Against the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I’d like to draw attention to the effects mental health issues have on marriages, during divorce proceedings to be specific. Mental health issues are a common issue that exacerbates divorces. Including substance abuse, well over half our cases involve individuals with mental health problems and these problems are portrayed as flaws rather than a medical diagnosis. Though all our clients have a story of how they met, how in love they were, how their spouse was “different back then”, perhaps before the illness developed, the actors in the present are points of blame for the irrevocability of the marriage. Given the frequency which symptoms of mental illnesses develop during young adult hood and the average age of marriage in the U.S., mental health problems often surface post certificate, symptoms and behaviors of mental health disorders give the impression that the sufferer has changed inherently as a human being. Those with mental health issues, of all kinds, are targeted as antagonists to the partnership. The behaviors they express can be interpreted as lack of self-control and empathy. Mental health issues are used as means to inflate the gravity of “abnormal” behavior in divorce; an overwhelming percentage of our clients and opposing parties have mental health issues, making this tactic an effective one. Normalcy is the standard all spouses are held against thought the concept of normalcy excludes those with any range of diagnosis. Many have bi-polar disorder. This is bound to happen when the divorce rate among this patient population is 90%. It is the behavioral profile that is given fault, with the diagnosis as proof. Medical records are demanded, medication histories are scrutinized and every episode is painfully delineated in front of the court. Though expert psychiatric testimony is the norm, many mental health issues are still seen as non-medicalized, as a personality flaw or a deliberate act of abnormal behavior.
It is this dis-engagement from the medical community, despite the exhaustive medical histories and expert testimony that are involved in such court proceedings, that make mental health records something to hide and medical histories something to “clean up”. The line between personality flaw, as something in one’s control and psychiatric episodes that are biochemically grounded and fully involuntary is blurred. For some reason, the diagnosis itself is just support for the argument that the patient in question has irrational and destructive behaviors, even though empirical medical evidence could, in a less litigious society, form compelling narratives in attempts to remove harmful behaviors from the client proper.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
The pursuit of happiness...
Recovery refers to the process in which people are able to live, work, learn, and participate fully in their communities. For some individuals, recovery is the ability to live a fulfilling and productive life despite a disability. For others, recovery implies the reduction or complete remission of symptoms. Science has shown that having hope plays an integral role in an individual’s recovery.
Resilience means the personal and community qualities that enable us to rebound from adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or other stresses — and to go on with life with a sense of mastery, competence, and hope. We now understand from research that resilience is fostered by a positive childhood and includes positive individual traits, such as optimism, good problem- solving skills, and treatments. Closely-knit communities and neighborhoods are also resilient, providing supports for their members.
-This taken from President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health-2003
The mental health system in America is like a band aide on a levy wall that has sprung a leak. In good faith, and with responsibility to heal in mind, the system applies itself hastily and manages to only make the impression of repair before it is whipped back out into the rapids. For all its efforts, our mental health care system here in America, to say nothing of the flawed systems around the world, tends to remain impenetrable to the marginalized and those who are most likely to be in need of community based resources. When I say community resources, I don’t mean posh resorts where one can retreat to morning yoga classes and “group” after brunch. I mean community health clinics that catch the population not severe enough to be in “in-patient” care (think One Flies Over the Cuckoos Nest) and past the general inquiry to primary care physicians you see in those advertisements for Prozac meant to “grow the market” to produce more consumers of their product.
This system is expensive. A routine psychiatric visit ever 8 weeks to check on medication regimes, something that is required to maintain that treatment, can cost upwards of $300. Counseling or visits to a psychologist, someone who doesn’t work with your medications but rather covers the non-physiological treatment, will run a couple hundred an hour at a once a week recommendation. Community mental health clinics can sometimes offer services at sliding scales, based on income, or even free access to basic visits to keep you stable but not only is awareness lacking but the care given is at times hasty and not at all comprehensive. While the administration intended these clinics to be the great alternative to psychiatric hospitals (again, One Flew Over…), they leave those unable to pay for more formal care waiting weeks for appointments, little patience or help when dealing with medication assistance programs through the pharmaceutical companies and not always the best treatment experience overall. There is a palpable distress and frustration among the caregivers that only the repetitive clinic patient can pick up on. Something the administration can never know to address.
