Returning after a long hiatus

It has been some time, years, since I last posted. I had planned to make a comprehensive study of the problem of the homeless mentally ill in one of the world's wealthiest cities. I believe I have accomplished that and from some of the comments that have come my way, I believe the task was very worthwhile. Many have written that this blog has helped them in times of trouble. Lord knows, we have all been through times of trouble and if anything I have done has helped, then it was worthwhile.

I had stopped posting because I went to work at the Calgary Drop-In Centre -- probably the world's largest homeless shelter. It is an amazing place with amazing people. The staff who work there are beyond description as far as the best attributes that can be found in human beings goes. There can be up to 1500 homeless people per night staying there. There are five floors. No one is turned away except for the extremely violent who would be a danger to the staff and other clients. Other than that, no one is turned away. Ever.

I worked nights. Mostly I worked on the first floor, at the entrance door and in the extreme intoxication ward. Sometimes I worked in the lobby where those in extreme intoxication had been removed to. It was like a war zone where wounded and desperate people lay everywhere. I have never seen such a sight other than in pictures of refugee camps or places recovering from natural disaster. In spite of the devastation, there is the consistent manifestation of unbelievable kindness and generosity between clients and among staff. It is a truly remarkable place. It changed me.

I also worked on other floors where people could try to get their lives together. Some of the floors had clients who worked daily and were waiting to get a place or established. These were sober floors. There are programs and counselling services. There is an artists' studio. There is an extensive kitchen and food. The place was built by the people of Calgary, primarily, who raised the money for it. It continues to run as a charity. It is right downtown and in a beautiful building. The place has saved a lot of lives. However, sometimes we lose people whose bodies have been found in the adjacent river or frozen in a parking lot nearby. Sometimes we are told of someone in trouble and we go and get them and bring them into the warmth. It was winter then and people freeze to death in Calgary.

At first I thought there would be a tremendous number of crack addicts. However, there were incredibly few crack addicts. Many had problems with alcohol. Some just had a really bad turn or series of turns in their luck. Practically every single client had been through the child protection agency or had been a foster child.  No one had family other than other people on the street. The lack of family, as children and as part of growing up, was the most remarkable and outstanding statistic. It appears there is a tie between us and our birth parents, that if broken has devastating results. The power of the family is absolute in our lives. After being at the DI for four months that winter, that is an obvious statistic.

There are those who man the trenches: men and women actually. Their weapon is selflessness. The battle cannot be won, but it must be fought. The resolution to this overwhelming injustice is included in teachings of many admired teachers and leaders in the past. It is our materialism that is killing us. But how do we change that? Indeed, how do we change?

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.

What’s Calgary Really Like?

This is my old stompin’ grounds. I hitch hiked out here back in 1968 and began work as a gravel truck driver delivering to the foot of the Husky Tower as it was being built. I’ve been all over this town. My parents got married here and so did I. It looks like my son will be married here too. I’ve met all kinds of people in Cow Town.

I came back here last year and was bustling around trying to make ends meet, as is my lot. I was working in the north east and living in the west end by the river. I was taking the C-train most of the time. That’s the Light Rail Transit in Calgary.

Nevertheless, I get home and realize I’ve lost my wallet. Do you have any idea what a major hassle it is to lose your wallet? Most of you probably do. It’s not the loss of money; it’s the loss of the ID. It takes months to get your driver’s license, health card, bank card; hell, even your library card requires a piece of mail with your address on in so that takes a while to come through. And of course every wallet has bits of pieces of paper and stuff that is real important information you will never get again. Let’s face it people, losing your wallet is a hell of a drag.

So I call the bank and cancel my bank card. I get Visa to shut down. I cal the police and there was a fairly helpful officer on the line who lodges all the info he can, including driver’s license, etc. It looks like my pocket was maybe picked or something. OK, that’s all done as evening comes to a close and I have no idea what to do next.

Morning comes and I find a crumpled up bus ticket rummaging in my coat. At least I can get downtown to the bank and maybe hunt around a little.

Downtown I drop into the Bay and security looks about and reports they haven’t seen my wallet. I tried a couple of coffee shops but to no avail. This sucker is lost.

As a last resort I cross Seventh Avenue into Calgary Transit’s office and ask at the desk if a wallet has been handed in.

