly-impaired-at-all-one-time-prior consumers read from a Quotations-of-Chairman-Mao-type book slogans which are-- by "training the will"-- cure mental illness.
Indeed, due to the charismatic nature of the way groups coalesce sociologically, and due to the typical history of organizations with ideological underpinnings-- if one might be permitted the analytic method of Max Weber-- such a bias toward original eccentricity in founders is to be expected: but this is not to suggest that in each case the eccentric founders should be heeded forever/always-- for the simplest and most-compelling reason that such individuals are likeliest to have gotten themselves into the role of establishing a new community by virtue of having been "deviant from mainstream." So it is in mental health: "consumerism" needs to outgrow the ideological underpinnings that motivated the peculiarities that impelled -- for essentially wrong-headed motives (the "right motives"-- with evidence-- are OK)-- need to be discarded for true needs-based intervention. And in advocacy, there is no higher need than to do what has not been done by any of these groups-- with whom I have had experience-- which are supposed to "really be helping me."
Thus I/we need organizations which will really "sit down and listen": our cause is real and just, has nothing to do with "weak wills" or "not-taking-our-vitamin-C." We need never listen-- in a true marketing orientation-- to banter about either of these subjects when they have been proven incorrect-- or to anybody-else's-idea about what makes-us-comfortable-when-we-do-not-feel-comfortable. The "willpower" gambit has been tried on us-- doesn't work; the "vitamin gambit" has been pushed on us-- doesn't work; but what does work (in addition to taking scientifically-demonstrated psychopharmaceutics) are simple things like visitation, and the opportunity to sit down with someone (call her/him a psychotherapist or whatever you want) to explain all our LONELINESS and HOW MUCH THIS HURTS...AND BOY!!! THIS DOES BETIMES HURT; we need to be spared from homelessness; we need -- because almost to a one we are destitute-- public-health/Medicaid/Medicare; and certainly we do not need arbitrary "busts" with beatings and handcuffs by the police when we have raised our voices; we need something but "kangaroo" Mental Health Courts-- ones that will LISTEN when we try to explain that WE GOT BEATEN BY A PROPERTY-MANAGER WITH AN OAKEN STICK, DECLARED "CRAZY" AND SENT TO THIS LOCK-UP-AS-DANGEROUS-TO-OURSELVES; we need so many basic, basic, basic things that the "advocacy groups" backed by jaundiced "families" with limited knowledge and equally-limited-yet-Machiavellian-social-skills are NOT providing for us. [Here there is more "correction for misbehavior" required of my "advocacy groups" than from any professional mental health agency.]
Again, I wish to state in the profoundest way I can that these words here are not intended to be unfair/negative criticism-- only an assertion that virtually to a one the "advocacy groups" that are supposed to promote my needs and to a substantially-lesser extent "the professionals" profoundly do not practice "consumer marketing" but instead promote their OWN AGENDAS... And this too would be OK with me if/when their objectives are evidence-based/scientific-- and little there is to suggest betimes that such is the case.
"What the customer wants" is not always obtainable, necessary, or even desirable in the case of mental-health-service-delivery: nevertheless in hundreds of simple ways, the marketing orientation-- implied by the fact that now we are called "consumers" of this type of service-- could certainly sans "agenda-setting" by anyone-else be practiced with overwhelming good effect!
---Vernon Lynn Stephens, M.S.S.W.
D.S.M. IV-TR # 296.44
Telephone: 1 (502) 561-5419 anytime
Email: freethink@insightbb.com
Agonia: Mental Health Advocates
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
A Sometimes-Stigmatic-Struggle: "Not in My Back Yard" (NIMBY):
Local Resistance to Group/Foster-Care/Supported-Living/Just-Being-Neighbors
For the Chronically-Mentally-Ill/Mental-Health-Consumers
Due to the cultural stereotypes of what "crazy people" are reputed to be, and occasional/infrequent mishaps which do occur when the mentally ill live unprotected outside of the residential hospital (there are now "partial hospitals," too), mental health consumers are recognized to be among the least-desirable housing rentees and undesirable neighbors. According to SAMHSA-- a federal mental health and substance abuse agency, a common stereotypic response in communities is "not-in-my-back-yard!!!" (NIMBY)-- and thus efforts must be made to assure that the mentally ill, in the "diaspora from the asylum" do not "fall between the cracks, wash-out, hit-the-skids, and end up either in a jail for vagrancy or dead of exposure in a back alley."
