The Circle City Clubhouse is an alleged "mental health recovery program" that is not effective at all! I've been a member of the Clubhouse since January 2016, and my disappointment with it, as well as the disappointment with it expressed by my friends and my former psychotherapist, is quite manifest. Yet it continues when it should not, and even gets uncritical endorsement from Indiana NAMI, which it certainly doesn't deserve, as this letter to the Clubhouse below makes quite clear. We mental health consumers need effective programs, not pseudo-programs such as the Circle City Clubhouse; yet it is a sign of the refusal of society as a whole to respect the natural needs of us who've been struggling with "mental illness" that, instead of effective programs, we get stuck with pseudos such as the Circle City Clubhouse. I researched what I wrote in the letter, and I stand by it 100%. Clubhouse Executive Director Jay Brubaker told me pointedly he would not respond to my "insults," to which I answer that the appropriate response to "insult" is "If the shoe fits, wear it!"--GF.
TEXT OF MY LETTER TO CIRCLE CITY CLUBHOUSE
Dear
Circle City Clubhouse:
Your
newsletter asks me to contribute my employment news as a loosely defined
Clubhouse member (because I don’t consider myself a Clubhouse member anymore,
even though I am a mental health consumer), so here it is. I was successfully employed at my job at
Kroger before I even became a Clubhouse member—I became a member in January
2016, but had been successfully employed at my job since August 15, 2015. I started out at $10.70 an hour. I’m still employed at Kroger, and now make
$16.60 an hour, a 55% increase in my hourly wage, and the first job I ever held
where I actually got regular wage increases!
I attribute this to the fact that my job is unionized (UFCW Local 700),
and that thus, wage increases are part of the union contract, as are many other
benefits and protections I have. Between
my wages, my Social Security, and my Kroger pension, which is also through the
union, I made nearly $49,000 in 2022.
Not only that. After 69 months of
successful psychotherapy that overcame 47 years (yes, 47 years!) of
malfeasant and inept psychiatric treatment, overwhelmingly through Indiana
CMHCs, I’m now fully recovered from my mental health malady of borderline
personality disorder and chronic depression.
I’ve been successfully off antidepressants since November 2004, had it
confirmed by a psychiatrist in December 2005 that I didn’t need antidepressants
anymore, and haven’t had a depressive episode since 2003. I am what mental health recovery looks
like! And you notice how different it
looks than the average denizen of the Clubhouse, overwhelmingly comprised of
people who are not recovering, but who are sadly staying the same, and
stagnating!
I’ve
gotten news updates on the Clubhouse from other former members, and what is
clear is that the Circle City Clubhouse is one very flawed institution, one
that does not advance mental health recovery! Circle City Clubhouse has the chutzpah to
claim it’s helping 310 mental health consumers recover, but that’s utter
nonsense—perhaps 310 people have gone through the Clubhouse, but most do not
stay. Your hard-core participants only
number about 20, and not only has the Clubhouse driven out all its college
graduate members, it’s also, I say, driven out most, or even all, its members
who are high school graduates. What I
saw of the 20 people who attended the Clubhouse regularly, though I don’t know
this as a fact, but it seems to be a reasonable surmise, is that the majority,
or even all, of the regular Clubhouse attendees are high school dropouts, and
the Clubhouse is thus but a rest lounge for unskilled, uneducated, menial
workers! This last point is important,
because I do mindless menial labor at my Kroger job, but I get paid $16.60 an
hour for doing it. Which is why I will never
do work at the Clubhouse for free, as it demands—doing work for free is the
very dictionary definition of slave labor, lest we forget. The Circle City Clubhouse’s “work therapy” is
nothing but mindless menial work, and is limited to such unskilled jobs as toilet
cleaning, emptying wastebaskets, and peeling potatoes. The Clubhouse relies on this free labor to
save money on cleaning and other needs, otherwise it would have to hire someone
to do these. The Clubhouse thus exploits
its members.
The
Clubhouse now has to insist all its hires be college graduates, as it should
be, yet it only pays them about $11.50 an hour—for a job that requires a
college degree! Sheesh! Do I need to remind the Clubhouse that my
Kroger job requires only a high school diploma, although I have a college
degree (in economics), and I make $16.60 an hour at it! This coming summer my pay will go up to
$17.10 an hour, and in the summer after that, to $17.60 an hour. Yet you hire required college degree holders
as substantially less than that! No
wonder you get such bad, inept help, such as Evan (whom I nickname Evan the
Inept) and Marissa (ditto, Marissa the Cipher).
