Domestic Psychology » mental health

The other occupiers

cathy — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:36:47 +0000

When hopeful college students first began occupying public parks, they were not the first urban campers. Homeless people were living in parks, empty buildings and cars long before the Citizens United ruling. Fighting attempts to help the homeless with the hateful excuse that they will go away if we ignore or punish them is a lie. The homeless are everywhere. Long after the occupiers *move on to other methods of protest or activism, the homeless will remain outside, unprotected and unwanted.

In our obscenely wealthy country, we allow human beings to live unprotected from the brutal extremes of nature. It is easy to dehumanize the homeless. They are primarily SPMI and the combination of illness and survival instinct create almost feral behaviors. They don’t follow social norms. They may or may not say thank you. It is extremely likely that they self medicate. They probably smell funky.

The homeless population is diverse and there is not a formula for helping them. Most are too healthy to be hospitalized, but too ill to survive without assistance. What we know for certain is that they are safer with a place to call home. When they are safer, the possibility of moving beyond the primal survival mode exists. The odds of happily ever after success stories with feel good endings are unlikely. The fact remains that we are talking about human beings who need help.

The complexity of the situation is being played out in the occupations everywhere. The occupations are well organized social systems that are a blend between a Boy Scout camporee and a For the One Dance. The SPMI population are more interested in getting food in their stomach than in recycling or **gifting time. Some occupations are dealing with the neediest members of their encampments better than others. The same is true of all communities.

It remains to be seen how the Occupy movement will be written about in future history books. I hope that the immediate result shifts from arrests to stronger efforts to house all people. Closing facilities for mental health treatment is only going to make the homeless issue worse.

*Yes, I want the occupiers safely indoors instead of outside as winter arrives. The move to occupy homes that are being foreclosed is far less legal than being in a park, but still safer.

**Hippie speak

it’s a marathon, not a sprint

cathy — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:58:46 +0000

There has been far too much death, illness, injury and loss in the social and IRL community that surrounds me lately. In every instance, people have swarmed to support those in need. Then, they slowly drifted to other places where they felt more needed. I’m going to tell you a secret about women. When there is a crisis, adrenalin or something deep inside that they don’t even know is there, kicks in and they do what has to be done. Just as things start to slip back into the new normal and the village of support vanishes, the anvil of reality crushes their soul and pins them down. Life changing events don’t have start and stop dates. They happen and change everything from that point forward. We need to change how we respond to these events. Instead of moving as a wall of support from one crisis to another, we have to spread out and hold hands, like a giant safety net. Check back in on people over and over again. Go the distance.

I do get weary

cathy — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:12:26 +0000

After almost twenty years with a child who doesn’t fit the mold and that same amount of time spent advocating, I get tired. It is exhausting to constantly explain to those who don’t want to understand. It makes your bones hurt to have obstacles and insults hurled at you daily. It is draining to trudge through the sludge of hate and ignorance at anyone or anything that is different. Sometimes, I want to leave the struggle for someone else.

In a neighbor state, mobs of hateful adults are teaching their children to be intolerant and spiteful toward those who are different or dare to love the wrong person. Locally, a newspaper article about teaching positions being saved from the budget axe doesn’t result in comments rejoicing the much needed teachers. Instead, it is a festival of wrath toward special education students.

Things like this make me weary. They also remind me why I can’t stop trying.

“We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

keep them behind a locked gate

cathy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:30:57 +0000

After meeting opposition at every proposed site, the plan to create permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless all over Knox County has ended where so many wanted it to be, Lakeshore. Pessimistic voices argue that this keeps the mentally ill homeless near mental health services. Optimistic voices argue that Lakeshore is lovely and one of their favorite places to go for a walk. How many of those voices have ever been inside the locked buildings at Lakeshore? How many had no idea there are still patients at Lakeshore? How many understand that Lakeshore is not an out-patient medical center, but a crisis stabilization facility? How can they miss all the news reports that identify Lakeshore as the forensic facility for people whose dangerous crimes may have been connected to personal illness?

