The OCD Diaries

October 28, 2011

An October Snowstorm? It Could Be Worse

New England is in the crosshairs of a rare, October snowstorm that could dump 3-6 inches on parts of my state. People on Facebook are freaking out. But let’s look at the bright side. Yes, there is one.

Mood music:

I’m not typically given to positive attitudes in the face of bad weather. In fact, I’ve written at length about the crummy impact too much cloudiness, rain and snow can have on me.

My moods almost always hit the depths when there’s too much rain, snow, cold and darkness. It throws me into a prolonged period of discouragement and depression. All I want to do is fall asleep in my chair, but that’s not possible most of the time. It becomes a lot harder NOT to binge on the things my addiction craves.

I’m not a special case. In the book “Lincoln’s Melancholy” by Joshua Wolf Shenk, we see how long periods of gloomy weather drove Abraham Lincoln to suicidal thoughts in the 1840s, two decades before he was president. It’s a common problem.

All that said, Saturday’s weather forecast should be freaking me out. A few years ago, it would have. I have plans for the day, and a storm like this will probably ruin them. There are warnings of power outages, which make me particularly uneasy.

It’s not freaking me out though, and it shouldn’t freak you out, either.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not particularly happy about the forecast. I just want to have the Halloween weekend I’ve been expecting. But as sucky as it may seem to many of you, there’s a positive perspective to be had. Simply put, it could be much worse. Consider the following:

–On Halloween 20 years ago, we were hit with a devastating storm that left coastal communities deep under sea water. I was living in the Point of Pines, Revere, at the time and mine was one of three houses in the neighborhood that escaped the flood waters. The neighborhood as a whole resembled a war zone after that storm. This storm is nothing like that.

–The arrival of snow means we’ve seen the killing frost, which means the outdoor allergens are dead until spring. That’s something to celebrate in my house, where allergies hit all of us hard.

–Snow in October is unsettling, but it also shakes up normal patterns and habits we need to be jolted from once in awhile.

–Whatever happens, the sun ALWAYS comes out again. In fact, the forecast calls for a warming trend next week. Not a bad way to start November.

So don’t get mad at the weather forecasters. They are merely delivering the picture as it looks to them now. And the only reason that picture drives us to depression and distraction is because we let it.

7-day forcast

October 27, 2011

Teddy Roosevelt Did It All. What’s Your Excuse?

Today is Teddy Roosevelt’s birthday, which I bring up because his is the ultimate story about staring adversity in the face, grinning and spitting in its eye.

Mood music:

TR was a sickly boy whose asthma often left him struggling for breath. He could have used that as an excuse early on to avoid life’s big challenges. Instead, he lifted weights obsessively and built himself into a bull of a man who would live what he called “the strenuous life” until it drove him to the grave.

TR went through a lot of bad stuff in his life. Let me demonstrate with a little help from Wikipedia:

–Sickly and asthmatic as a child, Roosevelt had to sleep propped up in bed or slouching in a chair during much of his early years, and had frequent ailments.

–His first wife Alice died young of an undiagnosed case of kidney failure two days after their infant Alice was born. His mother Mittie died of typhoid fever on the same day, eleven hours earlier, in the same house.

–His youngest son was shot down behind German lines during the first world war.

Despite all that hell, he lived every day like it was his last.

–He was a prolific author, writing with passion on subjects ranging from foreign policy to the importance of the national park system. wrote about 18 books (each in several editions), including his Autobiography,^[90] The Rough Riders^[91] History of the Naval War of 1812,^[92] and others on subjects such as ranching, explorations, and wildlife. His most ambitious book was the four volume narrative The Winning of the West, which connected the origin of a new “race” of Americans (i.e. what he considered the present population of the United States to be) to the frontier conditions their ancestors endured throughout the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries.

–He was a political warrior. We all know he was president, but before that he was governor of New York, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, vice president, NY police commissioner and a state assemblyman.

–While running to win back the presidency in 1912 (he didn’t succeed), he was shot in the chest. He delivered his speech anyway, speaking for 90 minutes.

