Mentally Ill? There is No Village For You-Stay Lost

Many years ago a coworker came to me and told me her brother, age 28, froze to death inside his car.

Diagnosed schizophrenic, his erratic and unpredictable behavior over the years had taken a toll on the family and they cut him loose. No one knew where he was or what kind of mental health care, if any, he was getting.

She felt incredibly guilty. "If I had kept in touch maybe I could have helped him.

It is very easy for those not having experienced living  with a mentally ill family member to say, " Put em away. Don't ruin YOUR life."

Little did I know at the time my coworker spoke with me that my teenager would be diagnosed as bipolar shortly after our conversation.

During the sixties, seventies and eighties, I worked as a social worker in short and long term psychiatric hospitals. My first job as a social worker was in a short term psychiatric facility. Treatments available? Electroshock therapy, haldol and lithium. Valium, opiates, seclusion and restraint. People would be locked in small rooms with padded walls and a mattress. The door had a small window. Aides would do clip board checks, peeking in the window to make sure the patient was safe.
Eventually, after massive doses of primative medications, patients came out, groggy, confused and subdued.
Over the three years I worked there many of the same people returned for treatment. Haldol created permanent damage , creating strange muscular mvements and spasms, permanent confusion and often hallucinations.
I suppose those were the only drugs available at the time and next to Electroconvulsive shock therapy those drugs were the babies.
I graduated from there to working with  patients who had been sent to the state hospital  for twenty or more years.
Up until the eighties it was common for family to lock up a family member for twenty or more years. Institutionalized, these individuals had no idea how to operate in the community. My job was to help them learn the skills to do that and help them move to special community homes in the cities and towns they came from.
It was a challenge. After so many years inside an institution learning how to communicate with the outside world created intense moments of wishing to return to institutional living. We did a lot of work but the joy and the pleasure in finding a place to fit and enjoying the freedoms were great incentives. I remember an older woman talking constantly about wanting catfish when she moved to her own place. One afternoon we went down to the river and fished for them. It was an activity she did as often as she could becuase it gave her great joy, brought up pleasurable memories and was cheap to do! Another woman spent her first monies buying lipstick at a department store. She had been the girlfriend of an mob member and used to spend time shopping-each week we went to the same store so she buy another lipstick.
Years pass and I live in the state of Nevada which has such poor services for the mentally ill you can find them frequently on the side of the road begging, in jail, the emergency rooms and frequently, dead in the hot summer of the desert. I don't want this to be my son's fate.
Whenever you see a homeless individual try thinking like a mother, I look at people and think, that individual was someone's baby-hopefully somewhere in this lifetime, that person was loved and cared for-and I feel sorrow. Don't give me that garbage about people choosing their fate. Yes, for many that is probably true, but for those with minds preceiving another reality, choosing can be a ittle off kilter.
My son is in his thirties now and he lives with me. Believe me there are challenges. When a person with bi-polar disorder goes off medicine the "I don't need medicine" manic phase kicks in. We can all see it but he refuses to believe his behavior is anything but truthful.
The problem with the new drugs is they don't give a person with Bi-polar disorder less emotion, they obliterate emotion. Literally my son feels very little emotion on medications. Off the medicine he feels immense joy and immense anger. But he feels.
He describes this flatness as looking at others and feeling deaf to emotion.
There is no village for the mentally ill anymore. What will happen to him when I am gone? I worry about that.
He is one of the fortunate. He is a part of and has a family who love him.
We used to care more about vulnerable citizens. The elderly, the chronically ill, the mentally challenged.
What happened to us?
What will happen to him and others like him?

A Proud History of Whistleblowing and Snowdon's condemnation

I don't know. At sixty I came from the proud generation that took Nixon down for bugging the White House.
The break-in at the Democratic headquarters was a big deal. Here we are over forty years later and our nation's government is listening to our phone calls, perusing our mail and documenting public library computer use. All in the name of "national security".
We have a lazy, uninformed, underpaid media with very little investigation and a huge media presence of rumor mongering on the internet.
Who knows what the truth is anymore?
The obscufation of Snowden's intent by the government and the media throws in a mass of confusion, just enough for our uninformed masses (those who foster a belief, look for proof to back it up, whether it be an ubran legend or a Perz Hilton gossip item) to believe whatever the media tells them.
We have become lazy and stupid citizens, taking at face value whatever is placed on our plate by CNN and Fox News.
The art of critical thinking has been obilierated from our school curriculums and replaced with "reading, writing and 'rithemtic' according to National Standards.
We have become a nation of lemmings. Some swimming upstream to the tune of the "Conspiracy shake" and others allowing themselves to float downstream because they can't dance.
Snowden gave US citizens a truth. Was that treason? Would Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein be considerd traitors in this age? Would they gone to prison for writing what they did? Would they had to leave the nation to get the truth out?
Questioning our government and holding our elected officials and those they supervise accountable has been a huge part of our demoncracy.
Have we gone full circle? Are those nations we consider "Leftist" (which is now a dirty word) evolving democracies?
When we are willing to pull the President of Bolivia's plane over by threatening other countries one would begin to wonder what direction the United States of America is moving in.

You Were So Great.., Too Bad You're Dead and Can't Hear About it..

James Gandolfini's unexpected death brought out the stars. Those who worked with him, knew him, were touched by him have set the media ablaze.
I hate to be a cynic but I imagine with the exception of those closest to him most who knew him did not ever take the time to tell him of the great respect and admiration in the atmosphere, all for him.
Like most people, life is a denial of one's death so we all have plenty of time to say important words to those we care about, respect and admire.
Unfortunately life, or the living don't really think in those terms.
The petty spats, the little grumbles, the built up arguments floating around inside most humans heads take precedence. We have a sky high divorce rate. Why is that?
Well, most married people can give you a list of grievances, perceived or otherwise.
The no return point comes when one of the partners begin to think, "I can do better than this. I DESERVE better."

Guess what? When you start thinking that way, it is the OTHER spouse who deserves better.
Marriage is like a good poker game- you'd better be all in if you believe in your hand.
If not, don't waste your partners good hand by pretending you have one.

Let's face it-death is the great equalizer. Great good people, and famous bad people all die. What we say to those we care about, others we cross paths with, even in small interactions, all have an effect on humanity.
As I drive in a 55 mph construction zone in Nevada while others race by honking and giving me the finger, I am not feeling very hopeful about humanity.
I am not inclined to return the gestures. In fact, I have learned to just accept 55 mph and relax.
Life can be like that. A relaxing 55 mph with a little kindness.
We need to remember we all have a "time is up" contract with life.
Remember the greatness, the originality and the feelings of care and love you have for others while life allows you the platform to say and show it.
Such an overused, caricaturist phrase, but so true, Life is short and precious. Mr. Gandolfini would have been honored to hear the wonderful thoughts and feelings so many people expressed about him.
How sad those quotes give the speaker more attention than him.