by Jack Bragen
Most psychiatrists might agree that if you have a “psychiatric impairment” you could be locked out of the use of your own perceptual and mental faculties. Some would argue that those faculties are absent, while others could say we have potential of mind that is blocked by an impairment.
Psychiatrists tend to medicate; they believe that’s what works. I can’t argue with that. When I was started on medication, I got better. But getting better from a psychiatric condition shoves us into a barbed and thorny reality.
Coming back to reality from psychosis is arguably a very good thing. When someone is psychotic, it can be a living hell both for the psychotic person and for anyone trying to help that person. When we come back, it can be initially quite horrible, because we are forced in a state of clarity to face some very hard facts. We exit the internally generated world created by being psychotic, and we enter a very difficult reality, a reality that some would rather not come back to. And that’s one reason that some patients find it very hard to come back.
Neurodivergent people, those who are presumed by appearance to be mentally ill, and those who do not have a residence address all have fewer rights in California than other citizens. “Equal protection under the law” is not being assigned. This brings us back to ancient history, prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We have traveled backwards in evolution to the tune of 60 years.
When you are disabled, and if you are on the edge, many other people are reluctant to help. They could be afraid of going down the wormhole with you. People will distance themselves. And this seems to be by instinct.
Also, your rights are automatically diminished.
It becomes easier for us to be locked up without due process. It becomes harder for us to get in the front door of opportunity. Many if not most companies will not hire a person who has a mental health history to do intellectual tasks. And often we won’t be tasked with responsibility.
I have struggled to be hired with my history of mental health issues. Generally, doors have been slammed shut in my face. A mentally ill man with a history like mine and no college will face sharp limits of opportunity. Companies want glitzy people, people accustomed to privilege, people with college degrees and no specs of dirt on their records. Being hired for a satisfying job seems like a hopeless prospect.
Absence of income and absence of college are further limitations on our legal stance. Trying to go to court against a reputable party or against a false accusation could seem futile.
The state government in California has recently passed numerous laws painted as getting mentally ill people into treatment. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a group of mostly parents and funded by drug companies, has substantial political power and has a policy of rubber stamp approval of any new, more restrictive laws that proclaim help for mentally ill people.
As a 60-year-old neurodivergent man living in a difficult situation, it feels like I felt when I was looking down the barrels of guns in two separate incidents in my young adulthood—no space here to talk about that. In short, I’m terrified. I’m close to being a victim of these laws.
If I compare the outpatient mental health care system of today to what it looked like in the 1980s, it is shocking to see how our government has let us down. Mentally ill people, at all costs, must remain stabilized or suffer dire consequences. If a psychiatric practitioner wants to tweak your meds, watch out—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!.
If we see any possible opportunity, such as sweeping floors with a job coach instructing us on the intricacies of sweeping, we should grab at that in spite of hesitation and ignore the insult to our intelligence.
Our information age makes it much harder to be closeted concerning a mental disability. Furthermore, social tolerance about us is much lower than before.
While it is not socially acceptable to discriminate and/or dislike based on skin color, it is common and perfectly acceptable to hate, despise, and exclude people with a psych disability. And it is very hard for us to defend ourselves.
Today’s “second-generation” antipsychotics such as Olanzapine and Risperdal, I was told by a psychiatrist, block more mental function than the predecessors, such as Thorazine and Haldol. This takes a toll on physical energy. And when we don’t have physical energy, we won’t be able to get out of bed and go do a job or go to school. The chance of bettering ourselves is that much harder.
The street next to my building where I park my car has a lot of foot traffic. I park there because I am physically impaired due to arthritis in my knees. I also smoke in my car. I’ll go there at all hours and light up my tobacco. Police seem to know who I am, and they don’t bother me.
I often overhear conversations of those walking by. People believe mentally ill people are dangerous. They believe we are “the other” and speak of us as “those people.”
Mentally ill people seem resigned to the collective fate of going nowhere. Many seem to accept this, and don’t expect more.
In effect, neurodivergent people do not have constitutional rights, we are locked out of money and out of society, and we are subject to public disapproving perception. If we want our lives to be better, we have a steep hill to climb and a path that is not clearly marked. We have to figure something out on our own, even if it involves risk.
Jack Bragen is author of “Instructions for Dealing with Schizophrenia: A Self-Help Manual,” and of three short story collections, all available on Amazon.
