November 2008 - letters2

Hello,

I have a question for you. I am a professional who works in the government as a program manager for mental health programs paid for by Federal funds (Medicaid) in other words, public mental health. I am a person who previously had a diagnoses and at one time took 8 different medications including thorazine and so on and yet despite those medications and weekly counseling I was still was not stable.

Initially I was plunged into the world of mental health when I went to a large mega-church and asked to receive counseling from the pastors wife because of a problem with the sin of bitterness. The first session she told me sin was not my issue, that I was probably sexually abused but “forgot” all about it.

After 2 months of her counsel which was 100 % secular I became so unraveled that I made some suicidal gestures and was put in the hospital and thus began a life in hell, and 17 years of mental health treatment. I could write a book of the obscene things I have seen done to people, what I have heard in staff meetings about clients, the bankrupt personal lives of counselors, the counselors that batter their wives, sleep around, abuse their own children and so on. Suffice it to say, last year I picked up the book “Don’t Waste Your Life” by John Piper and everything changed. I had a mental image of standing before my creator and saying “I did nothing with my life because I was in therapy” I was literally on disability and told I was too mentally ill to work, my days were tedious and painfully boring with no purpose and meaning.

I divorced myself from the mental health system, asked God to drop a job in my lap because my attempts to find a job after years on disability were not fruitful. I began to do public speaking about recovery. Someone in the State Mental health heard me speak, told me I would be perfect at their job (they were retiring, sent me the application and I applied and was hired. In my position I help people locate mental health services, and run programs and translations services at an administrative level and not direct service provision. However, I do have callers who are identified as consumers.

On occasion, I have callers that are so delusional, or speaking in “word salad” to the degree that it is very clear something is terribly wrong with the language function of their brains. I hear as well the stories about the CIA and FBI and radio waves coming through their teeth. What do you think of this? What causes this? I know that many of us who have been dxed bipolar are not, or if we are we have more control over it than we let on. However, in my tenure in the state hospital I have met some folks that are so very far from reality and hearing voices so loudly that they beat their heads on the wall to drown out the noise.

What do you think about that? In my position I also had a shrill harsh woman call and say “Give me the phone numbers of the people who cast out the demons of mental illness” I could hear her destroy people with that attitude. I had to tell her we were public mental health and not in contact with religious providers of services although Catholic and Lutheran services do contract.

Therefore, I do not know how to account for people who clearly seem to have a brain disorder versus those with emotional disorders. And while I could think all of it is just malingering when you talk to one of these folks for about an hour you realize that emotional disorders, personality disorders, bipolar disorders are quite different than paranoid schizophrenia. I had lunch with a women yesterday who was institutionalized with schizophrenia but recovered and is thinking of going off medications. She attributes her recovery to God. However, when she was sick she was very, very sick and now she takes a lot of medications to stave off the voices and symptoms but wonders if she could live without the meds.

PS Have you spent much time in mental hospitals are with people who are labeled schizophrenic? I have and I would like to hear from someone who has actually worked closely with them and spent a great deal of time say it is not real.