Christmas is over

I did not really think that much about it, my sister told me today. Oh right, it’s today. Okay sure Christmas, whatever. We had a nice dinner, candles and music with no vocal. Quite cozy actually, my presents where nice. Got a big black jewelry box from mom, wanted that for some time. Never told anyone about it, nice coincidence.

Dad gave me Angels and Demons (book – Dan brown). Never read anything from the guy, guess I found him to commercial form my taste.  But now I have the opportunity to give it a chance, maybe I even will read the Davincy code and the one about the Digital palace ore something.

My sister gave me Beer mugs and a book I wanted “the guide to the universe” I’m a big Astronomy fan. Never miss a good broadcast from NASA, it’s just astonishing. So many questions, so few answered. There are so many things human kind does not know, we think we do. But we don’t, not at all.

Once in High School my social anthropology teacher talked about us like we were not part of human evolution, like we where special in some divine way. Better than animals, well animals never hurt this planet as much as us. They would not, not yet at least.

I told him, you know we are a part of evolution. We are mammals with guns and the ability to question our own instinct. Maybe if this planet goes to hell, it where supposed to. Because we are the destructive part of nature, we evolved this way.

His answer was, where did you get this from?

Myself, I’m sort of an armature philosopher or something.

He: that’s a fascinating theory you got there, but don’t you think people ore nations can unite and act together to change the destructiveness?

Me: I would like to say yes, but I have seen so much negative from this planet. War, hunger, disease, nature disasters, environmental problems, families falling apart, abuse and so on. I just don’t think that we are smart enough to unite, too much greed.

He: you might just be right about that, tough that kind of thinking will lead to failure. Hope is not a bad thing in this case, better try failing then never try at all.

Me: yes, that’s true. But people ore to obsessed with their own life’s to actually do something. Their own problems, wanting to lose weight, be pretty, accepted among friends. It’s all about self success. The individual is in center; our society is not based on uniting.

He: sux to be an realist doesn’t it?

Me: Yeah

My inner self:  What is wrong about the individual to be in center? What so you are so different from us, don’t you want to get married, have kids, big house, nice car, nice boyfriend, nice wardrobe, have a pet and go fishing in the holydays?

My inner self: Yeah I do, but not the way I was taught to do it.

My inner self: So there is something wrong with being ordinary?

My inner self: No… I just don’t think I can be. And I don’t want to try to be something I am not. People have to evolve and be the way they want to, the way it feels natural to them. And I am ordinary, just not average.

My inner self: You’re such a fucking narcissist!

My inner self: What and you’re not? I live in this shell, I’m the main person of my own life. I live in here, it’s natural to be little self centered. And I do really care about the people around me, allot.

My inner self: Self centered behavior is symptom of Mental illness.

My inner self: You think I don’t know that? SHUT UP!

My inner self: At least you’re not bored now

My inner self: you really love this don’t you?

My inner self: Maybe little

My inner voice: You are so split, you have no idea who you are little girl.

My inner self:  I’m not little girl anymore!  I don’t see myself as a victim anymore! I’m not there anymore, I’m not her anymore. SHUT UP!

Inner voice: Your personality is one dimensional hell, and it’s never going to change. Why can’t you see that? You have to accept the fact that you’re always going to be this way. There is no way out, this is you. This is you, the way you are is how you are. You

Me: What???

He: PAY ATTENTION WHEN IM TEACHING!!

This is pretty much what my head is, confusing and some intelligence in there some place.

Tough when I’m bored I play that my skull has no brain, just water and a salt pickle swimming around in the stupefying lake. And when I shake my head it dances and says you’re an AOMOBEA!!

I had not heard the horrible story of Chris Muth’s 2008 psychiatric incarceration and forced drugging until reading of it on the blog Lunatic Fringe. The whole thing underscores the fact that the difference between sane and insane can be a simple matter of whether the right people believe you.

In July of 2008, Chris Muth was visited by a guest and his cat, Rumi. At some point, Rumi was poking around Muth’s apartment and entered a small hole in the bathroom wall. Muth ripped the wall open in hopes of rescuing a trapped Rumi, who returned his cat-calls, to no avail.  As it turns out, the small hole led to a large drop and Rumi fell 30 feet down a shaft within the wall. In his attempts to rescue the cat, he did break into an unoccupied apartment to create an opening. Understandably, the authorities were called. What is not so easy to understand is the leap the officers made next.

Not believing there was actually a cat stuck behind the wall, the police hauled him off to the psychiatric ward at Long Island College Hospital where he was held for six days. That is unconscionable. A man loses six days of his freedom because the cops mistake a very real cat for a psychotic delusion. Muth lost more than just six days through the ordeal. He lost his home, his girlfriend and his job while in LICH’s “care.”

In typical haul-them-in-and-label-them fashion, Muth’s medical records state that he “has the bizarre delusion [that he] was trying to ‘save’ a cat of his friend.” I wonder what kind of tests they administered to determine the existence of Rumi the cat. Surely they didn’t just take the officers’ word. Right? Muth, having had enough, decided to speak up saying to the resident nurse on duty, “‘Give me a pencil and paper. I’m going to write a press release and you are going to be the laughingstock of New York.”  Apparently no one informed him that the right to free speech doesn’t apply to psych patients any more than the right to due process. She did not get him a pencil and paper. She chose instead to  call for orderlies who held him down while she injected him with Haldol, a particularly ugly and powerful drug from the old round of antipsychotics — a blatantly punitive chemical assault and not an attempt at anything even resembling health, treatment or care.

“How can you stand up for yourself in this culture? You can punch someone and get arrested, or you can sue,” Muth said. And  he’s doing just that — suing the hospital and 11 0f its employees for a total of $260, 000. Considering what he’s been through and what was taken from him, that doesn’t seem like much. I hope he gets something that he can call justice out of the ordeal.