Neighbors who hear that they have prospects of living with mentally-ill person(s) will be provoked to "grassroots"-- albeit untoward-- agitation against this possibility. Sometimes, this agitation can have an ugly quality. In a report "Home for Mentally Ill Battles Stigma," in Star News of Elk River Minnesota, October 23 of this year, it was reported that upon news that a foster home for the mentally ill was contemplated by the Wright County Adult Mental Health/Residential Services program for the city of Ostego, locals circulated a advertisement that the opening of this home would bring in "sexual predators, drug and alcohol addicts and [additionally, by implication, as-if-to-make-matters-worse] mentally ill people into their neighborhood, and that these people might and [sic] abuse their children..." Only with diligent -- and apparently by this publication as-yet-unfinished effort-- the mental health agency and the residents themselves have done yeoman "PR" and community/social service to undo this prejudicial trend. For example, residents hold block-parties, are prime movers in "Neighborhood Watch," and shovel-out-snow from the driveways of housebound elderly neighbors. Nevertheless, despite this concerted altruism on the part of the mental health consumers who live in the home, certain neighbors still harbor misgivings about the very existence of the home "next door to us," as it were. One resident-- a woman-- persists in fretting about whether this group home will have been a 'cover' for sexual predators and the violent-mentally-ill, saying "We know more of the intent perhaps initially...but we don't know that it will escalate to these other types of individuals that move into the home." Even the visitors to the foster-home residents are feared, on the grounds that these would be "driving through her neighborhood, and she does not feel she would be able to let her young children go down to the neighbor's house to play if there are strange vehicles in the neighborhood."
The article just-cited writes favorably of the residence of the mentally ill as "neighbors." This is not always the case, however, as the 'slant' of a publication often reflects the policy concerns of the writer, and to a larger extent, of the publisher. To a limited extent, this trend toward negativity surfaces in a story "The Dilemma: Not Enough Room for the Mentally Ill," The Flint Journal (Flint, Michigan) on October 21 of this year. Here, the untoward and aggressive behavior of a mentally-ill person living with his mother at home, in which this individual (adult, male) was known to smash car windshields, and menacingly brandish swords toward people, and assault people. The point of this article-- though-- is not contra the notion of the presence of such people in the community per se, but only that foster homes -- like the one in Ostego, just described, are needed to house (certain) deinstitutionalized mentally ill. One could still obtain from a reading of this article, meta-communicatively, the sense that "those crazy people really don't belong here, WITH US." Of course, no falsification seems to be involved in presenting this story: there ARE mentally ill people-- a minority-- that perpetrate asocial/antisocial/violent acts. It would depend on which part of the "reality"-- the greater-or-the-less, one wishes to present in such accounting. The mentally ill know only too well that the "Son of Sam" and "Leon Klinghoffer" stories of notoriety about certain violent mentally ill people are by far the exception and not the "rule" where the conduct of mental health consumers is concerned, yet the stories make "better press" than the well-meaning-struggles-of-saps-who-lost-employment-then-mind-and-try-to-make-it after psychiatric hospitalization.
