Sell it and they will come. . .

So many books!

I should really write a book.

This blog is intended someday to become a memoir. If it doesn’t, I’m OK with that. The writing is more therapy than anything. But the more I look for books on bipolar/depression, the more I am convinced that many of them are written so the writer can gain fame and fortune.

I won’t name names. Just google search bipolar and dig a little into some of the author sites and you’ll see what I mean.

Kids are a growing market in bipolar

I get it though. Book deals and speaking tours are great if you can’t work a conventional job. I have this fantasy that I’ll just go around the country doing TED talks and other seminars where I can add a whole lot of psychobabble bullshit to my personal experiences.

But I can’t do that. There’s enough of that already.

The problem is America doesn’t really want to face up to the reality of mental illness. They want to read stories of overcoming, of triumph. They want a happy ending, believing everything has a fix if we only work/read/meditate/pray enough. The books reinforce that perception.

Bullshit!

The whole idea of suicide prevention in this county is to keep people alive. That’s admirable, of course, but in many instances, that’s it. Great, you’ve rescued them from killing themselves – now are you going to provide affordable and compassionate mental health services in the community so they won’t do it again?

Of course you won’t. There’s so much more that needs to be spent on weapons and subsidies to corporations. Besides, if you can’t afford the services, it’s because you’ve failed, and why should I have to pay for someone else’s treatment?

Unfortunately that is who we are.

BUT, we have lots of cheap cures in the form of books and tapes and, my, oh, my, drugs (some of the most widely used are generic and therefore, by comparison, cheap) that you can have, but geez, having the taxpayers furnish luxury hotels with compassionate, well-trained staff is a bit much, don’t you think? 

The problem is that too many people watch ‘reality’ shows like ‘Intervention’ and think everyone gets to go to the Mental Health Club Med where the kind director meets you at the door and starts scheduling your horseback riding therapy classes in the morning.

So. . . who ordered the wine? Dinner at six!

These places are anywhere from $15-30,000 a month and even if you have insurance, forget it.

An attack at the Arizona state mental hospital

The real reality is that you are taken by force, usually by the police (they don’t usually send men in white coats anymore) to some kind of county facility which resembles something out of Dickens’ time, where staff that get $9 an hour throw you in with people who may or may not cause you physical harm. If you’re lucky, you get to see a real, live therapist for 30 minutes a week or every other day. Your insurance, if you have any, may pay for 30 days of inpatient treatment. Then, ‘cured’ or not, it’s out on the street you go. Good luck!

If we are going to keep people alive, we, as a society, have to ask ourselves: why?

If it’s just a ‘feel good’ exercise, for the love of God, stop it. Let these people have their eternal relief. Yes, I know, many mentally ill people (usually with means and an already existing support system) get ‘cured’ and never try it again. But I can almost guarantee you; they think about it the rest of their lives. 

And then there are the people who get out of our medieval mental health facilities and, faced at some point with the prospect of having to go back, and unable to afford therapy, quietly hang themselves in a closet. Where are all the self-congratulators then?

He. . . is. . . .serious. I got nothing.

What I’m getting at is there is nothing sexy, trendy or hip about having a mental illness regardless of what you see on TV or read in these books. I can speak to bipolar, depression and anxiety. Believe me, there is nothing glamourous about it. The reality is, for most of us, there is no cure but a gritty, grinding, awful existence that is punctuated occasionally by brief periods of relief.

It is a hard life and for the vast majority of people suffering, there is no cure; it is something they have to deal with all of their lives. 

The cruel thing is not only the stigma we face – it’s all the quackery sold to us by the books, the seminars, the yoga teachers, the sweat lodge shamans, the homeo- and naturopaths – all more affordable than decent therapy and medications and all promising something they can’t deliver.

And if you fail, it’s because you ‘didn’t try hard enough.’

Yeah, eat your way to sanity. Woo!

There is not one physical ailment in this country that someone isn’t hustling a quack cure. ‘Buyer beware’ has never been more relevant than with the mental illness community.

I have a son with autism. I remember going to some of the Autism Society seminars and, looking around at the booths and companies offering this and that. I felt the atmosphere the same as a sales convention – because that’s exactly what it was. 

