COMMENTS
I apologize. I accidentally deleted my response to Laura Leigh's thoughtful comment on this original post. It appears to be almost impossible to retrieve a deleted post from one's blog, so I am just reproducing my comment here. I hope it's "visible" to those interested in the discussion.
Reply to Comment by Laura Leigh:
Thank you for your thoughtful remarks. You have made me think more deeply on the issues and my opinions, and I'd like to offer these comments.
First, I'm not sure the research you refer to leads to the solid conclusions you draw. I quote from a Huff Post blog by Michael Friedman, L.M.S.W., Adjunct Prof., Columbia Univ. Schools of Social Work and Public Health:
".....People with mental illness are not likely to be violent. ..... and mass murders include acts of terrorism, mob and gang violence, and acts of revenge. Yes, some mass murders are committed by people with serious mental illness, but it is likely that most are committed by people who are not. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of research about multiple or single murders of strangers by people with psychotic conditions in the United States, but research elsewhere suggests that such events take place at a rate of 1 per 14 million population. In contrast, stranger homicide in the United States takes place at a rate of 140 per 14 million population. Obviously, stranger homicide by people with psychotic conditions is both rare and a small proportion of all such murders."
You on the other hand are looking at shooters AFTER the fact and generalizing from their mental health conditions to the mental health conditions of future shooters BEFORE the fact. (And also omitting instances that don't fit the picture, like Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, who, while eccentric, did not and probably does not now have a diagnosable mental illness.) Applying what amount to catch-and-control policies as advocated would indeed require a large-scale surveillance or social-control apparatus that would waste of a lot of money for very little benefit and would probably make a large incursion on people's civil rights -- all people, for all are POTENTIAL criminals, but on those with already diagnosed mental illnesses. (Perhaps we could simply use the data the NSA has already collected?)
Further, requiring mental health providers to immediately report anyone with psychotic/paranoid/antisocial thoughts and who mentions violence would probably keep them from visiting those providers, and/or inhibiting them from reporting those symptoms.
A key consideration here is also that the likelihood of people with mental illnesses carrying out mass violence is hugely magnified when there is co-occurring substance abuse. (As it is also for everyone, with or without a mental illness.) Perhaps that is where we should be focusing our mental health care attention and funding if we want to reduce violent crime.
I am not one of those "who care only about the stigma, and not the suffering and loss of life." Of course I do. Of course I do.I am not "on the side" of mass shooters, mentally ill or not. I am on the side that takes a cold look at the facts as we know them, and crafts public policy that is most likely to reduce mass violence. Guns and their unbelievable accessibility to anyone and everyone in this country seem to me to be a much more fruitful focus than trying to foretell the future and prevent mentally ill people from committing crimes that only a tiny percentage ever commit anyway. Leaving gun control out of the discussion is like leaving the blueberries out of the blueberry pie. The pie doesn't happen without them.
By the way, I am not opposed to involuntary treatment. Under certain clearly defined and faithfully carried out criteria, it is necessary for the protection of the person being evaluated and his/her immediate circle and larger community. But we should be very careful to spell out those circumstances and be sure there is no violation of civil liberties. We must balance protection of the many with the rights of the individual.
I speak from the perspective of individuals with mental illness because I am one and we have no real voice in this debate. We lack a place at the table. But that does not mean that I place our rights above the rights of the community. I place our rights on a par with the rights of all other individuals, as is only right.
Thank you for such thought-provoking remarks.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Thursday, September 26, 2013
A Class of My Peers, Part 2
Bipolar Memoirs
Taking a Class with Those Mentally Ill People
Part 2: What I'm Really Afraid Of
So I went to the first Peer-to-Peer class. I described in an earlier post my reluctance to take this class due to my expectations that the other people would be unlike me -- sicker, less functional, or something like that. Of course those expectations were completely unfounded. Everybody's just themselves, three-dimensional. Duh.
I now realize my real difficulty is not with them but with me. I am so afraid of sharing my mental illness with real people that I can't even do it when they have a mental illness themselves! I've become so anxious over so many years of having to hide it, deny it, gloss over it -- or avoid the problem altogether by never leaving my house -- that it feels almost impossible to break the habit and just be myself. No environment has ever felt "safe" enough for me to let down my guard, not even other NAMI programs.
That's a big reason I started the Facebook page (Bipolar Over 30). Like all of us, I need friends I can be myself with, who understand and support me -- and for me the best way to do that is with online friends. We have formed our own community, and that is a life saver for me.
