Mental Health Writings: NAMI’s Wretched Writing Style

 (The last of my mental health writings for a while, which was true at the time of posting--GF)

I know NAMI well, having been a member since December 2019 (but not going to renew my membership when it expires November 2023), receiving its publications, including its national magazine, NAMI Advocate, and reading many of the articles it publishes.  Thus can I properly pass judgment on what I’ve seen:  what I’ve seen is truly wretched, article after article (and the same goes for NAMI oral presentations at conferences) in the same breezy, superficial, saccharinely cheery “positive thinking” vibe that does massive injustice to the seriousness of the topics it deals with:  mental illness, its treatment, and its effects on families, caregivers and others.  Moreover, it’s a very homogenous style, where one presentation is interchangeable with another, as though they were auto parts.  This even carries over in the first full-length book NAMI has commissioned, NAMI Chief Psychiatrist Dr. Kenneth Duckworth’s You Are Not Alone (New York: Zando, 1922), wherein the breeziness and good cheer of the presentation once again belies the seriousness of the topics covered:  mental health and its treatment, and the successful navigation to get such treatment through the maze of clinics and practitioners, insurance companies, “stigma,” and the myriad of people affected by being involved with a person under psychiatric care, such as caregivers, family members, friends, and others.

 

This kind of language, which is assiduously promoted by many nonprofits, of which NAMI is one, and which is designed to be “inclusive” (even though some of us with a more “elitist” regard for language might regard it as “dumbing down” or “speaking only in euphemisms”), has been masterfully dissected by Atlantic staff writer George Packer in the April 2023 issue of that esteemed magazine (which is a hallmark of genuinely good writing).  His short but pithy article, “The Moral Case Against Euphemism” devastatingly mocks such “inclusive” but vapid language, language that Packer dismisses well and with flourish.  He writes:  “Imprecise language is less likely to offend.  Good writing—vivid imagery, strong statements—will hurt, because it’s bound to convey painful truths.”  Such as, in the case of NAMI, the actual realities of living with, and suffering through, mental illness.  “Imprecise language” also infantilizes—another hallmark involved in its usage.  Again, as Packer points out, the euphemistic, “inclusive” language of the new nonprofit Language Police is pitched to a sixth- to eighth-grade reading level.  While such may theoretically garner a larger reading audience—after all, according to statistics I’ve seen, 57% of the US population reads only at a sixth-grade level or below—it does so by trivializing and infantilizing content, and making the expression of adult content childish rather than adult; thus radically oversimplifying and brushing off the inevitable hardships that will attend in the real world when people have to deal with mental illness and psychological disfunction, either in themselves, or in loved ones and acquaintances.  Remember, the sixth-grade level is only the beginning of real literacy, and is too young to acquire critical reading skills and understanding, which don’t even begin until the eighth-grade level.

 

NAMI’s wretched language also suffers from all the defects adult writer (who wrote as an adult for adults) Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out in her excellent critique of the cult of “positive thinking,” her book Bright-Sided (New York: Picador, 2009).  Ehrenreich’s book is aptly subtitled “How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America” (emphasis in original), and tears apart all the “positive thinking,” “look on the bright side” pabulum that infests the culture particularly of the US in the present time.  This includes the world of the nonprofit advocacy groups such as NAMI.  Being forever “bright-sided,” always “thinking positive” undermines what Ehrenreich properly calls for:  not negative thinking but (her words) “realistic thinking.”  Infantilizing the issue of mental illness rather than writing about as an adult speaking to other adults doesn’t make its understanding any less onerous or palatable, and doesn’t extend the realm of proper diagnosis, treatment, and provision of help one iota.  And Ehrenreich should know—she wrote Bright-Sided by becoming involuntarily immersed in the universe of “positive thinking” when she had to deal with her own breast cancer, where the realm of “positive thinking” in the face of a serious medical condition abounded!

 

Yet, mental illness and its often-painful realities can be properly dealt with in adult ways by adult prose aimed at adult readers in very compelling ways.  We need not the saccharine nostrums of the NAMI Advocate or You are Not Alone.  As an excellent example, take a good reading of Jonathan Rosen’s “American Madness” in the May 2023 issue of the Atlantic, the poignant and often wrenching account by Rosen of his childhood best friend, a brilliant young man who became schizophrenic and, in a fit of schizophrenic hallucination, murdered his fiancé.  Rosen’s account brings home not only the realities of mental illness, but also, our failure to provide adequate psychiatric treatment for it all too frequently.  This is adult writing for adults.  And thus makes a positive contribution to the subject.  A greater contribution, I might add, than I think NAMI makes.