There you have it. A man carted off by the police to a psych ward, denied his basic human rights and civil liberties, separated from his freedom, his home and his source of income, held down and drugged by force — all because the police didn’t think the cat was real. And what if it hadn’t been? Would any of this be acceptable if it had all been a delusion? That’s not a rhetorical question. We need to seriously question what constitutes an abusive system, which rights we can do without and what it takes to trade them in. The mental health system has acted as a system of punishment for people on the margins of society for far too long. If Chris Muth can find himself in this situation, what misunderstanding or perception can put you there?

Rumi was eventually rescued by an animal control officer and is doing well after 15 days behind the wall. Here is an article about the original event and one about the subsequent lawsuit, both from The Brooklyn Paper.

Every day, on average
18 American veterans**
commit suicide

….

The military rushes these young men and women

out of service through the WTB’s

to where the numbers no longer count against the

commander’s, leader’s or medical professionals

**Stats as of 20 Dec 09, Dept of VA

Time to prepare for the Christmas day service today – it is always not easy to reflect on what Christmas may mean to the people attending the service on Christmas Day.  Every year is different – how it felt and how consequently Christmas is experienced. Like every year for the last 23 years I try to find a tone, that will bring the message of Christmas closer to the attending people. I hope that they are encouraged to let the love and the peace and the intimacy of this special birthday be part of their life; not only on the Christmas Day itself, but being carried over to the next days and month to come.
Then this is indeed the message of Christmas: that we are called to be in the likeness of God – everybody a little Jesus, when born – with all the possibilities and the vocation, to tell the story of God’s unconditional love within the respective life. As God has shared life with us, so we are called to share our life with him/her. That is obviously not that easy – daily life tells us most times another story – where love, sharing, peace, tolerance seems not to be a top priority because abused so many times.
And interesting enough is Christmas in many families also the time for bitter fights at the end of the day – because the pressure, to suddenly turn around the normal way of dealing with each other, is getting to big.  Christmas is for us Christian the culmination of our yearning for harmony in life – and we should train it during the year that it works also on those days.. .

Being the likeness of God – that is also a headline when it comes to dealing with our brothers and sisters who are carrying the HI virus with them.  They remain this picture of God – nothing is taken away from them through this virus. Therefore there should be no stigmatization or criminalization or discrimination within any Christian community. I guess, there is still much to do…  In this matter, Christmas acts as a reminder how much is still to do to free our society from the devil of stigmatization and all what comes with it.

by Melissa Garcia Logan

Most of us do just want to be happy. But when you’re doing everything right, and you still cannot seem to overcome the obstacles in your pursuit of happiness, then asking for help may be your next step. Sometimes the path to happiness passes through self-sabotage, and the best tool to make it through is self-awareness. But other times, it’s darker and more complicated than that.

• Latinos are identified as a high-risk group for depression, anxiety and substance abuse.
• Women and Latinos are more likely to experience a major depressive episode.
• Prevalence of depression is higher in Latino women (46%) than Latino men (19.6%).
• Close to one out of every three Latina (30.3%) high-school students in 1997 had seriously considered committing suicide.

(The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI))

Are you reading? Our young women are at highest risk for developing suicidal depression; our youth have the highest attempted suicide rate of any racial or ethnic group. Sometimes our problems are deeper and more complex than we are equipped to deal with alone. While some depression is situational, many cases of chronic depression are neurological in nature, a by-product of malfunctioning biochemistry. Complicating the issue further is a distinct lack of qualified, bilingual mental health care providers able to serve a diverse population, and a culturally ingrained stigma against seeking treatment.

Learn the warning signs of depression and find out the facts. According to NAMI, “Clinical depression is a serious medical illness that is much more than temporarily feeling sad or blue. It involves disturbances in mood, concentration, sleep, activity level, interests, appetite and social behavior.” If you suspect you are depressed, contact your doctor or a qualified mental health professional. If you or someone you know is suicidal, dial 9-1-1 or go directly to your nearest hospital emergency room.

For more information, visit:

The NAMI Depression and Latinos Page

The NAMI Multicultural Action Center’s Latino/Hispanic Resources Page

The National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide (NOPCAS)

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* What’s YOUR story? *

Send YOUR story to: Beinglatino@gmail.com

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About Being Latino:

Being Latino is a communication platform designed to educate, entertain and connect all peoples across the global Latino spectrum.  Our aim is to break down barriers and foster unity and empowerment through informative, thought-provoking dialogue and exchanging of ideas.  Being Latino seeks to give a unified voice to the multitude of communities that identify with the multidimensional culture that is Latino.
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Sex and death are two of the most fundamental elements of the human condition. They are intensely powerful yet private topics that remain taboo in most cultures of the world. Add in a layer or two of moral or religious righteousness and some pretty strong cultural mores and you have a recipe for a staggeringly difficult environment for full and open, frank and honest discussion.

By combining the two, HIV sits stubbornly at the nexus of a multiplicity of human emotions, most of them negative: judgement, suspicion, accusation, fear, denial, revulsion, pain, remorse, pity… the list is close to endless. These are dark forces within the human condition and can lead to some pretty inhuman behaviours -  to give this darkness a shape, upon which we hope to shine a light, we refer to them collectively as HIV related stigma and discrimination.

It is hard to understate how disruptive a role stigma and discrimination play in the fight against HIV and AIDS. There is no point building a beautiful new treatment clinic if people are too ashamed to be seen entering it; there is no value in stocking the country with the best medicines if people are too scared to be seen taking them;  there is nothing to be gained in talking about the prevention of new infections if people are to embarrassed to take out a condom; I could go on…

For this reason, my organisation is home to small team of stigma experts who are dedicated to tackling this scourge across the continent. The team is led by Sue Clay and her two expert trainers Mutale Chonta and Chipo Chaya. Sue is originally a VSO volunteer who came to Zambia 10 years ago and fell so in love with the place that she forgot to go home. Last week I was fortunate enough to travel with them to Kenya to observe the first workshop they have conducted with Armed Forces personnel.