“What’s the name?” says the clerk.

“Bruce Rout,” I answer and he punches the name into his terminal at the counter.

“We got it,” he says and heads off into the back. I can’t believe my good luck.

He returns and hands my wallet to me. “Open it and give me a piece of picture ID,” he says.

I open my wallet to take out my driver’s license and there, staring me in the face, is a brand spanking new monthly transit pass that I had just bought. It was totally transferable. Whoever found it could easily have taken it. I hand the desk clerk my license and check the inside pocket of the wallet. Sure enough, there’s a $5 bill in there, right where I left it. That was all the money plus a $75 bus pass. All ID was intact.

I showed the clerk. ”There’s my bus pass and all my money,” I said.

“You’re pretty lucky,” he said.

I took back my license and headed out. First thing I did then was call the cop shop and cancel the report on the lost wallet. They were stunned and very happy to hear there were still honest people in enough abundance that my wallet could be found intact including everything valuable.

This is a good town. I had lost my wallet at the transit station in the middle of the seedy part of town. They have all types there. When I say seedy, I mean real seedy. Whoever picked up my wallet probably never even opened it. Then again, they probably did open it to check who it belonged to. They probably saw the transit pass and the money and handed it in to the transit lost and found without even thinking of being dishonest.

It reminded me of the time when red China was first opened up to the west as a result of Nixon’s visit. One of the comments there was that Chinese people were so honest you could lose your wallet with money in it and it would be handed in to the authorities completely intact. You don’t need to go to China to find honest people. They’re right here. They’re all around us.

As I went through the rest of my day I could only chuckle intermittently. That’s because that’s Calgary. That’s what this city is like. This is a good town and these are good people. They work hard and they are basically honest.

Like I say, this is a good town.

Interesting Times

The Feds have just announced a $55 million per year (five-year) commission/centre into mental health and it’s to be based in Calgary. Excellent.

So far it looks like it’s going to end up as a building or group of offices.

Let’s get the links here: There’s http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=PG_910_E&cw_topic=910&cw_rel=AR_1730_E which says homelessness is a huge contributing factor to mental illness.

Then there’s the Senate report which everyone is waving around, the link to which is on the side of this page. It’s been there for months.

I was walking by the river yesterday when I saw the headline announcing the commission jump out at me from the news stand. I had to buy it. It’s the first paper I’ve bought in years. I was talking about it with my son and he proposed the following scenario:

A: Hey, the press is really coming down on this mental illness thing.

S: Oh, hey, I guess we better do something. What have we got on it?

A: We got this Senate report from about a year ago. It looks pretty good.

S: A year ago eh? We better get onto that. What’s it say?

A: Says the same thing the press is saying.

S: Oh, ok, what’s it cost?

A: $85 million over five years.

S: Hmmm, right, give them $55 million. Where is the pressure from the press coming from?

A: Calgary.

S: CALGARY?!!! That’s my home constituency! Set up a centre and get some sort of press announcement fast. Send the minister!

And so it goes. It seems Steve has been moved by the travesty of mental illness and homelessness in his home town. Quoting the Herald, he says, “We see mental health disease everywhere.” Actually, kidding aside, I believe he is being sincere. I mean it.

It’s important to realize you are not going to solve this problem overnight. A building is good. A long-term commission is good. But please remember it’s been done before and we’re still hooped.

This is because of the fundamental problem with our society. We can find solutions to problems but we have great difficulty applying them. Building a centre as an answer to a social problem is a perfect case in point.

It’s like this … we see someone homeless and mentally ill. We say, ok, they’re homeless, I guess we had better give them a home. So we take them, and clean them up, give them a shave and descent clothes and maybe even a job. We set them up in a nice place, give them meds, check in on them once in a while and see how they do. I’ll tell you what happens. Five seconds after you leave, they take off and they’re back on the river bank. Calgary has done this before. It doesn’t work. It is not a sustainable solution to the problem. It helps the working poor, but the mentally ill -- a huge proportion of the homeless -- nada.

The drop-in centre is a fabulous facility with incredibly hard working people. It’s jammed packed and overflowing. It cannot solve the problem; it can only deal with the symptoms. It is not designed to solve the problem, only to try and cope with it.