But perhaps it's time for me to dip my toe into the "offline" world and test the waters. So I'm making it my goal for myself in this class to learn to be myself with other people I know are not going to judge me. To relax enough to take off the mask. And perhaps make a friend or two in the process.
Thanks for listening.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
A Class of My Peers
Bipolar Memoirs:
Taking a Class with Those Mentally People
I'm starting a new class on Wednesday, called Peer-to-Peer. It's a NAMI class for people with serious mental illnesses who are working on their "recovery" process. I've signed up for it twice before and bailed both times -- because the location gave me panic attacks when I drove to it, but mostly because at the first class I looked around (at a circle of perfectly normal if weary looking people) and said to myself: I don't belong here! These people have sad narrow little lives shadowed by their huge mental illnesses planted in the middle like an oak tree! They are what stigma says they are! They're not like ME. They don't run Facebook groups, write letters to the editor, blog about their lives, research everything online, have a sense of humor, love someone and are loved in return! If they're taking this class, they've been ground down and reduced to just surviving. They don't already know it all, like me. They don't even try to pretend they're normal. They are essentially and always just "the mentally ill."
But I am different from them. Right? I must be different from them. I absolutely have to be different from them.
But I'm not. I am exactly like them. I am them. Because they are not one-dimensional "mental patients." They are not thoughtless sheep being herded toward "recovery" with no personal resources to draw on. They are not like the people I knew in institutions 35 years ago. They are not like I was 35 years ago, medicated to the point of mindlessness and dumb acceptance. That was a different time. Severe mental illness itself was different. It is not the grim life sentence it was then. It does not rob people of their personalities, possibilities and adventures, their joys and amusements and empathy -- of their futures. It is merely one of their many dimensions. It's normal now to be different.
Yet I cling to the idea that one day I could be "cured." A deus ex machina could descend and wipe out my past. I could be the person I always dreamed of being, moving through the world lightly and gracefully, leaving poetry in her wake, not knowing what she had narrowly escaped. My whole life with a mental illness could be lifted from me and I could walk proudly toward the future with nothing to weigh me down. I would not need this "Peer-to-Peer" class because I would be in "discovery" not "recovery."
But that's all bullshit. It's a dream. And it eats up the time I have left in my life with fear and fantasy. It prevents me from knowing and befriending people who are just like me, just like anyone but with the depth of character this illness bestows -- one of its few gifts.
I want to cling to the fantasy anyway because it's comforting. It lets me sustain my denial. And denial is one of the few sources of peace I know personally I am like my 80 year old mother, outraged by the suggestion that she consider moving to a retirement home. "Those people are all OLD! They look old and they act old! They're going to DIE soon!"
But, you know, she is still old , just like them. And I'm still a person with a serious mental illness, just like my "peers."
And we're all just people, we're all still alive, and there is always hope.
Taking a Class with Those Mentally People
I'm starting a new class on Wednesday, called Peer-to-Peer. It's a NAMI class for people with serious mental illnesses who are working on their "recovery" process. I've signed up for it twice before and bailed both times -- because the location gave me panic attacks when I drove to it, but mostly because at the first class I looked around (at a circle of perfectly normal if weary looking people) and said to myself: I don't belong here! These people have sad narrow little lives shadowed by their huge mental illnesses planted in the middle like an oak tree! They are what stigma says they are! They're not like ME. They don't run Facebook groups, write letters to the editor, blog about their lives, research everything online, have a sense of humor, love someone and are loved in return! If they're taking this class, they've been ground down and reduced to just surviving. They don't already know it all, like me. They don't even try to pretend they're normal. They are essentially and always just "the mentally ill."
But I am different from them. Right? I must be different from them. I absolutely have to be different from them.
But I'm not. I am exactly like them. I am them. Because they are not one-dimensional "mental patients." They are not thoughtless sheep being herded toward "recovery" with no personal resources to draw on. They are not like the people I knew in institutions 35 years ago. They are not like I was 35 years ago, medicated to the point of mindlessness and dumb acceptance. That was a different time. Severe mental illness itself was different. It is not the grim life sentence it was then. It does not rob people of their personalities, possibilities and adventures, their joys and amusements and empathy -- of their futures. It is merely one of their many dimensions. It's normal now to be different.
Yet I cling to the idea that one day I could be "cured." A deus ex machina could descend and wipe out my past. I could be the person I always dreamed of being, moving through the world lightly and gracefully, leaving poetry in her wake, not knowing what she had narrowly escaped. My whole life with a mental illness could be lifted from me and I could walk proudly toward the future with nothing to weigh me down. I would not need this "Peer-to-Peer" class because I would be in "discovery" not "recovery."