Thus it is EASY to lose one's "happy home" as a mental health consumer as a consequence of (even mild) misconduct through eviction, and HARD betimes to re-locate after such a tailspin. I would say-- on the basis of hard experience-- that the stigma against renting to the mentally ill rivals that toward racial minorities or even to hardened criminals, "fresh outa the joint." Speaking from my own (Louisville, Kentucky) rental history as a mental patient "looking for a home", that eviction can come almost capriciously -- with trumped up reasons-- utterly unprovoked calls-to-the-police netting a putative "record of mental busts" which can thus get the consumer labeled a "nuisance" and expelled from domicile. But whether the eviction is for "lead paint in your windowsill-- gotta move" or for misbehavior-- the effect of eviction is DEVASTATING-- likely it would be on this account that one is never again able to find a "place to live," (especially) with cost-economies. From there, the trail for the consumer who "falls between the cracks," i.e. does not fall under the protection of some agency like Seven Counties Services (here) with its "wraparound services" and "shelter-plus-care" provisions for such contingency-- the result can be easily the skid-row result to which I alluded, above.
In this city, Louisville, it may betoken community non-acceptance that there do not appear to be "foster homes" for mentally-ill adults. What we have instead are an array of alternative residential facilities, such as the long-term "personal care home" (not indifferently identical to hospitalization) at Central State in Anchorage (a Louisville suburb.) And too, there are other not-public personal care homes which largely cater to the needs of the mentally ill-- one is just a few blocks from here, adjacent to Churchill Downs. Then-- more or less as an "answer" to the group/foster-home concept-- Louisville has Wellspring-- a non-profit organization established as a spin-off of the local NAMI chapter which sponsors 6 residential, rehabilitative therapeutic communities and 14 independent-living home-complexes for the mentally-ill. Seven Counties does not have foster homes per se-- according to information I received from their General Administration as of this date; this probably has to do with the fact that such programming would interfere with the ongoing projects of Wellspring.
This is not to suggest that it is difficult/impossible for the falling-through-the-cracks to occur: of this I am a "total evidence." The lead-paint eviction I experienced left me-- for honorable reasons-- in a disconnect from all of Seven Counties' (and thus Wellspring's) resources, and for an agonizing time I "had to prove myself" in dubious circumstances-- trying to 'buck' the stereotype that I was some kind of "freak" because of my uncomely position of being mentally-ill-and-on-the-town. My spell of official homelessness was rather brief, but I had to do battle with the attitudes of rooming-house managers, and of the general community-askance toward mental-health-types-who-live-in-rooming-houses-- until by happenstance I arrived at this place from whence I now write-- "a cheap apartment with adequate maintenance and an understanding landlord." To get to this happy point, I would nonetheless have to say, requires the "blood, sweat and tears" of which (affective-disordered) Winston Churchill spoke, the working through/around/over the small-mindedness of those who simply lack understanding of who I really am as well as lacking the sheer willingness to permit such empathy. I am well-aware that numerous people take "the media" as their source of connection-with-reality and thus as perception of what-is/ought-to-be. I know that the "bad press" generated by certain deranged culprits who do things sufficiently-bizarre to wind up as headline news WILL impact me-- in short order-- trying to do my best to be an ethical, "Eagle Scout" and an ambassador "taking asylum apart from the asylum" in my (impoverished) neighborhood-ambience. It is at times an up-hill climb: the likes of the Virginia Tech mayhem by an (untouched by institutionalization) should-be mental patient on April 16-- as well as all the other published stories of "bad apples from our barrel" who make tabloid-type news-- THIS EFFORT IS NEITHER EASY NOR ALWAYS SUCCESSFUL. So to the stars and the imputed-God-Who-cares-- I bid my prayer to "make it" and hope that all peaceable mental health consumers do the same.
--Vernon Lynn Stephens, M.S.S.W.
