written by
George
Fish,
mental
health consumer,
Clubhouse
member
since
January 2016
(It's time someone finally called out that close-to-an-absolute scam, the Clubhouse system for mental health consumers that's supposed to aid in their recovery (but doesn't, in many cases), and which vary in quality so widely one often wonders if different Clubhouses are even in the same Clubhouse system! Certainly, one of the very worst is the Circle City Clubhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana, to which this "Open Letter" addresses itself--GF)
Yes, I’ve been a Clubhouse member
since the beginning of 2016, although I deliberately haven’t been active since
the pre-COVID days before 2020. I did
return once not quite a year ago, in 2023, as an example of positive mental
health recovery, and even shared a document I had written on my recovery, which
was well received (and actually read!) by Clubhouse members, and which was
originally recommended for publication in the Clubhouse newsletter; but that
was scotched by the then-Assistant Executive Director, Pat, who claimed that my
recovery was strictly a “personal” one (whatever that means!), and besides, I’d
also urged Clubhouse members to make more demands on staff members to make sure
their needs were met (isn’t that what Clubhouse staff members are there for?),
which was a big “No-no” for Pat. Yet,
“personal” or not, for my recovery really had nothing to do with the Clubhouse,
my recovery is very much real, and is recognized as such by all those who did
Know Me When, and now know me as I am now.
However, unlike almost all the new
Clubhouse members who are interviewed for the Clubhouse newsletter (by the way,
a very insipid and too much real-content-free newsletter), I was not
doing nothing before I joined the Clubhouse.
I had just started a full-time job that previous summer, on August 15,
2015, and, though very late in life, I was now employed in a job that was permanent,
layoff-free, which paid decently, and had union protection! I was also actively engaged in very effective
psychotherapy, and had been since July 2014, and was to remain in active
therapy until the end of June 2019—69 months of most helpful
psychotherapy to make up for 47 years of very bad, frequently
malfeasant, and very ineffective psychiatric treatment I’d endured at CMHCs (Community
Mental Health Centers) and university clinics from September 1965 to beginning
of June 2012! Further, even though it
took me 11 years, I’d also earned a university degree (Bachelor of Arts in
economics, Indiana University), and had, through Indiana Vocational
Rehabilitation, earned a certificate as a paralegal—while also suffering from
my mental disorder of a schizoid personality disorder and chronic depression. So, unlike way too many Clubhouse members, I
was far from doing nothing before I came to the Clubhouse! Where too many come, I’m afraid, simply
because the housekeepers, supposed mental health professionals, and others
refer them simply to get them from being underfoot. And to my mind, too often this is just
substituting one kind of warehousing for another.
Yes, I’ll be blunt, as I will be
throughout this Open Letter. In fact,
from reading the Clubhouse newsletter, I know of only two exceptions: one was a college graduate like me, and was
an active rap singer; the other, Alec C, has a good union job at UPS. So, both were far from dead-end kids with too
little gumption to make anything of their lives—which, unfortunately, is not
the case with far too many Clubhouse members of my acquaintance. As an excellent psychotherapist I once had
put it so well, “Recovery means meeting challenges and overcoming them.” However, one does not come to the Clubhouse
to learn how to “overcome;” one too often comes to the Clubhouse simply to mark
time, and do unpaid menial labor, for which there is zero reward. Some have been coming to the Clubhouse for
years, and are no more on the track to recovery after all those years than they
were at the beginning. Far too often,
the Clubhouse, with its terrible dearth of programs, is just someplace you come
to kill time and stagnate.
I was active in the Circle City
Clubhouse from January 2016 until late summer 2019. I remember my first introductory orientation
to the Clubhouse well: I was impressed
initially with what it seemed to offer; at last, I had found a welcoming home
as a mental health consumer! However,
what I hadn’t realized at the time was that my hosts were but able presenters,
they had been scripted well. When they
were off-script, as they later were at the Clubhouse, they were both horrible
and knew little to nothing, although both liked to opine based on their really
substantive lack of knowledge! My next
encounter at the Clubhouse was the beginning of the disillusionment—here I
encountered one of my original hosts, Nathan, going off on a ten-minute rant
about how he, an evangelical Christian, wished he could afford to tithe, even
though he was broke and couldn’t hold a job for any length of time! I also encountered Clubhouse cliquishness, as
no one ever greeted me or said even “Hi” to me this whole time of 2016-2019. Despite this, I participated; and my outside
friends were really glad I had at last found a place congenial to sharing my
experiences, substantially negative, as a mental health consumer. Alas, it was not to be! The last thing Clubhouse members were was
open about their experiences and encounters as mental health consumers; very
quickly, I realized how mind-dead almost all of them were, especially the
regular attendees. I shared my mental
health writings I’d done earlier with the Clubhouse, donating copies to the
Clubhouse library, which were soon lost, and with no staff member knowing what
had happened to them, which, to me, was an unacceptable travesty. Didn’t the staff exercise normal supervisory
duties over the Clubhouse members? The
answer, I found out, was No, that “benign neglect” was the way of the Clubhouse
world, even when it led irresponsibly to my documents getting irretrievably lost. Which was so shameful I can never forgive the
Clubhouse for allowing that to happen.
