Happy Halloween From "The Dangerous Mentally Ill"!

Well, hello there! I am a member of that infamous tribe, "the dangerous mentally ill." The one politicians have been beating the drums about so often and so menacingly lately, leading up to the election. My heart skips a beat too when it booms out of my television. I'm a little scared, just like you. They sound pretty fucking alarming, "the dangerous mentally ill." 

Apparently they are buying guns in bulk, which they will use to kill senselessly, but that other politician has done nothing to stop them! He wouldn't even vote for criminal background checks to disqualify "the dangerous mentally ill" (who aren't technically criminals but hey, might as well be, right?) from owning guns! (And yes, there are so many guns in this country, it'd be easy for those mentally ill to get their dangerous little hands on them anyway. But, don't interrupt! We're trying to terrify the electorate here.) 

The phrase doesn't refer to a subgroup of "the mentally ill" anymore -- to that small group who are "dangerous" despite, um, never having posed a danger to anyone. (Let's see...They're dangerous because in hindsight, some killer or other was probably mentally ill, and someone should have noticed he was dangerous before he ever became dangerous, so that he wouldn't become dangerous....Wait, is that logical? .... Oh, logic doesn't matter? All rightey then.) Now it means everybody: All "the mentally ill" are "the dangerous mentally ill." They've all morphed into monsters overnight! That's how sneaky and insidious they are! Round them up: anyone you see going to a psychiatrist's office, or filling a prescription for one of those drugs they take, or talking to himself in public (but be sure he's not wearing earphones first). They're all coming to get us. We must be vigilant! 

But [SPOILER ALERT] guess what? They're just bogeymen. And like all good bogeymen, they're trotted out to scare and distract people -- so that politicians can do what they've always done: get themselves elected no matter what, by demonizing no matter who, so they can do nothing whatsoever about the things that are truly dangerous: unemployment, poverty, hunger, the disappearance of the middle class, climate disaster, lack of health care, women losing their rights to their own bodies...and, well, we could go on for quite a while. But it's easier to throw a sheet over thousands of human beings and yell BOO!! They're "the dangerous mentally ill!" Scared yet?

Bones: An Elegy

When you get to this age, it’s all about bones. They begin to thin like hair, or they grate against each other and the sound is large in your head but only a crinkling someone can hear if he puts his ear to your knee on the stairs — merely a crinkling, but he cringes and clenches his teeth. Bones go bad like bananas, lose their arc and soften, go limp. They go from staves to Easter eggs. They breathe and hold in air. Or they spurt out spurs, angry jabs at nerves along their roots, or even spit at the royal cord that rules the spine — or thicken around it in stenosis, tapping that long fibrous party line for neurochemical murmurings and screams….

I lie in bed in the mornings and as I swim to the surface of my mind from such deep dreams, I slightly, centimetricallly, tilt my pelvis in at the lower spine — until it clicks, two vertebrae engaging each other with no soft shield between, definitive but shy, and I cry. It hurts, and I know what that click means, but, still, it’s delicate and slight, pure like a sexual yearn so I tilt it back till it clicks again and keep clicking because you don't often hear your bones, do you?

All the cushions of bone, round or fluid, smoothed at the socket or elastic — they are drying, slipping, destroying themselves. Which leaves friction. Bone on bone. They’re following my headlong childhood, my strength that urged a baby into the light, some of the people I loved, into the past -- vanishing like a syllable on a breeze. Cartilege is in the process of leaving my bones to themselves. And my bones discover what they truly are is lace, jagged lace.

Bipolar Parents

Don't forget that all other parents fail their children in some ways, many without even considering it or feeling guilty for it. We will fail ours in some ways too. But having this disorder can make us better parents, not worse.

We know we'll make mistakes -- we have a mental illness! That's always on our minds (pun intended). In fact, we're so aware of it and so afraid of doing harm that we do everything in our power to avoid making mistakes, to minimize them, correct them, compensate for them, and give our children a normal life -- which means an imperfect one, touched by sorrow and loss and confusion like everyone else's life.

But we love hard. We love abundantly. We are devoted, knowing how lucky we are to have those children, given our brokenness. Like a knotty bent-limbed tree, we grow around the breaks and reach high. Our brokenness is only more obvious than other people's, not more dangerous. 

If our children grow into adults with bipolar disorder, as some will, the same will be true of them. They will know how important simple, vigilant love is, because it protected them and allowed them to grow into the complicated people they are. They will know that all parents are flawed but the good ones just love hard. They'll do their best. Just like us.