The problem is not just a problem with the mentally ill; it is also a problem of our society. Re-read with Madeline says about this. We have become an extremely materialistic society and it’s killing us. The homeless mentally ill and how we deal with them underscores the illness of our society.

To explain: the Webster’s dictionary says materialism is a denial of any form of spirituality. Everything is material or physical. Spiritual things like value, honesty, truth, integrity, love, selflessness and so on, the things that are indicative of the human spirit, do not exist in a materialist dogma; they are the results of physical interactions like ingrained pathways of the mind trained by a lifetime of chemical reactions among neurotransmitters.

To put it in clear terms, we all have a choice: we are either very intelligent animals or we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. I really don’t care which decision you make on this. Just realize there are consequences to the decision you make.

So, if we follow this dichotomy, if there is a problem, a materialistic solution is to find something material or physical to solve it, like a building or drugs. It fails to recognize that it is not money per se that has the power to solve problems; it’s people. This is a very difficult point to get across. Our society has lost sight of competency and replaced it with levels of measurable qualifications which may not actually solve the problem.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with capitalism; it’s what we do with it that counts.

The Senate report is very clear. We can solve the problem. It may take five to ten years, but we can solve it. To do so we need drugs and shrinks – competent shrinks. Yes, we need support of other people. We need to end prejudice. We probably need a building. But without shrinks and drugs, you’re not going anywhere. It’s people – competent people – who will solve the problem.

Let’s clarify this. The commission is spending $55 million over five years. That’s $11 million a year. Calgary spends about $55 million a year on the homeless. So $11 million is not that much money. I’m not saying we turn it down; it’s just we have to be careful with every penny. So how about we try a different tack. Let’s take five shrinks and 10 cops. Cops cost 100 grand per year, everything considered. For shrinks, budget 150 grand each. Drugs are cheap. That’s roughly $2 million a year. Get these guys on the street and start pushing anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers like street drugs. Follow up with support and lead the sick to long term treatment without locking them up. You want to deal with this problem, then get off your seat, away from your desk and your computer, and out onto the street with the people.

To cure mental illness, you have to hit it with meds to get the fire under control. You follow and support with therapy to finally douse it. In five years you won’t need a building – they’ll build one on their own by themselves and with no help from anyone.

Interview with Dr. Nordli

This post is a bit of a mish-mash of different things…

Dr. Nordli and I have been friends ever since I came back from New Zealand. She’s a wonderful doctor who takes a real interest in getting her patients better. She’s outspoken as sin, but a heck of a doctor.

She’s worked for six years in the Ponoka institution which is a world class hospital for brain damage and has a long history in treating people with mental illness. Dr. Nordli will be missed there by staff and patients.

If you happen to be severely mentally ill, and you are very lucky, you end up in Ponoka. According to what Dr. Nordli says, you’ll only be in there, usually, for three to four weeks. I don’t know yet what the follow-up is to your stay. That is something I have to look up.

Now, last Thursday, (and this is Monday), the Calgary police beefed up their personnel on the lower east side due to a “spike” in recent crime.

“There has been an increase in arrests,” said S/Sgt Barry Balerud. He said there have been 33 arrests so far and 15 of them are criminal code offences, mostly involving drugs.

He explained there is a lot of criminal activity in the area, mostly drug trafficking.

S/Sgt Balerud also explained that the purpose of the police crackdown was not to deal with the homeless or mentally ill; they were looking for criminal activity in particular. He said they do have a Mobile Response Team in the downtown core run by the Calgary Health Centre that they call on in cases of coming across people with mental illness issues.

However, he said, he did not know of anyone calling on the unit or of dealing with anyone with mental illness issues during the crackdown. He said he’s been out there himself and even in talking with fellow officers, there has been no one taken to the psych ward since Thursday as far as he is aware.

I’m also waiting for a download of info from Emergency Medical Services who deal with picking up mentally ill people on the street and getting them to a hospital if called upon by police.

Paul Lapointe of EMS explained that they have a special unit in the downtown core for such a purpose but he is unaware of any increase in activity during the crackdown. He said they usually respond to requests from police but sometimes their drivers can call in if they see someone they suspect is in real trouble.

I’ll fill in more details when I get them. In the meantime, have a good one.

