An observation about gay rights, Progressives, and my pet issue

[Mizmoon]

Okay, so the right hates gays and we're going to stick together anyway. That's right and good.

So what happened to you folks when I post about the rights of mentally ill people, my personal cause?

I talked about people being court ordered to undergo forced ECT (shock) treatments even though their own families objected, everyone yawned.

I talked about the number of mentally ill people in prison and how no one cared about them. Progressive went right on not caring about them.

Someone on dkos even told me that "mentally ill people being released from the asylums caused the TB epidemic". Though this sounded exactly like "those Jews spread the plague", only one person on all of these boards had a word to say in the defense of mentally ill people.

The only thing that got a tiny rise out of everyone was learning that Bush wants to check the whole population for mental illness. Suddenly people were a little interested - you know, they didn't want to be totally disenfranchised like mentally ill people are. But it dropped too.

Doesn't matter that the AEI is involved in this stripping of rights, either. It doesn't matter than mentally ill people fighting for their rights have virtually no one to turn to because EVERYONE hates them even more than gays are hated.

So, those of you who want us to continue to stick together for human right for gays - are you even slightly interested in helping mentally ill people? Or are you just going to tell me anecdotal stories about mentally ill people who pestered you on the street at some point in your life?

[Dookus]

1. I understand your frustration...

Of course the overwhelming majority here are for granting rights and respect to the mentally ill.

I think, though, that unless people encounter mental illness in their own lives, either themselves or a loved one, it's a rather abstract issue and one most of us don't understand that well, or remain fearful of.

But this gay guy backs your cause 100%.

[Maat]

2. No, as an ex-social-worker,

and soon I will be a defense attorney for parents - I will fight to ensure all fundamental rights, including the right to determine one's own response to one's mental illness.

I also am not a fan of compelling parents to medicate children with psychotropic medications, some of which I have personally noticed appear to play a part in the onset of significant mood changes.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

5. Yep

I quit childcare because I couldn't conscience distributing ritalin. I noticed it was given to every child that I considered intelligent or interesting...

[miss_kitty]

8. isn't that the truth

just gotta knock that shine off the bright penny there...to much trouble to deal with.

[miss_kitty]

3. i never saw those posts, chamilto

the mentally ill are always included in any sweep of the wretched by a fascist regime. if "mentally ill people being released from the asylums caused the TB epidemic" the poster should have had their ears pinned back with a query as to why institutions supposedly designed to care for the mentally ill cause them to become physically ill?

Ironically Bush wanting to check EVERYONE for mental illness came at a time when he was suffering from seeming uncontrolled anger...

No one seems to remember or understand that a lot of the problems for the mentally ill started with the Thugs' patron saint, Ronald of Reagan, who cut to the bone many social services that helped the mentally ill, and these benefits have never been restored, even when the Dems had the power.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

4. This issue short-circuits people's brains

Excuse the unfortunate choice of words.

The dkos poster was (I would guess) clumsily referring to the deinstitutionalization of mentally ill that supposedly caused homelessness (of the kind and scale we know now) to spring up in the 70s. Somewhere in the progressive "racial memory" is the ACLU and other prog groups' unwitting role in bringing about deinstitutionalization. It was an early taste of the dangers of bipartisanship in the Republicofascist age.

The rights-fighters back then read their Foucault and Goffmann, got horrified, came up with the solution of community care. The right-wingers chuckled and grinned and said "Sure we'll close the state hospitals, heh heh!" And then they made sure community care never got funded, and the mentally ill (among MANY other groups) were housed on the streets.

In the jungle in a nearby large city a non-mentally ill homeless friend of mine once pointed out the take-out containers at one of the camps. "They must be SSI's," he said. "No one else out here can afford Chinese food." RIP TN

[miss_kitty]

7. the deinstitutionalization of mentally ill happened during Reagan's watch

he cut the budget that help to mentally ill by and homelessness by more than 3/4 (from $32b per year to 7b per year for federal housing assistance alone) in his 8 year tenure...

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

10. Housing and treatment are separate issues

It was in the 70s they stopped "throwing people in the booby hatch" so readily. The Repugs were into it because they saw it as a big cost-cutting, and a lot of the left supported it because of the horror of those institutions. We were right, but in the long run the presence of the Repugs and Reagan's ascendancy assured that a bad thing would be replaced with nothing. A few people are starting to fix this damage. It's not IMO the most important contributor to visible homelessness.

[miss_kitty]

11. oh I thought it was all down to RR

Nixon, then? please don't let it be Jimmy!

I realise housing and treatment are two separate issues, but the housing cuts threw a lot of mentally ill on the street who were/are more visible than the non-mentally ill, jmo...I remember in the 70s the 3 homeless guys in downtown Seattle. Seriously. The Red-headed screamer man, the Rag man and the Tall guy. Then at once in the early 80s, they were swallowed by a sea, wave after wave of homeless people and many mentally ill-mind you we had a problem with Phoenix AZ throwing their homeless mantally ill on buses with a one-way ticket to Seattle, instead of taking care of the problem locally...