Sometimes I forget that joy is not mania, and sadness is not necessarily depression. In other words, sometimes I forget that I am a human being.

Spiral Out, Keep Going

                                                                               

 

(image from wasteofsociety tumblr blog)

I loved this image on sight.

Bipolar disorder is a circular disease. In one of the earliest clinical descriptions of it, French doctor Jean Pierre Falret published an article in 1851 on a condition he called "la folie circulaire" -- circular insanity.

The description rings true: endless cycles -- regular or irregular -- and the helpless sensation of "going in circles," carried along on a senseless merry-go-round. But what speaks to me about the image of a nautilus shell's spiral whorls is that it suggests the possibility of a direction for all this centrifugal motion. It recasts the circle as a spiral.

The small letters (I had to look twice to even notice them) snaking around the chambered shell spell out the words "spiral out, keep going." They urge me to just keep walking, hope in hand. I can't see it yet from inside the tight coil, but the circles get wider and wider, and they lead to a better place. One day I'll emerge from all the circling and cycling, the scary and confusing whirl of bipolar disorder, and find I've been climbing a spiral staircase, not spinning meaninglessly. I've gotten somewhere. There's air to breathe.

I'm in a spiral rather than a circle. Like the whorls of a nautilus shell, I'll trace an expanding pattern toward freedom.

I like it so much I've taken to repeating it to myself  -- usually when anxiety starts whispering in my ear. I resist it by reminding myself to "spiral out, keep going." When I'm losing hope, it's a gentle reminder not to. The rhythm of the words, repeated over and over, is like a work song or a martial cadence, a line of poetry or a prayer.

"Spiral out, keep going," and the image within the words, serves me as mantra, metaphor and incantation: a bipolar prayer.

Strange Things Psychiatrists Say

Question: What is the strangest thing a psychiatrist or therapist ever said or did to you?

                                                                            

I posed this question on a Facebook page I run for people with bipolar disorder.

These are some of the responses.

(If you’d like to add your story in the comments, please do!)

ONE

Psychiatrist: (he did this to everyone) would give a series of three words to repeat back to him, then discuss other things for 5 minutes before asking us to repeat the words back again. The three words were ALWAYS apple, chair, umbrella. I confirmed this with other patients in the hospital (the only place I really saw other patients) and as I recall we were developing an Apple, Chair Umbrella poem/performance art.

Therapist: I saw her for group and individual sessions for a while. After a solo session about my issues with my looks due to the fact that my mother was an exceptional beauty and she often corrected my looks, posture, carriage, etc., at the next group session, she, out of the blue, looked at me and said, "I just like looking at you, Amy. Is that okay?" And she invited others in the group to look at me and comment -- the group included men with sexual addiction! I still wonder what theory that rose from.

    Comment: that's just frickin' creepy.

    Response to comment: it was not long thereafter I declared myself cured. Which was not quite the right solution. But I left that particular practice and went to the community mental health clinic, which was actually better.

  
TWO

My first appointment with an actual psychiatrist went horribly. Even though I was self-harming and numbing myself with pills and was completely out of control he told me that I "just had a little depression" (whatever the hell that means) and to go to this particular pharmacy that I don't frequent (because it's so far from my home) and pick up this med I hadn't even heard of. Didn't discuss whether I wanted to be on it or not, just called the pharmacy and told the guy i'd be in.

I never went to pick it up (obviously) and a couple weeks later I was hospitalized where I was properly diagnosed Bipolar and put on proper meds.

I still want to smack that guy in the head.

     Comment: do you remember what the drug was? Maybe we all missed out on a miracle cure. :)


THREE

This one is embarrassing: told me to buy some sex toys. She also asked me where I got my lipstick, hair clips and shoes. And talked at great length about what was so amazing about Interview With the Vampire and Dexter. A real piece of work, that one.

FOUR

My eccentric one-of-a-kind psychiatrist of 28 years once gave me a "voodoo doll" she had sewn herself of black and red fabric with little black button eyes and a tuft of stiff hair sticking straight out. It came with a long hatpin to stick in the doll when you cast your curse. She made a lot of these and sold them at craft shows, so it wasn't THAT weird. But I later used the hatpin to self-harm, which understandably pissed her off considerably. :):


FIVE

Asked me if I was sure I was bipolar.


