Agonia: Mental Health Advocates

What to Do Now:
A Mental Health Consumer's Existential Response
To Being Left-for-Dead by Systemic Indifference

There were cries prior to the last (Kentucky General Assembly, GA) legislative session that there would be falling-through (the 'cracks' and otherwise) in the mental health system without requisite funding. OK. Kentucky did not do that-- but went to bankroll the highway-constructors instead. OK.

Consumers: do not look for 'help' of the kind we got in the 1990s and prior due to the hullaballoo that was incited by 'bleeding hearts' (unfortunately so called) who had just enough 'Sacred Heart Christianity' to advocate/lobby for what here locally is Wellspring (for the decomensated, providing housing and treatments), the Crisis Stabilization Center (an alternative to 'regular' psychiatric hospitalization), and certain other cautiously-drawn programmmatics. The General Assembly-- still under the sway of the get-to-work-slouch politics of the Zeitgeist of the first part of this decade-- has left us high:dry:dated. Don't look for charity-stories about us in the C-J as much. Do look for the popularity of 'lunatics' jokes. Do look for the MH agencies to "cut you loose" as Recovered-- Guy-- you are so well that you don't need to talk to the likes of us anymore anymore anymore!!!!!

I am already beginning to have reports trickle in of cut-back consumers lacking supervision and then doing mayhem; I am now beginning to see more and more consumer-looking people bagpeople on the streets; there is a suggestion that some are medicating selves with dope-- unable to get anymore the meds like on PAP-- "Patient Assistance Program"-- freebies once flowing from our CMHC-- and God-Forbid!!!-- it looks as though not a few more have taken to 'dealing dope' in order partly to fulfill a supply; I have indirect but tangible report that the jails-- pretrial, post-convicted-- are full up with types like us because there was 'no room in the mental health inn.'

Now I invoke something called "existentialism," nuts-like-me: in fine this means assuming the-real prior to assuming the-ideal, and living responsibly-- 'damn their hide anyway!' I am in a bit of a hurry right now, but this wisdom-- wise as you can get if you're a consumer of MH-- is like us getting old-hat, but had its mavens like Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Buber, the ole-Nazi Martin Heidegger-- a motley crew alright and some said they were as crazy as they would now make us out to be. But 'to be strong at the breaking places' as suggested above now I am prescribing a dose of existentialism (tastes like codliver going down; victual as hardtack for the longtrek pilgrimage we now must face.) We need, in fine, to separate the existential from the essential and best we can BE REAL without ass-u-me guesses that some savior besides Jesus in human-form will come, make things all nice and forgiving again.

I have already limned a good portion of the-existential. The problematic we face is a downturn in economy-- a legacy of dust-under-the-carpet-lipservice by the policy principates-- in Frankfort as well as Washington. The shortfall in Frankfort with GA was a reflection of these variables-- in particular with the shortfalls created by the regime giving us the Budget Reduction Act of 2006-- and profound cuts in Medicare and the rest of the social welfare system. IF HELP COMES TO THE 'RESCUE' DO NOT LOOK FOR IT SOONER: LOOK FOR IT LATER. Between this instant and relief there will have been a body-count-- and some of those-there bodies will be of you-me-MH-types-- by whom I mean not just us-nuts but the kind ones who provided the service heretofore-- there will be LAYOFFS AND RUMORS OF LAYOFFS for these clement -- I prophesy with the sage tendency of one well-burnt in both the worlds of giving and receiving 'help.' So don't look for help. Look for ESSENTIALS to fill the gap in EXISTENTIALS...

First, Consumers: survive. Do whatever you can to medicate properly. This need not be expensive as you might think. If you have been so-liberated by MH that you no longer have a healer, check around, and here-and-there will be GPs (general practitioners) and occasionally NPs (nurse practitioners) who might be so kind as to Rx like chlorpromazine [Thorazine (r)] or its ilk-- not as good as the new ones but still dirt-cheap as a psychotropic. It is also true that a generic for the out-patented risperidone [Risperdal (r)] is online; look for it to be a potential standby for the 'expensive stuff' on the horizon in the aftermath/afterbirth of W's "New Freedom-- get-t-work" for us.

Second, be self-cognizant: measure your mentalities and manners with honesty, brutality. Assuming that there will be some psychotropic you can get after the fold-up of the '10s-decade the GOP planned for us in mid-this-decade, you should with some " 'Zine" another to get-by be able to detect when off-going is at-hand. BY ALL MEANS IN COGNIZANCE DO NO HARM: THE SOCIAL WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE IN THIS UNTIED SNAKES OF AMNESIA (USA) IS WELL ACCUSTOMED TO NEWS-JUICIES ABOUT CONSUMERS SHOOTING UP PLACES LIKE VIRGINIA TECH AND NORTHERN ILLINOIS U: LOOK FOR NO SYMPATHY/EMPATHY FROM HENCE ON THESE MATTERS!!!! Yet with ruthless honesty you should be able to detect 'when it's getting bad.' At worst, the forensic/correctional psychiatric places still give a certain amount of psychotrops: but you will if you get 'criminaled' for something 'heady' lose liberty, and a good toehold we have acquired on the license-to-live.

Look for sometime cuts in form for the SSDIs and SSIs and Medicares and Medicaids you get: this will come at the far-end-flop of the coming pol upheaval-- when the GOPs again get control of White House, Senate, House-- and then the talk will be "we can't afford to keep these bums in cigarettes [or whatever stereotype for which we will be then-blamed.] This will come with 'freezes' at first in the cashflow, then rollbacks 'for the common good.'

