Health care workers are required to report any case in which they “know or have reasonable cause to suspect, as a result of information they receive in their professional or official capacity, that a child is abused or neglected by anyone,” but according to the administrator of Three Rivers Mental Health Solutions, this case didn’t meet these criteria because neither the victims of the child porn nor the children Gribble was babysitting could be identified by name.

Call me crazy but I assume releasing the names of the victims you exploit in child pornography is bad for business; and I would hazard a guess that the reason Gribble didn’t provide the names of the girls he was babysitting was because he had been… are you sitting down… REPORTED BEFORE!

That’s right, the final nail in the coffin; the thing that really blows my mind, is that the administrator at the mental health center fired this woman because she, quote, “Couldn’t tell me any names… In the past, this gentleman babysit kids and we were able to identify the mother and were able to carry out our duty to warn.”

In other words, the administrative staff at this mental health center considered it a breach of professional ethics to report a man they already KNEW to be a pedophile and already KNEW used babysitting jobs to gain unsupervised access to potential victims because this information wasn’t fucking specific enough!

The administrator officially stated that this woman was fired “in part” because of her report.  I wonder what the other “part” of it may be… maybe because she refused comply with the mental health center’s policy of harboring pedophiles?

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

On the premier episode of American Horror Story (so far the only scene of which I haven’t been able to watch with the lights off is the intro made up of all those creepy as hell baby pictures) there is a scene in which a psychiatrist named Ben is counseling a teenage boy named Tate who has, with much grandiosity, described a recurring fantasy about murdering some of his fellow students.  (The “noble war,” he calls it, to free the people he likes from this “filthy goddamn helpless world” and “take them somewhere clean and kind.”)  The doctor asks Tate if he’s been taking his medications; and then calls his bluff by asking him if he’s had any light sensitivity.  When Tate says something to the effect of not too much, Ben says that “light sensitivity isn’t a side effect of Lexapro.”

Lexapro?  Are you freaking kidding me?!

I’m in no position to say what Tate’s diagnosis may be, but even I know a psychiatrist may as well prescribe aspirin to a homicidal patient as an antidepressant.  Gimme a break!  FX fact checkers… fail.

Later that week I was trawling the Internet to confirm a rumor that George Lucas had yet again… ugh… “enhanced” the latest Star Wars boxed set, this time by adding a track of Darth Vader screaming while Emperor Palpatine electrocutes Luke Skywalker. (FAIL!)  And my long meandering browsing journey led me to this story which, perhaps due to a little schadenfreude brought on by my current struggles, caught my attention: a recent neurological study suggests that optimism may be the result of a lack of frontal lobe activity in the brain.  (So eat that!)

In an experiment conducted by Dr. Tali Sharot and Dr. Ray Dolan of University College London and Christoph Korn of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, volunteers were presented with 80 negative life events (like being the victim of a crime or diagnosed with a major illness) and asked to estimate how likely they were to experience them while an MRI monitored their brain activity.  They were then given the actual probability of each event and asked to make a second estimate.

Participants who had overestimated the likelihood of negative events in their future (i.e. pessimists) were likely to reduce their second estimates accordingly; however, participants who had underestimated at first (optimists, according to personality tests) were unlikely to increase them.  While this was happening, the more pessimistic volunteers showed, as expected, increased activity in their prefrontal cortex while the more optimistic showed significantly less activity, as though their brains were literally incapable of processing the new data.  (If so, it may be that those of us with depression aren’t so much more dysfunctional than those on the opposite end of the spectrum!)

My philosophy on public assistance- and the advice I give my peers- is to be honest but never volunteer information (in this case, any strengths or personal achievements).  Unfortunately, the Social Security system hasn’t evolved to accommodate any form of selective and/or cyclical disability, and it will always err on the side of, “You‘re fine.  Get back to work.”  Even my psychologist has said he feels conflicted about submitting an evaluation on my behalf- if and when asked- because he knows he would have to gloss over anything he likes or respects about me for fear of making me appear too “able-minded,” so to speak.

For many persons with mental illness, having a job is critical to their recovery.  However, for others such as myself, it is a road to certain relapse.  Consequently, when I was filling out my paperwork and I was required to describe my typical day as someone with a disability, everything I wrote was absolutely honest and true… just not 100% of the time.  But it’s, say, the 45% of the time it is true that makes employment impossible for me.