In fact, except for Peter, whom you laid off, you have never had decent
employees at the Clubhouse! Peter was
easily your best employee, yet you paid him so little he had to dip into his savings
to make ends meet. Then you laid him
off. Now he works at an auto parts store
making more money at yet another job that requires only a high school diploma
than he did at the Clubhouse at a job requiring a college degree! He was easily the best employee you ever
had. So how did you treat him? By sticking it to him!
Then
there was Lindsay Brock, the Assistant Executive Director, who was an employee
under Executive Director Jay Brubaker’s supervision, and is now—Jay's live-in
girlfriend! Do I need to mention the
obvious conflict of interest here, or mention the CEO who was fired for having
a consensual affair with his Chief Financial Officer? But then, Jay is but a schmoozer and toady who
sucks up to the Clubhouse Board and has the Board in his back pocket. He’s a lawyer by training, but was not a good
one, as I’ve found out—one prime example of his lawyering being that he was so
proud that, after a long period of wrangling, he got his client into
arbitration, even though referring to arbitration was in in the original
contract to begin with! I’m a trained
paralegal who worked under good lawyers, so I know inept lawyering when I hear
about it—and that’s why Jay is not a lawyer, but an NGO worker! He’s just not good enough for effective
lawyering—which became massively evident when the Clubhouse members came up
with a statement on what constituted acceptable free speech and what did not,
which was drawn up more strictly than it needed legally to be. Jay could’ve played a constructive role as a
trained lawyer by advising the Clubhouse members on what was required, but he
refrained from doing so. The supposed
“mental health professionals” who are Clubhouse employees thus don’t even do
the jobs they’re supposedly capable of, what they really should be doing—they
are but glorified babysitters who don’t supervise the children under their
watch! And very sadly, that is what
many, if not most, regular Clubhouse attendees are—adult children in their
mindsets, capabilities, and actions. No
wonder college graduates such as I, not to mention those with at least a high
school diploma, find the Clubhouse so utterly lacking.
But
I did participate in the Clubhouse until 2019, and in 2018 even went to the
effort to draft a 14-page paper I submitted to the Clubhouse retreat that year
in an attempt to offer constructive criticism and suggestions that in my
opinion would’ve improved the Clubhouse.
Lindsay, who was Chair of the retreat, promised me I’d have the chance
to present my paper, but then she reneged—instead, she allowed Savella (ah,
good ol’ Savella the Special Bella!), another person, and Nathan (ah,
Nathan—chronological age, 40s, emotional age 13!), none of whom had read my
paper, to speak instead, and who trashed me personally! Now, if that isn’t severe ineptness at one’s
job!! But such is par for the course at
the Clubhouse.
Let
it also be noted that I’ve contributed seven articles under my own name to the
Clubhouse newsletter, more than any other signed writer—yet they were all just
ignored! Well, what do you expect from
people who are most likely not even high school grads, and thus functionally
illiterate? I’ve heard reliably that
Chuck (yes, Chuck the Muck, rhymes with f**k!) can’t even read, yet he always
wants to do everything, even that which he’s incapable of, and relies on
manipulative appeals to pity to get his way.
Recently,
but only recently, the Clubhouse has done some things right. It reached out to its member list (which is
overwhelmingly comprised only of paper members, not actual participants in the
Clubhouse) during COVID-19 back in 2020 to see if anyone needed anything. I didn’t, of course, but that was
thoughtful. The Clubhouse newsletter has
now gotten around to including words of praise and encouragement to members who
get involved in Transitional Employment or other jobs, but it’s a case of,
despite this, “too little too late,” in my opinion. Despite this small but good improvement in
the newsletter, the newsletter still remains insipid and infantile, not a vital
read by any means. Thus, I cannot in any
way, shape or form consider the Circle City Clubhouse an asset or a resource
for mental health consumers.
This letter needs to be widely shared within the Clubhouse, and presented to all the alleged members, paper and otherwise. It should be included as an insert in the next newsletter. I invite all, Jay, Board members, all staff members, all Clubhouse members, to reach out to me with comments. You may e-mail me at georgefish666@yahoo.com, or else mail me at my address. I welcome feedback, and will make an honest effort to respond (although since I work full time, I have massive time constraints), but feedback sent to me must be civil. I will not tolerate nastiness, ad hominem arguments, or name-calling. Also, criticism of what I wrote must be based on the facts of what I wrote, and must make an earnest effort to be concrete, accurate, and constructive.
Critically yours,
George
Fish
No comments:
Post a Comment