–After the presidency, he lived hard right to the end, going on expeditions of Africa and South America (the latter journey nearly killing him) and staying active in politics.

I think of him whenever I have a tough day, get sick or experience tragedy. He never took it lying down, and neither will I.

So, what’s your excuse?

October 21, 2011

A Depressed Mind Is Rarely A Beaten Mind

A report in USA Today says 1 in 100 adults have planned their suicide in the past year, a statistic that doesn’t surprise me, knowing what I do about depression.

Mood music:

I’ve suffered a lot of depression in my day. I’m experiencing a touch of it right now. I’ve never seriously considered ending it. But I can easily see how someone in that state of mind could head in that direction.

From the report:

“There’s a suicide every 15 minutes in the United States, and for every person who takes his or her own life there are many more who think about, plan or attempt suicide, according to a federal report released Thursday.

“The analysis of 2008-09 data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that rates of serious thoughts of suicide range from about 1 in 50 adults in Georgia (2.1 percent) to 1 in 15 in Utah (6.8 percent). Rates of suicide attempts range from 1 in 1,000 adults in Delaware and Georgia (0.1 percent) to 1 in 67 in Rhode Island (1.5 percent).

“Overall, more than 2.2 million adults (1.0 percent) reported making suicide plans in the past year, and more than 1 million (0.5 percent) said they attempted suicide in the past year, according to the researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.”

I think I was just lucky. Or, more likely, my religious beliefs made suicide a line I wouldn’t cross. Instead, I dove head-first into a self destructive existence where I lived for my addictions.

Perhaps subconsciously, as I binged my way to 280 pounds and ate painkillers for breakfast (I was prescribed them for chronic back pain) I was slowly trying to kill myself. A troubled mind can easily rationalize that it’s not suicide if you’re not jumping off a building, pointing a gun at your head or wrapping a noose around your throat. Fortunately, I came to my senses before I could finish the job.

But I’ve seen relatives get hospitalized for suicidal talk and my best friend became one of the tragic statistics on Nov. 15, 1996. When depression takes hold on the vulnerable mind, you stop thinking clearly and, at some point, you lose full control of sane actions and thought. Some people think suicides were simply cowards who couldn’t cope with life’s everyday challenges. But they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Depression is an insidious beast that lurks like a vulture, waiting for you to get just tired enough to submit to the torture.

I’ve learned to see my own depression as just another chronic illness that comes and goes. I treat it with Prozac, regular visits to a therapist and a strict diet. I’ve learned, in a strange way, to still be happy when I’m depressed.

That sounds fucked up. But it’s the best way I can describe it.

Being lucky enough to have reached that point, I’ve made it my mission to help break the stigma.

Sadness and suicidal thoughts need not be the end. For a lot of people I know, it turned out to be just the beginning of a life full of wisdom and beauty.

October 20, 2011

My Mood Swing: A Soundtrack

I’m in a rotten mood this afternoon and I’m not sure why. Various people are pissing me off though. So I’m listening to songs that seem to commiserate with me. Allow me to share:

http://youtu.be/PBT5nAqMwvs

http://youtu.be/TraSBSNfpCg

That’s better.

October 18, 2011

Feel It, Don’t Fight It: Making The Disorder Work For You

Instead of fighting mental disorder — be it OCD or A.D.H.D. — picture yourself accepting and even embracing it, then learning to use it to your advantage.

It’s kind of like Luke Skywalker learning to use and control the Force instead of it controlling him.

Yesterday’s post on mental illness as a luxury item resonated with several readers, especially the part where I quote Edward (Ned) Hallowell, psychiatrist and co-author of “Driven to Distraction” and “Delivered From Distraction.”

Here’s what my friend Heather Stockwell said: “Dr. Hallowell shaped a lot of my perceptions about A.D.H.D. and how to live with it rather than fighting it.

From my friend Anne Genovese: “Ned is a great guy and has developed many techniques to deal with his A.D.H.D. Ask him about highly purified EPA and DHA. We did a study with him on about 20 A.D.H.D. kids; the ones on the ultra-purified fish oils did way better concentration-wise than the ones considered to be doing well on medication.”