You would think mental health reform would be of much more pertinence to those who are in power. It certainly keeps coming back to shoot them in the foot. School shootings point to the failed school system and weak parental involvement; military base massacres point to the ravages of war and even the past, and recent, political assassinations can be attributed to an ailing state of mental health. While war may kill publicly, suicide claims more souls than war and general violence combined (the WHO’s last comprehensive statistical estimate on global mortality), while little is done to prevent it and there remains a huge public effort invested in both the more somaticized issues.
There is an awareness, in the back of the mind sort of way, of the linkages of “mental health” to physical health” has on “physical health”; in terms both of preventative care (i.e. financial investment) and the long term toll mental diseases and disorders can take on the body. The World Health Organization touts that there is “No Health without Mental Health”. While a commendable statement, this implies, however so correctly or incorrectly, that mental health is not a part of physical health, rather a way of gathering all the psychopathologies that exist into a neat nomenclature, devoid of negativity, stigma and inclusion. Broken into its logical form, this statement separates mental health from the truer form of health, assumed to be everything somatic, but at the same time recognizes, weakly at that, the connectedness of the two.
Meanwhile, the National Institute for Mental Health pushes for a more inclusive view of mental health that makes no distinction between neurology and mental health, i.e. a historically supported and much more somatic collection of chemical imbalances and structural abnormalities and a slightly less somatic collection of chemical imbalances and structural abnormalities that mental health comprises.
We know enough about the causes of mental health ailments to attribute psychological pathologies to brain structure abnormalities, chemical imbalances and at times just damaged tissue. The only thing that separates mental health from a truer form of health is the internalizing of psychological distress, the effect of which is a hush among the public as a response to the externalization of something so little understood, seldom publicized and all around stigmatized as mental health.
Resilience means the personal and community qualities that enable us to rebound from adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or other stresses — and to go on with life with a sense of mastery, competence, and hope. We now understand from research that resilience is fostered by a positive childhood and includes positive individual traits, such as optimism, good problem- solving skills, and treatments. Closely-knit communities and neighborhoods are also resilient, providing supports for their members.
-This taken from President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health-2003
The mental health system in America is like a band aide on a levy wall that has sprung a leak. In good faith, and with responsibility to heal in mind, the system applies itself hastily and manages to only make the impression of repair before it is whipped back out into the rapids. For all its efforts, our mental health care system here in America, to say nothing of the flawed systems around the world, tends to remain impenetrable to the marginalized and those who are most likely to be in need of community based resources. When I say community resources, I don’t mean posh resorts where one can retreat to morning yoga classes and “group” after brunch. I mean community health clinics that catch the population not severe enough to be in “in-patient” care (think One Flies Over the Cuckoos Nest) and past the general inquiry to primary care physicians you see in those advertisements for Prozac meant to “grow the market” to produce more consumers of their product.
This system is expensive. A routine psychiatric visit ever 8 weeks to check on medication regimes, something that is required to maintain that treatment, can cost upwards of $300. Counseling or visits to a psychologist, someone who doesn’t work with your medications but rather covers the non-physiological treatment, will run a couple hundred an hour at a once a week recommendation. Community mental health clinics can sometimes offer services at sliding scales, based on income, or even free access to basic visits to keep you stable but not only is awareness lacking but the care given is at times hasty and not at all comprehensive. While the administration intended these clinics to be the great alternative to psychiatric hospitals (again, One Flew Over…), they leave those unable to pay for more formal care waiting weeks for appointments, little patience or help when dealing with medication assistance programs through the pharmaceutical companies and not always the best treatment experience overall. There is a palpable distress and frustration among the caregivers that only the repetitive clinic patient can pick up on. Something the administration can never know to address.
You would think mental health reform would be of much more pertinence to those who are in power. It certainly keeps coming back to shoot them in the foot. School shootings point to the failed school system and weak parental involvement; military base massacres point to the ravages of war and even the past, and recent, political assassinations can be attributed to an ailing state of mental health. While war may kill publicly, suicide claims more souls than war and general violence combined (the WHO’s last comprehensive statistical estimate on global mortality), while little is done to prevent it and there remains a huge public effort invested in both the more somaticized issues.