The team have developed a toolkit of modules which have now been translated into French, Portugese and Arabic in recognition of the truly trans-continental reach of this issue. They deliver the material with a slick mix of participatory discussion and debate, interspersed with much singing and dancing (no such thing as stiff and stuffy participants at an African workshop!) that really help to break down the barriers between groups and get them to examine their own perceptions and attitudes towards the disease before equipping them with the skills to go and challenge stigma amongst their own communities.

It was engrossing to watch the military personnel start the week talking of their HIV experiences in terms of “them and us”  only to end it on the much more personal “we and I” . My moment of greatest understanding came as one of the local trainers shared her experiences of being the wife of soldier who had died of HIV. Her husband had found himself to be HIV positive only when he was stood down for a UN mission after routine blood testing.  So filled with his own ’self stigma’ he could not even bring himself to disclose his status to his wife. Instead, he simply returned to the family home to die slowly and in silence.

After his passing, not only did she and her children loose the housing and other priveledges associated with her husband’s career, she then had to face the reality of checking her own status and confirming that she was indeed also HIV+. Very quickly she lost all her friends on the base and despite coming from a family of 17 brothers and sisters, found herself being disowned by each and every one of them.

Today she is the very definition of ‘living positively.’ She is fit and well on her ARVs, has returned to her valuable career as a nurse and is playing a vital role in the fight against HIV stigma by training others. The nuclear family is an incredibly important part of the African social fabric, yet she and her three children remain ostracised by her entire family and past colleagues. It is astonishing to me that even these strong ties are succeptable to the ravages of stigma and discrimination.

Despite having entered an era where HIV is both highly treatable and far from uncommon in this part of the world, I am sorry to report that Sue and her excellent team have many more hard years of vital work ahead of them.

“Nothing is as stark, punitive and redolent of hate as the Bill in Uganda,” Stephen Lewis, former UN envoy on AIDS in Africa, addressing the Commonwealth People’s Forum.

The part that is perhaps most disturbing is Clause 2, which states that a person who is convicted of gay sex is liable to life imprisonment, but if that person is also HIV positive, the penalty is death. Whatever your thoughts on homosexuality are, this Bill attempts to deny HIV-positive people their right to live, and that is a blatant violation of basic human rights.

Read the Times Online article or the Bill itself. The Bill is going through Parliament currently, so if you have a petition that readers can sign to oppose the bill or any news about what has happened, please comment on this blog post.

There are two schools of thought on what I’d like to call the “medication debate.”  Most of the time the debate centers around psychiatric medication, but there are other instances.  Since, however, it’s most prevalent in the mental health field, I’m going to focus there.

Group A:  Pro-medication.  They stand strong on the belief that chemicals in your brain basically misfiring or malfunctioning is the cause of a lot of psychiatric disorders and that medication is proven to help or even almost dissipate symptoms, leaving patients to live a normal life.  Most also agree that talk therapy is a companion to this.

Group B:  Anti-medication.  They stand strong on the belief that people would be better off talking to a therapist more often than taking medications to change brain chemicals.  The thought process behind this are that there are natural ways that one can help alter their brain and there are different ways of thinking that can lead someone to a normal life.  Some are so vehemently against medication that they demean others who take it daily.

My thoughts:  There are certain classes of mental illness, and therefore there are certain treatments and medications (as well as combinations) that help.  I’m a firm believer in medications, however I think that sometimes one can be on a medication and then be weened off if their condition isn’t lifelong.  Or, in the case of some milder depressions and mild anxiety that a person can learn coping techniques that will help them along without medication.  There are other disorders out there that definitely require medication.  Honestly, who on earth actually thinks that talk therapy is going to help a paranoid schizophrenic or someone with bipolar disorder who is bordering on a psychotic mania (or even a non-psychotic mania, at that)?

Then, of course, you get those people who say that mental disorders are over-diagnosed and that drugs are handed out like candy, etc.  Ok.  I get that… to some degree.  Honestly, though… it’s probably more of the fact that people nowadays are more likely to seek help for things that are going wrong in their life and symptoms that they would have otherwise tried (and failed) to ignore, push away… you name it.  And true, Prozac and other SSRIs were at first handed out as band-aids for both those with major depression and for those just going through the blues.  It turned into a major circus.

All I’m saying is that these instances give the psychiatric doctors a bad name.  They, above all else, are trying to help people.  And please, if you are one of those “Group B” people, please don’t criticize those who are on medication.  For all you know, they might really need it (and may not want to share why they do).