Step right up! Can I get a witness!?

So my message today is that if you suffer from these maladies, don’t buy into anyone’s quick fix – it’s a long hard road and beware those who say they have been ‘cured’ by any one method: often they have an investment in that method.

This one I recommend

For society, please understand that we as a community are always keeping the wolf from the door. If we could snap our fingers and ‘snap out of it,’ we would. Don’t push the Dr. Oz snake oil on us and then blame us for our own lack of effort. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to feel like this and we are doing all we can. 

There’s nothing to sell here except blood, sweat, toil and tears. Every day we rise again, it is our own little triumph. Understand that. 

I could write a book about it. But I don’t think it would ever get published.

Solitary Amusement or What Next?

My little corner of the universe

It is Wednesday and I am again in my office with silence, my old friend, punctuated occasionally by the sound of my typing.

Yesterday I spent the entire day like this. I saw no one and no one saw me.

Today is much the same. There is no communication, except by email (rare) and telephone (even rarer).

I could walk down the hall but I have nothing to say to them and, in fact, I am doing my best not to say anything at all unless it is work-related. I’m not sure they want to say much to me either. I’m saving us both the embarrassment of making useless small talk.

I should not be surprised that no one has come down to knock on my door. Since the reprimand came down on Wednesday, coupled with my email to my supervisor saying I would, at the advice of my union representative, attend no more employee social functions, the word has apparently got around: he has isolated himself from us.

People I see, weary of me
Showing my good side
I can see how people look down
I'm on the outside

This was not my choice but my idea, enthusiastically pushed by my union rep. I felt I had no other choice.

An email needed to be re-sent for some information I need for a report. The original email, to a former co-worker, had been sent five days ago. She responded back to day, curtly, with one sentence and no greeting.

Previously, I had requested leave from my supervisor and had to remind her five days later for approval.

I listened in on the staff meeting held yesterday by phone conference. My supervisor recalled none of my projects including one very important one that necessitated her meeting with the Director. That was a week ago and she said she would get back to me. I’m still waiting.

I could have jumped in to the phone conference and reminded her but I wanted to see if my work was important enough to be remembered. It was not.

Crazy I know, places I go
Make me feel so tired
I can see how people look down
I'm on the outside

She is at the other campus, perhaps for the entire week.

It has been five working days since the reprimand was proposed. After five days, unless a response for appeal is made, the reprimand becomes official and is placed in my personnel file for three years. I did the paperwork with the union rep last Wednesday. I have heard nothing. I sent her an email this morning asking where we stand. I am still waiting.

I am a natural paranoiac, but I sense that something is up. Either that, or I have, again, been ‘rubber-roomed.’ I’m left to figure it out for myself.

Yesterday, I called the number for the Employee Assistance Program (EAP). I did not want to do it but I figured it was free and added a layer, however thin, of protection for me. Since I was no longer seeing a counselor, there was no real issue in having two.

I was treated politely and put through to an intake counselor to whom I apologized for telling such a long story. I had to repeat myself several times since she kept getting the sequence of events out of order, even after I had specifically told her the dates and times.

She then found a local psychologist and connected me with her office voice mail, which I left my name, phone number and intake number, provided by EAP so the counselor would know who would be paying her.

It wasn’t until I got home that I had the chance to look her up. After checking, I was very surprised this person was an EAP counselor and equally sure she would not call me. She’s a media darling, a book author and a marketer of . . .well, herself. I left a message at 5 p.m. and. . . I’m still waiting.

(PS: Oh EAP called - I didn't hear the phone but I got an email. Wanted to know how things were going with my appointed shrink. I emailed back and said 'I don't think she'll be calling little old me' and attached one of the Star Shrink's webpage URLs. Suggested we wait 24 and then try someone else. I got a response back just now (430) that went like this: I'm sorry I'm not permitted to consult further via email, but I know that we can offer other options if you would like to call back to the XXXXXX number.

Ah, there's help out there. All you have to do is pick up the phone. . . 