Try to keep a domicile rented as long as you can. This is what the cops call 'permanent address' and it can differentiate between freedom and jail. In your place, it might be best not to go out unless you have to do so: and if you do exit domicile, in short order look for a dearth of transit-- meaning for sure that 'public transit' and the para-trans (which was cut from nuts short-after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.)

Get a pet. If you can't in future-tense get petfood for want of bucks, befriend the birds, the squirrels, the cockroaches that hither/yon will certain obtain around you. The animals will be your-only-friends, your-only-solace in a world that WANTS to hate you because of the Birchites who have come, will come, and are-now.

Mostly: don't look-for goods, but look-out-for bads. The rednecks who kill with purse-strings-- somewhat gone but by the American dialectical logic will return-- want you your-hide your-exit.

And don't you forget this!

Existentially before Essentially,
Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
D.S.M. IV-TR # 296.44
M.S.S.W. belatedly
In the Place Commonly Called 'The Desert'
Here: Louisville, Kentucky USA

posted by Louisville Hermitage @ 8:50 PM 3 comments

REJOINDER TO INSULT:
When Given Less, DO MORE--
Starting with (The Privilege, for Time-Being) of The-Vote

In Kentucky, as under several other juridictions, mental health consumers have but a privilege to suffrage-- not a right. But as many of us CAN vote, let us vote now -- in the Fall 2008 election and always-- for what is of-our-wallets, of social-justice, and of-mental-health.

Due to the shenanigans of the ancien Regime-- I mean the politics of the late 1990s to the mid-decade now (and you know -- all of you-- whom I mean) we now as mental health consumers are forced to take the short-end, while vastness of high-ways, and of thus high-way-robberies has taken place from our of-people-by-people-for-people-supposedly governance. This is a perceptible trend. Service in all areas has stiffled, suffocated, strangled little:little:lots over a series of times that have brought great bequeathment to the Welfare of War, the Welfare of Wealth, the Welfare of Weird.

There has been hue-and-cry over the large increases in what MH consumers have to pay for services-- a reality often unspoken and of which the public is dim therefore-- as well as the cutbacks in what is obtainable. NOW I cannot get certain kinds of lab-test for my several medical conditions (psychiatric + those-medicalities-caused-by-the-psychiatric) that are the reality of my retirement-age life. I have discovered-- as The Boomers retiring now will certainly have discovered-- that the Social Contract for the shortfalls of school:jobs:opportunities we got in youth-- and the liability of old-men's-wars-- would not be met on the far end of time with the 'carrot' of a social safety net. No. Due to the action of a callous Congress (you know who was in charge in 2006 and prior, not my party) we face the demise of Medicare/Medicaid as we know it-- much much much to the woe of the American Medical Association and all equity-minded folk.

In mental health, those who plugged 'equity' for mental health did not realize that equity for mental health CERTAINLY in fiscal and authorization-for-fiscality terms does not meet with equity in government. The Medicare and Medicaid both tend to stiffle mental health. The services which others get, we consumers in the receiving-end get not from America. On the other hand, we are now beginning to be expected to pay more for less service. The co-pay increases pinned to consumers now are by no means the beginning of such co-pays, such increases-in-co-pay: we shall in short-order be expected to give payment-in-full-not-in-kind for these services in psychiatry (not long really 'mental health') which are getting sketchy and augur to become imaginary.

For this reason, I am supporting Congress-folk who support MH issues like our equity-under-government problem. My present (Democratic) Congressman does support this cause, a matter which I receive gratefully, gladly-- all the while knowing that against the John Birchers in Congress (House and Senate) and in Kentucky General Assembly (GA) this will have been a bitter and probably unsucess-meeting battle. Unless...

WE VOTE!!!!!! So it is not very surprising-- as long as I am so condescendingly permitted suffrage/the-vote-- to VOTE MY WALLET. That it IS the donkey-party Democrats who do this so consistently (and not for 'jobs-back-to-work-bum' I cannot get under any circumstances)-- I shall VOTE DEMOCRAT PLUG DEMOCRAT PROMOTE DEMOCRAT.

Should the elephant-party GOP see the light in a real way-- and support MH-- then and only then will this position be reconsidered, re-drawn possibly. But there is strong tradition of this GOP clique-conservative-of-justice-little to penny-pinch-when-pound-wise is indicated, and where mental justice has been concerned, we have seen much violence-- the closure of asylums, the criminalization of the mentally ill in spates, homelessness-smirking, and now the short-end-of-courtesy from the strangle-funding of MH. The reversal in GOP will have to be more than a "New Freedom" of a right-to-work for mental consumers without jobs at all or opportunity for jobs. This is raw. Democracy demands difference to this indifference-- and certainly it would appear that the party named Democrat-- and thus for our democracy-- will deliver.

This is the most-responsible thing I can do, taking this stance-political-- after striving my utmost to ascertain that I for one shall NOT be victim to this studied and callous indifference from the Ancien Regime of Bushes Northups and McConnells. I hope these lackies do see the shortfalls of their soldier-mercenary-hire to the War-Lobby GOP-- but even the more, well-fried by these previously-mentioned brutes-- will VOTE DEMOCRAT in Fall, 2008.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens, Culdee
D.S.M. IV-TR # 296.44
M.S.S.W.

posted by Louisville Hermitage @ 1:41 PM 1 comments