*steps off soapbox*

There is no particular ‘type’ of person who suffers from depression; no demographic norm that fits people into convenient statistical boxes. Not one person is immune from this disease, and if there is such a thing as a ‘cure’, then it is truly individual. While there may be a holistic group of symptoms common to all who suffer; the cause and outcome effect of these signs vary in magnitude and duration in each of us. However; to the untrained eye depression; a feared and ill-understood entity, is all too frequently associated with a generic group of ‘down on their luck’ individuals. Perhaps it is this perception that results in the reluctance of some sufferers to speak about, and seek help, with the incoherent feelings and emotions that flood their daily lives. After all, nobody wants to voluntarily admit to experiencing depression if it results in large sectors of society casting them as a slightly crazy, unsuccessful social anomaly. I can certainly relate to, and understand, the weight that societal expectations play in any individual’s perception of themselves, and their subsequent choices based upon these beliefs. However, as it often seems with depression, the reality of the situation is far removed from public opinion and stereotypes. Depression knows no ‘type’ of person, it is an illness that exists in society, and no one in society is exempt. While this appears overwhelmingly disheartening, devastatingly diverse and ambiguous to treat, the universality of the disease may offer a flicker of hope to suffers. Those who have ever known the dark encumberment of depression will be all too familiar with the regular and sometimes overpowering sense of loneliness, the inescapable feeling that you are totally isolated. Again, the reality is very different from what we have the tendency to perceive. You are not alone in your suffering, and you are certainly not alone in your tremendous courage to endure. You are one of a group, a group that is made up of unique and astonishing people; a group whose members exceed one hundred million. This great assembly of individuals includes humans from every walk of life, people bravely living each day with an illness that pays no regard to their skin colour, age, sex, wealth, or celebrity status. Vince Lombardi (NFL coach) once said “people who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defences, or the problems of modern society.” Depression is a problem of modern society and perhaps, as a group more should be made of the seemingly unending network of support which members can lend to each other, inspiring hope and perseverance even in the face of our greatest tribulations. Furthermore, and finally; imagine if you will the awesome impact of a unified voice to quell the ignorant stigmas that so blithely hamper the health, well being, and happiness of millions of extraordinary people across this beautifully diverse planet.

Tonight, as I was editing the ‘About‘ page briefly, I was reminded that I had mentioned my pathetic little fantasy world there, but that I’d never discussed it in detail elsewhere on the blog.

Well – I’m not about to.  I don’t think I’ll reveal the specifics of it to anyone, ever.  But I will say a few words.

I suppose the best way to put the fantasy world is that it is just like a grandiose delusion (or such is my supposition) – except that I don’t believe it is real.  There’s a fine line here between creativity and madness; if I had written down all this stuff and sent it to a publisher, it probably would have made quite a successful (if far-fetched) novel (or set of novels).  Alas, any such attempt now would make people aware of the specifics of the fantasy world, and I couldn’t cope with the shame of that.  Plus I wouldn’t have the motivation to write a fucking novel anyway.

The only people that I’ve spoken to about the fantasy world are A and C.  C didn’t seem especially concerned about its presence, though I was interested to note recently that, after the development of ‘They’, he asked if ‘They’ were connected to the fantasy world in any way.  It had always been my concern that my use of the fantasy world as escapism would actually develop into an actual escapism – a complete break from reality.  And cevidently that was on C’s mind at this later juncture too.  So far it hasn’t happened, but it is still a worry.  Having said that, frankly sometimes I wish I would just lose all contact with reality and stop teetering on the brink of it…but that’s a whole another post.

Anyway, both A and C, and in fact all of the most significant personnel in my actual life, figure to some degree or another in this fantasy life.  However, they are supplemented by an entire cast of fictional people, some reflective to some extent of real people, others purely borne entirely out of my imagination.  The fictional people are crafted down to their wrinkles, down to whether or not they like brussel sprouts.

The universe itself is similarly crafted.  My living and working environments are also detailed to the nth degree, and on a major scale.  The streets I walk, the strangers I meet, the pubs and cinemas I go to, the books on my shelves.  Everything is covered.  It really is like an entire other life, and I can slip into it at will.

I am completely unsure as to what this means psychologically, but let’s not overcomplicate matters, and take it broadly at face value.  In the fantasy, I have a wonderful job and am very much the confident(-seeming) person that I was as a child.  I am surrounded by people who, despite my idiosyncrasies, like and respect me.  I have a stable and loving private life.  I have money, though not riches and my own home, though not a mansion.  Basically, I have the perfect young professional’s life.

From that, it would be easy to say, “well, it’s merely reflective of a longing, perhaps of regret over missed opportunities.”  And maybe it is.  Except, it’s not that simple.  In the fantasy world, I am still mental.  Does this go back to all the wank I wrote a few months ago about not flicking the metaphorical switch to sanity if given the chance?  Maybe.

Maybe also it’s reflective of my feelings on the stigma of mental illness.  I want to have achieved all of these things despite being mental, thus proving that mental illness is not a barrier to success.  But I have to ask myself, if this is indeed the case, is it because of altruism, or is it another narcissistic desire for me to achieve something?  Probably the latter to be honest.  What a self-centred bitch.

When I told C about it – probably back in April or early May – I broke down and cried for ages because of the shame and self-disgust I felt about not being content with my real life.  It was the first time I’d wept like that, and as regular readers will know, it is not something that I have done with frequency since.  I derided myself to C as “completely fucked up.”

And I am.  I really am.

Hello!  I’m introducing a new feature on my blog where I’ll dedicate a few postings to brief interviews with unemployed individuals whom I find admirable!

John O’Brien is my first feature profile.  John and I were in the NBC Page Program together for a few months between 2007 and 2008.  I always took note of how he never let anything get the best of him.  His sense of humor always shines through!

What are your own personal tips for keeping your spirits bright during the Holiday season?

I think it’s important to look at everything from a big picture point of view.  Sure, I’m unemployed now, and it stinks, but at the same time, it could all turn around really quickly.  Plus being unemployed leads to everyone in your family saying “Oh, you don’t need to get me present.”  Now they’ll be much more surprised when I get them something crappy.

In your opinion, what is the biggest myth about being unemployed?

There’s certainly a stigma about being unemployed.  At first I was almost embarrassed to tell people, but I’ve come around.  It is what it is.  People always assume I was fired or laid off though, and I wasn’t!  That’s the worst.

What is the best advice you would give others in your situation?

Always remain positive.  I’ve had countless interviews, informationals, etc., and sometimes it seems like nothing has come out of it.  This is not the case.  I have met people who may not have hired me, but certainly liked me and will remember me.  Every chance to meet someone in your desired field is a great opportunity, even if it doesn’t seem that way at first.