A New Header

My son tells me I’ve just discovered the internet.

Let’s see, I first started working on computers in 1968 on the first IBM 360 ever built. We didn’t have none of these fancy terminal thingies. No way, we used punch cards. And when we wrote stuff, we wrote it on a typewriter. It was before your time.

As a matter of fact, I had a portable Underwood I hauled back and forth hitch hiking across Canada on good old number one. I even packed it across the Yellowhead and up to Williams Lake.

But I’m not talking about writing here; I’m talking about all this new-fangled technology stuff. It’s unreal. We never had this click, drag, cut and paste stuff. When we needed something we cut it in FORTRAN and used drivers in Assembler. And, let me tell you, you cut your own drivers. A new printer, plotter, terminal, modem or whatever came along and you whipped up a driver using some Assembler Code and cut it into FORTRAN to make it look nice and you were away.

After a while I broke down and learned C and eventually C++, enough to keep up to the mathematical software coming out. I kept an eye on what was developing because I was interested in what the nerds were up to. So when I started out on this project, I thought I’d give blogging a whirl.

Holy snot is there ever a lot of new stuff you can get your hands on! And it’s free too. The blog site is fairly common, everyone can do it. I’ve noticed the news stuff is mostly techie with some news feeds from the pros. So I think I’m a little on the edge. Of course my wife has pretty well always thought I was on the edge, but that’s another story.

I’ve done a fair amount of writing and I’ve had some very positive and supportive feedback on the stories I’ve done. But there’s a bit of glitch here. You see, pod casts don’t download text and I don’t feel like writing a text driver for I Pods. So I have to pod cast a summary of my stories every time I post.

And as you can tell, I’m just starting out on this vid-casting stuff. I’m not very good at it. At least that’s the feedback I’m getting, mostly from my family. And they’re trying to be as polite as possible. So I decided to cut a header vid just like the pros.

I grabbed the camcorder, hopped on my bike and headed off in a blazing streak of pink. My bike’s a pink European racing bike, about twenty years old – an old Steve Bauer – a Canadian firm.

I took various shots heading into and out of town. It’s not hard to find homeless people and fairly easy to find the mentally ill wandering downtown. Of course, it’s important to keep the camera at the ready. And you have to pack it in your knapsack while you’re riding around.

The problem is that you spot something good to shoot, like a homeless campsite by the river, and you have to jump off the bike, dig through the knapsack and get out the camera and take the shot. It’s ok when you don’t have people around. You can take your time. But when I got into town, I had to lock up the bike and get the camera at the ready while walking around.

And you can get into a bit of a jam if you start shooting druggies doing deals. It’s best to act real casual and shoot from the hip. It takes practice and you waste a lot of film, or tape.

Nevertheless, just as I’m packing up, some man wanders by rummaging through garbage cans and I have to dig out the camera really fast and toss caution to the winds.

Later, I was approaching the east end of town when I managed to capture an old fellow who couldn’t sit still, though he tried. He looked like he was trying to adjust to his meds. He had that medicated shuffle while he walked and a fearful, paranoid look in his eye while he slowly passed.

Going by the river, there were many homeless sleeping in the park. I don’t know if they were mentally ill or not; I didn’t ask them. But it was good to get out and take it in. No one waved or said hi. Last week I did a walk around and there were a lot of friendly people calling out hello and telling me to smile more.

I even saw a small group of First Nations people helping and befriending an older man who looked pretty spaced out. I don’t know what that is about, so I’m tucking it away for future reference.

I got home and fire-wired the vid into Movie Maker and started hacking. I got it down to 35 seconds and used some of my son’s music as background. He wrote and recorded it. I stole it. I hope he doesn’t find out.

I’ve posted it here and I hope to hear some criticism on it. I’ve got to stop “umming” so much. I do that since I’m trying to think of what to say next. I’m trying to remember what I’ve written and get my thoughts in order. It’s too much. From now on I’m scripting my pod casts and concentrating on being smooth.

But I’m really more of a writer than an actor or pod caster. I guess I’m just old fashioned.

Nevertheless, it’s time for this old dog to learn a few new tricks. Thanks for hanging in there. Hi Sarah.

