How #MHM2016 Misses the Mark

 There seems to be an assumption behind many mental health campaigns, like the #MHM2016 one – for Mental Health Month – that mental health care is all people with mental illness need. There is an unwavering focus on access to care. Okay. That's great for people who want mental health care. I mean, I see a psychiatrist and a therapist. I take medication. Cool. In some ways I am a model citizen with mental illness. But when people talk about access to “treatment,” and people “needing treatment,” and “the plight of the mentally ill” and “mental health awareness,” this is what people mean, I think:

1. Access to to treatment is more important than issues like stable housing, co-occurring physical health conditions that can be managed so we don't die at our average age of fifty-two, and a source of income.
2. People need access and should have treatment whether they want it or not, because they need it for their own good.
3. Access to treatment will fix all the problems and manage the mental health needs well.
4. People with mental illness belong in the hands of psychiatrists and doctors.
5. Coercive/involuntary treatment and/or hospitalization.
6. Awareness!!! The tragedy of mental illness!!!

My reactions to these:

1. Stable housing, is, you know, kind of necessary to begin thinking about treatment. Instead of being homeless, or bouncing from place to place, and worrying about all the things that come with that.
2. Stop. The baseline for any treatment should be self-directed.
3. See number one. We need community supports, adequate physical health care, stable housing.
4. How medical model of you. We can be fixed just by doctors, clearly! Tell that to my brain after a psych ward visit, and years of psychiatry and therapy.
5. See number two.
6. We are not broken - at least, not that you can decide. We are not tragedies. Many of us would take magic cures. Many of us wouldn't. More than that, mental health awareness campaigns are aimed at getting us into treatment where we “belong.” We become whatever our diagnosis is, to be fixed. Alternately, we are prone to being mass shooters in the public eye. When your campaigns focus on treatment, it makes us seem broken and people are likely to believe we need treatment before ending up mass shooters.

Catch-22 of Mental Health Advocacy

There is a catch-22 I run into doing mental health advocacy as myself, similar to the one I run into doing autistic advocacy. It is a catch-22 similar to how people will tell autistic self-advocates: you're not autistic enough, you're too “high functioning,” you don't understand my [child, relative]'s struggles.

In a similar vein: I'm told I don't seem “mentally ill enough.” People have told me, “Well, I don't think of you as mentally ill.” Is it because the cyclical manifestations began later? Is it because they'd be embarrassed to know me otherwise? Or: I have a job. I look, day to day, slightly presentable – on occasion, even fully presentable. I am not homeless. I have never been homeless. I have never been involuntarily hospitalized.

So, people will tell me I'm not mentally ill enough... and then the people who have had all those things happen, been homeless and involuntarily hospitalized and jobless... will be told they don't know what's best for them. Will be told, because of the mindset that people with serious mental illness have no capacity, they have no right to self-directed services and treatment.

That the best place for them is the hospital and in treatment and being told what their treatment is. That HR 2646, “The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act,” will do everyone good, especially for the desperate families watching their loved ones' mental illness. It won't. That the Treatment Advocacy Center, advocating for more hospital beds instead of jail when neither more hospitalization or jails are the solution for people with people with mental illness, and NAMI, a parent-based advocacy org that supports HR 2646, are helping everyone with mental illness. They are some of the most prominent voices in mental health discussions, and they do not center us in their advocacy.

Instead of playing into it and trying to describe how seriously my mental illnesses impact me, talking about what the medication has done to me, talking about symptoms and things I've done, talking about my hospitalization more in this – trying to justify over and over again why I deserve to talk about it – I will keep talking about mental health care being broken and people's right to self-directed services, no matter how incapable society thinks they are. 

The Murphy Bill Has Gained Support of NAMI-NYS

 This is not a good thing, by the way. 

[TW/CW: Ableism, shooting, institutionalization]

From MindFreedom International on Facebook:

"On Friday evening, November 14 at 6:00 p.m., the NAMI-NYS membership will “stand united” in presenting the 2014 NAMI-NYS Legislative Champion Award to Congressman Tim Murphy, for authoring H.R. 3717 called, The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act."

I will post a transcription of the Autistic Self Advocacy's document on the Murphy Bill, along with an image of the document below, and I urge to you write/call to your Congresspeople against this, and spread the word.

"Why Your Member of Congress Should Oppose HR. 3717 
After the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) introduced HR. 5717, legislation designed to take advantage of media associations inaccurately linking mental health and violent crime to rollback civil rights protections of people with psychiatric disabilities. It is intended to completely change the current state of mental health services to make it easier to forcibly treat people with psychiatric disabilities, expand institutionalization and reduce privacy rights and legal protections. Here are some talking points you can use when speaking with your congressional offices about why they should oppose HR. 3717:

Privacy
The bill would reduce privacy protections for both people with mental illnesses and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The bill allows disclosure of confidential psychological and psychiatric information to family and caregivers in additional circumstances to those already defined in current privacy laws. Right now, doctors and therapists can give confidential health and mental health information to family and caregivers in emergency situations or if they have permission from the person getting treatment. The bill would allow doctors and therapists to give confidential health and mental health information to family and caregivers even without permission and without emergency circumstances.

The bill also allows for greater influence from family and caregivers, including forcing involuntary medication and institutionalization.

Institutionalization
The bill will provide federal government funding for more institutionalization. This will mean less money is available for other community-based services. The bill will also cut the budget for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s community integration projects to a little over a third of what it is now.

The bill would also require all states to create programs that allow judges to order people to take psychiatric medications that they do not want to take. The best way to help people get mental health treatment is to make it available and give people support, not to get the courts involved.

Legal Protections
The bill takes away many legal protections available to people with mental illnesses through the Protection and Advocacy program, which is the largest and most accessible program for legal services for people with disabilities. Over 80% of the funds for Protection and Advocacy for people with psychiatric disabilities would be taken away.

Economics
The bill establishes an unnecessary assistant secretary position to oversee the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration which would be financially supported by a portion of the budget allocated to supports for people with mental illnesses.”