Op-Ed: Reform of the U.S. Mental Health System

Op-Ed: Reform of the U.S. Mental Health System
By Michael Gottlieb, B. Sc.
How the Mentally Ill Have Been Abandoned by the Ills of a Society Gone Bad
Note: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of City Voices, its writers or its staff.
Reform of the mental health system in the U.S. was well underway when President John F. Kennedy endorsed this new era in mental health in a 1963 speech. He called for a “bold new approach” in which “reliance on the cold mercy of custodial isolation will be supplanted by the open warmth of community concern and capability.”
One of President Kennedy’s sisters suffered from severe mental illness and back in the 1930s and 1940s they used brain lobotomy. What was Kennedy’s interest or attitude toward the mentally ill and mental health?
Kennedy agreed that locking people away in mental hospitals was inhumane and indecent. He was open to the psychiatrists and activists who wanted local community mental health centers. But Kennedy could not persuade the U.S. Congress to fund that program. So when psychiatric hospitals were closed and the patients discharged, they had to fend for themselves.
Electric shock ‘therapy’ (aka electro convulsive ‘therapy’) was popular for a while. Psychoanalysis seems to have lost out to cognitive behavior therapy and behavior modification therapy. And of course, psychiatric chemical medications. No primal therapy or orthomolecular (nutritional psychiatry) therapy. Those would be the two primary healing tools for mental illness.
President John F. Kennedy tried to introduce compassion into society. However, society seems to operate according to two basic principles: Mindless hedonism (engaging in activities to satisfy personal pleasures and desires, regardless of how it affects or hurts other people, the environment, etc.) and “the ends justify the means.” Helping the severely mentally ill by creating local community support systems (housing, social support, financial support, etc.) did not jive with those values. Hedonism nullified any serious effort to help the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. They were abandoned and left to fend for themselves.
Fountain House is the rare example of a support system for people with severe mental illness. However, they do not focus on therapy or healing. Fountain House is predicated on the concept of having the mentally ill perform useful and meaningful work to give them a sense of dignity, self-worth and demonstrate that the mentally ill can be productive members of society. But they do not focus on healing the terrible wounds afflicting these folks.
These mental ‘wounds’ continue to fester unless they are accessed and healed through primal plus dream therapy, counseling, orthomolecular psychiatry, etc. The mental wounds fester and eventually manifest as serious and severe disease: Multiple sclerosis, arthritis, heart disease, cancers, etc. The premature death rate is directly related to the disunity of mind, heart and body, which eventually breaks down under the ‘weight’ and ‘pressure’ of repressed mental ‘wounds.’
Fountain House is performing a very rare (in our society) and vital service for the mentally ill by providing a support system and a place to work. Founded in 1944 by Michael Obolensky, a former patient, and Elizabeth Schermerhorn, a former volunteer. Fountain House earned the 2014 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, one of a number of awards it has earned since 1996.
Society is also using prisons, jails, the streets, nursing homes, etc. to place the mentally ill. It is a known fact that thousands of mentally ill people are incarcerated in prisons. New York City’s own Rikers Island prison has, over the past decade, housed approximately 4,000 mentally ill men and women at any given time. Harsh jail conditions with their violent culture often cause deterioration in these inmates, which jails are unequipped to handle.
The pharmaceutical companies are making huge profits from selling psychiatric medications. Orthomolecular psychiatry (nutritional psychiatry) is virtually unknown in America. They censored Drs. Hoffer and Osmond.
When President John Fitzgerald Kennedy tried to introduce compassion into our society the U.S. Congress blocked most, if not all, of his legislation. Was that because our federal elected ‘leaders’ (senators and representatives), to a very large degree, mirror and reflect the values and consciousness of the masses of Americans?
The hardened materialism and callous indifference to the pain and suffering of the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society by the masses of our fellow Americans was the primary driving force blocking President Kennedy’s legislative program.
Is making money the primary goal, primary motivating force in our society? 
Making money, greed and callous competitiveness, regardless of how it affects or hurts others, seems to be a major motive of society. But society seems to have descended into the animal world of Darwinian jungle mentality. The idea of bringing healing or providing housing, social support to the mentally ill, or any person for that matter, has been trampled by the mindless stampede of hedonism and selfishness. Society seems to radiate enormous amounts of brutality and cruelty on a daily basis. It is considered ‘normal’ to be uncaring, unfeeling and callous, ignoring those left behind, the mentally disabled, poor, and frail elderly.
What happened? 
Our fellow Americans, with very few exceptions, adopted and believe in the Darwinian jungle values—survival of the fittest. Disabled psychologically and/or physically, this “consciousness” gives way to terrorism, war, theft, crime, hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes, violence, guns, etc. 9/11 could have been a wake-up call. Instead, society ascribed it to “an act of Nature.” 
Any final words?
Keep your eye single on the “I Am” spirit within you. Be more caring, kind and compassionate toward one another, and yourselves. Create solutions that are win-win for all. A little healing goes a long way. “This too shall pass.” Planetary ‘cleansing’ and ‘scourging’ will provide humanity with a fresh start to use free will more wisely. If human nature does not transform to help one another instead of hurt one another, Nature will take its course.

