Mental Health Writings: Clarification--My Very Last Communication to the Circle City Clubhouse

 On Monday, July 15, 2024, I inquired of the status of my "Open Letter to the Members and Staff of the Circle City Clubhouse," which I had hoped would be circulated and commented on, even though it was highly critical; deservedly so, in my opinion.  My phone call was transferred to Jay Brubaker, the Executive Director, who claimed he didn't respond to "personal insult," and then abruptly, most rudely, hung up.  This inspired me to send this very last "Clarification" to the Circle City Clubhouse, which I will no longer communicate with.  As I state, I do not mean to "personally insult" anyone, but I consider Brubaker an utter incompetent, the "professional staff" (all of whom have college degrees) a passive bunch of glorified babysitters willing to accept really paltry wages, and the fellow mental health consumers at the Clubhouse taken for a ride, and they don't even know it.  I'm far too busy in my actual mental health recovery to bother with the Circle City Clubhouse anymore.  Although I would like to tell Clubhouse International, the national governing body of Clubhouses in the US, that Circle City desperately needs to be dis-accredited for being not a place for mental health recovery, but a warehouse where mental health consumers stagnate instead--GF 

It is indeed a shame that the Clubhouse did not see fit to circulate my "Open Letter," and to thus regard me as a second-class member, even though I'm supposedly equal to any other member, which I'm obviously regarded as not.  Recalls, of course, Orwell's "Some are more equal than others," needless to say.  But, while I don't mean this at all as a "personal insult," I do have to say that I have known Jay Brubaker since the beginning of 2016, a good 8 1/2 years now, and regard him as an incompetent and ineffective Executive Director, who has made the Clubhouse not a place for mental health recovery, but a mere warehouse and rest lounge for those not recovered who are denied the tools for recovery by the same Clubhouse, through its inadequate programs, lack of programs, and a "professional staff" that is nothing more than extremely underpaid glorified baby-sitters.  What does the Clubhouse pay its staff now, all of whom are required to have college degrees?  Undoubtedly less than what I make at my job, which requires only a high school diploma, and sometimes not even that, even though I have, of course, a college degree myself (bachelor's in economics, Indiana U.-Bloomington).  But I make $17.60 an hour for doing physically challenging blue-collar mindless menial work--yes, mindless menial work, same as the Clubhouse "provides" in its "work-oriented" program, only with the Clubhouse members required to do so for free!  $17.60/hr., or $704.00/week, vs. free.  And do "professional staff" even make $15.00/hr.?  I doubt it.  When the unlamented Scott worked there, I asked him what he made, and from the info he gave me, deduced he made only $11.50/hr.  The last time I made less than $12.00/hr. at my job was prior to October 2015!  And because of union contact, I'm guaranteed annual wage increases, so that my pay at my job has increased well over 60% since I've been there!  (By the way, to the staff I'd like to say, as an active and staunch trade unionist, "Why do you allow yourself to be demeaned by working for such wages?  Have you no gumption?")  As for mental health recovery, I've completely recovered and live an active "normal" life with a supportive friendship network, a nice apartment where I live without the burden of roommates, own my own car, actively participate in the community and have a social life, and do what I treasure most, continue to write, read, and be intellectually and aesthetically creative!  None, absolutely none, of that was due to the Clubhouse in any way.  The Clubhouse, far from being a community of supportive fellow mental health consumers for me, was exactly its opposite, and is now disapproved of by both my former psychotherapists (I've successfully completed psychotherapy, which was most helpful and enabling), and by my friends network, all of whom had hoped that in the Clubhouse I would find the supportive mental health community I deserved.  It is anger at my disappointing experiences with the Clubhouse that drives me to criticize it, as my fellow mental health consumers definitely deserve better than what they get (or mor accurately, don't get, which is so overwhelmingly much) from the Circle City Clubhouse! 

