Thursday, September 28, 2023

Mental Health Writings: NAMI’s Attitude toward Mental Health Consumers such as Me Is—Decidedly Unfriendly!

 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!     

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