On curing mental illness

How to cure Mental Illness

This article is gong to be a little difficult to write. Nevertheless, I think I should give a little feedback. I’ve been getting comments on other sites, like Facebook, and I’ve pasted a couple here to see if it would stimulate conversation. Time will tell. To let you know, I’m being read in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, the UK and in Chile.

Chile? Yeah, I guess that page translator comes in handy. This subscription thing is all so new to me; I don’t really know how it works until I try it out. So far, there are people who have been kind enough to subscribe and this will probably be the first article to hit their emails.

The big comment I get is that people want me to interview street people. They want to hear from the homeless and get their point of view. A lot of people have ideas on attacking or managing homelessness and it’s very important to hear the views from the street and incorporating that into management business plans. And, believe me, there are people who are surveying the views of the homeless. It may be inconsistent or not incorporated, but nevertheless, there are people out there trying to solve the problem of homelessness and listening to the views of the street.

I’ll get there; I promise. But first, I have to do the homework. If I’m talking to some poor incoherent man, I have to have a purpose to it. I want to be pretty clear in my head where I’m going with the interview and to give the guy a voice. I also want you to be prepared.

Now, I’ve been saying all along that mental illness can be cured, or in the words of the feds, people can recover from it. There are certain steps to be taken in order for it to work. But it does work.

I’ve been hunting the net and the library and talking to shrinks and psych nurses and there is a wide spectrum of analysis on the subject of mental illness. Some say you are born that way and that’s the way you are going to stay. Usually it is put to the patient that mental illness is like diabetes; you just have to stay on your meds for the rest of your life and so long as you are on the meds you are normal.

My response is that diabetes is a disease of the pancreas wherein not enough insulin is produced to digest sugars. Mental illness is a disease of the mind. If you don’t know the difference between the pancreas and the brain, please refer to your medical journal. The pancreas is located somewhere below the stomach while the brain is somewhere between your ears. If you keep looking, you’ll find it.

Nevertheless, there is medication. And if you’re to have any hope of dealing with mental illness, you’re going to have to deal with meds. There is simply too much evidence about the incredible benefits of psychiatric medication to rule it out. The problem is not the meds, it’s the fact that the meds are seen as a silver bullet, a cure-all. They are over-prescribed, harming the patient, and they’re seen as a way of not having to deal with the patient. The shrink becomes nothing more than a drug pusher on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies. He/she reads DSM-IV, looks up symptoms, matches them as best as possible to what seems to be going on with the patient and proscribes the meds. Then closes the book on the patient other than to ensure the meds are being taken and the patient seems to be on an even keel.

There is the constant admonition that if you stop taking your meds, you will end up back in the hospital, where perhaps drastic action will need to be taken.

This is pretty well the state of the art in modern psychiatric therapy and has been for the past 15 years or so. Why they aren’t allowing the homeless mentally ill access to a secure supply of meds, is somewhat beyond me. If they buy into this prognosis, how come they aren’t using it?

However; and here’s the key, after ten or 15 years of people taking meds and having regular visits to their shrink, some are actually recovering. It’s rare, but it happens. And the feds have picked up on it.

Time to start quoting form this thing – from The Face of Mental Illness, page 47:

Treatment to assist in recovery from mental illness must reflect its complex origins. A variety of interventions such as psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, medication and occupational therapy can improve an individual’s functioning and quality of life. Since mental illnesses arise from disorders of brain functioning, medication is often an important part of treatment.

So, each patient is going to be different. I don’t think that’s saying anything new, but if everybody’s different, then we’ve got to stop treating everyone the same. There’s more:

Assumptions about Recovery

1. The task of consumers is to recover. Professionals do not hold the key to recovery: consumers do. The task of professionals is to facilitate recovery; the task of consumers is to recover. Recovery may be facilitated by the consumer’s natural support system.
2. A common denominator of recovery is the presence of people who believe in and stand by the person in need of recovery. Seemingly universal in the recovery concept is the notion that critical to one’s recovery is a person or persons in whom one can trust to “be there” in times of need.
3. A recovery vision is not a function of one’s theory about the causes of mental illness. Recovery may occur whether one views the illness as biological or not. The key element is understanding that there is hope for the future, rather than understanding the cause in the past.
4. Recovery can occur even though symptoms reoccur. The episodic nature of severe mental illness does not prevent recovery. As one recovers, symptoms interfere with functioning less often and for briefer periods of time. More of one’s life is lived symptom-free.
5. Recovery is a unique process. There is no one path to recovery, nor one outcome. It is a highly personal process.
6. Recovery demands that a person has choices. The notion that one has options from which to choose is often more important than the particular option one initially selects.
7. Recovery from the consequences of the illness is sometimes more difficult than recovering from the illness itself. These consequences include discrimination, poverty, segregation, stigma and iatrogenic effects of treatment.