So I say not "Adieu" but "Good Riddance!"  However, as one last involvement, I would like to speak to the representatives of Clubhouse International when Circle City Clubhouse comes up for re-accreditation.

Cheers!

George Fish      

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.

  

 

 

Mental Health Writings: Open Letter to the Members and Staff of Circle City Clubhouse

 I've been a member of the Circle City Clubhouse since January 2016, and am now deliberately inactive, for the reasons given below in this Open Letter--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 $17.10 an hour, soon to rise 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.

Mental Health Writings: I criticized Indiana NAMI. Indiana NAMI “Read” My Complaint—and Banned Me!

 

I’ve been a dues-paying member of Indiana NAMI since December 2019, which also makes me a member of Indianapolis and national NAMI.  I had planned on attending Indiana NAMI’s Leadership Summit on June 17, 2023, its first live meeting since Covid.  However, I was unable to get the day off work.  So I e-mailed Barb Thompson, Indiana NAMI’s Executive Director, on June 6 informing her I would not be at the meeting, and thus would not be able to “confront” her (my word; I meant verbally, of course) for ignoring all my earlier e-mails to her raising issues about the Circle City and other Clubhouses (a most inadequate “mental health recovery resource” I’d participated in), as well as Indiana and Indianapolis NAMI, numerous e-mails to Ms. Thompson she never had the courtesy and respect for me ever to respond.  For which I properly felt miffed.  Well, this time Ms. Thompson “responded,” sort of.  She took my June 6 e-mail as “harassment,” reported it to Indiana NAMI’s Board of Directors, which acted on her complaint that very day, and, sure enough, later that day I received a copy of a letter written to me by the Indiana NAMI Board of Directors, dated that very June 6, informing me that henceforth I was “barred from attending any forthcoming NAMI Indiana in-person or virtual events, [Emphasis added—GF] specifically including the leadership conference.  If you trespass, appropriate steps will be taken, no matter how much NAMI Indiana would regret the need.  Additionally, you are barred from contacting NAMI board of directors, staff, or members and from appearing at NAMI Indiana’s offices.”  However, I was not removed from being a member of Indiana NAMI or any other NAMI body!  I simply could not attend or participate in any “forthcoming NAMI…events” indefinitely, nor could I contact NAMI in any way.  A perfect Catch-22 statement from Indiana NAMI’s Board of Directors!

 

Further, the Board accused me of stating “publicly” (I did so only by an e-mail to Ms. Thompson, not through any other forum.  I didn’t even tell personal friends of it) that while I would “confront” (the Board of Directors did get that right) Ms. Thompson, I would do so, I allegedly stated (which I didn’t) I would do so for “her behavior” (which is false; I did not use those words, which in the Board’s letter to me were put in quotation marks as though I’d stated them verbatim), when I was only going to confront Ms. Thompson on refusing to honor me by responding to at least one of my several e-mails to her!  Anyway, I had e-mailed Ms. Thompson on June 6 precisely to inform her I would not be attending the June 17 Leadership Summit, as I’d earlier planned, because I—was scheduled to work instead!  All of which was clearly stated in plain English! 

 

As to the original e-mails sent Ms. Thompson, which uttered specific complaints against the Clubhouse system (of which I was a member, by the way, though a deliberately inactive one) and the speech given on the Clubhouse system by one of its leaders back in 2019 (a speech I said at the time, in a private online chat, I though was nothing but empty public-relations fluff), for which I was barred by Ms. Thompson at that 2019 virtual meeting, and my $40 registration fee confiscated, I registered my obvious dissatisfaction, for which I had every right.  Indiana NAMI’s Board of Directors didn’t see it that way, however, as the Board wrote me on June 6, “The various individuals you contacted heard your complaints and responded to you their disagreement; they consider the matters closed.”  While Ms. Thompson did have what she euphemistically called a “conversation” over the phone with me about the Clubhouse, and I did receive one very condescending e-mail from one David Binet of national NAMI, it is simply not proper for only one party to a dispute to render the matters “closed!  As the old saying goes, “It takes two to tango,” two parties to a dispute to decide if the matters are closed.  Obviously, on my part, they were not.  However, I will give Indiana NAMI’s Board credit for doing one thing properly: it sent me a check by mail for the $40 improperly confiscated from me, which was the only thing the Board did appropriately.

