blah, blah, blah ...

Hi. I am getting interesting emails from different people all over the place. Here is a project for homeless people in New Hampshire. It is run by a professional psychologist named Cindy and it is call the Under the Bridge Project. They have very little to work with but at least it's something. India has at least something. We have a drop-in centre and some beds that are overcrowded. We have no one that I know of who is working with the mentally ill. Here, as in almost all other places, there is no access to medical care for the mentally ill on the street.

Here's something Cindy sent me:

The Under the Bridge Project

Since 1998 The UTB outreach team has attended to the needs of the unsheltered homeless in Manchester. Our volunteers collect usable goods from community resources to redistribute. We also provide advocacy and referrals. We receive help with our goals through community members who respond responsibly to help us address immediate needs and God's Providence.

The Dance of Outreach

Outreach is primarily directed toward finding homeless people who might not use services due to lack of awareness or active avoidance and who would otherwise be ignored or underserved.

Outreach is viewed as a process rather than an outcome, with a focus on establishing rapport and a goal of eventually engaging people in the services they will accept.

Outreach is first and foremost a process of relationship building and that is where the dance begins...

Outreach by peers, meaning "children of God" forgoing the titles or degrees, is an essential connection for the ignored, abused or otherwise sheltered and unsheltered and the formerly homeless.

Outreach connects us to one another, places care and humanity into our own hands and builds community amongst us.

Outreach with our peers is non-judgmental. It builds understanding it values programs that work and steers clear of those that don't. Outreach by peers doesn't waste time. It doesn't pass out bus tickets to other towns and it doesn't let people starve because of their "inappropriate behavior" which may have put them out of shelters, nor do they freeze in bad weather.

Outreach by peers, allows baby steps and coaxes when appropriate the step toward the hospital, the rehab, the shelter, and mental health. It doesn't side step real issues and, can confront when needed

And Outreach is to dance with grace, when the stakes are high as the challenge for all of us.

Bruce We also help plan annual Gimme shelter which is a sleep-out on our state capital- file attached. we work with colleges and churches to raise awareness. we get people experiencing homelessness that we have met to attend and speak and for at least one night thaty have a place to sleep without getting woken up and told to move on or be arrested.

and we annually plan Homeless memorial day vigils as we keep track of street deaths and help community grieve as other families would.

. there is awesome national group website where you can get lots of ideas.

nationalhomeless.org

peace, gotta work the streets as you know its getting cold and need to stock up folks with blankets and coats

cindy

--
"... everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence." Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket), Salish.

It's Been a While

It's been a while people. I have been busy beyond description. We ended up evicted because my wife and I are looking after our disabled brother. He's not mentally ill, he has Downs Syndrome. Such is the society in which we live. Life goes on.

I received an email from India. Sarbani works with the homeless mentally ill in Kolkata. It looks like it's his job. That's more than we have going here. We have people working with the homeless, but no one specifically working with the mentally ill on the streets. India's ahead of us on that one. Here's the email he sent:

We started this work one and a half years back. There are around 466 homeless mentally ill on the streets of Kolkata. Right now running from pillar to post to raise some funds for the hospitalization cost for emergency cases. Its tough. But worth trying.

He sent the following link: Stuff in India click here.

He also sent some pics of news articles. Here they are ...


I wish they weren't so blurred so they were easier to read. The top one is about a young man who was found naked and babbling prayers rummaging through garbage. He was taken to a hospital and under the care of a psychiatrist, found a road to recovery. He has a long way to go, but at least he is getting treatment that seems to be working.

The second article talks about 18 mentally ill people who were found living on a railroad platform. They were taken to a judge who sent them to a hospital. They didn't have any room for them there and they were rejected. They went back to the judge and he sent them to a doctor. The doc said only one of them was ill and the rest were rejected. The clinic revealed they simply didn't have the facilities for them. No one knows what to do with them or how to keep them.

Sarbani says he just keeps working on, with nothing and little or no help. But at least it's better than what we do.