 

I, too, am a writer who’s had to deal with my own mental illness (or, technically, “mental disorder”) of borderline personality disorder accompanied by bouts of acute depression.  Often my own disorder would interfere with my writing, and chagrin not only myself, but also editors, who were understandably irked at my not always delivering on time.  I had to write under the double burden of professional pressures and mental illness going on simultaneously, and had to overcome both.  But overcome I did, had a fairly successful (not monetarily, but in quality and quantity of output) several-decades long writing career (which still continues, by the way).  I even became a biographee in Who’s Who in America for both 2019 and 2020, thus achieving my Andy Warhol fifteen-minutes-of-fame!  And, I can say, without the help, but only the hindrance, of NAMI.  (I’ve written on NAMI’s hindrance elsewhere in my other mental health writings such as my “Politically Incorrect Leftist” BlogSpot blogs of September 19 and 28, 2023.)

 

All of which makes me very appreciative of adult writing for adults.  Over the past few years, I’ve been reading adult writers who wrote for adults in both the socialist press and popular literature, from Frederick Engels to Ernest Hemingway, and can tell you firsthand, reading adult literature written for adult readers is a joy to behold!  It will also “spoil” you, make you not want to go back to “inclusive” infantilizing, “positive thinking” pabulum such as NAMI proffers.  But being so “spoiled” is definitely worth it. 

 

  

 

   

A NAMI Paper on NAMI: Malfeasance at All Levels, Local, State, National

 I’m a member of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), have been since December 2019.  I joined as a mental health consumer hoping to find support in my recovery from my diagnosed psychiatric disorders, borderline personality disorder with chronic depression, and also to advocate for my fellow mental health consumers, to ensure they get the excellent treatment they deserve—treatment not only competent and evidence-based, but also given with empathy, compassion, and understanding.  Alas, I was to be disappointed.  Despite that they should be the focus of any group supposedly advocating for mental health, I soon found out that mental health consumers are given short shrift in NAMI at all levels, delegated to the “back of the bus” in favor of rich “caregivers,” i.e., families that can financially afford to support dependent adult children with mental illness, as well as also favoring both the Psychiatric Establishment and Big Pharma.  Tellingly, all three are major donors to NAMI.  As the old saying goes, follow the money.

 

Prior to Covid, in 2019 and into early 2020, I was feeling quite positive about my relationship with NAMI.  I met weekly with then-Greater Indianapolis NAMI Executive Director Julie Hayden, in friendly and extensive chats that made me feel valued as a mental health consumer.  I attended Indianapolis NAMI’s Christmas party and Hayden encouraged me to write on mental health issues (I am an extensively published writer and poet).  She even sent me a Christmas and birthday present (my birthday’s in December) on behalf of Indianapolis NAMI.  But all changed with the onset of Covid restrictions, which, it certainly does seem to me, NAMI at all levels—local, state, and national—used as a pretext not only to shut down operations, but to also have its staff members use as an excuse to take extended vacations, leaving ordinary NAMI members in a lurch.  Certainly, that was true of both Indianapolis and Indiana NAMI Executive Directors, the aforementioned Ms. Hayden, and Indiana NAMI Executive Director Barbara Thompson, who simply became unavailable for the next three years (Hayden went to another job), as well as NAMI local and state presidents, who neither answered phone calls, letters, or e-mails.  Which I, as a blue-collar Essential Worker grocery stocker, who had to keep on working in a public setting, and thus faced coming down with Covid myself (though I did get all my vaccinations, including boosters, as available), found not only wrongheaded but unconscionable.  Ms. Thompson has yet to respond to any of my e-mails over this period of time, which, quite frankly, I find rude and vulgar.  Same goes for one David Binet of the national NAMI staff, who sent me one very condescending e-mail in response to my expressed concern on both Hayden and Thompson being so incommunicado, and who also has never responded to any other e-mails from me.  Seriously—if NAMI employees lack the courtesy to even answer e-mails, how is that not egregiously rude and dismissive?  Does it not indeed show contempt for the rank-and-file NAMI dues-paying membership?  However, I do have to state that national NAMI’s chief psychiatrist, Dr. Ken Duckworth, has been unfailingly polite and responsive to my e-mails sent him!  The one sole bright spot in this whole affair.