Pullout: “Be more caring, kind and compassionate toward one another, and yourselves. Create solutions that are win-win for all. A little healing goes a long way.” 

My Mom in the Hospital

My Mom in the Hospital
By Craig R. Bayer
My mother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, a malady that she, like all women, always feared, even though she has smoked cigarettes for most of her life.
To make matters worse, the cancer spread to one of her legs and her pelvis.
To make matters even worse, my mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, a disease which continues to complicate her medical treatment.
My mother and her side of the family have always had a love/hate relationship with doctors: when they cured somebody, especially without utilizing surgery, they were heroes. When somebody died, they blamed the doctor.
Now, it’s my mother who sick and she is very paranoid about her caregivers. The doctors, the nurses, the nurse’s aides, the dietician, the physical therapist, the radiologist…she’s accusing them all of being butchers and quacks. She lectures them on how to do their jobs, based on information and misinformation she has gleaned from reading magazines and Ann Landers. Every time something goes wrong, no matter how minor it is, she presses the panic button.
If the radiologist mistakenly causes her to bang her head during treatment, if she has to take an x-ray, which she condemns as carcinogenic, if the hospital food is bad or even mediocre, if the laxative gives her diarrhea…all the world must come to a stop and so must her treatment. She has refused to take her pills, blown off radiation treatments, verbally abused the hospital staff, threatened to sue the hospital, etc.
She needed ten consecutive days of radiation treatments. On days when I failed to accompany her because I was at a Fountain House colleague training, she refused treatment, so I had to withdraw from the training and be there for ten consecutive days, virtually all day, to make sure that she submitted to treatment. All day she would argue with me about taking the treatment and rant about all the people who “gave her cancer”: the cigarette companies who sold her and the public cigarettes, instead of wholesome food; my grandmother, who condemned her for drinking apricot brandy to ease her cigarette cravings; a woman at her former adult home, who reportedly stole from her and committed other evil acts and who mysteriously has the power to give her cancer, too.
Then after ranting all day, my mother would miraculously change her mind and submit to the radiation, without ever admitting that I was right and she was wrong about the whole process.
All I could do throughout the ordeal was ride out her rants and pray—and try to protect the staff from her bitter, paranoid, desperate venom. It was very embarrassing, especially after I developed a crush on no less than two of her nurses.
But my mother is my mother: she sacrificed her own mental and physical health to get me all the way through college, so I’m going along with her on this arduous journey, not knowing what the results will be. Furthermore, it could be me someday on the radiation table, ranting and raving about whose fault it is, because I am obviously a consumer, too. I need to show some empathy.