D.S.M. IV-TR # 296.44
Telephone: (502) 561-5419
Email: freethink@insightbb.com
Local Resistance to Group/Foster-Care/Supported-Living/Just-Being-Neighbors
For the Chronically-Mentally-Ill/Mental-Health-Consumers
Due to the cultural stereotypes of what "crazy people" are reputed to be, and occasional/infrequent mishaps which do occur when the mentally ill live unprotected outside of the residential hospital (there are now "partial hospitals," too), mental health consumers are recognized to be among the least-desirable housing rentees and undesirable neighbors. According to SAMHSA-- a federal mental health and substance abuse agency, a common stereotypic response in communities is "not-in-my-back-yard!!!" (NIMBY)-- and thus efforts must be made to assure that the mentally ill, in the "diaspora from the asylum" do not "fall between the cracks, wash-out, hit-the-skids, and end up either in a jail for vagrancy or dead of exposure in a back alley."
Neighbors who hear that they have prospects of living with mentally-ill person(s) will be provoked to "grassroots"-- albeit untoward-- agitation against this possibility. Sometimes, this agitation can have an ugly quality. In a report "Home for Mentally Ill Battles Stigma," in Star News of Elk River Minnesota, October 23 of this year, it was reported that upon news that a foster home for the mentally ill was contemplated by the Wright County Adult Mental Health/Residential Services program for the city of Ostego, locals circulated a advertisement that the opening of this home would bring in "sexual predators, drug and alcohol addicts and [additionally, by implication, as-if-to-make-matters-worse] mentally ill people into their neighborhood, and that these people might and [sic] abuse their children..." Only with diligent -- and apparently by this publication as-yet-unfinished effort-- the mental health agency and the residents themselves have done yeoman "PR" and community/social service to undo this prejudicial trend. For example, residents hold block-parties, are prime movers in "Neighborhood Watch," and shovel-out-snow from the driveways of housebound elderly neighbors. Nevertheless, despite this concerted altruism on the part of the mental health consumers who live in the home, certain neighbors still harbor misgivings about the very existence of the home "next door to us," as it were. One resident-- a woman-- persists in fretting about whether this group home will have been a 'cover' for sexual predators and the violent-mentally-ill, saying "We know more of the intent perhaps initially...but we don't know that it will escalate to these other types of individuals that move into the home." Even the visitors to the foster-home residents are feared, on the grounds that these would be "driving through her neighborhood, and she does not feel she would be able to let her young children go down to the neighbor's house to play if there are strange vehicles in the neighborhood."
The article just-cited writes favorably of the residence of the mentally ill as "neighbors." This is not always the case, however, as the 'slant' of a publication often reflects the policy concerns of the writer, and to a larger extent, of the publisher. To a limited extent, this trend toward negativity surfaces in a story "The Dilemma: Not Enough Room for the Mentally Ill," The Flint Journal (Flint, Michigan) on October 21 of this year. Here, the untoward and aggressive behavior of a mentally-ill person living with his mother at home, in which this individual (adult, male) was known to smash car windshields, and menacingly brandish swords toward people, and assault people. The point of this article-- though-- is not contra the notion of the presence of such people in the community per se, but only that foster homes -- like the one in Ostego, just described, are needed to house (certain) deinstitutionalized mentally ill. One could still obtain from a reading of this article, meta-communicatively, the sense that "those crazy people really don't belong here, WITH US." Of course, no falsification seems to be involved in presenting this story: there ARE mentally ill people-- a minority-- that perpetrate asocial/antisocial/violent acts. It would depend on which part of the "reality"-- the greater-or-the-less, one wishes to present in such accounting. The mentally ill know only too well that the "Son of Sam" and "Leon Klinghoffer" stories of notoriety about certain violent mentally ill people are by far the exception and not the "rule" where the conduct of mental health consumers is concerned, yet the stories make "better press" than the well-meaning-struggles-of-saps-who-lost-employment-then-mind-and-try-to-make-it after psychiatric hospitalization.