 

In 2021 I attended two Indiana NAMI statewide virtual meetings by Zoom, and in both meetings, I was wrongly treated.  In the first, a supposed Leadership Summit, not only was my mute off, I responded only by silent “chat” to the remarks by a spokesperson for Indiana’s Clubhouse system, which, quite frankly, I found to be only public relations fluff, and lacking in substance.  For this, Ms. Thompson abruptly removed me from access to the meeting, thus causing me to forfeit my $40 registration fee.  She later contacted me (only once, and the only time she’s ever contacted me, in a period of two years) to have what she termed a “conversation” about this, where it was clear she had a clear misunderstanding of what I’d actually done, and the “conversation” was left hanging.  I have e-mailed her repeatedly on this, but she has not responded, and, as far as I’m concerned, Indiana NAMI owes me my $40 wrongly forfeited.  Indiana NAMI is having its first in-person meeting, another Leadership Summit, in late June of this year, 2023, and I promise all, I will confront Ms. Thompson on her behavior!

 

At a later meeting in 2021, I was victimized by another Indiana NAMI staffer, who pulled a bait-and-switch on me.  I submitted a query to the panelists, mental health professionals who had been mental health consumers themselves, asking for their feedback on the 47 years of inept and malfeasant psychiatric “care” I’d received at Indiana CMHCs and university clinics, which had put my life on hold and reduced me to a desperate, dependent outpatient not receiving the help I really needed.  The staffer host read my question, which pointed out the bad care I’d received, then asked the panelists to comment—not on the bad care I’d received, but on the good care they’d received!  This soon degenerated into a back-and-forth on art therapy, and I signed out of the meeting in disgust.  Again, this was neither addressed nor redressed.

 

As for national NAMI, the same indifference to my concerns as a mental health consumer NAMI member have prevailed, with the sole exception of Dr. Duckworth, who expressed warmth toward me and a wish that he’d been able to interview me on my experiences for his recent NAMI book, You Are Not Alone.   I have submitted my mental health writings to the appropriate NAMI body for publication, but they have not been published, because, quite frankly, I write in an adult style and format for adult readers.  I simply do not write in that breezy, superficial 6^th-8^th -grade-level way NAMI demands of its writers (including the hapless in this regard Dr. Duckworth), so that even a half-literate housewife does not feel intellectually “challenged” by NAMI’s message, which comes across to me, a college graduate, as ofttimes far too superficial and saccharinely overoptimistic.  NAMI would do well to behoove itself of both George Packer’s “The Moral Case Against Euphemism,” his devastating critique of “woke” language and fashionable “dumbing down” in the April 2023 issue of the Atlantic; and the late trenchant writer Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided (Picador, 2009), her equally devastating critique of “positive thinking” and eternal optimism (for which she urges substituting—realism).  As a NAMI member, of course, I receive its state-affiliate newsletters and its national magazine, the NAMI Advocate, which I routinely find hopelessly superficial and tritely breezy in their presentations, and overoptimistic to the point of being treacly in their subject matter.  No, this is not good writing, not by a long shot.  It’s not even conventionally adequate.  No, it’s just irritating and simplistic.  Certainly, all that comes across in the latest issue of the Advocate (Spring 2023), in its articles devoted to “Identity and Mental Health,” where “identity” and “culture” are given, in tune with the superficial approach of postmodernism, very static and set-in-stone connotations.  Reality, needless to say, is far more complex and flexible.  While I personally have a superficial “identity” of cis white male, I also have deeper and more substantive identities of blue-collar unionized Essential Worker; university graduate in economics with a strong math and statistics background; extensively published writer and poet, even at the national level; ex-Catholic militant atheist who has moral as well as intellectual objections to religion; abused child and adolescent, victim of multiple abuse from parents and relatives, teachers and bullying classmates, ignored when not denigrated; and that far from exhausts all my various “identities,” which all come together to give me my own particular, integrated, unique personality!  (I should also add, not just “mental health consumer,” but “victim of psychiatry” as well!)

 

Thus does all this sum up my thumbnail sketch of objections to all levels of functioning that characterize NAMI today, of which I am, as well, a dues-paid member who will renew his membership at the proper time, and who also promises to fulfill my “proper role” as a NAMI member by being critical of it when it deserves criticism, at the local, state