Category: Community Caring

Every Day Is World Mental Health Day

Does it ever feel like everybody but mental health peers are super stoked for World Mental Health Day and mental health awareness week and suicide prevention month? Having bipolar, it’s just another day, just another week, and just another month, with the only noticable difference being a bump in the numbers of people telling me how “brave & inspirational” I am for talking so willingly about that part of my life that is bipolar.

Okay, I get it, it’s important to have the open conversation and I’m active in that conversation . Still, hubris be damned, I’m pretty cool the rest of the year, too, and I know this because my Mom told me how very special I am every day.

You should be praising my bravery every day!

Living with bipolar, for me every day is world mental health day for as long as I’m in this world.

© 2024 STEVE’S THOUGHTCRIMES

Our Brain, Our Choice: “Med Noncompliant” Is Inappropriate.

The term “med noncompliant” must never appear in a mental health peer’s medical records, and any psych provider who notes this in a peer’s medical record must be stripped of licensure and never be allowed to treat peers ever again.

Sure, that’s obviously hyperbolic, but it’s no less extreme than such front end loaded nonsense, that a peer must take psych meds or be branded as difficult, stubborn, and not serious about their treatment. Bite the big green weenie, you psych providers who use “med noncompliant” in a peer’s notes. You don’t make the choice for a peer and you have no authority over a peer’s treatment options and decisions.

It’s the peer’s decision on all treatment strategies. As a psych provider, you are like our mechanic. We tell you what’s wrong under the hood and you make recommendations based upon your professional training. You are a professional collaborative advisor and not a legal treatment guardian.

With few exceptions, notating “med noncompliant” is an inappropriate assessment that assumes an authority not given by the peer. It’s okay to notate something like “peer chose not to try meds at this time” because that is factual information useful to the peer in future treatment. It’s also the type of honest information useful to other providers, because when you write “med noncompliant” in a peer’s medical charts enough times that peer will fire you and find a new provider. This happens, providers being fired by the peer.

Recap: Never say a peer is “med noncompliant” for saying no to your medical advice. Medical advice is not one size fits all and it’s the absolute and ultimate choice of the peer whether to accept your medical advice.

Our brain, our choice. Simple.

© 2024 STEVE’S THOUGHTCRIMES 

The University Interviews: Mental health peers to mental health providers.

In the months to come, STS is interviewing a number of peers pursuing university degrees in the mental health field. The unique challenges of college education for peers are illustrated in their experiences and stories shared, including how existing accommodations must improve to ensure peer success in their studies.

It’s a growing community of mental health peers returning to college to become mental health providers. There is a built-in benefit in this trend: Mental health peers taking primacy in the mental health provider market results in ongoing successful treatment for peers. Peers treating peers just makes sense.

Encouraging enough peers to enter degree programs is difficult, though, because these programs continue to lack properly enforced scholastic accommodation for the unpredictable nature of symptomatic episodes. The “wash out” rate is significant because the structure of degree programs value benchmarks and expected completion scheduling over the individual needs of candidates.

While university accommodation services are more available, the parameters are so ill-defined by administration and repercussions for non-compliance by educators is so inadequate, scholastic accommodations for mental health peers are easier to ignore than honor.

A prime concern is mental health peers aren’t involved in developing scholastic accommodations. Having peers develop mental health degree program scholastic accommodations for successful completion and graduation is critical, and not as an abstract talking point for consideration, this is required right now and going forward.

Given a choice, peers choose providers who implicitly understand with a unique-to-peers lived-experience empathy. And we peers deserve more providers who are peers. The time is right to change things up. Let’s create an ongoing education environment to support mental peer students. The upcoming interviews have lots of excellent insight on just how to do this.

Conspiracy theorists and mental health peers share a strong similarity.

Conspiracy theorists are upset that their views are dismissed and they thesmelves are marginalized. I say this is an excellent dynamic and I’ll tell you why, as a mental health peer advocate.

When I first started this peer advocacy thing – ten years ago – and began attending community behavioral health meetings in New Mexico, I was continuously “complimented” by others for “being so articulate… for a peer.” Yes, this is incredibly ignorant, biased, discriminatory, and just plain mean, and I could have gotten upset and demanded peers be treated with professional and basic human respect.

But I didn’t.

Why? Because as long as these minimizing well-wishers underestimate peers, we can get through all sorts of necessary change with little bureaucratic pushback. Being seen as intellectually deficient and less capable is a stigma worth capitalizing upon. So I did and I encourage fellow peer advocates to do the same.

The point is:

Now, my conspiracy theorist friends, a number of your ideas seem absolutely whack to me, but that’s a good thing. I take you seriously AND I think you’re nuts (at times). Folks like me are primed to accept your conclusions when we’re shown otherwise and logical proof. And to let you in on an observation, theorists friends. You’re more right that wrong, it just takes most of us longer to catch up.

So being tagged as a conspiracy theorist is a gift, not an insult. Let it ride. And, you can perpetuate their self-constructed myth even further with primely chosen words. For example:

Mental health community stakeholder: “Steve, you’re so articulate FOR A PEER.”

Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t know what half of those words mean.”

