I loved my three sisters and felt very close to them.  I counted them as my greatest resource.  I don’t know when that stopped.  I took antidepressants every day for twenty-six years.  Sometime during those years, my sisters’ relationships with me went rancid.  I’ve spent a thousand hours trying to figure out how and when it all went bad but I really don’t know.

When I stopped taking psych meds, I woke up to discover that my sisters no longer were an asset; they were the biggest liability I had.  I would be firmly launched on my recovery from depression and then I’d have a phone conversation with one of my sisters—they live 270 miles away—and spend about a week lying awake at night, reviewing our past, trying to find a future, and crying.

I’d take three steps forward and they’d drag me back two steps.  I tried every strategy I could think of to get them to know who I was becoming and give up who I had been but they wouldn’t do it.  They kept dragging me back into a sordid despairing kind of sickness.  At a time when I was becoming an activist who was sitting in boardrooms with executive directors, my sisters were dragging me back to being a total looser and the family scapegoat.

It took me three years to finally accept that my sisters would not change and that the only thing I could do was estrange myself from them.  My fiancé died when I was twenty-seven.  Burying him was easier than separating from my sisters.  Right down to the cellular level, they were a part of me but they would not let me grow.  Failure to support growth in others is one of the most evil sins.  It only took me about ten years to get over Bob’s death to the point where I could remember the joy of loving him instead of the pain of losing him.  I’ve been estranged from my sisters for ten years and the pain is still raw but I am good and healthy and strong.  It is a choice that many of us have had to make.  Okay, now back to how your therapist and psychiatrist are not your family:  you can file complaints against them to force them to stop mistreating you.

Virtually everything in our society is now regulated by some government agency—particularly if you are poor, and being mentally disabled leads to poverty really quickly.  You can’t work, you go on Social Security Disability and—bingo bango—you’re legally poor.  You don’t have to be poor to complain about your care providers but you do have to be poor to qualify for assistance from some agencies. 

Half the time, the government is paying for your care and therefore has a foot in the door to decide your quality of care.  The other half the time, Big Daddy government thinks that you, as a citizen, are too stupid to refrain from buying snake oil so they are protecting you from yourself.  (They did this by creating the FDA [Federal Drug Administration] which has legalized and institutionalized snake oil, but that’s a matter for a different blog.)

Simply, the government is involved in everything, so you file your complaints with the government.  Sometimes it actually works.  Perfectly intelligent, experienced, and moral workers in the psychiatric system have resources at their disposal that they’ve never heard of.  Nobody’s telling them.  Nobody’s passing the word on what to do if you’ve been screwed, so here’s me, Annie, giving you the book.  This is for all people, not just workers.  Let’s start with PAIMI:  Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness, which is a federally-funded program out of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services. 

Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness

PAIMI

Number: 93.138

Agency: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Office: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Beneficiary Eligibility (082):

Individuals with significant mental illness or severe emotional impairment (children) who are at risk for abuse, neglect, or civil rights violations while residing in care or treatment facilities have service priority. Persons with significant mental illness and severe emotional impairment living in the community, including their own home, may be served as determined by their state protection and advocacy systems

For more information, go to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance at https://www.cfda.gov/?s=program&mode=form&tab=step1&id=fea5dc4e45d508925501523e7c27d188.   This will tell you how to apply for an agency grant, as well as inform you that you don’t need to file an environmental impact information statement.  Apparently helping crazy people does not impact on the environment.

PAIMI is funded by the feds but run by the states and your state probably has it.  Google PAIMI and the name of your state to find more information.  In New York State, PAIMI is run out of Legal Aid.  You call them up and ask for help.  At the Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York, they start by asking you if you are the person applying for services, and then telling you that they won’t talk to you if you aren’t.  This is insane.  The person most in need of—hey, it’s called protection and advocacy—is the guy who is so discombobulated that he literally doesn’t know his own name.  See also http://behindthelockeddoors.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/being-disappeared-into-cpep-part-iii/

In regard to the money, ask yourself who signs the offending person’s paycheck and then head in that direction to file your complaint.  In the case of lower level employees, such as receptionists, ask to speak to their supervisor or the office manager.  Go over the offender’s head.  The offensive person never sees it coming.  They think that they are the law and can order you around as they see fit.  They never expect you to go over their head; they do not realize that you—the end-point recipient of services—have the wit to complain to their supervisor.