There is an awareness, in the back of the mind sort of way, of the linkages of “mental health” to physical health” has on “physical health”; in terms both of preventative care (i.e. financial investment) and the long term toll mental diseases and disorders can take on the body. The World Health Organization touts that there is “No Health without Mental Health”. While a commendable statement, this implies, however so correctly or incorrectly, that mental health is not a part of physical health, rather a way of gathering all the psychopathologies that exist into a neat nomenclature, devoid of negativity, stigma and inclusion. Broken into its logical form, this statement separates mental health from the truer form of health, assumed to be everything somatic, but at the same time recognizes, weakly at that, the connectedness of the two.
Meanwhile, the National Institute for Mental Health pushes for a more inclusive view of mental health that makes no distinction between neurology and mental health, i.e. a historically supported and much more somatic collection of chemical imbalances and structural abnormalities and a slightly less somatic collection of chemical imbalances and structural abnormalities that mental health comprises.
We know enough about the causes of mental health ailments to attribute psychological pathologies to brain structure abnormalities, chemical imbalances and at times just damaged tissue. The only thing that separates mental health from a truer form of health is the internalizing of psychological distress, the effect of which is a hush among the public as a response to the externalization of something so little understood, seldom publicized and all around stigmatized as mental health.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Heart of Darkness
Africa is elusive. The farthest imaginable place from the West Coast of the States. An amorphous collection of ideas of places that somehow comprise that tapered continent so termed as exotic. Hemingway romanticized it, Conrad spoiled it and Goodall bridled it.
Indeed to Western media, Africa has a heart of darkness. Central African upset caused by conflicting belief systems seems to be rotting the equatorial vegetation and maiming not only the spirit of but also the bodies of the inhabitants. Death is as daily as our morning mochas and as ruthless as our economy.
The violence is especially striking. Rape.
While any other matter of injurious assault can happen before your eyes (in the newspaper or in person), nothing is as jarring and as personal to a woman as rape. Unfortunately, women are universally subjugated and oppressed. Minorities in the States may have to deal with discrimination but women of many nations bleed and bear the brut force of political and tribal conflict like a man at the stake. It is surreal to read about Africa and it’s conflicts. Bombings in Sudan, Aids in South Africa, corrupt leaders in the Ivory Coast. Spanning the continent, Africa is charred from distress. These collective injuries bring cohesive narrative to the story of Africa to the West. To us, Africa is fierce. To us, Africa is exotic. To us, Africa remains.
We of Africa protest that, in this day and age, we should continue to be treated as lesser human beings than other races.
Robert Mugabe
Indeed to Western media, Africa has a heart of darkness. Central African upset caused by conflicting belief systems seems to be rotting the equatorial vegetation and maiming not only the spirit of but also the bodies of the inhabitants. Death is as daily as our morning mochas and as ruthless as our economy.
The violence is especially striking. Rape.
While any other matter of injurious assault can happen before your eyes (in the newspaper or in person), nothing is as jarring and as personal to a woman as rape. Unfortunately, women are universally subjugated and oppressed. Minorities in the States may have to deal with discrimination but women of many nations bleed and bear the brut force of political and tribal conflict like a man at the stake. It is surreal to read about Africa and it’s conflicts. Bombings in Sudan, Aids in South Africa, corrupt leaders in the Ivory Coast. Spanning the continent, Africa is charred from distress. These collective injuries bring cohesive narrative to the story of Africa to the West. To us, Africa is fierce. To us, Africa is exotic. To us, Africa remains.
We of Africa protest that, in this day and age, we should continue to be treated as lesser human beings than other races.
Robert Mugabe
Sunday, December 12, 2010
you move me when....
You move me when you are motionless
And quiet me with your laughter
A greater quiet will come
At the end and after..
But here we are bigger than the laughs
That fill the room we knock down with our love
We are stiller than the ice that freezes away our pain
And still that true quiet is yet to come
Ponds and pools of ethereal glacier mix
The mist is humid and heavy
And our weighted eyes give way to the heat
And quiet me with your laughter
A greater quiet will come
At the end and after..
But here we are bigger than the laughs
That fill the room we knock down with our love
We are stiller than the ice that freezes away our pain
And still that true quiet is yet to come
Ponds and pools of ethereal glacier mix
The mist is humid and heavy
And our weighted eyes give way to the heat
Sunday, December 5, 2010
real dark night of the soul
In the real dark night nothing gets in the way of these words. Perhaps my prolific tendencies in my past were due to my incurable insomnia.