Adapted from Anthony WA. A recovery-oriented service system:
setting some system level standards.
Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 2000;3:159–68.

So, there ya go. It all makes perfect sense.

1. Get on the right meds, and take the minimum dosage that will still kick in. Don’t overdose and don’t rock your meds. Stay steady over a couple of years at a time. Reduce it when you feel it’s right and under the supervision of a shrink. It’s your meds, not the shrink’s.
2. Get a shrink you can relate to. It’s very hard and it’s rare. The greatest attribute a shrink can have is empathy. There are very few who have it. Usually you get a new shrink every couple of months. Be patient, a good one will come around and then you hang onto ‘em.
3. Get your finances in order. Forget work, get on social assistance, and believe me, you qualify. Get the social worker to fill out the forms for you. Tell them you’re too sick to fill out the forms. They’ll understand. If at all possible get onto a federal disability pension. It’s made for people like you.
4. If you’re on a disability pension, there are usually free courses and programs you can get into. Get into them. You’re going to be down for a few years so you may as well make the best of them.
5. Quit smoking. Yes you can. If you have the incredible courage and self-control to get this far, you can quit smoking like falling off a log.
6. Quit drinking, quit drugs. See point 5.
7. Constantly build up a system of support. They’re your real family. As a result of mental illness, you have pushed everyone away and now you’re alone. Time to turn that around and accept help and love from everyone. There’s a lot of it out there. Hang with sane people; they’re on your side.
8. Be happy. Write, read, paint, go for walks, study, and make up for lost time. Enjoy your new life.

The big thing, is you have to decide to get better. Forget about admitting you're mentally ill. That's too hard. Nobody is goingto admit they're mentally ill. But wanting to get better? Hey, everyone can do that.

Ok folks. Thanks for hanging in there.

Reactions

Interesting.

I have no idea where this project will go. I'm just moving forward as best as possible. Already I have received an email from a reader who read my piece on what is it like to be mentally ill in Calgary and the reader confessed that they were about to cash in their chips. They read my piece and were moved to write to me. I'm very touched and honoured. I replied, after reading what they wrote, and that things always get better. I know it's tripe and things can always get worse, but eventually, they pick up. Really bad situations don't last that long. If you really feel like it's the end, I wrote, then get to a hospital -- fast.

A very good friend of mine a number of years back was seriously considering ending it. It's the big "S" word. I set off to get to her and told her to get to the psych ward as fast as possible in the meantime. By the time I got there, she had taken the couageous step of walking up to the emergency intake counter and demanding to see the psychiatric emergency response team.

"I want the psychiatric emergency response team right now or else I'm going to kill myself!" she said.

"Man," she said later, "do those guys ever move fast!"

Of course she was pumped up with meds, secured to a bed, counselled, visited by a shrink and had a program of future therapy lined up for her. This all happened in about an hour or so. She was in the hospital for less than a week, I think. She started straightenning out her life as far as financial assistance was concerned and sticks to her meds and regularly visits her shrink for sessions. That was a few years ago. She's on her feet now and would be, what I would call, recovered. There is hope for everyone.

Now, I'm not a shrink or qualified in any way to deal with mental illness. I have had a little conselling training which is totally inadequate. If you like you can email me and I'll try to email back. If you are seriously thinking of ending it or you are hearing voices, (and you know what I mean by that), then get to a hospital. Don't self-medicate or think you can cure yourself or that you're not worth saving or no one cares. We actually have a very good health system if you can get into it. It's stressed past the breaking point but filled with awesome dedicated people, so don't abuse it. But if you're face to face with the big "S" or you're hearing voices run, do not walk, to the nearest clinic or hospital.