 

I mentioned above that while I was barred from participating as a fully dues-paid member of NAMI (which I was, and still am, until the end of November 2023), my NAMI membership was not rescinded—I was simply suspended in midair, held in a state of limbo, by the Board of Directors.  I was soon made aware of this when I received unsolicited e-mails from Indiana NAMI asking me if I’d like to volunteer for certain NAMI activities (from which “forthcoming” NAMI activities I was indefinitely barred), would like to vote for NAMI officeholders, and would even like to attend the Indiana NAMI State Convention!  Yes, Indiana NAMI directly asked me if I’d like to participate in “forthcoming” NAMI activities I was barred from attending—and no, you can’t make this shit up!  I noted this discrepancy once again in an e-mail to Ms. Thompson (which I was at least technically barred from sending), but once again, as per usual, I received no response.  This, the personal slighting of me by Indianapolis NAMI’s former Executive Director, the degradingly condescending e-mail mentioned above by national NAMI’s David Binet, and the deliberate and ongoing slights and insults from Ms. Thompson and the Indiana NAMI Board of Directors has made me seriously rethink my NAMI membership; so, most likely, in fact, 99% assuredly, I will not be renewing my NAMI membership when it expires the last day of November 2023.

 

On my “Politically Incorrect Leftist” BlogSpot blog, I specifically criticized both the Circle Clubhouse, and implicitly the Clubhouse system, in blogs on April 18 and May 12, 2023, and specifically criticized all levels of NAMI, Indianapolis, Indiana, and national, in a blog also on May 12.  I stand by these criticisms 100%, and according to the letter I received from Indiana NAMI’s Board of Directors, these blogs caused consternation within NAMI.  Well, tough beanies!  Free speech is free speech, and if I’m wrong, let the Clubhouse system and NAMI prove me wrong!  As for me, I proudly refer all interested readers to my blogs, where the articles I’m referencing are very easy to find. 

 

            

Another NAMI Paper Sharply Critiquing the Circle City Clubhouse

 

This critique supplements my January 13, 2023, letter on the Circle City Clubhouse, which was posted in April 2023 on this very “Politically Incorrect Leftist” blog, and builds on the information brought forth in that letter.  What is different is, I researched the criteria for Clubhouse affiliation given by Clubhouse International, as well as noting that while Clubhouses have been extensively covered in the academic social science literature, the studies done to date have numerous flaws:  among them, no randomized samples or randomized control groups, use of mental health recovery measures that are limited to self-assessment, and I would add, only looking at certain select Clubhouses, and improperly generalizing from that sample.  Which has led, in my informed statistical opinion (I have a college degree in economics), to the Clubhouse model being vastly overrated, and wrongly credited for achievements it has not made.  That is certainly true for Circle City Clubhouse. 

 