All this despite my initially being
quite active in the Clubhouse, notably from the time I joined, in January 2016,
until the summer of 2018, and even somewhat afterward. For example, I published eight articles
under my byline in the Clubhouse newsletter, the most that anyone has published
under his/her byline. I also
prepared for the 2018 Clubhouse retreat a 14-page paper of suggestions on how
the Clubhouse could be improved, and gave specifics in this paper on just what
I found wrong and inadequate with the Clubhouse. I penned fourteen pages out of love! Yes, tough love, but that’s legitimate love,
especially when I saw the Clubhouse messing up, functioning quite badly. Alas, I wasn’t even allowed to present my
paper, even though then-Assistant Executive Director Lindsay Brock promised me
I’d be allowed to. (No longer employed
at the Clubhouse, where Executive Director Jay Brubaker was her supervisor,
she’s now Jay’s live-in girlfriend, although he calls her his “fiancé;”
however, in this “woke” age, supervisors having even consensual sexual
relations with work subordinates have gotten into deep trouble for it.) When my paper was finally introduced as part
of the day’s agenda, Brock, instead of calling on me to present an outline of
my tome, turned the floor over to others instead, people who had never read my
paper, but who criticized me sharply for even writing it. One of those persons who did this was
long-time Clubhouse member Savella, and she was followed by another woman who
essentially repeated Savella. Long-time
member Nathan again then chimed in, attacking me for not spending more time at
the Clubhouse despite what he knew to be true, that I worked full-time, I was
fully self-supporting because of my job, and thus didn’t have the “leisure” to
hang around the Clubhouse that Nathan did, because he always seemed to be
regularly unemployed! (Holding a job for
a while, only to lose it.) All this was
hardly fair to me, but no one at the Clubhouse objected, neither members nor
staff—even though it was obvious that my specific voice was being summarily
silenced!
Of course, I differed substantively
from most Clubhouse members, even though, like them, I had a psychiatrically
diagnosed mental illness. For one thing,
I’m a college graduate, who, even though it took me 11 years, still graduated despite
my mental illness! I’m also employed full-time, and completely
self-supporting—no welfare, no SSDI, no SSI, no working merely part-time when I
wanted full-time work, and now, because I also receive Social Security and a
small pension from my employer in addition to my wages, make $48,000 a year and
own outright my own car. I’m also a
talented, extensively published writer and poet whose writer’s biographies
appear in Who’s Who in America for both 2019 and 2020! In other words, I had (and have still) a lot
of gifts that could’ve been real assets to the Clubhouse, and to its members,
but I was prevented from using them properly, even though I had wanted to. In other words, I was shunned by the
Clubhouse, by members and staff alike.
The only Clubhouse staffer who had
any positive regard for me was Peter Hofstetter, the Clubhouse’s best employee
ever, and one of the first to be laid off because of COVID, while far less able
Clubhouse staffers kept their jobs. A
horrible mistake on the Clubhouse’s part, for which the Clubhouse bears full
responsibility. Peter was conscientious
and able, which can’t be said of all Clubhouse staffers, most of whom are
nothing more than do-little-or-nothing glorified babysitters. Of course, Clubhouse staff wages (except at
the top) are abysmal, but since most Clubhouse staffers do almost nothing, and
don’t even do a good job at the little they do, it’s only “fitting” in a way
they are paid like the teenage babysitters they essentially are—even though they’re
older than teenagers and are required to have college degrees! I’m in the union at my job, and as an active
trade unionist I look askance at the paltry wages Clubhouse staffers accept. (Wages so low that Peter, when he worked at
the Clubhouse, was forced to dip into his savings to maintain himself on his
job, as he had a wife and children to also support.) I remember asking a former staffer (not
Peter) how much he was making, and from the info he gave me, I calculated he
was only making around $11.50 an hour—this in the late part of the second
decade of the 21st Century! I
hope you staffers are now doing better than that, though I really doubt it; if
you are, most likely it isn’t by much; and why you would stomach such low wages
when you are required to “earn” them by having a college degree in the first
place, I find exceptionally appalling!
