Category Archives: stigma

Stigma: How Can We Fix It?

17 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by in Anti Stigma Movement, humane treatment, mental health advocacy, mental heath, stigma, Survivor Of Mental Health System

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Here is the final installment of my 3 part interview with Dr. Patrick Corrigan, an expert on stigma and mental illness. Stigma might seem off-message to this blog’s main topic, but not really, if you think about it. Erasing stigma is foundational to having a voice if you’ve been misdiagnosed and/or abused by a mental health practitioner or a psychiatric facility. I hope it has been helpful and insightful.

 

 

Stigma and The Media

10 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by in Anti Stigma Movement, humane treatment, mental health advocacy, mental heath, stigma

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Here is the second in a three part interview with Patrick Coorigan, a distinguished professor of psychology at Illinois Institute of Technology and world expert on stigma and mental illness. In this episode, we talk about the media, how it makes stigma worse, what might they do to make it better.

https://youtu.be/9oUUq7GjacE

A Discussion About Stigma Part I

31 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in Anti Stigma Movement, End Mental Health Stigma, humane treatment, mental health advocacy, mental heath, mental institutions, patient abuse, stigma, Survivor Of Mental Health System

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I recently sat down with Dr. Patrick Corrigan, Psy.D, a distinguished professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, to talk about the stigma of mental illness. Pat is a world expert on the subject and has spent decades researching the topic. The interview is in three parts and will be posted over the next three weeks. In this first episode, Pat explains stigma, what it means, how it harms people, why people stigmatize.

Stigma is still a very real problem as Pat so eloquently explains in our casual conversation. It is the first hurdle to tackle when addressing abuse and misdiagnosis. If we can erase stigma it would benefit patients and ex-patients by allowing them to have a voice, to feel less discrimination and less isolated in our world. I hope you will, as I did, learn something from these interviews with Pat.

https://youtu.be/A6CcdbspaOI

The Signifcance of Lime Green

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Anti Stigma Movement, End Mental Health Stigma, mental health advocacy, mental heath, stigma, Survivor Of Mental Health System

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The ballroom was packed, a speaker at the long podium testing the mike. I’m not a conference goer, with the exception of the occasional writer’s conference. So, it was intimidating to walk into a room full of strangers at the Hyatt Regency on the Embarcadero in San Francisco that first day in mid-February.  I was there for the 7th International Together Against Stigma Conference.(TogetherAgainstStigma.org). 
I’d been invited to attend the conference by Dr. Patrick Corrigan (https://humansciences.iit.edu/faculty/patrick-corrigan), a leading researcher in the field of stigma related to mental illness and a distinguished professor of Psychology at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) (http://comingoutproudprogram.org).  IMG_1458This was the first time the conference was held in the States. More than 750 researchers, advocates, policymakers and mental health professionals attended.  It is the only international conference focused on eradicating the social stigma of mental illness.

As a person with lived experience, as they say, a survivor of the mental health system, I was hoping to meet others who have had similar experiences as my own. Trying to make a connection. Find a foot hold.

In the hall outside the ballroom, tables were lined up displaying information about various organizations sponsoring the conference and others. I kept seeing lime green: the title of the conference program,  highlighting topics and headers. lime green scarves, lime green buttons, lime green candy, lime green bags, a lot of people wearing lime green accessories, just a lot of lime green. I didn’t realize until later that some of my everyday possessions are lime green—Lime green glasses case, lime green iPhone case, etc.—and this before I had any idea that the color was linked to this particular cause.  (And then there’s the irony of the lime green wall color in the abandoned mental hospital that is the header for this blog!) I was drawn to the color without realizing it although I may be reading too much into it. Still. So, what is, was, the significance of lime green and why that color for this particular movement?  I’d never really thought about it before–colors and how they represent or signify movements. IMG_1460

Of course, green, in general, is the color of renewal, spring, rebirth, of safety, permission. Hope. Social Justice (the Green Movement). But lime green?  According to old-earth.com the principal of lime green is truth. The color is associated with striving to manifest in a positive way situations that have caused a great deal of stress and worry that have been hard if not impossible to surmount. “The meanings of Lime Energy tell us that sometimes we think that we won’t get what we want so we either give up or force issues before others are ready to give.”

When I read that last sentence, getting past the New Agey prose,  I remembered Pat Corrigan saying during one of his conference presentations that often times people with a history in the mental health system think, “Why bother?” (disclosing/telling my story) They either keep silent or spill and both ways of disclosing feel terrible and unsafe. To not live in fear, to feel the freedom and affirmation of being recognized as a fellow human being, to feel empowered, not labeled as different or crazy, this is the hope, the goal of this anti-stigma movement. After all, one in four people will suffer a mental illness in their lifetime. It might be you.