Hallowell has written about mental disorder being the stuff legends are made of. The thinking is that you have to be a bit crazy or off-balance to do the things that change who we are and how we live:

“Consider also the positives that so often accompany A.D.H.D.: being a dreamer and a pioneer, being creative, entrepreneurial, having an ability to think outside the box (with some difficulty thinking inside of it!), a tendency to be independent of mind and able to pursue a vision that goes against convention. Well, who colonized this country? People who have those traits!

“Back in the 1600s and 1700s, you had to have special qualities — some would say special craziness — to get on one of those boats and come over to this uncharted, dangerous land. And the waves of immigration in subsequent centuries also drew people who possessed the same special qualities. In many ways, the qualities associated with A.D.H.D. are central to the American temperament, for better or worse. I often tell people that having A.D.H.D. is like having a Ferrari engine for a brain, but with bicycle brakes. If you can strengthen your brakes, you can win races and be a champion, as so many highly accomplished people with A.D.H.D. are. But if you don’t strengthen your brakes you can crash and burn as, sadly, many people who have A.D.H.D. but don’t know how to manage it ultimately do.”

That’s also true of people with OCD, like the late Joey Ramone, Harrison Ford and Howie Mandel.

Early on in my efforts to get control of my life, one of my biggest struggles was that I didn’t want to completely rid myself of the OCD. I knew that I owed some of my career successes to the disorder. It drove me hard to be better than average. I needed that kick in the ass because being smart didn’t come naturally to me. I had to work at it and do my homework.

There was a destructive dark side, of course: The OCD when stuck in overdrive would leave me with anxiety attacks that raised my fear level and drove me deep into my addictive pursuits. That in turn left me on the couch all the time, a used up pile of waste.

The two sides of the disorder were like two buzz saws spinning in opposite directions. My brain, caught between them, took a lot of cuts.

My challenge became learning to shut one of the blades down while letting the other keep spinning. Or, as Dr. Hallowell put it, developing a set of breaks to slow it down when I needed to.

My deepening faith has helped considerably, along with the 12 Steps of Recovery, therapy, changes in diet (more on that tomorrow) and, finally, medication.

You could say those are the things my breaks are made of.

I still need a lot of work, and the dark side of my OCD still fights constantly with the good side. I’ve come to see the OCD as a close friend. Like a lot of close friends, there are days I want to hug it and days I want to launch my boot between its legs.

My progress has come with a fair share of irony: Without the fear and panic driving me, I sometimes act more like someone with A.D.H.D. I lose focus, my mind wafting into that place that makes you forget to put your coat in the closet and pay the electric bill. Erin has noted more than once that I’ve become a slob.

I have. But I am in a happier place than I used to be, so it’s a trade-off I’m willing to accept, even if earns me the occasional scolding.

October 17, 2011

Is Mental Illness A ‘Luxury’ Disease?

There’s an interesting debate unfolding on The New York Times website about mental illness in America. What got my attention was the suggestion that mental illness and the related treatments are luxury items.

Mood music:

The debate — between a variety of professionals in the mental health field — runs the spectrum from suggesting mental illness is still misunderstood and undertreated to being over diagnosed and used as an excuse to hide from personal responsibility.

From the introduction:

Whether you call it hypochondria or American exceptionalism, the numbers are plain: Americans lead the world in diagnoses of mental health problems.

For some conditions, perhaps wealth explains the disparity: in developing nations, more people are focused on pressing needs like food and shelter, making depression a “luxury disorder” in wealthy nations like the United States.

But are there other factors at play for conditions like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, that may be “culture-specific”? Maybe the condition is more common in the United States because the high-energy, risk-taking traits of A.D.H.D. are part of America’s pioneer DNA. Or maybe the same behavior is common elsewhere, but given another label? Some critics would argue that American doctors, teachers and parents are simply too quick to diagnose A.D.H.D. and medicate children. Do the American medical and educational systems inflate the numbers?