Making the Climb with Chrystal

Making the Climb with Chrystal

By Chrystal Woodson

Proving the Impossible

Before I was diagnosed with an Axis I mental illness, I took a job working for Outward Bound as an urban outdoor wilderness instructor. I had never camped, rock-climbed or taught anything. This was called “experiential education”; learning by doing.

One day, during my training period, I was told that I was going to have to learn how to climb a 65-foot-tall tower in order to teach youngsters how to do the same. Of course, you can’t tell someone to do something if you haven’t first done it yourself.

I was terrified. But I learned how to harness myself and I learned how to manipulate the rope and ensure that I had enough slack so that I could move forward and how to pull the slack so that I could safely descend. And I learned how to communicate with the belay team so that we could establish trust.

I learned that even though someone is telling you not to look down, doesn’t mean that you’re not going to do it. And maybe looking down is essential at some point to show you how high you’ve gotten. You may learn something by doing what you’re told, but it’s up to you to create a fingerprint and stamp that action to make it your own. You can perfect yourself by learning and interpreting your experience and communicating with others what you need and promoting yourself to others to build their confidence in you that you can get the job done. By the time that summer job was over, I ended up climbing that tower at least four times!

My point is this: You can’t be afraid of doing something you must do simply because you’ve never done it before. Maybe your purpose in growing is to advance so that others may follow in your footsteps. As consumers, we must learn that our progress is not merely ours alone. We must be responsible and lead the way for others who may be lost and struggling because they may not feel empowered to find a way to overcome their illness.

There are those of us who prosper and we must remind our observers (those who are consumers and those who aren’t) that success is possible. We must not be ashamed of who we are, including our diagnosis. We shouldn’t use our illness as a crutch or an excuse for why we feel limited.

I’ve had to learn things the hard way. I’ve been unemployed in my life many times. I’ve quit jobs, been fired, went on unemployment, enlisted in the Navy, 9/11 occurred, I had a breakdown, hospitalized, discharged from the Navy, got on Public Assistance, SSDI and started vocational training, worked as a peer (not certified) and found myself working in mental health agencies now for fourteen years.

There are so many lessons I’ve learned and I feel so blessed that I have the ability now to ask the right questions and find teachers and mentors who will guide me along the way. I have a master’s degree in public administration which I earned in the midst of my recovery process. And my current job is a non-peer clinical position. From time to time I question myself and ask, “What is all my climbing for?” And I realize within my soul that I have an urgent need to prove the impossible. And I remember my first psychiatrist telling me, “You will never work again.” I just had to prove her wrong.

I am proud of my accomplishments and I still strive. Knowing that God will see me through any obstacle and believing that to climb is to cling to the heights of the Earth in an effort to grasp at Heaven and conceptualize the Eternal.

Pullout: “…I question myself and ask, ‘What is all my climbing for?’ And I realize within my soul that I have an urgent need to prove the impossible.”