Clubhouses, although extensive geographically, vary widely in quality and availability of programs, with Circle City Clubhouse, the main Clubhouse in Indianapolis, having a major paucity of programs, thus being really limited in the mental health consumer services it provides.  Carriage House, the Clubhouse in Ft. Wayne, as one example, has a savings bank available for use by its members, but no such exists for Circle City.  Clubhouses are supposed to offer three tiers of employment programs, 1.) transitional employment, 2.) supported employment, and 3.) independent employment; but Circle City only offers transitional employment, and that is spotty.  Circle City Clubhouse has only one transitional employer now that I’m aware of, and has lost several transitional employment sites in just the last few years.  As for supported employment (i.e., employment with staff support assistance for maintaining employment) and independent employment (i.e., Clubhouse members finding, with help and encouragement, employment on their own), neither exists at Circle City.  Nor are Clubhouse members encouraged or cajoled to seek employment, even when they’re capable of doing such, so that many Circle City Clubhouse members who could benefit from employment do not, in fact, do so.  Though Clubhouse International maintains it seeks employment for its members at “prevailing wages,” here in Indianapolis the “prevailing wage” varies considerably depending on the nature and size of the business.  I would imagine Circle City Clubhouse’s transitional employers in Indianapolis and environs pay only minimum wage or maybe a little above, which is still at a truly dismal $7.25 an hour; but also here in Indianapolis, my employer, Kroger pays a starting wage of $14.25 an hour, nearly double!  Crew Car Wash and Target here pay starting wages of $15 an hour, so as is easily seen here, what the “prevailing wage” for the type of work Clubhouse members get to engage in can mean either an income that is indeed very low-wage, or an income nearly double that.  As a trade unionist supportive of the union in my workplace, I naturally find that appalling!  Yet, I don’t see Circle City Clubhouse or any of its staffers trying to address that.

 

Another major gripe I have with Circle City, and one that may extend to many other Clubhouses as well, is that in its “work-oriented program” of having Clubhouse members do simple maintenance, food prep and other labor to occupy themselves and contribute, these members work for free, are given absolutely no wages or incentives.  Such labor for others (and the Clubhouse is an “other,” it stands as an institution with rules and structures that members must subject themselves to) is the very dictionary definition of—slave labor!  As a person influenced by Marxism, I definitely agree with Marxism’s premise that humans are fulfilled by productive labor.  But the only labor available at the Clubhouse is all unskilled mindless menial labor such as cleaning toilets, emptying wastebaskets, pushing mops or brooms, or simple food prep.  Labor that gives no chance to grow in productivity and competence, or learn new work and employment skills.  It’s all dead-end labor for free, and saves Circle City Clubhouse much money it would otherwise have to spend on outside maintenance or food prep contractors.  All this fits the direct dictionary definition of labor exploitation:  Clubhouse members add value through their labor to the Clubhouse, but get nothing back in return.  In fact, not even a staffer saying to one worker (but not to all), “Job well done,” for that would violate the Clubhouse meaning of equality: high quality and low quality of performance are on an equal footing alike!

 

That is a key reason why. when I would show up at the Clubhouse, I would always refuse to do any work.  I wasn’t about to allow myself to be used as a source of slave labor for free, and certainly was not, as a university graduate, going to allow the Clubhouse to confine my labor, skills, and education to uses that were menial and mindless.  I note that at my present job at Kroger I do mindless menial physical labor, but it is far more therapeutic, for I gain a decent hourly wage out of it.  (Currently $16.60 an hour, or about $35,000 a year.)  I put up with its mindlessness and physical strain because I am rewarded, am given incentive, for doing so.  Totally unlike the Clubhouse, where the workers don’t even receive a simple “Thank you” and are just taken for granted, denied all opportunity to advance in work skills that would be useful in a real job situation.  They are consigned, thus, to being mere myrmidons used unconscionably by Circle City Clubhouse to save money through what can only be called a form of “wage theft.”  They don’t even get minimum wage, but just how much money do they save the Circle City Clubhouse each year?!

 

To add insult to injury, Clubhouse members are also pressured and dragooned to help the Circle City Clubhouse in its incessant fund-raising campaigns—again, for free!