What motto, phrase, or quote do you live by during these times?

My high school’s motto was “Succisa Virescit” which is Latin for “If you cut me down, I’ll grow back stronger.”  I live my life by this motto in good times and bad.

What piece of advice would you give to the friends and family of those who are unemployed?

I’m lucky enough to have a close knit family who understands that I have just hit a little bit of a bad patch.  They are not judgmental or brash in anyway.  They offer positive support and go out of their way to offer a helping hand.  It’s important to be supportive and stay positive for the sake of your loved one struggling to find a job.

Favorite Christmas Song?

I consider there to be two very different categories of Christmas tunes.  The first is the old school classics that you can hear at Christmas mass.  My favorite of these would be “Hark! The Herald Angel Sing” or “Joy to the World.”  In terms of more contemporary/poppy Christmas songs, I like The Pogues “Fairytale of New York” (despite being depressing) and Elton John’s “Step into Christmas” makes me happy.

Favorite Christmas Cookie?

Every Christmas my mom buys a contemporary twist on the classic gingerbread man.  It is two gingerbread men with vanilla ice cream in the middle.  I’m not sure it qualifies as a cookie but it’s delicious and makes me fat.

Favorite Christmas Movie?

It would have to be a tie between “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” (which I still watch every year with my siblings, ages 27 and 31) and “A Christmas Story.”  There’s so many close runner ups though; “The Grinch” (cartoon of course), “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” “Home Alone,” and clay-mation “Rudolph.”

Have you visited Zippy in Santaland yet?

Negative.

Thanks, John!  Check out his blog here:   The Hair Of The Blog That Bit You

-Zippy

I have been discussing with some of my HIV positive friends and fellow activists: how do you become an activist? What motivates you, what inspires you?

One of the answers was: you are self appointed, you make yourself one. And maybe it is partly true.

Sometimes I feel I am doing what I am doing, because nobody else (or just a few others) want or are able to do it. Who wants to be known for having a sexually transmitted disease? What will be the consequences of being so open about my status? I do fear sometimes that some enraged old lover may find this blog and come looking for me with a machete, but I hope that my cat Caspar will defend me fearlessly.

I would like to know more about the moment, or the process that pushes you and makes you step up.  What sparkles that? For me personally it was seeing so much unnecessary suffering in the women I supported. Witnessing women being beaten and abandoned by husbands, young women thrown out of their homes by their parents, gifted and talented girls gripped and paralyzed by the shame and low self esteem caused by internalized stigma. I felt that if I didn’t do something to stop this, if I didn’t try to act on the cause of such violence, I was almost an accomplice, how could I not do something?However, I also soon realized that you can not talk about HIV without talking about power, how it is distributed in our society, and how those who have less, or none, are so much more vulnerable to this small bug called HIV. You can not talk about HIV without talking of gender, poverty, the educational system, the relationship between rich and poor countries, homophobia, racism and a lot more. HIV and social justice are tightly interconnected. It is not just a limited struggle about this virus that affects me. It is about something much bigger: it is about justice.

Also I would have never taken this big step with all the risks involved if it wasn’t for the inspiration I had from other women living with HIV who had already started. We follow on the steps of those who walked before us and we hope that others will follow on our steps. A West African proverb states: we stand on shoulders of our ancestors.

My ancestors are many:  people who dared in face of incredible difficulties to do something to change the minds and hearts of those around them and thus initiate a much bigger change.

One of the ancestors on whose shoulders I stand is Rosa Parks, the civil rights movement leader, and this is how she commented on her decision not to give up her bus seat to a white person, and thus initiate the historical bus boycott:

The only tired I was, was tired of giving in. I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move.

Rosa Parks

This is a Globe and Mail web site. It has stories about people that have experienced mental illness.  It contains articles written by professionals about mental illness as well.  It is an excellent site to check out.  This web site is an eye opener.  If a person wants to learn about mental illness this is a great place to visit.

http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/breakdown/

Now, a little about my own psychiatrization.

At the end of a sexually and emotionally abusive relationship, that ended when I was twenty years old, I became suicidal and “depressed”.  The automatic reaction of those around me was to send me to the hospital.  One major catalyst in this process was when I chose to cut my own hair, chopping out layers in a rather creative manner.  I found this to be wonderfully cathartic, but my ex-partner and family were very disturbed.  At age nineteen, I had already been put on a variety of psychiatric medications for “depression” and “anxiety”, including SSRIs (Paxil, Celexa) and atypical antipsychotics (Risperidone, Seroquel).  No drug seemed to do the trick, and it is now obvious to me that my environmental circumstances are what caused my suicidal ideation and depression, and that being removed from that environment (not via institutionalization) would have caused these “symptoms” to subside.  But, alas, my family and friends immediately concluded that the hospital was the only answer.  I remember the tears of hope in my father’s eyes as he sat with me in the hospital parking lot before my admission.  I’m sure he was thinking, “Maybe this will finally fix her!”  I had always been a passionate and emotional child and adolescent, and had been chased into many a hiding place by him when he hollered about my “feelings” monopolizing his time.  ”Cry Baby” was one of my first labels, I suppose.