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“Only Connect”–Like It’s That Easy

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in history, mental health advocacy, mental heath, stigma, Uncategorized

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I’m back after weeks of distraction; too much snow, too much grey weather, too much time alone, much-needed time away somewhere warm, a sprained foot (I’m ok now), my sick dog (he’s ok now) and other things that sapped any inspiration or motivation I might’ve mustered for a post. I’ve been sitting here in my office in the Hancock Tower, this somewhat sunny afternoon, Spring trying to show up,  and wondering what to write about. What I notice besides the intermittent sounds of honking horns below on Michigan Avenue is the silence. It’s quiet on the floor except for a few people walking down the hallway. muffled voices.  A few people have the doors to their offices open. Most don’t, including me at the moment.  Glued to our various devices, it probably doesn’t matter anymore to a lot of us who we actually spend most of our time with, how it affects us, since it’s all virtual. But connection matters to me. It’s always been—no matter how scary relationships are for me—a core value of mine.

But I am ambivalent about connection. This is where the scary part comes in. Early on in my life, lonely and essentially invisible in my family. I took myself as my own companion. The family I grew up instilled in me that the world was too dangerous, the cost of relationships was too high, and nothing good could come of putting yourself out there, only disappointment. I believed it (and many relationships reinforced this belief) though something in me, the healthy part that wanted love and relationships, tried to fight it. But the frightened part of me won out.

Some people have asked exactly what happened to me in the mental health system, soup to nuts (hmm. bad pun) the whole story, not just bits and pieces here and there. I get that. And I will tell more in detail in future posts. Part of me wants to tell all the details at once and part of me doesn’t. It goes back to the old and familiar tapes: I feel deeply conflicted about being seen and heard. I have the need to speak out, have a voice. To speak for myself, for others, to find others (you?) who can relate, feel they have a voice. Who else is out there in the wilderness who has been through similar hell and feels alone, unable for whatever reason to speak up? All this collides with feeling overwhelmed by the telling of a story too raw still, insanely complicated, and the bone-deep feeling I will be punished for speaking up, for having a voice, and the feeling of futility. So,  the act of writing this blog,  just hitting “post” is a big deal for me. A small act of courage.

Camera As Advocate

23 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in mental health advocacy, mental heath, patient abuse, stigma

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On November 19th of last year, the New York Times featured an article about hidden cameras in nursing homes, dubbed granny cams. Doris Racher, concerned about her 96-year old mother in a nursing home in Oklahoma, had a motion-activated camera that looked like an alarm clock placed in her mother’s room. The images captured of her mother being abused by staff were horrific but, sadly, not surprising.

As I read the article, I was struck by the parallels to psychiatric mistreatment. Based on my admittedly unscientific tracking of such reports, it seems once every year or two, an article appears in the news about elder abuse as if it’s never been reported on before: We’re shocked! Shocked! This is also true of psychiatric abuse. I began to think about the benefit of neutral watchful eyes in psychiatric hospitals. The camera as patient advocate. Such surveillance could counter stigma’s close cousin, invisibility, and medical records which are written by the very doctors and staff who are the subject of complaints. Patients have little or no say in what is documented (and even if they did, their words would carry less weight). The odds are depressingly low of their complaints being taken seriously if they muster the courage to come forward. Their credibility has been snuffed. This is especially important in cases where family members are dubious or indifferent. I know this from my own experience, a part of which I will bluntly encapsulate below at the risk of being a bit overwhelming. I will continue to share my experience with you in future posts.

In 1989, after my father died, I checked myself into a highly-regarded, private psychiatric hospital in Dallas suffering from insomnia, anxiety and side-effects of medications I’d been on for years.  Just before I was to be discharged, my assigned doctor decided I was suddenly too sick to leave. She had learned that my family had the resources to pay for long-term treatment, and tried to have me committed. (I was deemed paranoid for thinking their motives were financial. Later, I learned the hospital was on the verge of bankruptcy at the time and re-organized under Chapter 11. Was I paranoid? You decide).  I was held against my will for weeks, and denied counsel. My family was indifferent. By the time I felt strong enough to sue, the statute of limitations (a meager two years) had expired. All complaints I submitted to the appropriate boards were dismissed without explanation. That hospital is up and running again. Those doctors are still practicing, as far as I know. I am haunted to this day by what happened to me and others there. What other lives have they ruined in the years since?

If there had been some form of surveillance in place, cameras as my advocates,  would I, or any other forceably incarcerated patients, have had a better chance of being taken seriously, especially in the case of a hospital that had the stellar credentials to use as camouflage? Texas currently allows surveillance cameras in nursing homes. Why not extend that to psychiatric facilities as well?

It’s not as easy as that, of course. For one, there is the issue of privacy. Though the Constitution doesn’t guarantee a right to privacy, and security and surveillance monitoring are woven into our daily lives now, there are legitimate legal and ethical concerns. Where is the fine line between protection of an individual’s  privacy and the common good? I have no easy answers for this, or any at all at the moment, actually. But today the question is as timely as ever.

In the 1990’s, with mass deinstitutionalization, psychiatric patients were often left to their own devices. Many of them were left homeless, reliant, at best, on inadequate  outpatient services, if they had access to them at all. Inpatient care plummeted. Today, with the Affordable Care Act mandating mental health parity, insurance will cover mental health treatment on par with other physical ailments. The limits for inpatient care will expand. With the sites of gun control legislation aimed at treating the mentally ill, there will most certainly be an uptick in inpatient care.  If we are serious about putting a stake in the heart of the systemic problems in institutions, and in protecting patients, I think we have to take seriously the benefit of cameras as advocates.