Thus it is EASY to lose one's "happy home" as a mental health consumer as a consequence of (even mild) misconduct through eviction, and HARD betimes to re-locate after such a tailspin. I would say-- on the basis of hard experience-- that the stigma against renting to the mentally ill rivals that toward racial minorities or even to hardened criminals, "fresh outa the joint." Speaking from my own (Louisville, Kentucky) rental history as a mental patient "looking for a home", that eviction can come almost capriciously -- with trumped up reasons-- utterly unprovoked calls-to-the-police netting a putative "record of mental busts" which can thus get the consumer labeled a "nuisance" and expelled from domicile. But whether the eviction is for "lead paint in your windowsill-- gotta move" or for misbehavior-- the effect of eviction is DEVASTATING-- likely it would be on this account that one is never again able to find a "place to live," (especially) with cost-economies. From there, the trail for the consumer who "falls between the cracks," i.e. does not fall under the protection of some agency like Seven Counties Services (here) with its "wraparound services" and "shelter-plus-care" provisions for such contingency-- the result can be easily the skid-row result to which I alluded, above.
In this city, Louisville, it may betoken community non-acceptance that there do not appear to be "foster homes" for mentally-ill adults. What we have instead are an array of alternative residential facilities, such as the long-term "personal care home" (not indifferently identical to hospitalization) at Central State in Anchorage (a Louisville suburb.) And too, there are other not-public personal care homes which largely cater to the needs of the mentally ill-- one is just a few blocks from here, adjacent to Churchill Downs. Then-- more or less as an "answer" to the group/foster-home concept-- Louisville has Wellspring-- a non-profit organization established as a spin-off of the local NAMI chapter which sponsors 6 residential, rehabilitative therapeutic communities and 14 independent-living home-complexes for the mentally-ill. Seven Counties does not have foster homes per se-- according to information I received from their General Administration as of this date; this probably has to do with the fact that such programming would interfere with the ongoing projects of Wellspring.
This is not to suggest that it is difficult/impossible for the falling-through-the-cracks to occur: of this I am a "total evidence." The lead-paint eviction I experienced left me-- for honorable reasons-- in a disconnect from all of Seven Counties' (and thus Wellspring's) resources, and for an agonizing time I "had to prove myself" in dubious circumstances-- trying to 'buck' the stereotype that I was some kind of "freak" because of my uncomely position of being mentally-ill-and-on-the-town. My spell of official homelessness was rather brief, but I had to do battle with the attitudes of rooming-house managers, and of the general community-askance toward mental-health-types-who-live-in-rooming-houses-- until by happenstance I arrived at this place from whence I now write-- "a cheap apartment with adequate maintenance and an understanding landlord." To get to this happy point, I would nonetheless have to say, requires the "blood, sweat and tears" of which (affective-disordered) Winston Churchill spoke, the working through/around/over the small-mindedness of those who simply lack understanding of who I really am as well as lacking the sheer willingness to permit such empathy. I am well-aware that numerous people take "the media" as their source of connection-with-reality and thus as perception of what-is/ought-to-be. I know that the "bad press" generated by certain deranged culprits who do things sufficiently-bizarre to wind up as headline news WILL impact me-- in short order-- trying to do my best to be an ethical, "Eagle Scout" and an ambassador "taking asylum apart from the asylum" in my (impoverished) neighborhood-ambience. It is at times an up-hill climb: the likes of the Virginia Tech mayhem by an (untouched by institutionalization) should-be mental patient on April 16-- as well as all the other published stories of "bad apples from our barrel" who make tabloid-type news-- THIS EFFORT IS NEITHER EASY NOR ALWAYS SUCCESSFUL. So to the stars and the imputed-God-Who-cares-- I bid my prayer to "make it" and hope that all peaceable mental health consumers do the same.
--Vernon Lynn Stephens, M.S.S.W.
D.S.M. IV-TR # 296.44
Telephone: (502) 561-5419
Email: freethink@insightbb.com
Friday, October 19, 2007
Florida Automobile Accident Victim
Reports Discrimination Re Head Injury
Mis-Read Psychiatricly Due to Past MH History
In my role as ad-hoc mental health advocate, I get calls from desperate people -- those who have experienced and are experiencing the raw end of discrimination in palpable ways. Not infrequently, these folks lack the social and fiscal resources to do much more than "cry in the dark." Often the call to me comes out of desperation, where, back-against-the-wall, they turn to me-- a mental health consumer pledged to "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but truth, so help me Truth" -- what Mohandas Gandhi called "the Truth-Force" (satyagraha) in order to get things done. Enough people read this web-log that there is more-than-promise that this objective of effectiveness might be met.