As I wrote this description of my daily life when I am am symptomatic I was shocked.  Stripped of my punctuated achievements, the degree to which mental illness overwhelms my life is astonishing even to me.  And yet I realized I have never been so open or so candid, and that as vulnerable as it makes me feel I decided I want people who doubt the profoundness of even what popular culture considers the “milder” forms of mental illness- such as depression- to read it.

So, here it is.  A day in the life of psychiatric disability:

“I wake up around 8:30 or 9 and have breakfast.  I spend the rest of the morning on the Internet checking email, visiting social networks, and reading blogs.  Some days I will blog and/or journal.

“In the afternoon, if I have the energy, (on average 1 or 2 days a week) I’ll exercise for a half hour on my Nintendo WII.  If I’m too lethargic I’ll spend the rest of the day watching TV or playing video games.

“If I exercise that day, or if I’m going somewhere, I’ll usually take a shower.  Otherwise I may not feel up to showering for 2 or 3 days.  Some days I won’t even have the energy to wash my face or brush my teeth.  I’ll sometimes wear the same clothes for weeks because I don’t have the energy to do laundry.  At most I’ll clean my house once a month.

“A few days a month I volunteer on community councils to share my knowledge of mental illness, but sometimes I am too nervous to attend.  Sometimes I will start to have anxiety as much as 2 days before a meeting.  I will have pain in my chest and nausea until I decide not to attend it.

“Telephone calls are particularly stressful for me.  Just hearing a telephone ring may trigger immediate nausea and an increased heart rate, and sometimes I’ll be too nervous to return a phone call for days.

“At the end of the day I find it very difficult to relax enough to fall asleep.  I usually get to bed around 10:30 or 11 but sometimes it will be as late as midnight or 1.”

I don’t get to brag about my home state too much, so this is pretty kickass.

Responses to Marshall’s personal disclosure and willingness to be, quote: “the face of BPD” largely consisted of snide remarks about fake disorders and rich people having the “luxury of being mentally ill” while everyone else has to “just get on with life,” punctuated by a shocking amount of racism, frankly.  (I guess at some point even a lily white country girl like me discovers that having a black President pisses far more people off than I can imagine.)  Somehow, no matter how often I encounter mental illness stigma- either through first or second hand experience- it still shocks and infuriates me as though it’s the first time I’ve ever witnessed it.

Maybe these bigots will find mental health matriarch and Dialectical Behavior Therapy creator Dr. Marsha Linehan’s account of her personal battle with BPD more credible.  Maybe not.  Personally, with the media spotlight on people like Charlie Sheen and Jessie James, it’s refreshing to read an article about celebrity mental illness that isn’t just a grotesque joke.  But times change and the assholes stay the same.

On behalf of all of us who suffer from this very real illness, thank you Brandon Marshall.

(And, while I’m at it, I applaud MHA for using the phrase “died by suicide,” as I recently made the decision to never again say “committed suicide.”  The expression implies a deliberate act, rather than a tragic consequence of an illness beyond someone’s control, and I refuse to perpetuate it.)

It may seem like just a symbolic gesture to those who aren’t personally affected by mental illness, the suicide of a loved one, or both; but, the truth is, sometimes symbolic gestures mean everything when they defy oppressive long-standing cultural beliefs.  It’s simply unconscionable to me that our society’s Puritanical hypocrisy has maintained to this day that the “sin” of suicide somehow cancels out all that a person, along with his or her loved ones, sacrifices in order to serve in our nation’s military.  It’s not only the ultimate insult to injury for the survivors of suicide; it’s bigotry, plain and simple.  As the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention stated in its press release: “We applaud the president for taking a courageous stand and sending a strong message that America will not tolerate a culture in our Armed Forces that discriminates against those with a mental illness or furthers stigma.”

“25 Facts About Rape in America”

I guess it’s kind of a cop out just linking to another blog post after all this time but I think these statistics speak for themselves.  What I find particularly interesting is that, under federal law, men can’t be “raped.”  The phrase “rape and sodomy” has always really irritated me.  It always seems to indicate a socialized disconnect between what is a sexual crime and what is not only a crime but also a deviant act.  In other words, sexual violence against women is a crime against a human being but at least it’s not a “crime against nature” as well.

While advocating for proactive community treatment of mental illness, I often feel like my account of my inpatient experience is unwelcome; or, if it is, it is only as an example of why mental health advocacy is necessary, not as a call to action in itself.  I often feel like activists are so focused on the future mental health care they envision that acknowledging the failed and deplorable system that still exists seems counterproductive.  (And NAMI’s Peer-to-Peer course flat out instructs people to inform the public at every opportunity that mental health treatment is no longer the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest travesty it once was.)