Do I take my children to the trails at Lakeshore? Of course I do. The difference is that those buildings with locked doors aren’t invisible to me. I am constantly aware of their presence and the seriously ill people inside them. People who are struggling to survive. People in very real pain. People who have been victimized by their extreme vulnerability. Human beings in locked rooms, in locked buildings, behind locked gates. Lakeshore is a hospital and no matter how much they have to sell their land to stay in business for the people who desperately need care, it is still a place where sick people go to get better.

Is permanent supportive housing a place for people with special needs who lack the support systems needed to fully function in society? If so, why isn’t it being put in neighborhoods with other people? Group homes belong among other homes. Apartments cluster with other multi-family housing facilities. Where are the other families living at Lakeshore? They are not there. Where can the PSH residents go when they need a cup of sugar? Shall they knock on the hospital door? Even the Lakeshore chapel was sold to make additional parking for soccer moms. That’s not a community. It’s a business. It’s not a business that will hire them though.

Oh, ha-ha Cathy. You’re so stupid to claim Lakeshore is not a community. Look at all the people walking their dogs and watching children play soccer. If a crowd of strangers decided to let their dogs poop on my street, they would not make this a community. Community is the all of the neighbors who know each other. Community is the ability to walk next door for a cup of milk or collect a neighbor’s mail when they are on vacation. Community is knowing that everyone in this neighborhood recognizes my children and keeps an eye on what they are doing just as I know and watch over their children. Community is not a place surrounded by gates and designed for lock-down protocol. Not gates to keep the scary out, but gates to control the residents and keep them inside the facility. Gates to keep the mentally ill and now the homeless out of sight and out of mind.

The people who don’t want this site discussed because they think this is the issue that will put someone in or keep someone out of the mayoral office are helping nobody. Constant media attention has made politicians completely ineffective people whose primary goal is their next elected office. The only decision politicians make that isn’t based solely on campaigning are the ones they make when they take off their britches. I know that the League of Women Voters could revoke my membership for saying that, but I suspect they recognize frustration and aggravation as the predecessors to focus and motivation.

hiding out

cathy — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:44:50 +0000

I have no personal space. I thought about hiding in our bedroom closet until I realized that it is filled with everyone’s stuff but mine. It’s not fair to hide in someone else’s clothes. You would think the bathroom would be a safe place for privacy, but you’d be wrong. Even the newest 4-y-o picks the bathroom lock and stomps in to demand whatever it is he thinks he needs at that moment. My first reaction to Color Guard practice not disappearing from my carpool duties for the summer was disappointment. Then, I decided to claim the one hour practices as MY time. I might sit in Starbucks and listen to the vitamin salesman trying to sell his wares. I might turn on the ipod and do some people watching at the park. Maybe I’ll put the seat back in the car and sleep in the sticky, southern summer heat. Mostly, I will sit with my low-tech (not by choice) pen and paper writing posts or working on the project I am doing for the middle school PTO. I will only be dropping off and going home during the three weeks of all day, every day practices, but that’s okay. I’m still going to get more me time this summer than I have had since I became a parent. Anyone want to place bets on how long this lasts before the rest of the family declares mutiny on my selfishness?

I do not think it means what you think it means

cathy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:51:58 +0000

stimulus: something that rouses or incites to activity: as a: incentive b: stimulant 1 c: an agent (as an environmental change) that directly influences the activity of a living organism or one of its parts (as by exciting a sensory organ or evoking muscular contraction or glandular secretion)

Children’s Services -16.40%
Division of Mental Retardation -52.92%
Economic and Community Development -22.84%
Mental Health & Developmental Disabilities -13.10%

Literacy classes, job skill training, workshops and almost anything that provides education is stimulating. Bringing new companies to the state and helping small businesses get started is stimulating. Free wi-fi is stimulating. Using it for less than what you already had is NOT stimulating. If you are using money to slow down the hemorrhaging, you should call it bandage money.