My Therapist, My Self

My Therapist, My Self
A Stand-Up Comedy Routine Performed by Carl Blumenthal
Editor’s Note: Carl performed a different version of “My Therapist, My Self” at the July 19, 2018 New York City Peer Specialist Conference.
Carl: Welcome everyone. Welcome. It’s an honor and a privilege to perform at the NYC peer specialist conference. I call this skit “My Therapist, My Self” because my therapist, Nina, and I are as tight as…well, Michelle and Barack. But don’t take that the wrong way.
First a disclaimer: No mental health workers were harmed during the making of this comic routine. I really love my therapist and psychiatrist. 
You’ll hear today a sample of what Nina and I talk about during our therapy sessions. Because Nina’s big on patient-centered care, she’s going to let me say a thing or two about my recovery. Right, Nina?  
Nina: I can’t promise you anything. That’s because I’m a refugee from the Soviet Union, a socialist turned social worker. I left when the KGB wanted to lock me in a mental hospital for demonstrating against the regime. Now I’m afraid the CIA is following me.
Carl: Aren’t we all paranoid? Thankfully we live in a democracy with separation of church and state. That means we can choose between possession by the devil and surveillance by OMH. God bless America!
Nina: Here’s something else to celebrate: Due to the insanity of global warming, the National Weather Bureau is changing the names of hurricanes to brands of psychotropic medication. Now, we’ll have every drug from Adderall to Zoloft to thank for our destruction. 
Carl: On a lighter note, have you heard this joke: If New York doesn’t drive you nuts your therapist will. 
Nina: That’s right Carl. So, take a hike—if the subway’s late. Grow your own—if the food’s rotten. And pay the price—if Medicaid won’t. For God’s sake, take responsibility for your recovery.”
Carl: Talk about responsibility. Do you remember the day I found you in your office tearing up your abnormal psychology textbook? 
Nina: Yes, I thought some smarty pants doctor had discovered a cure for mental illness. Thank God he was wrong. Just think how bad that would’ve been for business.  
Carl: Even if you were ready to throw Freud out the window, there’s no denying the importance of childhood trauma? I remember one of my mother’s religious fits, when she tried to drown me in the bathtub—a test of whether I could walk on water like Jesus.
Nina: Forget your mother. You’ll learn a lot more from my books: How to Take the Mad out of Madness, Why Therapists Make Lousy Lovers, and Medical Marijuana is the Best Thing Since Thorazine
Carl: Self-help is great. But what about empowering peers with mental illness? When discussing my case with doctors you’re all about my poor insight, low competency skills, and lack of impulse control. Sounds like I need toilet training.
Nina; Don’t worry. I’m no fan of shrinks. They’re like tour guides showing you a foreign country where the language is impersonal and condescending. To them you’re just a broken machine that needs fixing. 
Carl: As far as I’m concerned, my treatment team analyzes me as if they’re picking meat from my bones. If only they’d invite me to lunch, I’d bring my homemade barbecue sauce. The secret ingredients are lithium and Prozac.
Nina: At least I’m interested in your dreams. Not the ones about becoming a chef. The nightmares about losing your health insurance. Who will pay me for putting up with your craziness? 
Carl: If you need money so badly, why did you become a social worker? I hear you wanted to be a doctor but flunked anatomy. I hope that doesn’t mean you think my mind is a compound fracture.  
Nina: Are you worried I don’t take your bipolar disorder seriously? My job is to keep you from doing anything foolish. If you fly without a parachute and land in a garbage dump, I’ll kick your butt.
Carl: So, what’s your reaction to this dream? I’m in heaven. The American Psychiatric Association and the big drug companies sit in judgement next to God. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin both demand admission. While the Donald claims he’ll make America great again, Vlad swears Russia already rules the world. God’s diagnosis: “You’re both deluded. Now take your Risperdal.” 
Nina: Doctors think they’re gods and God thinks he’s a doctor. What’s a social worker to do? 
Carl: How about joining the peer movement for better mental health? Admit it. Social workers are in denial about their own mental illness. Jump on the bandwagon before psychiatrists claim they’re sicker than you are. 
Nina: Does that mean we get to counsel each other?
Carl: Of course. I’m sure you have a recipe for ribs you’re dying to share with me.

