Mental Health Writings: OPEN LETTER TO THE MEMBERS AND STAFF OF CIRCLE CITY CLUBHOUSE

 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 21^st 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 45^th 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.