As morbid as it is, I miss that lingering disorder. I miss the concentrated time of the night, the stillness, the silence. The day stretches my mental capacities around such issues of whether that deadline at work was met or finding out why Jaak Panksepp’s latest book’s publication date has been extended. Though I am not particularly anxious, I find myself obsessing over myriad elements of my work a day life. It’s a rare moment my frontal cortex can focus on identity outside of work.
The regularity of it, while excellent for my health, has taken its toll. After nearly two years of it since graduating, I hang on to the thought of mental freedom every day from 7am to 4:30pm when I take off my apron of concern, of advancing professionalism, of the opportunity I have but just can’t take, and hang it up for the night.
Longing for the creative more mentally stimulating life of academia again, I find myself being hit with small pangs of sadness. It’s like salt has been poured on my muscle of a heart and it contracts and withers, momentarily injured and fleetingly broken. They are deep but invisible pangs, leaving very little surface effect and are quick enough to not drag down my current mental state.
I never thought I’d find myself in a place between college and graduate school that I could so tolerate as I do my job; where I could possibly have a future and have respect for my education and even use a portion of my mental faculty. I expected inconsistent shift work and insurmountably more struggle.
Talk to a group of anthropology majors on graduation day and you will see why I had that expectation. No one is going off to work as an anthropologist. No one is even going off to work in a related field unless they are archaeologists, which I firmly do not categorize with my ethnographic self for reasons that may be delineated in a future submission.
No. For us the only road to practicing what we’ve learned is through further education and this is the road I’ve chosen. I figured I’d take some time off, learn those life lessons I kept hearing about and explore the world outside of the grassy knolls of campus life but within the confirms of city limits. The pangs are mounting as I write this among my stacks of university-borrowed ethnographies I’ve gathered to read. I wanted my “real life experience” to conclude organically and softly, like the last fall of autumn leaves. Perhaps with a finality and closure I feel should come.
While my professional experience has been placid there is a change I’m internally preparing for, like the last leaf has broken from its dried stem and has landed on an embankment; with the only direction option is towards the cold, still pond.
In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o' clock in the morning, day after day.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
As morbid as it is, I miss that lingering disorder. I miss the concentrated time of the night, the stillness, the silence. The day stretches my mental capacities around such issues of whether that deadline at work was met or finding out why Jaak Panksepp’s latest book’s publication date has been extended. Though I am not particularly anxious, I find myself obsessing over myriad elements of my work a day life. It’s a rare moment my frontal cortex can focus on identity outside of work.
The regularity of it, while excellent for my health, has taken its toll. After nearly two years of it since graduating, I hang on to the thought of mental freedom every day from 7am to 4:30pm when I take off my apron of concern, of advancing professionalism, of the opportunity I have but just can’t take, and hang it up for the night.
Longing for the creative more mentally stimulating life of academia again, I find myself being hit with small pangs of sadness. It’s like salt has been poured on my muscle of a heart and it contracts and withers, momentarily injured and fleetingly broken. They are deep but invisible pangs, leaving very little surface effect and are quick enough to not drag down my current mental state.
I never thought I’d find myself in a place between college and graduate school that I could so tolerate as I do my job; where I could possibly have a future and have respect for my education and even use a portion of my mental faculty. I expected inconsistent shift work and insurmountably more struggle.
Talk to a group of anthropology majors on graduation day and you will see why I had that expectation. No one is going off to work as an anthropologist. No one is even going off to work in a related field unless they are archaeologists, which I firmly do not categorize with my ethnographic self for reasons that may be delineated in a future submission.
No. For us the only road to practicing what we’ve learned is through further education and this is the road I’ve chosen. I figured I’d take some time off, learn those life lessons I kept hearing about and explore the world outside of the grassy knolls of campus life but within the confirms of city limits. The pangs are mounting as I write this among my stacks of university-borrowed ethnographies I’ve gathered to read. I wanted my “real life experience” to conclude organically and softly, like the last fall of autumn leaves. Perhaps with a finality and closure I feel should come.
While my professional experience has been placid there is a change I’m internally preparing for, like the last leaf has broken from its dried stem and has landed on an embankment; with the only direction option is towards the cold, still pond.
In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o' clock in the morning, day after day.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
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