Carla Rabinowitz Honored with 2018 CIT Advocate/Family Member Award

Carla Rabinowitz Honored with 2018 CIT Advocate/Family Member Award
This Award was given for “efforts to have NYPD receive crisis intervention team (CIT) training.” On August 16, Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) International—a leading organization dedicated to promoting safe and humane police responses to people experiencing a mental health crisis—presented its 2018 CIT Advocate/Family Member Award to Carla Rabinowitz, the advocacy coordinator at Community Access. 
Ms. Rabinowitz was recognized for building and leading a coalition of more than 200 agencies, Communities for Crisis Intervention Teams (CCIT NYC) and successfully pushing the New York Police Department (NYPD) to train its officers to more effectively and humanely handle encounters with people in crisis.
When the NYPD launched a CIT program in June 2015, it was the culmination of a coordinated advocacy campaign that owed much of its success to Rabinowitz’s organizational savvy, industriousness, and commitment. To date, more than 6,500 NYPD officers have completed 40 hours of CIT training. However, recognizing that the initiation of this training did not completely put an end to people in emotional distress being shot and killed in police encounters, Rabinowitz has kept working for more change. She focuses on three related goals: ensuring that the training officers receive is high-quality and effective (by invitation, she continues to monitor CIT training sessions); encouraging the NYPD to achieve its goal of training 15,000 officers more quickly; and positioning CIT to be an important part of broader criminal justice and mental health reforms.
When the NYPD first launched its CIT program, it did so in response to an action plan developed by the Mayor's Task Force on Behavioral Health and the Criminal Justice System. Just as Rabinowitz’s CCIT coalition was instrumental in encouraging Mayor de Blasio to form this Task Force, it is now holding it to account, resulting in its reconstitution in April 2018 as the NYC Crisis Prevention and Response Task Force. Both Ms. Rabinowitz and Community Access CEO Steve Coe have been selected to serve on the Task Force. 
“I am honored to receive this award from CIT International,” Ms. Rabinowitz said, “I take it as an affirmation that the work we’re doing matters, and I remain as committed as ever to fighting for a fairer, safer New York City for us all. I am grateful to all my partners in the CCIT NYC coalition. We’re not done pushing.”
Community Access expands opportunities for people living with mental health concerns to recover from trauma and discrimination through affordable housing, training, advocacy, and healing-focused services. It is built upon the simple truth that people are experts in their own lives. To find out more, go to http://www.communityaccess.org. 

Bruni in the City: My Choice Not to Have Kids

Bruni in the City: My Choice Not to Have Kids
A Column by Christina Bruni
Flouting White Middle-Class Rules About Childbirth
As a Lefty, I want to talk about a new 2018 book Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice by Rebecca Todd Peters.
My own life narrative is atypical. A woman I hired told me my story was “unusual.”
I don’t think and act like a lot of people of my race and gender. I’ve always gone Left when everyone else goes Right.
Christian social ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters asserts: “The public rhetoric that insists women must justify their abortions represents a thinly veiled racial and class bias that does two things: It attempts to impose white, middle-class values about marriage, sexual activity, and childbearing on everyone. And it focuses on individual women’s behavior while effectively obfuscating the complexity of their day-to-day lives and the viability of their various choices.”
The feminist author proposes: “Public policy ought to focus on addressing systemic social problems rather than attempting to police and control the behavior of women and their bodies.”
In her view the real issue is that women who have abortions are told they need to take responsibility. The truth is that “difficult real-life moral decisions stand in contrast” with the prevailing white, middle-class politicians’ and anti-choice crusaders’ perception that women who terminate pregnancies need to take responsibility.
Trust Women tells a different story through statistics about women’s reproductive health choices:
• 91.6 percent of abortions happen in the first trimester;
• 73 percent of women indicate they could not afford to have a baby at that point in their lives;
• 74 percent cited interference with their education or job/career or responsibility for existing children or other dependents;
• 49 percent of women who had abortions in 2014 were living below the federal poverty line;
• 95 percent of women terminating pregnancies think it was the right decision for them;
• Between 50 and 60 percent of women who have abortions were using some form of contraception the month they got pregnant; and
• 60 percent of women who have abortions already have children.
According to Rebecca Todd Peters: “Women also face a host of barriers when trying to obtain birth control: cost and lack of insurance…difficulty accessing a pharmacy…challenges in getting prescription contraception…in scheduling appointments and getting to a clinic or doctor’s office.”
These barriers were greater for women living below 200 percent of the poverty line.
My Own Story
Let’s face it, doesn’t every woman out there have hard-luck romance stories under our Hermes-H or other belt?
One of the psychics I went to told me: “Love’s been up and down and all around for you. It’s been to the dogs.”
This waterfront fortune teller told me I’d meet a lot of turkeys along the way. Yes, she used the word turkeys to talk about the guys I’d meet.
Taken in this context I haven’t been so quick to drop my skirt to get into bed with just any guy that walked on by in my life.
As a woman with a mental health diagnosis, I didn’t want to get married and raise a family.
Yes—I’ve known without a doubt since I was 15 or 16 that I didn’t want to have kids—not even one kid.
This stance of mine doesn’t fit into the white middle-class heterosexual norm that prevails in American society.
It’s this world that I was born into that I so intuitively rejected as not being the right lifestyle for me to live.
Leading yet again to how I championed everything Left of the Dial in my memoir.
I still haven’t found Mr. Right nor have I found Mr. Almost Right either. And I definitely haven’t found Mr. Not-Right-Yet-I’ll-Take-Him-Anyway.
In this dry climate with no prospects does it make sense to risk getting pregnant by having sex just to prove you’re a normal woman?
This is the double-bind or double-standard women are held to:
If we’re not having sex we’re viewed as being screwed-up and that there’s something wrong with us.
If we’re having sex and, heaven help us, too much sex, we’re viewed as having a lack of morals.
What Do You Say?
Isn’t it time to give the boot to restrictive regressive political policies that make it harder and harder for women to remain child-free by choice?
Isn’t it time to stop judging women for the choices we make?
Isn’t it time to accept the multitude of expressions of what is “normal” in society?
It’s time.
I for one have failed at living a mainstream life.
I have failed to please the people who stand in judgment of me even though they haven’t met me.
I have failed to see the logic in overpopulating the planet.
More to the point: not only did I not want to have a kid: I didn’t want to go through the experience of being pregnant.