Edward (Ned) Hallowell, a psychiatrist and co-author of “Driven to Distraction” and “Delivered From Distraction,” suggests that A.D.H.D. in particular is part of the American DNA:

There are two main reasons the diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is high in the U.S. First of all, our gene pool is loaded for A.D.H.D. Consider the central symptoms of the condition: distractibility, impulsivity and restlessness. Consider also the positives that so often accompany A.D.H.D.: being a dreamer and a pioneer, being creative, entrepreneurial, having an ability to think outside the box (with some difficulty thinking inside of it!), a tendency to be independent of mind and able to pursue a vision that goes against convention. Well, who colonized this country? People who have those traits!

His description of someone with A.D.H.D. is priceless:

I often tell people that having A.D.H.D. is like having a Ferrari engine for a brain, but with bicycle brakes. If you can strengthen your brakes, you can win races and be a champion, as so many highly accomplished people with A.D.H.D. are. But if you don’t strengthen your brakes you can crash and burn as, sadly, many people who have A.D.H.D. but don’t know how to manage it ultimately do.

As someone with OCD, I’d add that the description also fits for my condition.

Peter R. Breggin, a psychiatrist in Ithaca, N.Y. and author of more than 20 books and the director of the Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education and Living says the drugging of children for A.D.H.D. has become an epidemic:

The A.D.H.D. diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis, from the 2000 edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” is simply a list of behaviors that require attention in a classroom: hyperactivity (“fidgets,” “leaves seat,” “talks excessively”); impulsivity (“blurts out answers,” “interrupts”); and inattention (“careless mistakes,” “easily distractible,” “forgetful”). These are the spontaneous behaviors of normal children. When these behaviors become age-inappropriate, excessive or disruptive, the potential causes are limitless, including: boredom, poor teaching, inconsistent discipline at home, tiredness and underlying physical illness. Children who are suffering from bullying, abuse or stress may also display these behaviors in excess. By making an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, we ignore and stop looking for what is really going on with the child. A.D.H.D. is almost always either Teacher Attention Disorder (TAD) or Parent Attention Disorder (PAD). These children need the adults in their lives to give them improved attention.

He makes an important point about the use of medication. A lot of parents turn to drugs because they simply don’t know what to do. Junior is a terror in school and on the playground and he’s exhausting everyone at home with his behavior. Turning to drugs is often an act of desperation. Desperation can be a good thing. It can force us to deal with our problems in ways we weren’t willing to consider before. But it can also rush us into bad decisions.

Erin and I are walking this tightrope with Duncan. We’ve had him tested in the doctor’s office and at school, and he has all the textbook traits of someone with A.D.H.D. But at 8 years old it’s still difficult to know for sure if this is A.D.H.D or something else that acts like it. Pills could tame his difficulties, but if he has something else that’s simply acting like A.D.H.D. — bi-polar disorder or OCD, for example — the pills that work for A.D.H.D. could make those other things much worse. So we’re not doing the medication.

This much I can tell you: When his older brother asks aloud if Duncan has A.D.H.D., Duncan bristles. He doesn’t like the label. And who can blame him?

I can tell you that Duncan has made a lot of progress with the other tools we’ve deployed: cool-down exercises, activities to channel anger (painting is one of his favorites) and so on. But there are still big challenges every day. And that’s ok.

Does the search for a problem and solution make us over-reactive parents? I don’t think so. When you see your child struggling, your instinct is to help them find a better way. Their happiness is what matters to us in the end.

Are kids diagnosed too easily and drugged too quickly? I’m sure of it. But to simply write the parents off as over-reactive is silly.

Society in general has learned to take everything too far. Ever since tragedies like the Columbine High School massacre, school administrators and teachers go crazy over things that are usually nothing. A kid collecting sticks and rocks in the schoolyard because he simply likes to collect these things becomes a danger. Why would a kid collect rocks and sticks if he didn’t intend to hurt his classmates with them, right?