I can’t stress enough how quiet it is in this otherwise deserted wing of our office floor. Occasionally the silence is punctuated by someone going down the stairs, a scrap or two of conversation, but otherwise the only noise is the quiet hum of the air circulation system.

It is the kind of quiet in which all kinds of thoughts present themselves. It may sound pretentious, but I think to myself that I have lost all usefulness not only to this office, but in general. I had a good run, but it ends here, again, not with a bang but a whimper. I did things in my career I had dreamed of as a child but I always had this nagging feeling that after some close calls, my need for security and mental quirkiness would box me in somewhere where I would sit in silence and contemplate what was and what might have been.

I dealt with my issues as best I could, fighting an enemy I didn’t understand. Perhaps making it this far was an accomplishment.

Most of the time I am tired, I think probably because this whole 18 month ordeal has worn me down.

It’s funny, if I ever meet Robert DeNiro, I could tell him that mimicking his quote from The Untouchables was the final stupid thing I said that led to the deluge.

But the only thing I ever really wanted to say
Was wrong, was wrong, was wrong

All I ever wanted was to be relevant in some way to some greater cause. And to have real friends I could trust that I could be myself around. And because of my illness, I could and did have those things, but only for a short time.

I don’t want to believe this is the end of my usefulness.

But in the silence, I can’t help but think that perhaps I have played my last hand.

It's that little souvenir of a colorful year
Which makes me smile inside
So I cynically, cynically say the world is that way
Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise

Lyrics: ‘Here’s Where the Story Ends,’ by The Sundays (1990)

Mental Illness in Middle Age Must Be Addressed

There’s something that just keeps bugging me so I’ve decided to write a post about it.

I sign up for all these depression/bipolar/anxiety sites and without fail, every one of them features writers, editors and commenters who skew heavily (1) young (under 30 in most cases) and female (I’d say the ratio is about 3-1).

For one example of what I'm talking about, see the bottom of this story.

Now these sites can do what they want. Bandwidth isn’t free and the ever-present need to market targets the most valuable money demo. But while I get some insight from these stories, they really don't speak to me and my life's experiences.

And, honestly, young people, younger everyday (like 10) are committing suicide or facing mental health issues that could lead them to kill themselves.

And I’m not minimizing the trials and travails of the Millennials. They’re not stupid. They know they world they’ve been brought into is crumbling. All they have are the stories they’ll inevitably hear from their parents and grandparents about how things used to be. So they dive into online gaming and technology fetish to ease the pain.

Hell, this society could drive anyone up a wall, not counting organic examples of mental illness or exacerbations of same.

Just look at last night’s debate. I remember Carter-Ford. Sure, I was a kid and was kind of bored but at least it didn’t make me scared, disgusted and despairing of the future of this county and the world.

But while we’re obsessed with youth in all respects, the thing I’m bothered about is the virtual silence on the mental health needs of people over 40 and their rising suicide rates.

I just get the impression that, from the ‘helping professions’ to the government, we’re pretty much on our own.

This blog is an attempt to not only write stories from my past that might give the reader a hint into how I got to be the way I am, but to advocate, in my own small way, for more attention to be paid to middle aged and elderly people who are struggling, most often in silence, with mental illness.

Do we care as much about the people who kill themselves at 60 as those at 16? We should.

It’s not like the media doesn’t run stories about people who have worked their entire life, get thrown out of their jobs (they’re ‘redundant’) in their 50s and can’t find another job? What happens to these people when they disappear from Labor Department unemployment statistics when they can’t find jobs?

Here are some background articles:

Financial Despair, Addiction, and the Rise of Suicide in White America

The 56-year-old former salesman’s struggle with chronic pain is bound up with an array of other issues – medical debts, impoverishment and the prospect of a bleak retirement – contributing to growing numbers of suicides in the US and helping drive a sharp and unusual increase in the mortality rate for middle-aged white Americans in recent years alongside premature deaths from alcohol and drugs.

U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

People disappear all the time in America because they are no longer of any use in making money or generating tax revenue. Their lives also matter. The difference between wrecked boomers and millennials is that the boomers (who are not all wealthy and smug by any means and my ‘in-between’ generation, are despondent that we’re seen as disposable. The millennials come into the game knowing they are cogs. I think most of them can deal with it better than my generation.

