I used to call my mental health
writings “The NAMI Papers,” but as I no longer consider myself part of NAMI,
even though formally I’m a dues-paid member until the end of November 2023,
which I explained in detail in the post just below this that detailed Indiana
NAMI’s egregious malfeasance toward me, I now call my mental health writings
simply “Mental Health Writings.”
Simply and directly, I am fed up to
my Fish (my last name) fishy gills with NAMI at all levels, national, Indiana,
and Indianapolis. Indiana NAMI’s actions
against me on June 6, 2023 (of which I wrote on my last blog, September 19,
2023), was the absolute last straw. I
won’t dwell on the details of what happened then, as you, the readers, can
easily read them for yourselves, but I had finally had it with the
insensitivity and malfeasance of NAMI at all levels toward me: from the condescending e-mail sent me by one
David Binet of national NAMI (who hoped for me to “heal” after he’d rejected my
complaint in its entirety by simply referring to the Executive Directors of
both Indianapolis and Indiana NAMI as “professionals,” implying they could do
no wrong); the slight and refusal to get back to me as promised by the former
Indianapolis Executive Director, with whom, before Covid, I had met cordially
once a week, and, because of this, felt validated as a mental health consumer;
Indiana NAMI’s Executive Director refusing to respond to any of my e-mails sent
her prior to June 6, 2023, but in response to that one only, accused me of
“harassment” to the Indiana NAMI Board of Directors, which then reprimanded me,
barred me from NAMI activities even though I was a fully dues-paid member, and
same as Mr. Binet, said to me that because it and the persons I had contacted
in NAMI disagreed with my complaints, that mere statement of disagreement meant
”they consider the matters closed,” to quote directly from Indiana NAMI’s Board
of Directors June 6 letter! (No matter
whether or not I considered the matter closed; I was
irrelevant.) Only one person in the
whole of NAMI, at any and all levels, has been at all kind and considerate to
me: Dr. Kenneth (Ken) Duckworth,
national NAMI’s Chief Psychiatrist, with whom I’ve shared several pleasant
e-mail correspondences.
But all this horribleness from
2019-2023 was not the first time NAMI had shafted me. All the way back in 2005, it did a number on
me too. Back then my application for
SSDI benefits I was entitled to wasn’t going through, and though I asked about
this repeatedly with my Gallahue CMHC case manager in Indianapolis about this,
all he’d reply was, “It’s not going through,” though each time I asked me to
tell me what he was doing , he refused to do so, which was causing me
great anxiety. (Needless to say,
although I was working, a regularly but strictly seasonal job that left me
unemployed much of the year, I needed that SSDI badly.) I complained about this to Indiana NAMI and
Indiana NAMI responded by—barring me from further contacting it on this! However, the anxiety I suffered caused me to
be “liberated” from my job, and so I went over to the case manager’s office and
asked him pointedly to show me just what he was doing that was holding up my
application. I found out, ruefully: he was entering as the address of Gallahue
CMHC only “Gallahue Mental Health,” an obviously incomplete address that the
computer, being the big idiot that it is, was rejecting. Needless to say, I was appalled, and
rightfully so! So I entered the complete
full address, “ Gallahue Community Mental Health Center,” and voila! the
application went through, while my case manager stood there dumbfounded as an ape. Within twenty-four hours all the necessary
paperwork was completed, after being incredibly, stupidly, held up for four
months! That was June 2005. In August, I received all my SSDI, current
payments as well as back payments. I
gave my case manager, whose last name was Bell, and whose intelligence clearly
was not ringing clear as a bell, the invidious moniker “Dull Thud,” and even
wrote a satirical song about him and this incident, “He’s Just A Dull
Thud.” I also volubly complained about
this all to both my case manager and my Gallahue psychotherapist, both of whom
responded by—refusing all contact with me whatsoever for a year, not resuming
contact with me at all until August 2006!
(However, later on my therapist became quite helpful with my other
complaints against Gallahue.)
Although mental health consumers
such as myself should be the raison d’etre of NAMI’s existence—after all, it’s
official full name is the National Alliance on Mental Illness—sadly, not only
are we not, but the above experiences that other mental health consumers and I
have had with NAMI only show that we are essentially held in contempt. Although we who suffer mental illness are
urged to overcome the “stigma” associated with psychiatric treatment and get
psychiatric treatment ourselves, we are considered by NAMI to be far less
important than “caregivers,” i.e., those families and their members who care
for mentally ill persons as adult dependents—which is both classist (only the
rich can afford to care, perhaps for a lifetime, an adult dependent who does not
work, or works only part-time) and counterproductive to actual mental health
recovery. As I found out ruefully when,
suffering from my devastating disorders of borderline personality disorder and
acute depression I lived far too long under the same roof as my abusive,
blaming parents, my recovery made vast strides when I lived independently of
them, and had to function as a self-sustaining adult. (By the way, neither of my parents would’ve
been caught dead at a NAMI meeting or contacting NAMI: they blamed me for seeking psychiatric help,
saying I brought “shame” upon the family by doing so!) Independence from my alleged “caregivers” was
liberating for me, as it is for so many other mental health consumers.
Unfortunately, too many families as
well as NAMI and mental health professionals don’t see it that way—they see
“recovery” as only being dependent and perhaps qualifying for a pittance of
SSDI or SSI funding, and not at all being independent and actively
participating in the workforce like “normal” people. Now I grant, not all mental health consumers
are capable of doing this: triage is in
order, and some consumers will need to be cared for as dependents, some perhaps
for a lifetime, and completely unable to work, while others will only be able
to work part-time; but many others can recover fully, and recover well, only
all too often they’re not enabled to do so; neither by the psychiatric system,
by NAMI, by the overtouted Clubhouse system, nor by their alleged “caregivers.” However, now in my full recovery, living a
completely “normal” life and making a decent income, I am mentally healthier
than I ever was. For which I owe much
more to my own gumption than I do to NAMI or psychiatry; and although I
benefitted massively from sixty-nine months of excellent psychiatry, my life
was also put on hold and I was reduced to a desperate, dependent outpatient by
forty-seven years of malfeasant and inept psychiatric “help.” Further, despite my mental illness, I also
earned a college degree; I would make an excellent mental health aide to NAMI
if I qualified, but alas I don’t, simply because my college degree is in
economics instead of social work or psychology, which is but a most arbitrary
distinction. (NAMI’s peer-to-peer
recovered mental health consumer assistants are required to have either social
work or psychology degrees; but as far as I’m concerned, too often psychology
or social work degrees are merely akin to degrees in the storied, infamous “basket-weaving.” My college degree required mastering math and
logic skills as well as learning a foreign language, I pointedly note.)
So, goodbye, and good riddance,
NAMI! Don’t let the door hit you on the
way out of my life!