We all struggle to find the sensible middle ground, because American society has seen some really bad shit in the last two decades: 9-11, Columbine, kids knifing each other in schools. We’ve seen the worst of the worst. The resulting fear can blind us to the fact that we’ve also seen the best of the best, including the advances in medical care.

When I was Duncan’s age and I was behaving badly, I was simply written off as a behavioral problem. I saw it happen to other kids as well. In hindsight, the building blocks of my mental illness were already swirling around in my head, shaped by the hard stuff I was experiencing back then, like my parents’ divorce, my brother’s death, the hospitalizations with Crohn’s Disease and the schoolyard bullying over my excessive weight.

Behavioral problems aren’t written off as easily today, and we should all feel good about that. The trick is to make the best use of all the newer mental health treatments, and that’s still a work in progress for all of us.

In my case, I’m lucky because I was determined to try everything else before trying medication. That resulted in several years of hard self-discovery and a better understanding of how I got the way I am. It led me to an array of coping tools I may not have learned to use had I turned directly to medication. Eventually I learned that my brain chemistry was still too far off center for me to control without medicine, and that’s when I tried the Prozac, which has worked exceptionally well.

It didn’t turn me into a robot. I’m still me. I see everything and feel everything. I still get depressed. But with the Prozac correcting the chemical traffic in my brain, these things no longer incapacitate me.

Is treatment a luxury? Sure. If you live in deep poverty and your biggest concern is where the next meal for you and your family is coming from, that’s going to be your first focus.

But if you aren’t in that situation and you have the luxury of dealing with mental illness, you shouldn’t feel bad about it.

You should simply thank God and do your best to pay it forward.

October 12, 2011

How To Talk To A Liar Who’s Been Caught

A reader who recently found the two posts I wrote on addicts as compulsive liars had a sad story to share. Her husband, a compulsive spender, gambler and drinker, lies to her all the time. He apparently sucks at it. She always finds out.

Mood music:

How, she asked me, does she deal with a person like this? She still loves him, and in many respects he’s still the great guy. But lies are a cancer on even the most tried and true relationships.

It’s a hard question for me to answer. For one thing, it’s self-serving of me to tell a person like you how to talk to a person like me. My instinct will naturally be to tell you to go easy on him and calmly talk it through. It is true that yelling at a liar won’t make him stop. In fact, it will probably compel him to lie even more, convinced that any shred of honesty will result in a verbal beating every time.

This part has been especially challenging for me over the years. I grew up in a family where there was constant yelling. Because of that, I react to yelling like one might react to gunshots. I instinctively avoid it at all costs, and that has led to lies.

But if your significant other is stealing money behind your back to buy drugs, a friendly, smiling reminder to him that grownups aren’t supposed to behave this way won’t work either. The liar will simply thank God that he got off the hook that time.

You just can’t win with a liar.

I lied all the time about all the binge eating and the money I spent on it. I’m guilty of the lie of omission when it comes to smoking. And in moments where I felt like I was in trouble, I lied about something without meaning to. The instinct just kicked in and a second later I was smacking myself in the head over it.

Here’s where there’s hope:

Lies tire a soul out. It weighs you down after awhile like big bags of sand on your shoulders. Guilt eats you alive. That’s how it’s been with me in the past.

If you’re like that and there are any shards of good within you, you eventually come clean because you want to. Remember that lying is part of two larger diseases: Addiction and mental illness. Nobody wants to be sick.

But while some who get sick wallow in it and make everyone around them miserable, others are decidedly more stoic about it and try to do the best they can with the odds they’re dealt.

I was a miserable sick man but eventually, through spiritual growth, I tried to become a more bearable sick man. That meant dealing with the roots (addiction and OCD) and the side effects (lying).

I still fall on my face. But I work it hard and seem to have gotten much better than I used to be.

I credit Erin for a lot of this. She could have either thrown me out or thrown up her arms and turned a blind eye to my self destruction. But somehow, she has found a middle ground in dealing with me. It hasn’t always been pretty. But we’ve had our victories along the way.

You want to know how to talk to a liar who’s been caught? You’re better off asking her than me.