SIX

I have another one: A psychologist I saw about 5 times after I had to leave college (because of suicide attempt) stood up to hug me at my last session (weird enough), then kissed me (with tongue), then while still "hugging" me asked me to lay down on a bed he had in the office (!). I declined in terror. He said he just wanted to "comfort" me because I looked so sad. I didn't know if I'd get out of there without being raped. I managed to hide my terror and edge toward the door. Got away. I was 18, he was about 50-60.

    Comment: Geez. I'm traumatized for you just reading that. What goes through their heads? I'm glad you got away.

    Reply to comment: What went through his head was what went through his other head. LOL (Pardon me, I'm crude.) There was a showdown afterwards when I told my parents and the teacher who'd referred me and he denied everything. Then he conceded he'd given me a "grandfatherly" kiss. (Because doesn't your grandfather stick his tongue in your mouth?) Then he said I'd better stop spreading this story because it was hurting his professional reputation. Good. What a pervert.

SEVEN

Told me to change jobs and gave me employment advice. Moron.

EIGHT

Fell asleep.

NINE

Told me I needed to stay medicated like a zombie because I was a threat to society....I have never harmed myself nor anyone else, I have never been hospitalized, I am manic and become invincible in a very happy way, if anything more sexual, but I was a threat? Btw this was 20 yrs. ago: no kids at the time and fresh out of high school,  graduated! Dude was an asshole!

TEN

That he wasn't "impressed" with my story, this was at our first meeting.

Mass Murder and the Mentally Ill: 60 Minutes Gets it Wrong

This psychcentral commentary summarizes my own opinion and perspective on gun violence and the mentally ill, an opinion shared by many professionals as well as people with a mental illness themselves, and ordinary people who want the truth. It does so by stating the facts as we know them, not speculations or lazy assumptions. The comment comes in response to a recent 60 Minutes piece which relied on loose correlations, unfounded assumptions and untested conclusions to call for some ill-advised measures to contain and "prevent" this kind of violence.

Ill-advised because based on little to no data. Ill-advised because no one can foresee the future. Ill-advised because they isolate and target a group of people who need and seek treatment -- making them more likely to forgo any treatment.

Suggesting we initiate mental health screening and vastly increase treatment access is all well and good -- but how would they be funded and carried out? There is no screening tool that can foresee the future of any individual -- how will we develop one? Increasing treatment is a sound goal, a desperately needed goal, but it would cost a fortune. Are we ready to pay for it?

60 Minutes, ignoring these hard questions, accomplished little more than demonizing the mentally ill, relying on "experts" like by Dr. E. Fuller Torey and his Treatment Advocacy Center, who  has been pushing for forced treatment of schizophrenics for years, claiming they pose a unique threat to society but failing to back it up with any scientific data.

And that's what we need. Scientific data and research on gun violence, mental illness, schizophrenia, and if it is possible to prevent horrible crimes before they are even conceived of. Scientific research, furthermore, on better treatments that would actually work and be more tolerable so that people would stay on them. As it is now, our first-line treatment -- drugs -- often carries with it such unpleasant and even debilitating side effects that it's little wonder so many give up on them.

But we won't get it, because it seems that when it comes to mental illness and gun violence, data is irrelevant. We go with the easy conclusion, out of fear of threats to our safety and well-being, however ill-founded and misdirected. We focus on identifying the very tiny needle that is the "dangerous mentally ill" in the vast haystack that is our population -- and that is ridiculous.

Targeting everyone with a severe mental illness, in particular schizophrenia, may make the public feel better, but it is a straw man that needs to be knocked down.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/09/30/60-minutes-connecting-mental-illness-to-violence-with-little-data-facts/

Read viewer comments here:

 http://www.cbsnews.com/8601-500251_162-50155990.html?assetTypeId=58

Me and My Shadow

Me and My Shadow
(Judy Garland song)

Shades of night are falling and I'm lonely
Standing on the corner feeling blue
Sweethearts out for fun
Pass me one by one
Guess I'll wind up like I always do
With only

Me and my shadow
Strolling down the avenue
Me and my shadow
Not a soul to tell our troubles to
But when it's twelve a clock
We climb the stair
We never knock

'Cause nobody's there
Just me and my shadow
All alone and feeling blue
And when it's twelve a clock
We climb the stair
We never knock

'Cause nobody's there
Just me and my shadow
All alone and feeling blue

Writer(s): Al Jolson, Billy Rose, Dave Dreyer
Copyright: Larry Spier Music LLC

Below: Van Gogh, Road to Tarascon