 

That does much to explain why the Circle City Clubhouse can’t retain its college grad or even high school grad members, but, as I surmise, is but a resting lounge for what are, in so many cases, only high school dropouts.  Circle City Clubhouse grotesquely maintains it has helped 310 mental health consumers recover, but that 310 is only the total number of people who have passed through its doors, and only a few remain for any length of time. (Many come one time, and never come back.)  From my experience, the core membership of Circle City is only about 20 people.  But once a Clubhouse member, always a Clubhouse member, at least on paper, even when one has no interest whatsoever in the Clubhouse.  I once looked forward to participating in the Clubhouse, having finally found a home for myself as a mental health consumer, a hope also shared by my friends and my psychotherapist.  Alas, it was not to be!  I ran early on into a wall of cliquishness and clannishness, a wall so extensive other Clubhouse members didn’t even say “Hi” to me, and was soon stymied by my inability to use my educational and other skills productively in any kind of Clubhouse setting (though I did manage to publish articles in the Circle City Clubhouse Newsletter, which was fulfilling, even though no one seemed to read them).  Yet, it was so apparent things could be so much better!  Yes, a Culture of Mediocrity prevails, both among members and staffers alike.  Staffers are, in social work jargon, regarded as “generalists,” but really they are mere baby-sitters who play a very passive role in the Clubhouse, even though they’re required to have college degrees.  Of course, from what I’ve been able to determine, they’re only paid like baby-sitters, an unconscionably low hourly wage.  Marissa, a Circle City Clubhouse staffer, admitted I earn more than she does at her job, at $16.60 an hour, which will go up to $17.10 an hour in July; 2023 yet my job only requires a high school diploma, and hers a college degree!

 

Clubhouse International is aware of these and other deficiencies at Circle City Clubhouse when it does its periodic accreditation review, but to date has only given Circle City a “Tut, tut, do better” admonition.  In my opinion, Circle City shouldn’t be accredited at all, given its overall lousy performance that does little, if anything, for real mental health recovery (my recovery, for example, owes nothing to the Clubhouse, despite my formal membership in it since January 2016).  Nor should it be given charitable donations—that’s just throwing money down a rathole, in my opinion.  However, to be honest, I will grant that Circle City has recently made some positive changes, but they are, in my opinion again, not only long overdue, but too little, too late.  They’ve only marginally improved the functioning of Circle City Clubhouse, but which still stands at mediocre or worse.  And probably will continue to do so.

 

Supporting details for my arguments above can be found in my January 13, 2023, letter to the Clubhouse, which should be read in tandem with this essay.  Perhaps the effect of these two highly critical Clubhouse posts will be salutary--waking up the Circle City Clubhouse to do much more, be much more, be more effective at it!  That, thus, would be the "constructive" role I could play as a Clubhouse member:  by being one of its most scathing critics, I'd be giving it a very much needed wake-up call.       

NAMI Papers on and about the Circle City Clubhouse

 A fit retort, these three mental health articles of mine below, on the pretensions and ineffectiveness of the Circle City Clubhouse, the Clubhouse system generally, and what real mental health recovery looks like.  Sadly, mental health consumers such as myself have few resources available, and in fact, more pseudo-resources than actual resources-- among them the Circle City Clubhouse and Indiana NAMI, bot of which I'm a member of, but a highly distressed one. --GF.   

January 13, 2023 Letter to the Circle City Clubhouse

 The Circle City Clubhouse is an alleged "mental health recovery program" that is not effective at all!  I've been a member of the Clubhouse since January 2016, and my disappointment with it, as well as the disappointment with it expressed by my friends and my former psychotherapist, is quite manifest.  Yet it continues when it should not, and even gets uncritical endorsement from Indiana NAMI, which it certainly doesn't deserve, as this letter to the Clubhouse below makes quite clear.  We mental health consumers need effective programs, not pseudo-programs such as the Circle City Clubhouse; yet it is a sign of the refusal of society as a whole to respect the natural needs of us who've been struggling with "mental illness" that, instead of effective programs, we get stuck with pseudos such as the Circle City Clubhouse.  I researched what I wrote in the letter, and I stand by it 100%.  Clubhouse Executive Director Jay Brubaker told me pointedly he would not respond to my "insults," to which I answer that the appropriate response to "insult" is "If the shoe fits, wear it!"--GF.

