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We with psychiatric disabilities have some of the hardest lots in life. These diseases will attack a person from deep within. When consciousness is compromised from the ground up, you should know life can't be easy. At the same time, mentally ill people don't get treated well by most of the public. Most people do not have empathy for mentally ill people, and view us as sick, dangerous, and/or dishonorable. 

The lives of mentally ill people are not enviable. The diseases we face are serious, and they interfere with nearly every aspect of living. Most of us have a much shorter life expectancy than a non-afflicted person. We often lack any real career prospects. Often, we are predestined to living under poor, deprived conditions for our entire lives. And our lives often lack anything that will provide meaning, fulfillment, and/or happiness. 

We are not cute like the stereotypical TV portrayals of people with Down's Syndrome. We are not good to put on television in a commercial for a children's hospital. Instead, mental illness conjures up images of clusters of poorly dressed, poorly groomed adults, smoking cigarettes and talking among ourselves. (It is called "milieu therapy.") 

Mentally ill people do not have good P.R. Our images are tarnished with incidents recorded in the mass media in which a mentally ill person is deemed responsible for a mass shooting. Or, in some instances in the media, a mentally ill person is shown being apprehended by police and in the process of this, being treated in a violent, inhumane manner, and in some instances being killed. 

Yet, few people have sympathy. Even most American Buddhists put mentally ill people in a category of "different." I've been among American Buddhists who have attributed "bad energy" to me. Do I have bad energy? I don't care whether I do. Human beings should not be judged based on such impressions. The American enlightened crowd consists to a large extent of psychologists and others who work in the mental health field--I can't say it is a majority, but it is a large percentage. That predisposes them to turn up their noses at mentally ill meditation practitioners. 

People with mental illness are rejected. We are not considered for any of the good jobs in which we'd have the potential to earn a good living. We are not considered worth conversation or social interaction. We are blacklisted automatically from numerous opportunities. 

Yet, Disability Insurance does not provide enough money to live on. If we are to be rejected by society, then society must provide for us, which it does not. As a mentally ill man trying to create a decent living situation for myself, I find I am stymied and sabotaged in my efforts, repeatedly. And this is not coincidental. 

If people believe we are a potential nuisance and/or threat, and we are put under social restraint via outpatient institutionalization and poverty, then people owe us a living. Since we can't fend for ourselves, either because of being excluded from financial and thereby housing opportunities, or because we just can't work competitively due to disability, then it is only fair that we are provided unconditional housing and unconditional income. If you broke it, you bought it. 

We do not deserve the rough treatment that people give us. We do not deserve being excluded from opportunities, which we are. We deserve to be taken care of, and this ought to be done in a manner that is not humiliating and controlling, and in a manner wherein we feel safety in our lives. Safety from homelessness, from jail, and from being regarded as idiots and as worthless human beings. 

I call on the Kamala Harris and Joe Biden Administration to produce legislation that will make the lives of mentally ill people livable.