I began this blog as an investigation into the causes of social problems. I wanted to find out why nothing worked in our society any more. Here we have a problem that is epidemic throughout the world. This problem of homeless mentally ill people is everywhere. And here we have pretty good evidence that almost nothing is being done about it. At least in India, it's being examined. Here, it's being ignored. I am not a sociologist or a shrink; I'm a mathematician mostly. I am trying to model social problems and look at it mathematically. I have come to a few conclusions on the causes of having 1,000 to 5,000 homeless mentally ill people, who are very sick and suffering, living on the banks of the Bow River in Calgary, one of the riches cities in the world. It would cost very little to cure the problem in fairly short order with a commitment to actually solving the problem. In other words, with integrity. However, we spend much more to manage the problem; it just keeps going. It's destroying our downtown and killing business after business in the central core. Recently, Sears moved out of the downtown. A huge multi story building has been emptied by Sears. I don't know if anything has taken over to fill the void. The Bay is probably next, and if the Bay goes, there goes downtown Calgary.

So, what's my conclusion, and what the heck is it about that stone? Well, it goes like this, I'm concluding the reason we're in this situation, is because we have built a society where people would rather keep their jobs than do them. We have an army of bureaucrats and accountants and no one to do the work. In Calgary, there is one psychiatrist working for Access Mental Health who is assigned to the homeless. He works a couple of days a week, a couple of hours a day. And that's for over 1,000 very sick people. He works out of an office. You need an appointment and have to go through a screening to see him. You fill out a form. You wait for a phone call and two separate phone interviews from screeners. If you're lucky, you can see him in a couple of months. So, if you're mentally ill, homeless, have the where with all to keep it together for a while and have a cell phone -- hey, you're in luck!

It's based on the difference between our perception of the problem and the reality of the problem. Which is why I keep harping on Truth all the time. There's a huge difference between our perception and reality. People who believe their perception happens to be reality are people who are mentally ill. Those of us who strive to come closer to reality and overcome their assumptions and perceptions, are those who are a lot closer to good mental health. In other words, to get right down to it, we have built a society which has lost it's fundamental integrity. It is inherently corrupt.

A couple of weeks ago, the federal minister of health lambasted a conference of physicians over the drug shoot-up havens provided for in Vancouver. He based his condemnation of the bevy of doctors on the simple fact that what they were doing was simply morally wrong. It was a wrong thing to do to provide access to the poison that was killing their patients when they could, in fact, actually heal them. It's a step forward. There may be arguments against him, but his premise is sound. There has to be someone, somewhere, who is willing to take the moral high ground and damn the consequences; let's heal people, lots of people. We don't need more bureaucrats or accountants; we need people on the street getting the job done.

A Zero-Sum Game

We are caught in a zero-sum game. Wars get started this way.

To explain: there is a mathematical approach to human relationships. One of theseis the two-person zero-sum game. In this particular game, game there is a loser for every winner and for every winner there is a loser. The Chicago Futures Exchange, which handles most of the world’s economy, is protected by the principles of a zero-sum game. It is the prime example of a zero-sum game. If you investigate these principles, you would find that for every zero-sum game, without exception, there is a trick to winning. If you know the trick, you can win every game. In other words, it’s a crooked crap game.

What’s the only thing you can do when you find yourself in a crooked crap game? – Quit.

The only way to win in a zero-sum game is not to play. Actually, the game is played by trying to get the other side to lose. It’s a losers’ game. No one wins; life is not a zero-sum game. Life is a game of cooperation. We are, in reality, in an arena where if you win, I win; if you lose, I lose. Whether we like it or not, we’re in this together. And yet the world keeps playing a zero-sum game. For the sake of power and wealth, everyone else has to lose so that, by default, those playing the game win.

But everyone thinks they know the trick. Everyone tries to put everyone else into a crooked crap game and thinks they have the dice loaded in their favour. Both sides of the game think they cannot lose. And as a result, we walk onto the field of brinkmanship; hence, the Cuban missile crisis; hence, World War One.

Now, there has to be something to pull us out of this ridiculous game, otherwise we as a species could not have survived for so long. And it is this game that is being played throughout the world, which has placed us in crisis.