The questions for many of us are  simple: where do you go work when you have nowhere else to work? What do you do when you've done all you can do? And where will the money come from? 

For people in my generation who are already dealing with lifelong mental illness (and came from a society in which we were still told to keep quiet about it), this makes our situations even more difficult.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have believed the lies. Perhaps we shouldn’t have believed the promises of our employers, government and advertisers. We never imagined that we’d have to be this resilient. Blame us all you want but we were the twilight generation of American prosperity. We never believed the ride would end. So we were suckers. 

But again, I don’t want to confuse organic mental illness with event-generated disillusionment. The latter just exacerbates the former. But it’s a powerful and deadly mix that feeds the statistics quoted in the stories above. We shouldn't be regulated to being statistics. We are living, breathing human beings who have a problem but want to be useful and appreciated. 

In addition to the struggles of the mind, we’re at the time where our bodies are beginning to betray us and the dreams we had about what kind of life we were going to lead are receding in our rear-view mirror.

We have to deal, true. But every mental health site out there talks about not having to walk the walk alone. But so many of us in this age group do because we’re still seeing people being fired and shunned for talking about it and many of us fear we won’t be believed anyway.

And as I grew older and my therapists grew younger, I noticed the experience and cultural gulf between us growing. I got more quizzical stares and blank looks as time went by. They don't know; they didn't live through the times we did. 

We have no support groups dedicated to the middle aged and seniors. There’s no ‘walks’ for us, very little money, time and care.

I don't know what the solution is. I know we have a problem that is not being addressed and we, as a nation and a people, are poorer for it.

As promised above, here's one day of The Mighty's email digest of stories picked especially for me:

Things I Don't Want to Hear as Someone With Anxiety and Depression Lily-Rose Phillips Anxiety People with mental health problems have probably heard it all. “Just smile.” “Just stop thinking about it.” “Just go to bed early.” Here’s a little list of ... read more »

5 Tips for Coping With Changing Seasons When You Have Bipolar Disorder Tricia Chilcott Bipolar Disorder When the seasons change, what do I do as a person with bipolar disorder? Seasons changing can be a dangerous thing when you live with a mood disorder. When the weather get... read more »

When You Can’t Do What You Want to Do Because of Your Anxiety B.G. Anxiety Today, I’d like to talk about something that means a great deal to me. When I was younger and didn’t deal with anxiety as much, I loved going places. I loved shopping, ... read more »

On Days When Depression Is 'Winning' Lori Russell Depression Today was sh*tty. Yesterday was especially awful so I went to sleep feeling hopeful that today was going to be better. Nope. Today I feel physically ill. I’m clammy, naus... read more »

What I Want My Loved Ones to Know When My Depression Makes Me 'Disappear' Laura Coward Depression I know my depression has returned full-force when I start to triage my life. The simplest tasks overwhelm me, so I begin to make silent, irrational deals with myself. “... read more »

The Colors of a Manic Episode Laura Dennison Bipolar Disorder Mania can be hard to understand. This poem aims to bring to life some of the images I associate with my own experiences of being manic, as well as my feelings towards bein... read more »

The Power of Crying During Depression Brianna George Depression I sat on the bed and cried. Tears fell down my face and onto the crisp white sheets, leaving a stain. I tried to wipe them away, but they kept falling. I was having a power... read more »

The Problem With Referring to Depression as the 'Common Cold' of Mental Illness Alison Cervoj Depression Depression occurs so frequently within our population that it is often referred to as the “common cold” of mental illness. Everyone may at some point be affected by de... read more »

When 'Better' Feels Like a Mocking Mirage Jeremy D. Kleinhans Depression Robin Williams’ death from suicide hit me hard. Like most, I was stunned and confused as to how he could’ve gotten to that point in his life, even though I have sp... read more »

A Weekday With Anxiety Keren Rosenthal Anxiety I’ve been struggling with anxiety for quite some time now, and I’ve noticed how many people don’t understand why I get so panicky and stressed out all the time. So to... read more »