Pullout: “One of the psychics I went to told me: ‘Love’s been up and down and all around for you. It’s been to the dogs.’”

Book Ends: "Art of Recovery" by Simon Heyes and edited by Stephen Tate

Book Ends: "Art of Recovery" by Simon Heyes and edited by Stephen Tate
A Column by Kurt Sass
Use the Tips that Work for You
Art of Recovery is a 58-page chapbook out of England from South Somerset Mind www.southsomersetmind.co.uk. It is a combination of a guide to recovering from a mental breakdown, case studies and quotes from individuals ranging from Nelson Mandela to Albert Schweitzer to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Mr. Heyes is a former patient at the Summerlands Hospital and has laid out his theory for a successful recovery.
Mr. Heyes believes there are two steps needed to begin the recovery process. The first is to believe that recovery is possible and the second is to be realistic and to realize that there are no quick fixes.
One very strong and powerful point he makes is that recovery is not returning to how things used to be, but finding a better, healthier and more sustainable life that recognizes the past, accepts the limitations of the present and is full of hope for the future. In other words, we should not be looking to just return to our lives before our psychiatric breakdown occurred, but to a better more fulfilling life.
Mr. Heyes separates recovery into three stages: Inactive, Reactive and Creative.  
I have written a brief description of each stage and listed the tips given for that stage:
Inactive: Broken down-No longer functioning
• Value the pleasures;
• Trust in you;
• Take care of yourself;
• Find positive role models;
• Don't push the limit or set unrealistic goals;
• One step at a time;
• Recognize change;
• Beware of false friends;
• Live in the present;
• Hope is eternal.
Reactive: Beginning to look for ways to reengage with life
• Be comfortable with the uncomfortable;
• Pause to think;
• Find your off switch;
• Don't have negative agendas;
• Find your funny bone.
Creative: Taking charge of your life
• Find community- Don't isolate;
• Rise like a phoenix;
• Slow down;
• Get absorbed in activity.
I did not list all the tips, nor the descriptive details for each. I think the chapbook is a valuable resource for anyone, whether in recovery or not, looking to improve upon their happiness. My suggestion is to read it and use the tips you feel are best for you.

Pullout: “…we should not be looking to just return to our lives before our psychiatric breakdown occurred, but to a better more fulfilling life.”