So it was that a Florida woman-- with Louisville, Kentucky connections-- called me on Thursday, October 18 about what has to be -- to my unfortunately casual hearing-- blatant discrimination due to her prior history of mental hospitalization. This woman, who identified herself as Faith Summut, said that she was involved in an automobile accident recently in the Sunshine State-- and sustained serious head injury. After some wrangling, all unkind to her, she was declared the victim-- NOT at fault-- in this accident. But when she tried to get Florida lawyers to take up her cause in litigation, she was spurned because years prior she had been hospitalized psychiatricly at Central State here in Louisville. The lawyers with whom Faith consulted apparently felt that the psychiatric history would weigh against court proceedings where the goal would be to determine the nature of the injury/dysfunction inflicted by the accident. Now, Faith is strapped for income; she wanted me to call her in the p.m. after our brief introductory conversation, provided she "still had minutes on her cell phone in the evening." When I called, the telephone number appeared to be valid, but subject to the restriction Faith most feared-- not enough time left for the conversation.
Accordingly, I have only a limited amount of information on which to base this report. I would like to have corroborating data, and much more of it-- but nevertheless CAN report on the experiences of people like Faith when the legal system-- like much of social order-- comes to bear on the mental patient when "trouble happens." Faith's account of the "short-shrift" treatment she has been getting from Florida lawyers is not indifferently like what countless other mental health consumers experience when ADVOCACY is needed for genuine torts which are inflicted upon us. The VERY FACT of knowing whether a victim of mishap is a psychiatric patient can make the difference between fair treatment by "the system" or none-at-all or even being victimized as "just another nut who should be locked up in the crazy house" instead of a participant of social amenities.
If Faith's situation parallels the situation in Kentucky, she could-- if she "raised heck" enough-- find herself in seclusion restrained on "emergency mental inquest" because merely showing anger to the "powers that be" can facilely be taken as "dangerousness to self/others." In Florida, this is done under the Baker Act; Kentucky has identical provisions under a Kentucky Revised Statute number (Chapter 202A.) For reasons that I find puzzling and irksome, "pesky" people can be involuntarily hospitalized after crimes or serious injury have been inflicted upon them, whereas there are other people -- like the Korean student at Virginia Tech who this April killed 32 innocent people after an unsuccessful effort at involuntary-- manage to "slip out of the grips of the law" when in fact they REALLY NEED LOCK-UP!!!
The situation about which Faith conveyed to me relates to a highway-traffic accident. But because discrimination against the chronically mentally ill is a pervasive factor in society, the "consumer" can expect the short end of justice when-- inter alia-- the legal/social matter pertains to the marketplace, the workplace, in housing, in pubic accomodation. The mere fact of "talking to oneself" in a restaurant can make a fretful waitress "call the cops on that guy," and IF the cop who comes does find out that this one-talking-to-himself is a psychiatric patient-- he runs excellent prospects of a mental health "bust," and in the process also runs great prospects of being "roughed up" by the cops-- a matter about which the hapless one can do nothing. When it comes to eviction, a landlord who has suspect grounds for removing the "stuff" of a mental patient due to the requirement of eviction-court waiting can expedite matters by having the cops "get him mad," and of course in this schlock mentality madness = mental illness, just sufficient for an involuntary-- then either putting the sap's belongings in the dumpster or SELLING IT on the open market. I myself -- as I have conveyed in this web-log-- experienced a landlord breaking into my apartment in the West End of this city, beating me enough with a oaken stick to break my left hand, then telling the cops "Mr. Stephens had been making a lot of noise down there, and I caught him beating his hand against the wall; PUT HIM AWAY!!!," which story the cops "bought" and sucessfully got the "danger to self" sustained with an involuntary in Mental Inquest Court.