But that's all bullshit. It's a dream. And it eats up the time I have left in my life with fear and fantasy. It prevents me from knowing and befriending people who are just like me, just like anyone but with the depth of character this illness bestows -- one of its few gifts.
I want to cling to the fantasy anyway because it's comforting. It lets me sustain my denial. And denial is one of the few sources of peace I know personally I am like my 80 year old mother, outraged by the suggestion that she consider moving to a retirement home. "Those people are all OLD! They look old and they act old! They're going to DIE soon!"
But, you know, she is still old , just like them. And I'm still a person with a serious mental illness, just like my "peers."
And we're all just people, we're all still alive, and there is always hope.
Friday, September 20, 2013
Mass Murder and the Mentally Ill
THE MENTALLY ILL AND MASS MURDER
Here we go again with the mass shootings and the mental health of the shooter. There's talk of finding ways to identify the "dangerous" mentally ill people and get them help before they kill. As if the only reason society should look after the mentally ill is because they pose a deadly threat to the "sane" people. The shooter becomes "the new face of mental illness in this country," as Brian Williams said on NBC not long ago (re Ariel Castro, kidnapper, torture, murderer).
I hate these debates because mentally ill people as a whole are LESS violent than sane people and more likely to be victims than perpetrators.
And because it is not possible to predict who will become violent; no particular traits, behaviors or symptoms correlate with violence.
And because forcing someone into treatment violates civil rights even when it would benefit the person.
And because requiring therapists to "turn in" patients who show signs of future violence as defined by these laws would discourage people from seeking treatment in the first place.
And because all this surveiling, investigating, correlating, identifying, forced treatment, denial of rights, and all the rest would require a huge bureaucracy dedicated to social control, which is scary (and besides, we already have the NSA for that).
And because, seriously, what is the problem here? Preventing a very few people who cannot be identified in advance from committing mass murders? Or the absurd number of guns in this country, almost completely unregulated and unlimited?
Control guns not minds. Guns are controllable; minds are not.
Here we go again with the mass shootings and the mental health of the shooter. There's talk of finding ways to identify the "dangerous" mentally ill people and get them help before they kill. As if the only reason society should look after the mentally ill is because they pose a deadly threat to the "sane" people. The shooter becomes "the new face of mental illness in this country," as Brian Williams said on NBC not long ago (re Ariel Castro, kidnapper, torture, murderer).
I hate these debates because mentally ill people as a whole are LESS violent than sane people and more likely to be victims than perpetrators.
And because it is not possible to predict who will become violent; no particular traits, behaviors or symptoms correlate with violence.
And because forcing someone into treatment violates civil rights even when it would benefit the person.
And because requiring therapists to "turn in" patients who show signs of future violence as defined by these laws would discourage people from seeking treatment in the first place.
And because all this surveiling, investigating, correlating, identifying, forced treatment, denial of rights, and all the rest would require a huge bureaucracy dedicated to social control, which is scary (and besides, we already have the NSA for that).
And because, seriously, what is the problem here? Preventing a very few people who cannot be identified in advance from committing mass murders? Or the absurd number of guns in this country, almost completely unregulated and unlimited?
Control guns not minds. Guns are controllable; minds are not.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Drama
Drama
It makes me laugh when someone accuses me of "drama." Because what is bipolar disorder but drama? I live and breathe drama.
Today is Wednesday. Starting last Friday, I went on a manic tear about a home project I suddenly and out of nowhere realized we had to do and do immediately. It started with paint. I got very excited and very obsessed with what colors to use. But I couldn't decide. I kept adding more and more features to the project as we went, abandoning one thing for another with no rhyme nor reason, redoing what had been done because I changed my mind TWICE about all the paint I had just bought, and had to go get more. Then I insisted in the middle of painting that we drop everything and race over to buy a dresser I saw on Craigslist because now the project had expanded to replacing all furniture. When we got it home it didn't look right. I was anguished about ever finding enough new furniture that matched and fit in the room, wringing my hands, berating myself, wracking my brain for exactly the RIGHT furniture and where to get it. Within a day of going full blast in all directions, I could not make a single decision, like what clothes to put on. So I stayed in pajamas. I couldn't stop talking, or clenching my muscles in intense frustration and rising anger at myself and my family, who weren't being "supportive" enough -- while doing all the work I assigned them to make my dreams come true. (Apparently I am quite persuasive when in a hypomanic state. A few years before, I had talked them into "fostering" 25 dogs for a rescue organization -- and ate least two of them didn't really like dogs.) I couldn't stop telling myself out loud how stupid and disorganized I was, how awful and crazy it was for me to make everyone drop their weekend to work on this ersatz undertaking, getting more and more agitated. I literally beat myself up, punching, pulling, banging my body.