October 7, 2011

Happy Birthday, Old Friend

It just dawned on me that today would have been Sean Marley’s 45th birthday. You’ve seen much here about how his life and death shaped me. But right now I just want to point out all that was cool about him.

Mood music:

–He was a gifted guitarist. He could learn to play just about anything, and could write great musical bits when he wanted to. He gave me my first guitar for Christmas in 1986. It was an Ibanez strat model. He had what I think was a Guild electric guitar with a dark blue or black body. I sold the Ibanez several years later and it’s one of my biggest regrets. Sean was pissed but forgave me. I sometimes wonder whatever happened to his guitar. I hope someone’s putting it to good use.

–He was a great writer, and was a very disciplined diary keeper. He showed me several posts over the years, but I haven’t read them since his death. I know they are in safe hands, though.

–His hair went through more changes than Hillary Clinton’s, in both style and color.

–He reveled in listening to bands that weren’t as well known. He was listening to Kix several years before they achieved moderate success. He turned me on to T-Rex, Thin Lizzy and Riot (not Quiet Riot. This band was just called Riot).

–He loved the sea as much as I did, which makes sense, since his father Al was the one who really taught me to appreciate the ocean.

–He was a vegetarian who could not understand why people had to kill animals for food or any other reason. I never caught on, but I respected him for it.

–He was a very spiritual man who was always seeking. He eventually rebelled against the Catholic faith he was brought up on, but he was always reading, writing and exploring who exactly his higher power was.

–He used to find a lot of bizarre z-grade horror movies for us to watch. I can’t remember half the titles, though the Toxic Avenger was in there somewhere. One movie involved aliens who drank their own vomit. He thought that was especially funny.

–He was a Libertarian way before it was the popular thing to be. In fact, in the 1988 presidential election we both voted for a practically unknown politician named Ron Paul. He was the libertarian candidate. Sean voted for him because he was a true believer. I just didn’t want to vote for Bush or Dukakis.

–He was always taking classes, studying and studying some more. He had a serious, deep academic mind. He never stopped learning.

–He was my brother. Not by birth, but our souls were interconnected.

Happy Birthday, old friend.

October 6, 2011

Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Us About Life

The news is full of analysis this morning about all the ways Apple’s Steve Jobs changed the world. Rightfully so. But he was also an interesting case study in human nature, and we can learn from what was good and maybe not so good.

Mood music:

Let’s put aside talk of the iPhone, iPad etc., and talk about the man. I’ll admit that I’ve always been hard in my judgement of Jobs. Sure I have no right to judge, but while none of us do, all of us do.

My view of Jobs has always been colored by the TV movie about him and Bill Gates called “The Pirates of Silicon Valley.” The film focuses intently on Jobs as a crazy, overbearing and even cruel executive. Apple employees wear shirts that say “90 hours a week and loving it!” He torments employees constantly in the film, and you find yourself thinking that it would be good if he got run over by a truck at the end of the movie.

But Jobs was a brilliant visionary, and brilliant visionaries always seem to fight harder against their demons than most people. Or maybe it just seems that way because they’re on the public stage.

Considering my own battles with personal demons, I’m actually awed by what it must have been like for him. I’m just a regular Joe. I’ve never invented things that will change how we live and I never will. But I’ve had to struggle plenty to be a better man. I’ve been cruel to people in my past. I’ve let obsessive-compulsive thinking drag me to the depths. Clawing back has been beyond hard.

It must have been a million times harder for a guy like Jobs, who possessed a talent and drive few on this Earth will ever know. When you’re so damn good at changing the world with technology, how can you not carry on like a deranged narcissist when you’re still young? Some manage to avoid that, but they are freakishly exceptional people.

While there are plenty of indications that Jobs remained a difficult boss to work for in his later years, there’s also a lot of evidence that he grew as a human being. Mark Milian at CNN wrote a good piece about Jobs’ spiritual growth. In it, he says:

“As with anyone, Jobs’ values were shaped by his upbringing and life experiences. He was born in 1955 in San Francisco and grew up amid the rise of hippie counterculture. Bob Dylan and the Beatles were his two favorite musical acts, and he shared their political leanings, antiestablishment views and, reportedly, youthful experimentation with psychedelic drug usage.