Just know going in, invariably the gift is rescinded when they figure you out. This gift to peers hasn’t been available to me for years. In fact, I’m seen as “too functional,” and because of this, mental health colleagues either didn’t recognize or simply ignored that I was falling into a seriously dangerous suicidal episode by volunteering to help the Albuquerque Police Department. But that’s a different tale for another time.

For now, always keep this chestnut cliche firm to the chest, ready at mind, and primed at the fore: Self-care, self-care, self-care! And this is a great number of articles for another time.

And again, let them underestimate you. It’s a great way to get things done with little resistance.

Why I didn’t and won’t watch Breaking Bad

It’s appreciated just how excellent a program Breaking Bad is. I didn’t watch it and I won’t watch it for this very simple and singular reason:

It’s a show that dramatizes drug culture.

The stuff I do in peer co-occuring advocacy gifts me with friends whose lives are severely and significantly damaged by illicit drugs like meth. Dramatizing drug culture isn’t necessarily condoning, glorifying, or celebrating drug culture. However, it’s impossible for me to watch a show like Breaking Bad without reflecting on the horrible life stories my friends shared with me. This negates anything pleasurable and enjoyable about watching the show. So I didn’t and I won’t.

And that Breaking Bad was filmed in Albuquerque makes it even more tangible, the literal recognizable physical setting of my friends’ life experiences.

I have an irritated good friend insisting I watch Breaking Bad, pointing out it’s about more than meth culture, that it’s about character development and character interaction. He insists if I give the show a chance I would understand this.

I asked him a single question: Does the show utilize meth production and sales as a central plot point throughout the series? The answer is of course “yes.” Returning to my first principle reason for not watching the show, because it is based upon dramatizing drug culture I won’t watch Breaking Bad. Flatly and immutably.

Call me stubborn if need be. I don’t feel my personally earned principles are open for debate. And I appreciate just how excellent a program Breaking Bad is.

Starting psych meds and remaining suicidal – or – Starting psych meds and only then becoming suicidal.

Last week’s thrifting found two DVDs from a medical-sounding production company directly funded by the Church of Scientology. These DVDs are candid interviews and group discussions with parents who lost a child to suicide. Viewing the material a few times, I recognized this logical pattern.

1.) Child is depressed and suicidal.

2.) Parent chooses to take child to medical provider.

3.) Medical provider prescribes antidepressant.

4.) Child begins med regimen.

5.) Soon after, the child suicides, by these accounts within days of starting the med regimen.

6.) The medical provider and their prescription is to blame for the suicide.

This logic troubles me greatly. As a peer who has cycled through many different antidepressants, I can attest to the dreaded “it’ll take two to four weeks to see if it even works.” And in this efficacy lag time, quite often I remained suicidal.

No antidepressant I’ve taken has ever worked within days.

Based on my experience and my understanding of psych meds, the query is plain:

Did the medication cause the child’s suicide, or did the child continue to be suicidal as before starting the medication?

The Church of Scientology is infamous for their outspoken denouncement of psych meds, and aggressively so. For DBSA and STS, Craigslist was a great way to reach peers in search of a peers support group. Well, the local Scientologists messed that up for everyone by overposting. Now, no peer support group posts are allowed.

You see, the church posted daily dozens of “support group notices” of the ilk:

“Do you have anxiety? Come to our support group.”

“Do you have depression? Come to our support group.”

“Do you have bipolar? Come to our support group.”

“Do you have PTSD? Come to our support group.”

“Do you have insomnia? Come to our support group.”

“Do you have an eating disorder? Come to our support group.”

And onwards.

There was no accompanying contact info, just an address … which was the local office for the church. I dropped in once in curiosity and upon arriving I was near immediately asked if I was prescribed psych meds and given literature similar to the DVDs I watched this week.

There were no support groups.

What’s so troublesome to me is how hazardous this tactic is, using manipulative illogic to dissuade peers from exploring every option available, in this case psych meds.

Don’t give your suicidal child psych meds because I did and it made my child kill themselves.

I asked the plain question earlier, was it the psych med that pushed the child to suicide or did the child remain suicidal and end their life in that dreaded two to four week lag time?

The answer is also plain. The child remained suicidal. Some will take this as me being insensitive and ignorant, which if you know me and my advocacy efforts you’ll know is not true.

What I find concerning is using correlative illogic to convince peers psych meds are universally deadly. How can that be? There are millions of peers making use of psych meds who are alive and healthy, their lives more successful and joyful in part from having the choice of psych meds available to them. This includes me.

We’ll never find a DVD of interviews with parents whose child has benefitted from psych meds. Like Yelp, reviewing activity is skewed greatly towards complaints and not praise. To take a (thankfully and blessedly) small population of family tragedies and claim this represents inherent danger is knowingly irresponsible.

How can I know this? Because if psych meds were as damaging as claimed, the pharmaceutical manufacturers would have been out of business decades ago.

This is plain logic that makes good sense.

My feelings on psych meds and treatments options for mental illness is consistent and transparent. Peers benefit the most from having as many choices as possible available. For my wellness, I am alive because of the choices I made in my treatment, and this includes choosing to have a psych med regimen.

It is responsible to encourage and promote support for all existing choices and the creation of new choices. Peers benefit from having choices.

And to be balanced, this includes choosing not to take psych meds.