The Mental Health Conspiracy

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 8, Verse 1

"Can't you hear the voice of wisdom?"

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

When you work with people who have serious mental illness, you become paranoid.  No longer is "the walls have ears, my friend" just an avuncular piece of advice from a desk-jockey lifer: it's real.

Or at least, you think it's real.

But, isn't perception reality?

So.  It's.  REAL.

But in addition to a terrifying fear of my superiors, to wincing every time I drive down the long, twisting driveway festooned with Tim Burton-style gonna-get-you barren trees that lead up to the Draconian building I call home for far too many hours each week, I feel, I don't know... conspired against?

Is that the right word?  

Maybe.

So far, no grants that I've written have gotten funded.  Many are still "in the pipeline" as we professional grantwriter assholes call it (I'm sure there's many a vivacious Urban Dictionary definition for "in the pipeline" that do not relate to development and fundraising) but the ones I've heard back on have all been a resounding, "NEIN, FRAULEIN!"  Okay, so maybe I'm not a good grantwriter.  Or maybe nobody's jumping up and down to throw money at forensic mental health.

Then there's the op/ed, commentary pieces I've written to the newspaper.  I did one in August, one in September, and one this month.  None we run by the paper.  Now, granted, there's a lot of competition, but I don't want you to think I'm bragging when I say that I have a 9-out-of-10 success rate when it comes to getting commentaries published in the paper.  At least, that was my success rate before I started writing about mental illness.  Now the tumbleweeds start to dance by.

It's possible that my writing skills have tanked in recent years.  That's possible.  

Other people do seem to get published when writing about mental illness.  I just today read a very interesting piece about Assisted Outpatient Treatment today and, underneath the author's name all the way at the bottom was a picture of a young woman standing outside closing a flannel shirt over her bra and the caption below read "10 SMALLEST CELEB BREASTS" and I was thinking to myself, I'll bet at least a hundred times more people clicked on that link than read the article I just read.  

And I got sad, because as much as I love small breasts, particularly those attached to celebrities, I just shake my head in despair when I think about what mental health competes with on a daily basis.  On Philly.com, for instance, there is a whole page about "HEALTH".  What are some of the "articles"?

The big story is an expose about how Cliff bars and their counterparts aren't really as "healthy" as people think.

Catch me, I might swoon.

"New Method May Improve Face Transplant Methods" which, I'm sure, is relevant to so many people on Philly.com, certainly more pressing and urgent than a story about mental illness, which impacts 1 in 4 Americans, probably more people than who need concern themselves with face transplant methodologies.

And, the question to the answer that nobody asked: "Breast Implants a Boost to Women's Sex Lives?"  Not satisfied with merely one story about silicone slappies (featured twice on the page, mind you) there's also "Breastfeeding After Implants Won't Cause Sagging, Study Finds".  Gee, that's good to know!

Oh, and let's not forget the gem, "Smaller Testicles, Better Dads?"  Well, I guess it's a nice complement to "10 Smallest Celeb Breasts."  I wonder if smaller breasted celeb moms are better moms than big breasted celeb moms.  Stay tuned, I guess.

Now, if you bother to scroll ALL THE WAY DOWN, past the stories about Tom Hanks having Type II Diabetes and "Use By and Sell By -- What Does it all Mean?"  (IT MEANS USE BY THIS DATE, AND SELL BY THAT DATE-- WHAT THE FUCK?!!!) you finally will get to a little section of stories about "Mental Health".

What are they?

There's a piece about a link between gum disease and Alzheimer's.

Oh.  That's... uh... helpful?

An article about autism (always), and two actually interesting pieces about Parkinson's and depression and depression in pregnancy possibly leading to psychiatric issues in those children later on.  But, like I said, you have to really work to find those pieces, and they're the sort of pieces that offer straight information about rather benign subjects.  They're not talking about how the jails are the biggest mental health "treatment" centers in the country, or about how under-trained police officers are gunning down the mentally ill, or about how competently-trained police officers aren't, or about how the stigmatization of individuals with mental illness by the news media and the entertainment industry is actually killing people, or about the public health crisis of 38,000+ suicides every year in this country, or reasons why psych patients don't want to take their meds and, well, you get the fucking idea.

Hey, we're Americans.  We wanna read about small celeb breasts and Tom Hanks taking Glucophage.  

I get it.

It's the Mental Health Conspiracy, hard at work.  Beating you down, every day, reminding you that you are, in fact, its wholesome little bitch, bending to its will, responding to its caprice.  You are not acting of your own volition, you are powerless to stop it.  It comes in waves.  We have them all in jails, so we build mental hospitals.  People don't like the mental hospitals, so we de-institutionalize and put them back out on the streets with inadequate supports, and they get arrested and thrown back in jail because we've gotten rid of the hospitals.  And here we are again.  But, if you talk about it, God help you, because if you say the wrong thing in the wrong room near the wrong person, it's LIGHTS.  OUT.  

It's diplomatic seclusion.  It's political restraints.  

It's time for your non-profit needle.  

I'm terrified of saying the wrong thing, so most of the time, I just say nothing.  But I can say it here, right?

Well.  Probably not.  Maybe for now, only because nobody's listening.  Nobody but you.

Just us chickens.  

No no-- sheep.

Behold, I send you out as sheep amidst the wolves.

Baaa.