TEXT OF MY LETTER TO CIRCLE CITY CLUBHOUSE

Dear Circle City Clubhouse:

 

Your newsletter asks me to contribute my employment news as a loosely defined Clubhouse member (because I don’t consider myself a Clubhouse member anymore, even though I am a mental health consumer), so here it is.  I was successfully employed at my job at Kroger before I even became a Clubhouse member—I became a member in January 2016, but had been successfully employed at my job since August 15, 2015.  I started out at $10.70 an hour.  I’m still employed at Kroger, and now make $16.60 an hour, a 55% increase in my hourly wage, and the first job I ever held where I actually got regular wage increases!  I attribute this to the fact that my job is unionized (UFCW Local 700), and that thus, wage increases are part of the union contract, as are many other benefits and protections I have.  Between my wages, my Social Security, and my Kroger pension, which is also through the union, I made nearly $49,000 in 2022.  Not only that.  After 69 months of successful psychotherapy that overcame 47 years (yes, 47 years!) of malfeasant and inept psychiatric treatment, overwhelmingly through Indiana CMHCs, I’m now fully recovered from my mental health malady of borderline personality disorder and chronic depression.  I’ve been successfully off antidepressants since November 2004, had it confirmed by a psychiatrist in December 2005 that I didn’t need antidepressants anymore, and haven’t had a depressive episode since 2003.  I am what mental health recovery looks like!  And you notice how different it looks than the average denizen of the Clubhouse, overwhelmingly comprised of people who are not recovering, but who are sadly staying the same, and stagnating!

 

I’ve gotten news updates on the Clubhouse from other former members, and what is clear is that the Circle City Clubhouse is one very flawed institution, one that does not advance mental health recovery!   Circle City Clubhouse has the chutzpah to claim it’s helping 310 mental health consumers recover, but that’s utter nonsense—perhaps 310 people have gone through the Clubhouse, but most do not stay.  Your hard-core participants only number about 20, and not only has the Clubhouse driven out all its college graduate members, it’s also, I say, driven out most, or even all, its members who are high school graduates.  What I saw of the 20 people who attended the Clubhouse regularly, though I don’t know this as a fact, but it seems to be a reasonable surmise, is that the majority, or even all, of the regular Clubhouse attendees are high school dropouts, and the Clubhouse is thus but a rest lounge for unskilled, uneducated, menial workers!  This last point is important, because I do mindless menial labor at my Kroger job, but I get paid $16.60 an hour for doing it.  Which is why I will never do work at the Clubhouse for free, as it demands—doing work for free is the very dictionary definition of slave labor, lest we forget.  The Circle City Clubhouse’s “work therapy” is nothing but mindless menial work, and is limited to such unskilled jobs as toilet cleaning, emptying wastebaskets, and peeling potatoes.  The Clubhouse relies on this free labor to save money on cleaning and other needs, otherwise it would have to hire someone to do these.  The Clubhouse thus exploits its members.

 

The Clubhouse now has to insist all its hires be college graduates, as it should be, yet it only pays them about $11.50 an hour—for a job that requires a college degree!  Sheesh!  Do I need to remind the Clubhouse that my Kroger job requires only a high school diploma, although I have a college degree (in economics), and I make $16.60 an hour at it!  This coming summer my pay will go up to $17.10 an hour, and in the summer after that, to $17.60 an hour.  Yet you hire required college degree holders as substantially less than that!  No wonder you get such bad, inept help, such as Evan (whom I nickname Evan the Inept) and Marissa (ditto, Marissa the Cipher).  In fact, except for Peter, whom you laid off, you have never had decent employees at the Clubhouse!  Peter was easily your best employee, yet you paid him so little he had to dip into his savings to make ends meet.  Then you laid him off.  Now he works at an auto parts store making more money at yet another job that requires only a high school diploma than he did at the Clubhouse at a job requiring a college degree!  He was easily the best employee you ever had.  So how did you treat him?  By sticking it to him!

