Public Comment

Part One: The Unacceptable

The lot in life of people with chronic mental disease is not enviable. Society doesn't offer us anything any good. We are segregated into treatment venues in the mental health treatment system, where we have lives of restriction and being 'supervised.' We are credited with lack of basic insight across the board. If we are in the category of 'client', in the perceptions of the mental health counselors, who assume too much, this means to them that we lack basic intelligence. Consequently, condescension is the norm.

Lunches at a treatment venue are an example of unequal treatment. At mealtime, we are bribed with sugary, fatty junk food such as Chinese takeout or pizza followed by cake--and we eat alongside counselors who have their politically correct salads with kidney beans, kale, brown rice, and tofu. This example of different meals encapsulates classism.

Transportation is unequal. We are shuttled around in vans to get to and from our treatment venues. If we fail to board the van on time, we're stranded. Then what?

If we have an ambition of doing something intelligent, we are best off keeping it to ourselves when possible. Otherwise, counselors will have methods of interfering with our thought processes about such ambitions, and this could in the guise of being encouraging. Or it could be in the rationale of keeping our thoughts connected to reality as they perceive it. Counselors may feel obliged to keep us 'grounded' and 'connected' to reality'--thus it falls upon them to impart to us we can't, because in their minds, we're too inferior. 

A psychiatric diagnosis is a life sentence to poverty, suffering and humiliation. This is not to say that counselors are necessarily unkind. However, piggybacked onto the kindness--and likely good intentions--ride discriminatory assumptions. These assumptions are imparted in training of counselors and reinforced by professional peers. 

We are expected to take medications that interfere with the necessary processes of our bodies and minds. Medications are no fun to take. They induce physical and mental suffering. They restrict our capabilities. Antipsychotics, because they slow parts of the brain, and shut down other parts of the brain, make us incapable of doing many of the things that most people assume anyone can do. 

Mentally ill people develop chronic health problems at a young age. Yet, alarming weight gain does not sound the alarms of treating professionals--it is normalized. Dying young is normalized. Incarceration is normalized. None of this should be normalized. 

We are not afforded basic dignity. We are cutified, infantilized, and treated and perceived as dumb. There is no open-mindedness that we might not be dumb. Our serious life and death issues, that could kill us, are made to seem unimportant. In therapy we are rendered psychologically and interpersonally impotent. 

We do not have much chance at establishing a professional career. Our chances depend on getting an education when young enough to do so. When we get older, multiple factors take effect that will impair our efforts. Efforts, no matter how valiant, in my experience, are repeatedly stymied. 

Our perspectives are not validated. When we say something that to us has some level of meaning, it isn't taken as we intend, rather, it is often dismissed as the rambling of a psychotic person. 

We can barely, if at all, survive on the measly government benefits we get. We cannot own very much, or the government will take it. If we have children, the government will take them. 

Medication to treat psychosis introduces other impairment. Antipsychotics make it hard to do anything. It is a challenge to maintain oral hygiene, to shave my face, to wash my clothes, and to get in the car and drive across town or to another town. I can only handle a few things in a day. I don't try to do more than that. I'm not a masochist and I refuse to do damage to myself based on a so-called 'work ethic.' 

(It has been a source of relief to acknowledge that decades of being medicated, repeated setbacks, repeated trauma, and age, influence my current capabilities--and therefore to acknowledge and accept that I can't always get much done.) 

I am not spiritually enlightened. But who is? Sometimes I am immune to things that make other people upset. But sometimes I'm bent out of shape by things that wouldn't bother most people. 

In the mentally ill package, far too much is expected of us, and it is beyond reason. And far too little is offered. 

PART Two: The Bright Side: 

If we follow instructions to be medication 'compliant', and if we work to better ourselves and better our circumstances, we could make a lot of progress. Any sustainable progress will entail constant work, and this progress will be measurable in small increments. And we may have to produce threefold the effort to get similar results achieved by the neuro typical. Yet, if we work to better ourselves and our circumstances, this is inherently respectable, whether people acknowledge it or not. 

Depending on age of onset, we may not have gone to college. Not having college is a very big problem, because to get hired at anything good, the minimum is a BA degree. Other than that, there are trade schools where we could get a certificate. Trade school is a more practicable and less difficult choice for many. I went to trade school for electronics in the mid nineteen eighties, and it was hard work, but not at the level college would have been. 

We should not allow ourselves to be dissuaded and discouraged by the skeptical. We should not openly share our ambitions unless we feel fully secure that discouraging talk won't affect us. 

Psychiatric disability is not different from other disabilities. We can work around the limitations. If there are some things that are just too hard, we should not try to do them. 

Yet, unless we really want to, we don't need to have a career. Having a 'fabulous career' is not a match for all people. Some people need a break and need to simply enjoy life to the extent they can. 

On the other hand, a wallet full of cash, that we earned, can do a lot for our outlook on life. Mental illness, despite what many people may think, is not insurmountable. 

Our progress, or the absence of it, is up to us. We may need to create our own sources of encouragement. Sometimes, you find a job situation that has support built into it. This is a very good thing because then we don't have to rely on other sources of encouragement to recharge. When we rely on counselors to keep us encouraged in our work, we stand the risk of having the support pulled out from under us at a time when that support is most needed. 

There are areas in which we are well-advised to cooperate with treatment professionals. But we ought never let them talk us out of doing something that brings us meaning, money, status, and respect. There are careers like that, and we can always try. 

If we try something and fall short, we could be in for a lot of disappointment. But that's the risk we invariably face. Declining to try to do something means we will never have tried. And this is fine if it suits you. I have met many people who’ve overcome disabilities and who can make an honest living at something. But it is not for everyone. 

An activity should not always be measured by its money-earning potential or by its potential to impress people. Sitting to read a book on a Sunday afternoon is worthwhile. Drawing bizarre doodles on a piece of notebook paper is redeemable. Washing dishes, if you can get yourself to do it, is worth doing. Many things you already might do, probably have value.  

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Jack Bragen is author of 'Jack Bragen's 2021 Fiction Collection'.