We are thus looking at a pervasive pattern of inequity-of-service due to the flagrant stereotyping of mental patients. The pattern persists in every kind of amenity this society/community has to offer "respectable" folk. Elsewhere, in articles on Google Base, I have described just how "whopperjawed" this imbalance is: 80% of even the most-psychotic individuals NEVER "cause problems," while 20% of psychiatric inpatients cause 100% of the mayhem, and 2% cause 66% of the violence so storied in the media-- in newspapers, magazines, the electronic media-- and in cinematic abortions like "Halloween," with plot predicted on the thesis that a mental patient escapes from an asylum and goes on a super-killing-spree. For these misconceptions, and for the minor-minority which do all the mad criminal mischief, WE ARE WRONGED AS A COHORT OF BENIGN-MENTAL-HEALTH-RECIPIENTS.
I am so glad that Faith was able "to get a word in edgewise" to me on her at-the-limit cell telephone: her story speaks to a grim reality, the plight of all hapless souls who must deal with prejudice before and excluding-of social justice. Heed Faith Summut's case: heed the case of all mental patients subjected to "kind and usual punishment" when service should be mandated. AND ALL WHO HAVE SIMILAR GRIEVANCES SHOULD FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME-- AT THE NUMBER/ADDRESS CITED HERE AND THERE ON THIS BLOG-- WHENEVER "IT HURTS SO."
---Vernon Lynn Stephens, M.S.S.W.
D.S.M. IV-TR # 296.44
Agonia
743 East Broadway #155
Louisville, Kentucky
40202-1711 (USA)
Telephone: (502) 561-5419
E-Mail: freethink@insightbb.com
Reports Discrimination Re Head Injury
Mis-Read Psychiatricly Due to Past MH History
In my role as ad-hoc mental health advocate, I get calls from desperate people -- those who have experienced and are experiencing the raw end of discrimination in palpable ways. Not infrequently, these folks lack the social and fiscal resources to do much more than "cry in the dark." Often the call to me comes out of desperation, where, back-against-the-wall, they turn to me-- a mental health consumer pledged to "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but truth, so help me Truth" -- what Mohandas Gandhi called "the Truth-Force" (satyagraha) in order to get things done. Enough people read this web-log that there is more-than-promise that this objective of effectiveness might be met.
So it was that a Florida woman-- with Louisville, Kentucky connections-- called me on Thursday, October 18 about what has to be -- to my unfortunately casual hearing-- blatant discrimination due to her prior history of mental hospitalization. This woman, who identified herself as Faith Summut, said that she was involved in an automobile accident recently in the Sunshine State-- and sustained serious head injury. After some wrangling, all unkind to her, she was declared the victim-- NOT at fault-- in this accident. But when she tried to get Florida lawyers to take up her cause in litigation, she was spurned because years prior she had been hospitalized psychiatricly at Central State here in Louisville. The lawyers with whom Faith consulted apparently felt that the psychiatric history would weigh against court proceedings where the goal would be to determine the nature of the injury/dysfunction inflicted by the accident. Now, Faith is strapped for income; she wanted me to call her in the p.m. after our brief introductory conversation, provided she "still had minutes on her cell phone in the evening." When I called, the telephone number appeared to be valid, but subject to the restriction Faith most feared-- not enough time left for the conversation.
Accordingly, I have only a limited amount of information on which to base this report. I would like to have corroborating data, and much more of it-- but nevertheless CAN report on the experiences of people like Faith when the legal system-- like much of social order-- comes to bear on the mental patient when "trouble happens." Faith's account of the "short-shrift" treatment she has been getting from Florida lawyers is not indifferently like what countless other mental health consumers experience when ADVOCACY is needed for genuine torts which are inflicted upon us. The VERY FACT of knowing whether a victim of mishap is a psychiatric patient can make the difference between fair treatment by "the system" or none-at-all or even being victimized as "just another nut who should be locked up in the crazy house" instead of a participant of social amenities.