During my three week stay at “Unit Six” in September 2004, a well-known inpatient facility in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a “psychiatrist” that saw me for about five minutes a day put me on seven different drugs: Wellbutrin (300mg), Effexor (300mg), Seroquel (200mg), Risperidone (2mg), Clonazepam (2mg), Lorazepam (2mg), and Lamotrigine (250mg), and branded me with the diagnosis and “formal label” of Bipolar Disorder (Type I).  These are massive doses of powerful and dangerous drugs, but I was none the wiser, and like my dad, I wanted my self to be fixed.  I met many fascinating friends in the facility, including a 50 year-old schizophrenic man who only I seemed able to understand and communicate with.  However, when I started self-harming in the hospital, cutting my arms with a razor blade stolen from a drugstore across the street during a cigarette break, something I had never done before, I was kicked out of the ward.  Of course, before being sent away I was held down by six male security guards, stripped naked, and injected in the butt with heavy tranquilizers, and put in the isolation room for 24 hours, after I slammed a the receiver of a payphone down several times after an upsetting phone call from my ex-partner/abuser.    I went on disability social assistance, as the chemical straightjacket I now wore made daily functioning nearly impossible.  A trip to the grocery store took me days to recover from.  Before this hospitalization, I had worked full-time and been a full-time student since age 15.

In January 2005, I had had enough of living like a slow-moving corpse, and attempted to go back to school.  I was in the third year of my B.A. in Sociology.  Apparently, I did quite well, but that month was permanently erased from my memory when I suffered a grand-mal seizure at the end of the month.  No drugs other than psychiatric medications were present in my blood, and after conducting research on these drugs this past summer, it has become overwhelmingly obvious that these drugs caused the seizure, a suspicion I had for a long time, despite my psychiatrist’s denial that this cocktail had been a recipe for a seizure, as it included drugs that carry black box warnings about heightened risk of seizure (Wellbutrin, high dose Effexor), as well as others that lower the seizure threshold (benzos and atypical antipsychotics).  I remained in a coma for two weeks, and doctors doubted that I would ever recover from the brain damage caused by the seizure.  However, I slowly did recover.  During my recovery I had visions about the nature of the Universe, but could not communicate them to others.  I remember sitting on the bathroom floor in the ICU trying to spell out what I saw with pieces of toilet paper.  I believe that I healed my own mind through this exploration of other states of consciousness, although others preferred, and still prefer, to see it as an act of God.  When my physical health was deemed stable, I was sent back to “Unit Six”.  I still “did not make sense”, as I paced the halls making such statements as “no one wants to be a terrorist” and shouting “like captalism!” when things did not “make sense” to me.  This time I was a pariah on the unit and was fed massive doses of Halidol which caused me to write upside down and backwards when I attempted to journal my experience from the isolation room.  When I regained “coherency”, I was put on a new cocktail of meds – Lithium (1200mg), Effexor (600mg), Seroquel (600mg), and PRNs for various benzodiazepines.  I was immediately put back on disability, and the next several months were a haze.  I spent some time living with my father, some time living in the only rat-infested apartment that I could afford with my disability assistance payments, committed cheque fraud to be able to pay for groceries, and wandered the streets of downtown Winnipeg having nothing else to do.

During this period, I had intermittent delusions that I was dead, and that everyone around me was simply carrying on a charade that I was alive.  These delusions, which I had never had before, I can only conclude were a result of the seizure and coma (near death experience), during which I had visions of another dimension of reality.  Thus, I was hospitalized again in May, when those in contact with me again believed it was the best option.  Finally, in September 2005, upon attempting to return to school, the delusions reached their peak.  After a week of everyone around me telling me that I had a “crazy look in my eyes that they couldn’t stand (just stop it!)” I took an overdose of Lithium and went to sleep, not expecting to wake up.  I woke up to the sound of paramedics in my apartment, lecturing me about how “no one could live like this”, as they observed my living conditions and as I lost control of my bladder and bowels.  It was obvious that their implication was that living in the only apartment I could afford was my fault.  After five days of blood dialysis, and multiple doses of Halidol and Olanzapine, I arrived back at Unit Six, where I remained for two months, escaping for my twenty-second birthday for two days before being picked up by the police.  I soon left on yet another combination of medications – Effexor (450mg), Lamotrigine (250mg), an endless supply of Lorazepam, and Clozapine (150mg) – an extremely dangerous anti-psychotic that was taken off the market in the 1970s after scientists learned that it often lowered one’s white blood cell count to the point where a mild infection could become deadly.  However, as a 22-year old woman who had no one else to turn to, I blindly trusted that these “doctors” were acting in my best interest, and had no idea why I gained 40 pounds after I started taking Clozapine.  I started running six miles per day but could not lose the weight.  I had always had an extremely high metabolism and thin frame.  My new boyfriend made comments about my lessened attractiveness, and for the first time in my life, I became extremely self-conscious about my body image.

In December 2005, I suffered what I can only call a “blackout” – again I wandered the streets of downtown Winnipeg, leaving another temporary home on Boxing Day, and awoke on December 30^th in a hotel room with my pants off, where two males I had never seen before threatened that they would kill me if I left.  I ran as fast as I could, and miraculously there was a taxi waiting outside.  I returned to my father’s house, and the next morning, believing that I had shamed my family and that they would be better off without me, I used a single razor blade to cut my arms down to the bone.  I passed out in the bed I slept in as a teenager, and unexpectedly woke up, this time to the sound of my father yelling.  I was taken to an emergency room where I was laughed at.  I was not given a rape kit when the police took my statement about the night of the 30th, and the doctor that used 150 staples to reassemble my arms screamed at me for taking time away from patients that “really needed his help”.  After this, I spent only 72 hours in Unit Six.  I believed that there must be a reason that I was still alive – a reason that my body was able to withstand the torture that both doctors and I subjected it to.  I finally started to become suspicious about the “medical/psychiatric system”.

