At 14, I joined my high school speech and debate team. Ever since, I've been hooked on public speaking. Put me in front of a bunch of strangers, the more the better, and I thrive. I don't need to imagine people in their underwear. All I need is my voice and occasionally, a microphone.
So, you can imagine how bizarre it was for me when I recently found myself feeling nervous in front of an audience of only a few dozen people. I'd been invited to speak at an alumni event, which would have been fine were it for high school, college, law school or even kindergarten. But it wasn't. It was for Skyland Trail, a psychiatric day treatment program I'd attended two years earlier, after being hospitalized for my first acute manic episode.
Most of the lectures I give at universities are about one of two topics you're never supposed to bring up in polite conversation: politics or religion -- and quite frequently, both. Talking about such issues has never made me the least bit uncomfortable. But talking about my psychotic break was terrifying.
My mouth got dry. My palms grew sweaty. My heart pounded. Still, I managed to share my story -- granted, in a much less self-assured tone than usual. Talking religion and politics is cake compared to rehashing my mania, depression and psychosis. For one, no matter how heated things get, I never break down in tears discussing Islamophobia or foreign policy. But there, I lost it. Twice, I had to take a long pause.
Still, the audience of patients, staff, family members and other alumni was warm and encouraging -- some even said "it's okay" when I had to stop. These people knew where I was coming from; they were willing to wait for me to pull myself together, and they encouraged me to move on.
That is precisely what community-based mental health facilities are meant to do. To recognize where those of us with mental illnesses are coming from, to give us the time and space we need to get well, and to encourage us to meet our potential -- which incidentally, can often exceed that of so-called "normal" people.
But these aren't the kinds of facilities people want in their backyards -- that is, until they need them. Assumptions about the mentally ill abound: that we're violent, that we can't be trusted around children, that we can't be trusted full stop. The truth is, though, that we are more likely to be victims of violent crime than we are to be violent criminals, and with proper treatment, many of us can and do lead fruitful and productive lives.
Yet today, that kind of treatment is becoming less and less available. Arizona alone has made $65 million in behavioral health cuts in the past two years, affecting roughly 28,000 state residents -- which may well have included the young man charged with the recent shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and over a dozen others at a Tucson Safeway supermarket. And although this man is by no means representative and his story feeds all kinds of false stereotypes about the mentally ill, I still can't help but hope that this tragedy will spark a necessary debate and benefit those of us who genuinely need access to mental health care and are by and large not criminals.
As mental health programs and facilities across the country lose funding, people like me, who desperately need them, are left with few options. Due to such cuts, patients end up having access to only acute facilities and mental hospitals, which are much more expensive and traumatizing than the community-based programs that are most vulnerable to budget cuts today. The counselors at these programs do more than throw drugs at us and send us home. They teach us vital skills to function, contribute and thrive in society.
Without them, I could easily be sitting on a back ward somewhere eating Jell-O and complaining about missing puzzle pieces. Without them -- and I say this with no exaggeration -- I could just as easily be dead. Without them, society risks losing countless caring and competent mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and children. De-funding community-based mental health programs and providers is simply not a risk that we can afford to take.
Follow Melody Moezzi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MelodyMoezzi
And yet, I still struggle to get any help, or to make people understand that I am disabled even though I am just shy of 23 years old and often seem perfectly fine. I certainly can't convinced social security of it, and I can't convince anyone to employ me after messing up at my last job thanks to my illness. I also had to quit college, once again, thanks to my illness, which makes finding work all the more difficult.
I will always struggle with this illness, and it is a daily struggle to come to terms with the fact that my future is not going to be what I'd imagined. As of right now, I can't depend on anybody outside of my family and friends to help me to shape a new one.
Communities in a budget crunch look for areas to cut, and unfortunately, mental health is almost always the first item on the chopping block. The conversation never happens about the need for these crucial services until a person becomes so detached from reality that they do something dangerous. In all these years of working with people with mental illnesses, I have yet to run into anyone who asked to be schizophrenic, bipolar, severely depressed or addicted. We have the capacity to help those suffering with these debilitating conditions; what we must ultimately find is the compassion to do so, because sticking our heads in the sand won't solve anything. How we treat those less able will define us as a nation, and as human beings.
BY INSTITUTINÂG THESE CUTS, SHE WILL BE ABLE TO ALLOW LARGE BUSINESSES TO KEEP THE SUBSTANTIAÂL TAX BREAKS THEY WERE GRANTED EARLIER!
Since Jared Loughner shot up the Safeway entrance, I have been telling this story over and over again online. We need to announce it to the world, that there are chemical illnesses that cause mental illnesses. If you can get those chemicals straightened out, that psychotic person returns to being the same wonderful person you knew before. Its not a weakness, its no one's fault. Its a chemical problem.
And I appreciate your comments as well organicconnect, though I completely disagree. This would be much harder for you to say if you had a mental illness. These are not made-up illnesses--I didn't start having delusions and hallucinations b/c I wanted to. I started having them because I have a disease (which I am having great success treating with medication and therapy incidentally). It's just that this disease is in my brain--and for some reason, people think that makes it less real. I can assure you that this makes it all the MORE real--once you've had a vivid hallucination or concocted serious delusions without the aid of any substances, then come back to me and tell me that funding mental health is unnecessary.
Mental illnesses account for several of the top causes of disability in the US--if we could better fund mental health programs, then fewer people would have to be on disability and in the long run, funding mental health will SAVE money. I'm sure of it!
And there ARE wonderful medications and psychiatrists and psychologists that SAVE LIVES every day. I am living proof of this--but I have health insurance and enough money to pay for my medications--and I have a network of support. Please just thank God that you do not have a mental illness and try and have a little more compassion for those of us who do.
By the way it costs more money to incarcerate people than it does to treat mental illness.
it's people like you who drive the poor medical treatment of people wiith mental illness. You can't help anyone you have contempt.for.
And what are you if you would deny anyone medical treatment?
I firmly believe that if our country actually had a decent health care for everyone, and mental health was considered a medical problem, and people were able to get care, there would be a lot less people in prisons. I used to work in a prison for in Colorado, and almost all of them had committed their offenses while on drugs or alcohol, self medicating their depression or psychosis. You should see the % of these guys on psych meds in prison.
I met you at a function at the Carter Center. I didn't know of your esteemed background!