At my own blue-collar job, which
requires only a high school diploma (and sometimes not even that, if one has an
especially stellar work record), I started out in August 2015 at $10.70 and
hour, which went to $12 an hour in October that year, and built-in annual wage
increases even since, doe to our union contract. I’m now up to $17.60 an hour, an over 60%
increase! Furthermore, and needless to
say, my making halfway decent money at my job is also therapeutic for my mental
health recovery. Which is why I refuse
to do any work at the Clubhouse, as it is for free, i.e., it is, by definition,
slave labor. Were the Clubhouse to have assigned me to college graduate-level jobs, I
might’ve considered working for free; however, since all Clubhouse jobs are
mindless menial labor, I’m not about to do them for free. I do mindless menial labor at my regular job,
and I’m not about to do any such for free!
It’s either pay me adequately, or expect no work whatsoever from me!
Nor does the Clubhouse do anything
substantial for its members to find and hold jobs, a key part of re-entry into
“normal” societal life. In the first
place, the Clubhouse focuses on resume writing, which is useful only for
professional positions; it’s job applications that have to be filled out to get
the prospective employer’s attention, not resumes, and most employers are
wanting to know the applicant’s job record for the previous five years—and it
the applicant doesn’t have one, or it’s not a good one, that’s a hurdle that
has to be jumped over. Clubhouse staff
should be helping prospective jobseekers how to overcome that, but aren’t. Also, they should be helping jobseekers to
know where to look for work, and how to properly pass a job interview. Again, the Clubhouse staff does none of those
things. The Clubhouse further has far
too few Transitional Employers, can’t seem to recruit more, and can’t seem to
hold onto them in many cases. Again, the
staff should be working with Executive Director Jay Brubaker and the Clubhouse Board
of Directors to overcome that.
Further, from what I can gather,
many Clubhouse members are high school dropouts, a sure killer of a decent
future. The Clubhouse staff should be
offering programs to help members get their high school diplomas, or if that’s
not possible, their GEDs. The Clubhouse
staff should also be helping people develop literacy and math skills, should be
recommending books to Jay and the Board that they should include in the
Clubhouse library, and insist that the Clubhouse library have a budget to
purchase books. The staff should also be
encouraging members to read, and to utilize the Clubhouse and public
libraries. Last, the staff should
cajole, gently and tactfully, yet insistently, Clubhouse members to show
gumption and initiative, and actively set goals for themselves, all the better
to achieve mental health recovery. One
is not “recovered” simply because on is on SSDI or SSI and doing nothing;
recovery means holding a “normal” job, and interacting in society like “normal”
persons, not like people with debilitating disabilities.
Yes, the Clubhouse staff, from the
top down, from Executive Director and Assistant Executive Director on down, has
to be more proactive in cajoling and incentivizing Clubhouse members to show
gumption and not be so passive! Also,
Clubhouse members need to “importune” staff members to fulfill their needs, set
up programs to fulfill those needs, and to ensure that staffers are meeting
their needs. This toddler-neglectful
babysitter relationship between members and staffers has got to end!
The Circle City Clubhouse makes the
outrageous claim that 310 of its members, out of a total membership since its
existence of 320, have recovered! This
is a pure lie. Truth is, most people who
ever attended the Clubhouse either dropped out, or showed up once, at their
orientation meeting, and were never heard from again. But I say, they didn’t leave because they
“recovered,” they left because they saw how little the Clubhouse had to offer
them. (One of the reasons I also left
the Clubhouse.) But of the 320 members
who’ve come (and usually have gone) through the Clubhouse, only about 20 are
active participants, and they tend to be the same old participants. Which I’ll say it bluntly, only indicates
that they’re—stagnating! They somehow
enjoy the meaninglessness of Clubhouse life; but they certainly aren’t
“recovering” from their mental illnesses.
The Clubhouse spends an inordinate
amount of time on fund raising, for what ends no one knows, and, again, just as
with Clubhouse household maintenance, dragoons Clubhouse members to assist in
fund-raising activities, once again, for free.
Unconscionable, same as having members do Clubhouse maintenance work for
free! Clubhouse members deserve to be
paid for their work; not to do so is to use them as slave labor, as I’ve also
said above.