But as people with mental illness we have a history- even a culture- that is rightfully ours to claim, too often represented only by the countless unmarked graves that bear silent witness to the nameless, faceless people who have died in psychiatric institutions over the centuries.  From being used in involuntary medical experiments, to being targeted by the Nazi “Euthanasia Program”, and, most importantly, to the inadequate care and mental, physical, and sexual abuse that people with mental illness suffer in institutionalized treatment every day, we are entitled to draw strength and pride from all that we have suffered and survived.

As we look to the future we must not forget the past, nor bury the present.

I probably sign a half dozen online petitions on any given day, and in all honesty I usually use the “click to add your name” button without reading them very closely.  I usually just figure if NAMI or CREDO supports it it’s good enough for me.  But ever since the Tuscon shooting I’ve received several requests from organizations I usually support encouraging me to advocate for the Fix Gun Checks campaign spearheaded by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  And I can’t, as a person with mental illness, endorse any petition worded: “…keep guns out of the hands of criminals, drug abusers, the mentally ill and other dangerous people.”

But Bloomberg doesn’t stop at nuanced mental health stigma.  On January 27 he appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word advocating for a “registry of people who have psychiatric problems” (which 80% of NRA members favor so, you know, there’s no need to consider anyone else’s opinion on the matter).

Some people with mental illness may consider this violation of privacy- should any such legislation ever be passed- acceptable for the sake of the greater good, (like being profiled by airport security) especially since Bloomberg invokes the names of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and once again picks the scab of the Columbine shooting, but there is far more than potential gun ownership to consider.

Never mind the fact that a “psychiatric problems” registry would be generally ineffective at preventing violent crime because there’s no way to predict a psychological crisis in someone without a history of diagnosed mental illness.  Imagine a system in which having a mental illness meant you had to register with your state like you were a sex offender (or that your doctor would do it for you).  Who else, besides gun dealers, would have access to this information?  Employers?  Landlords?  The neighborhood watch?  Basically any idiot who doesn’t want “crazy people” anywhere near him or her?  And how many fewer people would seek treatment for their mental illness knowing nothing about their medical care would be confidential?  (And, in turn, how the hell would this make our society “safer” if people with mental illness at risk of violence would forego treatment because they had no hope of privacy?)  The idea is simply toxic- and counterproductive- on so many levels.

(Oh, and did I mention that Bloomberg felt it necessary to call Jared Loughner a “lunatic” just to solidify his role as the most stigmatizing asshole on the planet?)

Also, I need to post something to this blog to keep it on life support while I don’t have the energy to write anything even if I could conjure something to say.

In January, Just Detention International reported a landmark victory for a woman who was raped in prison by a staff member.  The Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that the prison investigator who handled Michelle Ortiz’s case was immune from prosecution, despite not only making no attempt to protect her from being raped again by the same staff member but actually placing her in solitary confinement under deplorable conditions as retaliation against her report.

Just Detention International is an organization I enthusiastically support because it approaches sexual violence as a human rights issue, not merely a public safety issue, quote: “Our programs are built around a core belief: everyone has an absolute right to be free from torture, including sexual abuse in detention. And we mean everyone — regardless of custody status or criminal history.” Though it focuses specifically on sexual violence within correctional facilities, I like to think it sets a precedent for other institutions, mental hospitals included.  The dominant culture is generally unconcerned about sexual abuse- and its victims- behind closed doors.  In cases of sexual violence, the immediate response all too often is something to the effect of, “If you don’t report it, he will do this to someone else.” Social obligation is piled onto the victim, her acceptance of which determines whether or not she is to be believed or supported.  But for the institutionalized population there is no social contract to be made, and hence no public concern.

On the local front (but I believe a victory for one of us is a victory for all of us) a member of my other favorite organization, Disability Rights Montana, and a personal friend, was able to successfully advocate for a MT State Hospital patient who was left in restraints for over four hours, an experience that re-traumatized her while in supposed “treatment” for her mental illness.  The article doesn’t really specify what DRM was able to achieve in this case, but just bringing public attention to instances such as this is monumental.  Punitive use of restraints falls under the category of Things People Don’t Believe Happen in Mental Hospitals Anymore, and they need to be told otherwise.