My Kind of Motivation

One of my daily activities these days is to roam the web, looking for references to mental illness.  If I come across something that illustrates the writers' ignorance of the issues, I try to enlighten them.  I try to be polite and informative.

Today, I ran across an article about a woman who killed her 8-yr old boy who was autistic.  She was labeled a "socialite" in the title, which con-notates a rich woman who has nothing better to do than go to parties.  She had previously claimed the boy had been abused by a cult.  There wasn't a lot of additional information about the murder, but her ex-husband called her a devoted mother and was shocked by the news.

To me, a woman who kills her own 8-yr old son, a boy with disabilities, must have had some psychological issues.  I mean, who in their right mind would do that, right?  Without knowing anything else, I think most people would come to that conclusion.  Think of Andrea Yates.  She was in a state of psychosis when she killed her children.

The first comment I read was, "Socialite = trash with money." I replied with "The woman obviously had psychological issues. She should receive treatment, not ridicule. The whole cult thing was a warning that was ignored."  Someone else replied to my comment with, "while i disregard what the OP said......this woman murdered her son....while she certainly needs treatment, a little ridicule is certainly in line as well".  To which I replied,  

"If you ever had a family member with a severe mental illness who hurt someone - you would not say that. This is certainly not a time for ridicule. There is nothing funny about this. Yes, she murdered her son. A mother who murders her little boy, who had claimed that he had been controlled by a cult, is obviously not well. Just because she was rich does not mean she can't have the same problems as people like my brother, Paul, who had schizophrenia.

He pulled a knife on us once. If he had killed me, would you have ridiculed him too? But then again, it wouldn't have gotten in the news because I am not famous or rich.

Your ignorance is showing."

Another person wrote this comment, , "Give the wench the chair.'  So now the "socialite" is a "wench".

I created my own original comment, which read,

"Posters like C and A come here to show off that they can make cute, sarcastic remarks that does nothing to forward any really discussion on the issue. Without thinking they assume that someone who is rich is obviously trash. Without thinking, someone who is obviously in need of psychiatric help is called a "wench".

She is someone's daughter. She needs treatment, not ridicule.

Yes, she did a horrible, horrible, thing, but someone who can kill their own little boy is obviously not well.  That she is now subject to these childish remarks shows how low this society has sunk."

One person wrote a very thoughtful comment, thanking me for my attempts to enlighten these fools.  The person who wrote the original remark about the socialite being trash replied, "cry me a river". She later went to another article where about someone who beat his wife and replied to one of my comments with, "maybe he was 'mentally ill'." She was trying to egg me into an argument, I think.  I ignored it.

Yup, that's what she wrote.  I am assuming the person is a woman based on her screen name, but it could be a man, I don't know.  In any case, not only is his/her ignorance showing, her utter lack of common decency and empathy is actually a little scary.

But this motivates me more than anything.  I guess I am the kind of person that needs to be pissed off to keep going.  So, I thank her/him for it.  I will save the comments and revisit them.  They will help feed my motivation when it gets low.

Dear Media Matters - Does It?

The following is a copy of an e-mail I just sent to Media Matters. This falls in the pet-peeve/Mother Clucker creating category. This is what gets my feather's ruffled up!

I am very sensitive when the terms mental illness, schizophrenia, psychotic, etc., are bandied about incorrectly, but when an organization like Media Matters reprints it and basically blows it off as a shortcoming, I get really pissed off.

To Whom it May Concern:

My understanding is that you report when the media misinforms the public. Is that correct? I would like to see more coverage on issues related to Mental Illness. While there is little media coverage on issues related to mental illness, unless someone who is untreated has a psychotic episode and hurts people, misinformation does occur. Given by the number of articles that came up when I searched on the words "mental illness", I do not think much fact checking is going on by your organization in this area.

To that end, I will start submitting tips whenever I see errors in the coverage of issues relating to mental illness, specifically as it deals to policy issues about homelessness and incarceration.

However, I want to address an even more disturbing issue of your own reporting. The first article that came up in my search was "WND touts book claiming liberalism is mental illness", dated Nov. 24, 2009. The last line of the article was "Given WND's track record, I can only assume WND is engaging in a Rovian effort to accuse their counterparts of their own shortcomings. "

Mental Illness is not a shortcoming. People with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, clinical depression and a list of other illnesses are sick, just like someone with Alzheimer’s. It is a brain disorder that affects the mind, but it is not a shortcoming. It is much more devastating.

By minimizing the often horrific effects of brain disorders categorized as "mental illnesses", you are creating an image of someone who has a mental illness as someone who can help himself or herself. People with brains disorders such as schizophrenia cannot help the fact that they are ill. They need treatment, not ridicule.

Not pointing that out in your critique of this book is just as damaging to the efforts made on behalf of the millions of people with real mental illnesses, as the claims made by the book itself are to liberalism.

Please, do a better job.

Sincerely,

Ilene Flannery Wells

The Earthquake Within our own Borders

When a tragic event like the earthquake in Haiti occurs, the hotlines are a buzz and now we can even text our donations to help the hundreds of thousands left homeless and in need. Everything is made easy for us. Our news programs flash the telephone and text numbers while bombarding us with devastating images. I just received my umpteenth e-mail alert.

While I applaud these efforts; the heartfelt generosity I see outpouring from my countrymen and women to strangers across the globe makes me wonder; how can many of these same people literally step over the homeless on our own streets? We divert our glances and quicken our pace. Sure, some of us give money to charities, but the homeless remain.

An earthquake occurred within our own borders a long time ago and we have been feeling the aftershocks for decades. The US homeless population rivals the numbers of people afflicted by the Earthquake in Haiti and up to a third have a severe form of mental illness. We have become so accustomed to it that we don’t even see the victims on the street anymore.

What happened? Well part of what happened was that beginning in the 1960’s, an explosion of former state hospital patients were released into our communities. The premise was that community mental health services were not only more humane, but less costly.

The whole process was coordinated poorly; housing could not be secured to keep pace with the number of patients being released and remains a problem today. This started the homeless problem and since housing continues to be a problem, so does homelessness. On top of that, the sickest of the sick were also released; those who, through no fault of their own, would never recover enough to participate in their own care. My brother Paul was one of them.

The flow of patients released into the community continued, unabated, over decades, and the homeless population continued to grow. So did our prison population. The sickest of the sick, not only do not understand they are sick, they do not have the life skills required to maintain their physical, let alone mental health.

Yes, I can hear you. Many people with a severe mental illness can live productive lives in the community. I am not talking about them. Yes, the community system can work for many people with severe forms of mental illness, but not all.

The sickest of the sick cannot manage the maze of rules and regulations they run into on the “outside”. They don’t even know how to cook their own food and buy their own groceries, yet they are expected to do just that. Adult homes are the last resort for people like my brother and now they will be closed due to the latest Supreme Court ruling that they are unconstitutional.

Virtually no long-term care facilities are available to people who are so sick due to a mental illness that they are made incapable of living on their own – to the point where they could die – unless of course, they also have a debilitating illness in some other organ of their body, or the person is over 64 or under 21. I know, it’s confusing isn’t it? But that’s the way it is. This is discrimination pure and simple.

I think about the hundreds of thousands of homeless people in our own country; a large portion of them are just plain sick and need our help. Many wind up in prison because of incidents that occurred while they were having a psychotic episode. They are all someone's son or daughter, sister or brother, yet we still just step over them or look the other way. It's very sad.

For more on why there are no long-term care facilities available for people with severe mental illness and what you can do to change it, please read my post, End Discrimination Against the Severely Mentally Ill.