“The name of Jobs’ company is said to be inspired by the Beatles’ Apple Corps, which repeatedly sued the electronics maker for trademark infringement until signing an exclusive digital distribution deal with iTunes. Like the Beatles, Jobs took a spiritual retreat to India and regularly walked around his neighborhood and the office barefoot.

“Traversing India sparked Jobs’ conversion to Buddhism. Kobun Chino, a monk, presided over his wedding to Laurene Powell, a Stanford University MBA.

“Rebirth is a precept of Buddhism, and Apple experienced rebirth of sorts when Jobs returned, after he was fired, to remake a company that had fallen the verge of bankruptcy.”

He still fought personal demons, to be sure. But you could say he died a better man than he once was.

It doesn’t matter who you are and how big you become. It doesn’t matter how much talent you have or if you create things that change how everyone else lives.

If your soul doesn’t evolve and you fail to be good to the people in your life, the rest doesn’t matter much, does it? That’s my belief, anyway. Feel free to disagree.

I think Jobs did grow inside, and good for him.

October 4, 2011

Mentally Ill Behind Bars

Came across a disturbing report by Steve Visser in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that clearly illustrates how far we have to go in getting the mentally ill the help they need.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/yndfqN1VKhY

The headline: Mentally ill inmates languish in local jails

From the article:

Detention Officer Terroyanne Harris considers the inmates she oversees on 3 North as much patient as prisoner. They suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress and other mental illnesses. Some walk aimlessly around their cell block. Some are lost in hallucinations.

Most are in the Fulton County jail because they are more of a nuisance than a danger in the free world.

Taken into custody for petty crimes such as trespassing, damaging property or resisting an officer, some end up trapped in a revolving door of arrest and release. Others languish behind bars for years as they wait to be declared competent enough to stand trial.

Fulton County is not an aberration. The same is true in DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett counties, as well as some rural counties in the state.

Jails have become the new asylums. In Georgia, more mentally ill people are locked away than are treated in all the state psychiatric hospitals combined.

This is bad for a variety of reasons, the first being that a mental illness sufferer’s chance of recovery is seriously diminished in a bleak environment like that. Environment can make all the difference. I know from experience.

My OCD and depression run hot whenever I spend too much time indoors, hidden from the daylight. Even walking into a hospital to visit someone for an hour has a depressing impact on me. It’s a bleak environment, where people are essentially imprisoned by their illnesses. But it’s still better than the inside of a jail cell.

The article captures one aspect of this tragedy quite well:

With more mentally ill people on the streets, more have run-ins with the law. A Supreme Court decision in the mid-70s made it harder to involuntarily commit those with mental illnesses. Jail is where many land.

I can’t help but think of the fellow in my hometown people call Crazy Mike.

In any city there’s a guy like him.

The stereotype is usually a long beard, ratty clothes and the fellow is usually living on the street. He talks aloud to no one in particular and falls asleep on playground equipment.

People like to laugh at him.

I’m no saint. I’ve made my share of fun of people like this, and in the rear-view mirror, looking back at my own struggle with mental illness, it makes me feel ashamed. It makes me the last guy on Earth who would be fit to judge others for poking fun at someone less fortunate.

Is Mike better off in a jail cell? I can picture him easily getting detained for disturbing the peace and ending up in the slammer. But I can’t picture him being better off.

I think of all the war veterans who are on the street or in jail because their experiences in combat left them traumatized for life. They fought for their country and deserve better.

The state of Georgia needs to reform its system now. Locking the mentally ill away in jail isn’t just tragic. It’s outrageous. I don’t fault officers in the correctional facilities. They seem to be doing the best they can with the tools they have. The problem is that these inmates shouldn’t have landed there in the first place.

Here’s hoping Georgia and other states find a way to solve this problem.