I'll have to do more research...thanks!

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

12. It was a major conflation of forces

Seattle had the original "skid row", but by 1930 every major city in the country had one. "Urban Renewal" in the 70s was a movement from skid row housing to no housing, period.

Crack hit the streets after a decade of heroin and speed. All of a sudden addicts could be produced faster and cheaper. Meanwhile industries failed. People became dealers because there were no jobs. People became alcoholics because there were no jobs. (This sounds wrong but it's not. The average guy who drinks a six pack a night will go up to a case a day if he's unemployed.)

The mentally ill we've already discussed.

THEN Reagan came in with his housing and welfare cuts and started the war on drugs. The male population began to disappear into prisons, leaving the women to be skewered as "welfare queens". The young were incarcerated and hardened and put back on the streets.

Now twenty years into the war on drugs we're getting our first wave of "graduates" from the draconian sentencing laws.

[Mizmoon]

15. Very true

how sad too.

There is a glimmer of hope. Have you heard about ZuZu's Place?
http://www.namiscc.org/Recovery/2002/ZuZusPlace.htm

Zuzu's Place: Cooperative Living for Psychiatric Survivors

ZuZu's Place (the name was inspired by Don White's song, "Angel in Pieces") will eventually be a number of homes for people with a history of serious emotional problems. While overwhelming stress may have resulted in their hospitalization in the past, the members of the Zuzu's Place Cooperatives are committed to independent living--to making their home--outside of the psychiatric system.

Members appreciate the universal human need for community, but do not want to live in a "group home" or other institutional setting run by "staff." For such "psychiatric survivors," there are currently no places in the USA where cooperative living in a supportive community is available outside of institutional, professionally run programs. There appear to be some examples of this type of home in England and Europe and, in the US, cooperative houses that are run by the members do exist. But, these US co-ops typically refuse to accept new members who have had a history of "mental illness." Therefore, if survivors want to join a cooperative community in the US, they have to hide a large part of themselves--and must even lie--merely to be accepted and given a chance.

The people coming together to create and live in ZuZu's Place want to be open and honest about their lives, and feel supported by housemates who can relate to and be patient with one another. People who have survived overwhelming emotional experiences know about the need for patience, acceptance, and belonging. Almost invariably they encountered the opposite--judgment, stigmatizing labels, impatience, and rejection--when they were forced to turn to the available sources of care or tried to join independent efforts to form caring, cooperative communities.

[On the Road]

6. I Think People Have Psychotics in Mind

and are really unsure how to address the issue as a result. The mentally ill are a category of real people to you. To most of use, they're not. And it's difficult to know how to interpret disagreements between the medical community, the government, families, and individuals who may not be able to make sound decisions very well.

What is scary to me is the way that the definition of mental illness can include not just the profoundly disturbed, but in theory any one of us. The definitions of mental illness expanded so much by the time DSM IV came out that they're almost universal. I've taken antidepressants in the past, and to get insurance a diagnosis is needed, albeit a mild one.

Ordering shock treatment over the objections of family and the patient is appalling. But as a political issue, mental health rights is very difficult. I sympathize with your frustration.

[Mizmoon]

16. Tell me about it

I study this topic every day and I still have more criticisms than useful suggestions. I hope for the day that I understand it well enough to find a real solution to the problem while respecting the rights of both individuals and society.

[On the Road]

17. It's One of the Most Diffucult Political Causes

and because it's not in the front of everyone's minds and people don't understand it.

But progress can still be made. It may take a different way of phrasing it, such as "if a person can ..., he or she should be able to ...."

[skygazer]

9. It's an issue that is very important to me

The only posts I did see were the ones about forced checks of the population but I would have been interested in others. Here in California we did pass a measure designed to prop up funding for mental health - it's far from perfect but I voted for it because I think it's an important issue and it was the first time I've ever seen it truly addressed on a ballot before.

I grew up in a town where one of the first hospitals for the mentally ill was built (the Brattleboro Retreat in Brattleboro, VT) - it is now mostly a rehab like so many other psychiatric care facilities. I guess there's money to be made from rehabs but the mentally ill can just rot on the street.

[Mizmoon]

13. If anyone is seriously interested in this issue

or learning more about it, please email me via DU. I will be happy to give you some links to look over and tell you how you can get invovled.

[liontamer]

14. I'm sorry that you've seen negative responses

I'm purely a lounge lizard so I never really saw your posts. Like with most issues, if one never deals with a problem personally, it is very easy to accept common prejudice. So if you got negative responses, remember that since mental illness is so often covered up, many people don't really see the human side of the issue.

thank you for continuing to fight for human rights. We all benefit from your work.