Public Comment

WE NEED TREATMENT AND WE NEED MORE PERKS

I have lived with psychotic illness my entire adult life, a span of more than four decades. I can tell you that people with psychiatric conditions don't lead enviable lives. Aside from stereotypes, myths, social rejection, and being an unacknowledged minority, symptoms of a mental illness--by themselves--without all the add-ons, are enough to ruin our lives. vc Medications that usually allow manageable behavior are given and/or forced on mentally ill people. Some of the meds can help resolve delusional thinking and others can relieve severe depression or a bipolar elevation. Yet many psychiatric medications cause a lot of side effects, including but not limited to physical suffering. To me it seems likely the unhappy circumstance of side effects could be closely related to the reason for the drugs' effectiveness. Antipsychotics are apparently designed to suppress brain activity, and that's why they work. With psychosis and with being on antipsychotics, the nature of the brain is changed, and this means everything is affected. These illnesses, including when we are in treatment, make it hard to live in society at large. It can be challenging to be in a public place, sometimes due to the higher amounts of stimuli. If subject to paranoia, too much stimulus may cause our symptoms to temporarily flare up. This can look like an individual being distressed in a public place. Symptoms of untreated, severe psychosis can lead a person's mind into an internally generated hell. Despite a major malfunction of the brain, and speaking by experience, I was conscious during the psychotic episodes I had, and this is despite the content of my mind being fully erroneous. 

PUBLIC PERCEPTION 

Those of us who have a chronic, severe psychiatric condition could be seen as members of the most underrepresented minority in the U.S. And that's merely one of many facets to our very harsh predicaments. A mental condition is sometimes concealable, and we can sometimes be closeted about it. But usually, it is apparent to most people that we are not quite the same as they are. And people react to this, often by being disrespectful and believing disrespect is justified. It is not justified, and it is not acceptable. People with psychiatric conditions deserve common decency and common respect. There are stereotypes about mentally ill people. Some people might expect us to live in a separate supervised clinical setting. And they might imagine us riding around in vans and being supervised by workers. And many of the uninformed might believe that we have very limited minds. And this includes treatment professionals. A clinical mental health worker is trained to believe we lack mental resources. Yet this error made by practitioners probably can't be debunked, because I can't force anyone to see it my way. I can tell you that many people with mental illness are highly intelligent. Some have above average intelligence, and some have below average. Yet members of the public often presume that we are automatically stupid. Being mentally ill and medicated is apparent to people. This could be due to mannerisms. Or it could be due to a difference in grooming and clothes. In some instances, it is at least clear to people that I am low-income. This alone is enough to prevent being afforded respect. And then when we speak and when we have mannerisms affected by medication, an onlooker may conclude I am a mentally ill dumb idiot. And added to that, many citizens presume criminality.  

WE ARE NOT "NORMAL" 

A mentally ill person is different. Many of us lack social skills. We may be conditioned by our living situations to relate well to other mentally ill people and to counselors. But when it comes time to try to hobnob with proper folk, we may face a huge gap. This is due to conditioning. Additionally, many well-to-do people are classist and intolerant. When in a social situation, the first question is "What do you do?" I have been asked that question at a writer's group that once met in Walnut Creek at a coffee place. It is the norm that ninety nine or more percent of writers to have a day job. If we reply to the question that we do nighttime cleanup of a supermarket, or if we report that we are unemployed because of a psychiatric disability, it creates the instant perception we are different. People may not want to be seen talking to us.  

EMPLOYABILITY 

We are not normal. And this also impacts employability. For a position involving brains, or involving responsibility, potential employers will not knowingly hire a mentally ill person. This was different a few decades back. Intolerance is a bigger problem than it was in the nineteen eighties and nineties. In present day if you want to earn enough to live on, you must have a college degree and you must be prepared to produce a ton of work. This is often beyond what a mentally ill medicated person can do.  

A PURITANICAL AND INTOLERANT CULTURE 

Certain things in modern times cause people to be excluded. If you are a smoker, you are abruptly rejected by the proper people. If you have a record of incarceration, it never goes away, and people cannot or will not forget what happened decades earlier. If you lack college, you are presumed a lower-class person and unsuitable for a middle-class social group. If your income isn't high enough, you are excluded. Or maybe you're the person hired to take out the trash. If you have a psychiatric condition, you might encapsulate all of the above marks against you. And there may be a few mentally ill who are accepted into the upper crust group by virtue of birth, but you are not one of them. In an episode of "Seinfeld" the protagonist was accused of picking his nose. It is a perfect example of how being a person with normal behavior can get you excluded. Society has stiflingly strict norms of acceptable behavior. And if you can't measure up to them, you could be out of luck.  

PEOPLE WITH PSYCHIATRIC CONDITIONS HAVE IT ROUGH 

I have outlined some elements of the predicament of mentally ill adults. This manuscript is far from a complete description of our challenges. For example, I have not addressed housing here, which is one of the foremost concerns. I have not addressed run-ins with law enforcement either. Mentally ill people deserve to have a decent home, we deserve acceptance, and we should not be harassed or otherwise intimidated by authority. We have it rough. And anyone who can make the best of it should be proud of themselves.  

Jack Bragen lives in Martinez and writes commentary and fiction.