I’m just not impressed by Executive
Director Jay Brubaker, whom I’ve known since 2016, and know him to have one,
and only one, real talent, that of schmoozing.
He knows how to schmooze the Clubhouse Board, he knows how to schmooze
the naïve Clubhouse members, he knows how to schmooze away any objections that
staff might have; in other words, he’s skilled at that, but nothing more. He’s a failed lawyer who could be making a
lot more money were he a halfway decent one.
He’s just skilled at getting away with stuff. He once tried to punish me for being too
“negative” about the Clubhouse, then denied he’d ever threatened me with
reprisal, but then I showed him the e-mail he’d sent me threatening me, and he
had to retreat, bleating lamely that acting against me “was not [his] intent”!
However, Jay could have used his
lawyer’s background and, presumably, the lawyering skills it gave him to advise
the Clubhouse members when they drew up their statement for the Clubhouse on
what would be allowed in the newsletter in terms of articles, and what one
could say in the newsletter. As it was,
the statement drawn up was much more restrictive than legally required, and Jay
could’ve properly used his legal skills to advise these neophyte members in
drawing up a proper statement, one that was fully in accordance with statute
law and court rulings, but was also not overly restrictive. This “hands off” approach that seems to be
required of Jay and the staff actively works against the best wishes of
the Clubhouse members, however, as they lack the expertise that Jay and the
staffers supposedly have. After all, Jay
and the staff all have to possess college degrees to even work in the
Clubhouse, so presumably they’d have good ranges of expertise—something
valuable to ordinary Clubhouse members!
But alas, ordinary Clubhouse members are just cast off to drift, to
muddle through inexpertly, by the Clubhouse’s strict “hands off” approach, an
approach that hurt me personally when, due to lack of proper supervision, my
mental health writings given gladly as a gift to the Clubhouse were
unconscionably lost forever. Passive
babysitters are definitely not what the Clubhouse needs!
In ending, let me point out that my
absence from the Clubhouse has also been a time of—active mental health
recovery for me! My mental health is
sterling, the result of five years and nine months of excellent psychotherapy
done by compassionate and understanding mental health professionals. I have finally put my dismal decades of
horrible mental health treatment at the hands of CMHCs and university clinics,
the quintessential poor people’s mental health treatment outlets, far behind
me. (I feel for all of you still having to use the CMHCs for your mental health
treatment, because they can be so terribly inadequate, especially in Indiana,
which ranks 45th out of the 51 states plus D.C. in terms of adequacy
of mental health services. I lucked
out. I was able to find excellent
private alternatives that accepted my Medicare. [I don’t know any private
provider who’ll accept Medicaid.]) I am no longer in therapy, and I am also no
longer interested in participating in the Clubhouse, save in only one
regard—when Clubhouse International comes around to review the Circle City
Clubhouse’s accreditation, and how well it is doing its job (which is, let me
bluntly say, doing it inadequately), then I’d like to address the Clubhouse
International accreditation body on why Circle City Clubhouse should be
decertified.
Unless, of course, the Clubhouse
takes my criticisms of it to heart (as expressed in this Open Letter, and in
earlier writings to the Clubhouse), and makes necessary changes and
improvements. But if the Clubhouse continues
its presently highly inadequate business-as-usual, then it needs to be
decertified!
Other than that, I wish not to be
involved, although as I am writing this Open Letter in good faith, I do hope it
will be received in good faith also, and I encourage all at the Clubhouse who
wish to, members and staffers alike, to reply to me and my Open Letter. Say anything you want, be as firm with me as
you wish, but I do require this: you must
be civil! No profanity, no name-calling,
no verbal abuse whatsoever. You’re all
adults—write like adults! You may send
all such replies to me via my e-mail, georgefish666@yahoo.com. (Yes, that is the Mark of the Beast from
Revelation! I’m proudly an ex-Catholic
atheist, proud survivor of Catholic parental and school system abuse.) I end, “Therapeutically yours, and wishing
Clubhouse members much better than they’re getting.” Yes, you can recover! Each of you can improve your
situation! Just have the gumption to
try! Keep in mind always the old Chinese
saying: “Don’t fear going slow, fear
standing still.” Yes, even a little bit
of progress can be a lot. Don’t forget
it.
That is all I have to say, and I
wish you all well. I give all of you,
members and staff alike, my love: tough love,
to be sure, but tough love is sometimes the best kind of love one can give—or
get.