Putting services for the neediest citizens on the chopping block is going to result in a surge of homelessness, over-burdened and under-financed hospitals and a tremendous spike in crime. Tennesseans are going to have to put aside differences and work together like never before.

help me understand

cathy — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:05:50 +0000

I am not an accountant. Reading the TN budget for 2009-2010 is about as pleasant as watching for the return of a swallowed Playmobile toy. I understand clearly that we are cutting or eliminating:
family resource centers, school safety grants, school health positions and funding, the child health and development (CHAD) program, the healthy start program, programs focusing on delinquency and truancy prevention, the relative caregiver program, alcohol and drug counseling for students, respite services, mental health and suicide risk screening program for youth and the peer power program.

The state of TN is going to: Eliminate homeless, consumer family support, employment, recovery and housing evidence-based services for persons diagnosed with serious and persistent mental illness (SPMI). Reduce mental health crisis diversion and continuum of care services. Reduce mental health services to children and other special populations.

What I don’t understand is that it looks like many of the affected services and programs will get funding from the one time only, federal stimulus money. That must be a misunderstanding on my part. How is spending the money on what we have now going to stimulate the economy in our state? If all the programs vanish at the end of the surplus money, aren’t we guaranteeing failure of the stimulus plan? Surely the state of TN isn’t going to set up children and families to suffer just to prove a political point.

chapel > soccer

cathy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:51:07 +0000

While another area in Knoxville rallies together to be heard by St. Mary’s, the neighborhoods around Lakeshore sit silently. They silently watched, year after year, while the buildings deteriorated as the state reduced Lakeshore’s budget. They said nothing when Lakeshore was forced to sell some of their valuable property to Parks & Rec. They are remaining quiet as all of the cottages and buildings on the soccer field side of Lakeshore’s Orchard Road are claimed for the soccer teams’ parking needs. The majority of the SPMI population at Lakeshore has been tossed aside by their families and the state is quietly taking away their front and back yard. This time, they have taken the consumers’ chapel away from them. The Lakeshore family needs that chapel far more than the Hummer driving soccer moms need additional parking. How many of those soccer parents have ever spent an hour in that chapel with the Lakeshore consumers? I’m seriously guessing that the answer is none. How many soccer games are the Lakeshore consumers welcome to attend? There may be a few kind hearts on that field, but I still doubt if the majority would allow it. Lakeshore’s chapel needs to be open. The consumers, doctors, nurses and volunteers need that chapel. The chapel would never turn away any of the soccer families. Unlock the chapel doors and let it serve the entire Lakeshore community, athletic families and health families alike.

Dear family and friends,

cathy — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 06:55:31 +0000

When I have my mental breakdown, if you love me in the very least, please, please, please do not call Dr. Phil. In fact, don’t call anyone with their own television show. It won’t take much effort to locate a good therapist. The local Mental Health Association can recommend a doctor who specializes in whatever has sent me over the edge. If it involves helicopters always flying over me, idiots rifling through my trash and cameras constantly pointed at my crotch, a talk show appearance is NOT going to make things better. Buy me some underwear and take me someplace where paparazzi are treated like the criminals that they are. I suspect my personal crisis will be much simpler than that anyway. I think someone in Hawaii specializes in my problem. Send me there for a week and I’ll feel much better. Thank you for caring about me.

Love, Cathy

P.S. I sure hope Britney’s problem is Rheumatoid Arthritis.

fighting the good fight

cathy — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 01:03:10 +0000

I can’t count the number of times I came home from work and complained to poor Doug about how frustrating and depressing it was to not be able to really help the people who needed help the most. Lacking any other option to get services for their child, parents gambled with the odds by handing their children over to the state. Teenagers getting thrown to the sharks on their 18th birthday. Parents helplessly watching their intelligent 18-year-old tailspin out of control without medications or therapy. Families torn apart by frustration and pain. Parents hoping that their own child gets arrested. The magic three day fix that is supposed to make people well enough to be released from medical care. I still hear someone’s voice in my head talking about “Little Timmy” playing with her children and everyone in East TN is haunted by the complete loss of common sense that necessitated an edible roadkill bill. If Senator Burchett can draw the delicate line between families who sincerely want to help their ill relatives and the families who want to lock the ill away forever, he will really be helping the people who need it.