This may sound melodramatic or absurd, but the answer is Truth. Beyond the tricks, beyond the façade of falsehood, lies Reality, lies Truth. And the truth is the ultimate trick in this universal zero-sum game. With Truth, you cannot lose; it is the ultimate weapon.

But if you are dedicated to Truth and cannot lose and everyone else is playing this stupid game, then they have to go to the wall. They either back down or go the limit. Each side piles on more and more consequence to get the other side to back down; hence brinkmanship.

We are caught in a zero-sum game and no matter how hard we try, we can’t get out. Believe it or not, this has everything to do with homeless mentally ill people strewn throughout the cities o the west.

Compassion

Compassion is an interesting thing. You would think it would apply to those in need pretty well across the board. But it has boundaries and limitations.

For example, my brother John arrived Christmas Eve. He was pretty well a basket case. He is a mentally retarded 61-year-old man in a wheelchair with a broken leg. He is completely dependent, on a list of medications a mile long, was "escaping" from a nursing home where he has been pretty well locked up for five years, both ears were badly infected, he was totally disoriented and a mess of other stuff I won't go into. Needless to say, he was traumatized.

Without hesitation, my wife and I devoted ourselves to bringing him back from the edge. We hustled up various organizations and government bodies to swing into action in order to support John and start him on a recovery process.

There are very limited programs and policies in place for the government to support disabled people in such a situation who arrive from another province. However, the individual bureaucrats, desk jockeys, professionals, clerks and just about everyone who came into contact with John swung into action and did everything possible to help him. As a result, he can stay with us for a while and we are able to nurse him back to health.

To let you know, it has been about a month and John is off of all but one of the meds and that is in a greatly reduced dosage. That's under medical supervision as well. He has weekly therapy to get over his trauma. He is awake now. He enjoys going to the local Junior B hockey games. He has a growing community of friends and circle of support. He is looking forward to getting his cast off. He likes to sing when he's happy. He still cries in fits of anguish and grief, but the fear is leaving him. He's getting better.

John's life of hardship began decades ago when his mother died in 1961 and he was institutionalized for 20 years. The last five years were just the last straw. Right now we look to the future and things get better day by day. In his life John has had people who loved him. And that is what makes it possible for him to begin to recover.

Now, the reason I'm writing about this on a news blog about the homeless mentally ill is this: John got help because people were compassionate about his situation. Of course they were compassionate. He has his brother and family to advocate for him and people have compassion for the mentally retarded. We all know John was born with his condition. He is not at fault. As a matter of fact, even thinking he is at fault is repulsive.

As my wife and I were walking in the local park by the river pushing John along in his wheelchair, we discussed why is it that John gets help while all those people who are very sick and unable to look after themselves -- the homeless mentally ill -- go without. We figure it has to do with compassion. People are compassionate towards John, but, it seems, not towards the mentally ill.

John is easy to love. He smiles at people and waves and says hi to just about everybody. He has an innocence and child-like nature that inspires compassion. Mentally ill people do not.

Furthermore, some of those who are mentally ill have been known to be dangerous. It's fairly rare, but it happens. Generally, mentally ill people are not easy to love.

John is not alone as one who has suffered because of his disability. There are thousands who suffer with no access to services and treatment all across Canada. There are also thousands who do receive treatment and whatever help they need as well. But there is a dividing line here. Some receive compassion within our society and others do not. And the dividing line is hard to define.

The mentally ill are seen as having brought it upon themselves, that they were not born that way. For example, many are associated with the addicted and thereby tainted with the accusation that their disease may be in some way their fault, or that they could recover if they wanted to.

The statistics contradict the belief that the homeless mentally ill are sick because they fried their brains on drugs. It is not fair to equate mental illness with drug addiction. These people are just sick. They have no hope and no access to help and as a result, they are a major drain on society.

The madness is that they can possibly recover and the cost of their recovery is far less than the cost of managing a hopeless situation for both the ailing and the surrounding community.

It appears that from a lack of compassion, rather than a lack of ability, we have found ourselves with a major social problem.

And the paradox is, that this is from people who are basically compassionate.