If Faith's situation parallels the situation in Kentucky, she could-- if she "raised heck" enough-- find herself in seclusion restrained on "emergency mental inquest" because merely showing anger to the "powers that be" can facilely be taken as "dangerousness to self/others." In Florida, this is done under the Baker Act; Kentucky has identical provisions under a Kentucky Revised Statute number (Chapter 202A.) For reasons that I find puzzling and irksome, "pesky" people can be involuntarily hospitalized after crimes or serious injury have been inflicted upon them, whereas there are other people -- like the Korean student at Virginia Tech who this April killed 32 innocent people after an unsuccessful effort at involuntary-- manage to "slip out of the grips of the law" when in fact they REALLY NEED LOCK-UP!!!
The situation about which Faith conveyed to me relates to a highway-traffic accident. But because discrimination against the chronically mentally ill is a pervasive factor in society, the "consumer" can expect the short end of justice when-- inter alia-- the legal/social matter pertains to the marketplace, the workplace, in housing, in pubic accomodation. The mere fact of "talking to oneself" in a restaurant can make a fretful waitress "call the cops on that guy," and IF the cop who comes does find out that this one-talking-to-himself is a psychiatric patient-- he runs excellent prospects of a mental health "bust," and in the process also runs great prospects of being "roughed up" by the cops-- a matter about which the hapless one can do nothing. When it comes to eviction, a landlord who has suspect grounds for removing the "stuff" of a mental patient due to the requirement of eviction-court waiting can expedite matters by having the cops "get him mad," and of course in this schlock mentality madness = mental illness, just sufficient for an involuntary-- then either putting the sap's belongings in the dumpster or SELLING IT on the open market. I myself -- as I have conveyed in this web-log-- experienced a landlord breaking into my apartment in the West End of this city, beating me enough with a oaken stick to break my left hand, then telling the cops "Mr. Stephens had been making a lot of noise down there, and I caught him beating his hand against the wall; PUT HIM AWAY!!!," which story the cops "bought" and sucessfully got the "danger to self" sustained with an involuntary in Mental Inquest Court.
We are thus looking at a pervasive pattern of inequity-of-service due to the flagrant stereotyping of mental patients. The pattern persists in every kind of amenity this society/community has to offer "respectable" folk. Elsewhere, in articles on Google Base, I have described just how "whopperjawed" this imbalance is: 80% of even the most-psychotic individuals NEVER "cause problems," while 20% of psychiatric inpatients cause 100% of the mayhem, and 2% cause 66% of the violence so storied in the media-- in newspapers, magazines, the electronic media-- and in cinematic abortions like "Halloween," with plot predicted on the thesis that a mental patient escapes from an asylum and goes on a super-killing-spree. For these misconceptions, and for the minor-minority which do all the mad criminal mischief, WE ARE WRONGED AS A COHORT OF BENIGN-MENTAL-HEALTH-RECIPIENTS.
I am so glad that Faith was able "to get a word in edgewise" to me on her at-the-limit cell telephone: her story speaks to a grim reality, the plight of all hapless souls who must deal with prejudice before and excluding-of social justice. Heed Faith Summut's case: heed the case of all mental patients subjected to "kind and usual punishment" when service should be mandated. AND ALL WHO HAVE SIMILAR GRIEVANCES SHOULD FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME-- AT THE NUMBER/ADDRESS CITED HERE AND THERE ON THIS BLOG-- WHENEVER "IT HURTS SO."
---Vernon Lynn Stephens, M.S.S.W.
D.S.M. IV-TR # 296.44
Agonia
743 East Broadway #155
Louisville, Kentucky
40202-1711 (USA)
Telephone: (502) 561-5419
E-Mail: freethink@insightbb.com

