Yet another group of disadvantaged people are double f-ed.

            Our many discussions and readings about who the disadvantaged are and why they are disadvantaged got me thinking about another group of people we don’t often hear about. I frequently think about the large population of people all over our country who have issues with their mental health. We know that people with mental health issues are largely stigmatized and misunderstood, and I’m sure we would all agree that people with mental health problems should be taken care of so they won’t be a danger to themselves or others. So, why does it seem like no one gives a damn about them until there is a mass shooting or other catastrophic event that makes national news? In the United States, we have seen so many closings of mental health facilities that today, you’d be hard-pressed to find one that is close enough to your home that you could actually go and get treatment with ease. What I find extremely irritating about this is the fact that basically anyone could be diagnosed with a mental health problem. Story time! Shortly after my mom died, I went to my doctor for an annual physical. When I told her about my mom’s passing, the very first words out of her mouth were, “I can give you something to make you feel better and something to make you less anxious.” Without any further analysis of my well-being, she wrote me two prescriptions, one for Zoloft (for my “anxiety”) and the other for Lexapro (for my “depression”). Knowing myself and the fact that I was experiencing the normal human emotions that come with losing a parent, I didn’t fill either of the prescriptions and I never saw my doctor again.  But, if you happen to see her in a professional setting, walk out. Unless of course you're into scoring some sweet drugs.   

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Luckily, I have been wary of SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) or antidepressants since I watched a documentary called “The Marketing of Madness: Are We All Insane?” about five years ago. My experience with my personal doctor was shocking in that if I had filled those prescriptions and taken those drugs, I would no longer have been who I understood myself to be, and I would have probably started a lifetime of unnecessary medication use. I would have also been labeled “depressed.” My point is this: there are seriously crappy doctors out there, doctors who will misdiagnose and over-prescribe serious, life-changing drugs to patients who trust them. And the patient is left to live with the consequences of that diagnosis.

            The second part of my rant has to do with where mental health facilities are located. I was curious to see what types of facilities are available for people with mental health issues in Chicago and where they might be located. It turns out, by reading this article by Tom Dart (sheriff of the Cook County Jail, writing for the Chicago Tribune), “Since the 1960s, the number of beds in Illinois' state-run psychiatric hospitals has decreased to fewer than 1,500 from 35,000.”  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-cook-county-tom-dart-jail-mentally-ill-0729-20140729-story.html. With no institutions or facilities to house and/or care for this population, Dart says, “the seriously ill patients end up on their own, often on the street with no support system to keep them stable or medicated. Inevitably, they suffer psychotic states and commit petty crimes that land them within the unyielding grip of the criminal justice system — caught in a revolving door between jail and the streets.” I find this situation offensive on a couple of different levels. The doctors (even general physicians) are happy to diagnose someone as mentally ill, when on occasion they are not. With their new, fun label, the person sits with the realization that there is actually something clinically wrong with them because a doctor told them so and this could alter their decision-making among other things. As Sheriff Dart discusses, the places that people can go to get adequate treatment in Chicago are abysmal and on the decline because the funds aren’t there anymore. So people that are diagnosed with mental health issues are just hanging out in the city with pitiful resources, becoming more and more likely to wind up in jail or prison, with no one to help them or no place to deal with troubles other than the prison system. One would think that with the huge daily costs of housing inmates we would see the value in keeping mental health facilities open so people can get treatment without becoming offenders. That doesn’t appear to be the case at all as we continue to build jails and prisons at an alarming rate. Just one more item on the seemingly endless list of things to fix in ‘Merica.