I got off of disability, stopped taking Lorazepam, and went back to school, although each morning it was a struggle to pull myself out of a Clozapine-induced coma of sorts.  I could sleep for sixteen hours and awake feeling completely unrested.  In the summer of 2006, I took my first tutorial in the Sociology and Politics of Madness, allowing me to examine my experiences from a critical point of view.  I decided to specialize in this area of the discipline of sociology, and spent the last years of my B.A., now in the Honour’s program, vigourously reading any material on the subject I could get my hands on.  After two years, I told my psychiatrist that Clozapine was making me lethargic and unable to complete my work – I was now a teaching assistant for the professor that I took that first tutorial with, and the task of marking 200 final exams loomed.  His answer was, “No, the drug is working.  Thus, you are sleeping less than you would be without it.”

When it came time to complete my Honours Thesis in order to graduate, exactly one year later, I decided to take matters into my own hands.  I conducted my own research on Clozapine and its effects, discovered that it was responsible for slowing down my metabolism and even often lead to the development of Type-II Diabetes.  I stopped taking it, tapering off the drug over two weeks as was described as the proper method of withdrawal by academic medical publications.  For the first time in years, I was able to bound up flights of stairs, and felt intensely motivated to finish my work.  I did not sleep for many, many days and believed that I had “figured it all out” – most professionals would call this a “manic episode”, but I kept secret the choice I had made.  I came to understand the visions I had during and after my seizure, conjured them at will, and experienced a spiritual awakening, or rather, the beginning of one.  I graduated and won the gold medal for Sociology and an award for Best Thesis in the Department of Sociology – on the topic of the social control of subversive women through the diagnosis of the DSM-IV personality disorders.

I now live in Vancouver and attend Graduate School, but remain physically addicted to Effexor, Lamotrigine, and Clonazepam.  When I tried, over the summer, as I continued to explore my new outlook on life and my own spirituality, to reduce my dose of Effexor by a mere 18 mg, I felt electrical shocks running from my brain to my toes with every step I took, and constantly found myself crying for no reason.  I now have to take 4.5 mg of Clonazepam each day to counteract the agitation caused by Effexor, which every psychiatrist I have seen in Vancouver has said that I should never been put on in the first place (“not with a diagnosis of ‘Bipolar I’!”), yet their only answer regarding how to get off of it has been to add new drugs to the mix, which I refuse to do.  My greatest fear is that I will never be able to stop taking Effexor, and that when and if I do, it will have permanently damaged my brain – that the “brain zaps”, well known to others who have gotten off SSRIs and SNRIs, will never completely go away.

I had to defer all but one credit during my first semester of Graduate School, due to the lethargy enduced by Clonazepam, the disillusionment I experienced after the departmental rejection of a project I wanted to do on the treatment of mental health patients in the ER (the reason given to me being that the professor of the qualitative methods course the project was to be for did not want any students’ work to speak to “a larger political situation”), the struggle to get my fiancée, Chris, out of yet another psychiatric ward, where he was being tortured with massive doses of neuroleptics and threatened with involuntary ECT for “counter-propagandizing”, reading certain books, complaining about nurses shining a flashlight in his eyes to check if he was asleep during the night, and other displays of “obviously manic behaviour“. I lost my beloved T.A. position, guaranteed to me upon admission to the University, when I made the “extremely unprofessional and absolutely unacceptable” move of running out of a lecture to answer a phone call from the hospital, was “chronically 3 minutes late for the class I taught at 8:30 am” and had to get subs for some classes.  Thankfully, I remain in close touch with many of my students, who I connected with on a deep level from day one.  My guaranteed T.A.ship for the coming semester has been “deferred” until I prove to my boss, the head graduate studies in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at this University in Vancouver, that I am able not to let my life circumstances interfere with my professionalism.  On December 1st, I was given an early gift for the holiday season – one month’s notice of eviction from my basement suite in a rented house, the landlord citing absolutely false reasons for the legitimacy of the eviction.  The tenants living above me, interior decorators who have always treated me like an alien of sorts, helped him to compile this list.  Now, I face the additional and familiar obstacle of forced poverty as well as I go into my second semester.

Thus, it is now my personal mission to take militant action against the “mental health system” that has destroyed countless lives, erased the personalities of countless amazing people, and that has come close to killing me and those that I love.  I will spend the time that I would have spent working with students to begin a campaign against forced ECT in British Columbia.  I encourage you with all of my being to join this struggle with the ultimate goal of destroying this institution of torture and its perpetration of crimes against innocent members of humanity.

It has been known for centuries that South Korea previously has been a nation unable to take care of their newborn children and babies. The statistic up until 2006 says that almost 228 00 children has been accepted for foreign adoption compared to only about 69000 domestic adoptions. The majority of the foreign adoptions was requested from Western states. A majority of Swedish adoptions has been through Korea, China, Sri Lanka and Colombia (but there might be even more). It is a bit tricky to keep track of them since they are so many… 

Last year 79 Korean children were adopted to Sweden out of those 56 were boys. According to scb.se  South Korea and China are the most common birth country for boy babies that are adopted to Sweden.  Surprisingly enough I found statistics stating that a total of 33 children that was adopted by Swedes was of North Korean origin in the years of 1999 -2008. I have always believed that North Korea did not allow foreign adoption.

 Previously there was almost no option for single mothers to care for their children or working or middle class families. That is however about to change but it will take a long time. The current government has promised to end all foreign adoption in about 3 – 4 years. Single people has also recently been able to adopt children and the limited age for domestic adoption has been raised from 50 to 60 in an effort to increase domestic adoption.

What seems to complicate things generally speaking is that there are almost no families who accepts a newborn baby into their families. The most recent celebrity to adopt a Korean baby girl was the actress  Katherine Heigl from Greys Anatomy, Knocked Up, 27 Dresses and the Ugly Truth.  Recently there was reports about suspicions in the couples fast  adoption process. Let me just say that the little girl apparently is a “special needs” child. But why should adoption of special needs children be faster than ordinary child adoption?