 

Then there was Lindsay Brock, the Assistant Executive Director, who was an employee under Executive Director Jay Brubaker’s supervision, and is now—Jay's live-in girlfriend!  Do I need to mention the obvious conflict of interest here, or mention the CEO who was fired for having a consensual affair with his Chief Financial Officer?  But then, Jay is but a schmoozer and toady who sucks up to the Clubhouse Board and has the Board in his back pocket.  He’s a lawyer by training, but was not a good one, as I’ve found out—one prime example of his lawyering being that he was so proud that, after a long period of wrangling, he got his client into arbitration, even though referring to arbitration was in in the original contract to begin with!  I’m a trained paralegal who worked under good lawyers, so I know inept lawyering when I hear about it—and that’s why Jay is not a lawyer, but an NGO worker!  He’s just not good enough for effective lawyering—which became massively evident when the Clubhouse members came up with a statement on what constituted acceptable free speech and what did not, which was drawn up more strictly than it needed legally to be.  Jay could’ve played a constructive role as a trained lawyer by advising the Clubhouse members on what was required, but he refrained from doing so.  The supposed “mental health professionals” who are Clubhouse employees thus don’t even do the jobs they’re supposedly capable of, what they really should be doing—they are but glorified babysitters who don’t supervise the children under their watch!  And very sadly, that is what many, if not most, regular Clubhouse attendees are—adult children in their mindsets, capabilities, and actions.  No wonder college graduates such as I, not to mention those with at least a high school diploma, find the Clubhouse so utterly lacking.

 

But I did participate in the Clubhouse until 2019, and in 2018 even went to the effort to draft a 14-page paper I submitted to the Clubhouse retreat that year in an attempt to offer constructive criticism and suggestions that in my opinion would’ve improved the Clubhouse.  Lindsay, who was Chair of the retreat, promised me I’d have the chance to present my paper, but then she reneged—instead, she allowed Savella (ah, good ol’ Savella the Special Bella!), another person, and Nathan (ah, Nathan—chronological age, 40s, emotional age 13!), none of whom had read my paper, to speak instead, and who trashed me personally!  Now, if that isn’t severe ineptness at one’s job!!  But such is par for the course at the Clubhouse.

 

Let it also be noted that I’ve contributed seven articles under my own name to the Clubhouse newsletter, more than any other signed writer—yet they were all just ignored!  Well, what do you expect from people who are most likely not even high school grads, and thus functionally illiterate?  I’ve heard reliably that Chuck (yes, Chuck the Muck, rhymes with f**k!) can’t even read, yet he always wants to do everything, even that which he’s incapable of, and relies on manipulative appeals to pity to get his way. 

 

Recently, but only recently, the Clubhouse has done some things right.  It reached out to its member list (which is overwhelmingly comprised only of paper members, not actual participants in the Clubhouse) during COVID-19 back in 2020 to see if anyone needed anything.  I didn’t, of course, but that was thoughtful.  The Clubhouse newsletter has now gotten around to including words of praise and encouragement to members who get involved in Transitional Employment or other jobs, but it’s a case of, despite this, “too little too late,” in my opinion.  Despite this small but good improvement in the newsletter, the newsletter still remains insipid and infantile, not a vital read by any means.  Thus, I cannot in any way, shape or form consider the Circle City Clubhouse an asset or a resource for mental health consumers.

 

This letter needs to be widely shared within the Clubhouse, and presented to all the alleged members, paper and otherwise.  It should be included as an insert in the next newsletter.  I invite all, Jay, Board members, all staff members, all Clubhouse members, to reach out to me with comments.  You may e-mail me at georgefish666@yahoo.com, or else mail me at my address.  I welcome feedback, and will make an honest effort to respond (although since I work full time, I have massive time constraints), but feedback sent to me must be civil.  I will not tolerate nastiness, ad hominem arguments, or name-calling.  Also, criticism of what I wrote must be based on the facts of what I wrote, and must make an earnest effort to be concrete, accurate, and constructive.

Critically yours,

George Fish