Exactly a day later, calm descended. It didn't seem urgent anymore to complete the whole project right this minute. I made an agreement with myself to pause and regroup, make a plan step by step, logically. I even crossed off one or two of the steps that day. I made sure to stop berating my family for not keeping to my arbitrary schedule. I felt sane again.
That reprieve came yesterday, 4 days after the manic race to nowhere began. Today, one day after that soft landing, I woke up as tired as I have ever been since I had pneumonia years ago. It hurt to lift my eyelids. I was exhausted, and I wanted to lay down and never get up. I got out of bed but I crashed into the walls when I walked because I was sore all over and still half-asleep -- all day long. I had crashed. I wished for death in a foggy, distant way. It was comforting to think of dying, like a blanket drawn around me, a pleasant possibility of relief. And I was pretty sure I just couldn't and wouldn't live much longer anyway, not at that crazy, hypomanic pace. It was too punishing being me.
Do other "normal" people go from zero to 150 in one day, begin to stall and sputter after two more days, bring it down to cruising speed finally, but then hit the wall and spin to a bruising stop, finally just laying there, knocked unconscious? Over a home improvement project?
"Drama." Tell me about it.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Read My Mind
Read My Mind
It must be a feature of my bipolar mind, but I am very bothered, saddened and distressed when my mood shifts to painful or sad or explosive or despairing or even suicidal, and no one notices! What the hell? Not even the dog?! How could they not notice these volcanic emotions, the churning anxiety, the knot in the top of my stomach, the tears verging on falling, the blood that’s about to drip out of my mouth from biting my tongue so hard in order to avoid screaming, my worthlessness, my guilt, my sudden realization of my utter futurelessness?
It’s all beating like heavy metal in my head, like a forge plunging up and down, and it won’t stop. I can’t turn down the volume, and I can’t think: Well, this will pass. It’s owning my mind!. And it has not-passed before, there’s precedent there, and it’s getting really unbearable, so... Why the fuck doesn’t my husband take one look at me or hear one word from me, and KNOW? Why isn’t he scared to death like me? Why doesn’t he take emergency measures? (like…..what?). Shouldn’t he immediately hug me? Shouldn’t he call the police because I’m dangerous? Shouldn’t he fly to the computer and google “wife crazy what to do?”
Why isn’t this visible? Why is a broken leg so different from a broken mind? Why don’t these two “poles” in my broken mind poke out starkly and cringe-inducingly like a broken bone pokes out of a thigh? And why, God, haven’t the people I love, and who love me so much it’s just inexplicable -- why haven’t they learned the warning signs? Why don’t they notice I am quiet? (Because me being quiet is very very noticeable.) Why don’t they grab me when I come home from Target with one shirt in five different colors, $50 in dog treats, a piece of furniture and my 30th pair of shoes -- and say “Lookit! See what’s happening here? Sit down where I can see you, and we’ll call your doctor.”
Why can’t they read me?
I can’t help but be angry they can’t. I don’t want to be, because what can you expect of a fellow human being, even your husband? A Vulcan mind-meld? But I am angry anyway, and also scared. I don’t know what I’ll do or how far I’ll go this time -- and I really don’t want to find out. But by the time they notice, I could be beyond cooperating with the Treatment Regimen as Prescribed. And that’s somewhere none of us want to go.
And why can’t I just tell them: “Um, hey? I’m fucking losing it over here? You know that way I lose it when I cry for a few hours, then yell at you for a few hours, then fall deeply into Internet research on attachment theory (or Civil War photography, or canine cognition, or... )? Yeah, that way. I’m losing it that way.”
Well, I can’t tell them because ……..
It might be brief, and go away on its own.
It’s my fault.
I don’t have the energy to talk.
I can’t possibly take one more pill. (Or three less and two more. Or any new combination really.)
I don’t want to be a burden.
I believe nothing on earth can help me anyway.
Maybe there’s nothing WRONG. Maybe I’m just really really knowledgeable about canine cognition right now.
I am deeply embarrassed.
I am even ashamed.
I think they should just KNOW. If they really love me.
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