I can understand why the Korean government would like to see a change in the adoption debate but I also think adoption is great way to make a change. You give an innocent and helpless child a fresh start and a change to a better life. Personally though I do not support adoption. Apparently domestically adopted children are stigmatized since they do not share their adoptive parents blood… Do you know or believe from firsthand experience that this claim is valid?

Yet there are some who seems to understand the importance as well as need for domestic adoption. Celebrity couple Cha In – Pye and Shin Ae – Ra has adopted two daughters . They are South Korea’s answer to Brangelina in many ways. They also care for less fortunate and orphan children.  The couple also has one biological son and their adoptive daughters are named Ye Eun and Ye Jin. But there are many differences for instance Cha and Shin considered domestic adoption were as Brangelina did not. They have also not had any other biological children after their first-born and only son unlike Brad and Angelina who at present have 3 biological and younger children and a total of six children. Do you think it is good to adopt as many children as Brangelina did while still having biological children?

Along with the raised concern and criticism for foreign adoption comes concerns about elder adopteés wanting to discover their birth culture which most of them never has known.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/09/117_30098.html link to the article.

I wanted to share this very beautiful piece about postpartum depression (PPD), written and read by Helen Ferguson Crawford to introduce a speech about depression made by a former LA Times President and Head of CNN in Atlanta.   Not only is Helen a talented poet, she’s an award-winning artist, architect, and designer living in Atlanta.  

Helen received her art and architecture education at Parsons School of Design in New York, and at Princeton University.  Her work has appeared in exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, among other places.   Helen has provided commentary for NPR, Metropolis magazine and the New York Times, and was featured as one of “30 Artists: 30 and Under” in the New York Times Magazine.

* * *

Dear Post Partum Depression,

After the birth of my daughter, you silently slipped in, and settled down.

I recovered from birth, hugged my family, and watched autumn change to winter, while you slowly grew.

You hid behind other temporary, post partum illnesses, undetected.

You fed on stress. You fed on fear, until I found myself in a black hole so deep, dark and terrifying.

The sides were wet, damp and crumbly dirt; the width of my arms.

Up far above, the sky was barely visible.

Sometimes I could feel the sun for seconds.

There in that place, I accepted that you were here.

With intense fear, I stood up and gathered my army – friends, family, therapist and psychiatrist.

But even at night, when I lay on the cool floor of my porch, listening for anything – birds, trains, wind – waiting for the anxiety attacks to stop, waiting weeks for the medication to work, waiting for sunlight, sleep and appetite to return, I knew you were not me.

Depression, you are something that happened along the way – a situation. I accept this. You do not define me.

I laugh, sleep, play with my children, talk with my husband, draw, paint, smile, pray, cry, spend days with friends and live.

I climb, inch by inch, fingers dug in the sides, pulling myself up.

Each inch I climb is a triumph. I am on this path that is life.

My light shines from within.

- Helen Ferguson Crawford

*  *  * 

I’ve had the pleasure of becoming friends with Helen over the past few months.  She constantly amazes me with not just her artistic and creative talents, but also for her dedication in seeking supporters through such social media forums as Facebook and Twitter.  She formed the FB Group – “Sign This – Post Partum Mother’s Act.”  Having gone through a serious bout of PPD and still in recovery, she is determined to contribute to positive change that is desperately needed in this country with respect to early detection and treatment of PPD, which occurs at rate of one out of eight new mothers.  That’s right, PPD occurs in approximately 15% of all new mothers! 

Helen and many other advocates for PPD education and public awareness—like myself, Katherine Stone, Lauren Hale, Amber Koter-Puline and others—do what we do because of our experiences and want to help prevent other moms from having to go through what we went through, not knowing, fearful, miserable, deprived of a joyful motherhood experience, and with doctors, friends and family members not necessarily helping or understanding due to lack of awareness.  Out of lack of awareness comes stigma.  From our experiences, came the realization that our experiences could have been minimized or prevented had we known about perinatal mood disorders the way we do today, had we been screened early enough to detect that something was wrong before our illnesses spiraled into nightmarish experiences.  We realized that what this country desperately needs are the following:  1) education and awareness, 2) increased research into effectively detecting and treating perinatal mood disorders, and 3) an increase in training of healthcare practitioners.  Without these improvements, mothers will suffer the way we suffered, or worse—families being torn apart, death of the mother and/or baby(ies).

EVERY MOTHER DESERVES TO HAVE A GOOD POSTPARTUM EXPERIENCE.  So, if you haven’t done so already, please sign the petition today in support of this long overdue legislation!

“Nuts, schiz, psycho”: an exploration of young homeless people’s perceptions and dilemmas of defining mental health, Social  Science and Medicine. 2009 May;68(9):1737-44

O’Reilly M, Taylor HC, Vostanis P.

University of Leicester, Leicester, UK. mjo14@le.ac.uk

Abstract:

Through our research we explore the term ‘mental health’ as articulated by a group of young people living in homeless shelters utilising staff in a mental health service. This mental health service was offered in 5 large geographical areas (urban, semi-urban and rural) in England to 18 homeless shelters and we interviewed 25 homeless young people, 5 Mental Health Coordinators and 12 homeless shelter staff. Using discourse analysis of semi-structured interviews, we investigate the ideological dilemmas presented by the young people. They report negative and stigmatising descriptions of mental health despite their involvement with a mental health service. Four key interpretative repertoires are identified; denial of problems, mental health as negative, the need to talk, and challenging prejudice. It is concluded that the term ‘mental health’, which appears in the title of the service (of which they are clients), presents barriers for usage but works to challenge prejudice and educate young people. Discussion of the implications of naming services and the importance of shared meanings are considered.

Lancashire Care staff can request the full-text of this paper, email: susan.jennings@lancashirecare.nhs.uk