In a well-run organization, the supervisor will see your point, give you an apology, and reprimand the recalcitrant underling.  However, if you are not satisfied with the supervisor’s response, then go to the agency’s director.  In one instance I went through two levels of supervisors, who both defended the frontline worker, then I got to the director, who fired the girl.  If, when it’s just between you and God, you know that the offender was out of line, then keep filing your complaint up the line.

What I have learned is that the higher you go up the hierarchy, the smarter the management people are.  Keep going until you reach the person who’s smart enough to see the big picture and know that the employee was wrong.  This is how you handle minor problems with low-level bullies, of which there are a great many in the psychiatric system.  Everybody thinks they are the boss of people with psychiatric diagnoses.  They are not.  Do not let obnoxious little people be mean to you.  Push back.  It will make you feel very good about yourself.  You will feel powerful.

This is how you deal with people who earn an hourly wage, such as receptionists, clerks, case managers and technicians.  When it comes to salaried people, it’s different.  Then we would be talking about social workers, psychologists and physicians who have to have licenses in order to practice.  With them, you start by filing complaints with their supervisors but you need to be more formal about it.

You should make a distinction between complaining about an annoying person who is bothering you and an abusive person who has hurt you.  The degree of injury you have suffered—the depth and the length of the pain—are important.  Everybody does things that bother other people and we all learn to just forget it.  If, half an hour after you are away from the offender, you can forget about the incident then do so.  If it keeps coming back to haunt you then you have to address it.

I know this is hard.  Once you get a psychiatric diagnosis then people start to invalidate you.  Your utterances are attributed to a “psychiatric patient” and everybody knows that psych patients are liars, distort things, and don’t understand how things work.  “Psychiatric patients” are now down at the bottom of the barrel where niggers and faggots used to be.  African-Americans and homosexuals fought back and gained pride of person; psych patients must do the same thing.  You are a child of God, born to walk in the sunlight.  Stand up and take your place.

But first you’ve got to get the assholes and crapheads out of the way.  It’s okay to take it in baby steps.  File your first complaint with an office manager.  As you see your effectiveness and your ability to create change, you will become stronger and more assertive.  And then (tee-hee, when you’re fully grown like me) you can take on entire hospitals, multimillion dollar agencies, and guys who boss hundreds of employees.  It takes practice.  You learn as you go along.  Start anywhere you want to, but do start.

The most important thing is not the change you cause in somebody else’s behavior or in the policy and practices of an agency.  What is of greater importance is the change you create in yourself.  You start to hold your head higher and lengthen your stride.  You understand that you matter and that you are a power to be reckoned with.  You are not a loser; you are not the person whom everybody looks down on.

Every time you push back, you regain the self-respect that was your birthright.  You acquire pride of person.  Go for it.

We’re going to cover things like PAIMI (Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness), the CQC (Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities), OPMC (Office of Professional Medical Conduct) and a few other acronyms your therapist has never heard about.  We’re going to talk about filing complaints about both private and public agencies, and at the local, state and federal level, e.g., I know a civil rights lawyer at the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

The first step in a complaint comes when you feel hurt.  You, as a child of God, have the right to be treated with respect and courtesy, no matter what the employees of the psychiatric system believe.  You also have the right to competent, effective treatment.  If you’re not getting it then you have the right to complain.  You have the right to hold care givers to the standard of performance that has been set for them by their various oversight agencies, not by their mean and venal selves.

You must understand, particularly if you have been diagnosed with a mental illness, that you are still a valuable person.  You are not trash; you are worthy.  Nobody has any reason or right to treat you as anything less.  No one has the right to judge you, either.  You should not be degraded, humiliated, frightened or physically constrained or damaged.  Your civil rights should not be denied.

If you have been hurt then you should complain.  The best way to file a complaint is in writing and by mail.  Words spoken aloud can be twisted, misunderstood or forgotten but words on paper don’t go away and can’t be removed with a delete button.  Words on paper sit on somebody’s desk and demand to be attended to.  They can be filed, copied and passed around.  They are patient and wait for the right time and person.  They accumulate and tell a story.

Of course, you always can address your complaint orally or file it by email and sometimes that’s the right choice for you.  Don’t hesitate to complain just because you don’t have the time, energy or skills to write a letter.  But, whatever method you choose, do complain.  Do make your voice heard.  If you don’t, then two things happen:  (1) the person with whom you are dealing will continue on a path of increasing abuse, and (2) you will become a progressively more passive victim.  You must complain to save yourself.

Somewhere, at some time, you have to decide to stand up for yourself and push back against those who abuse their power over you.  Any power that is not constrained by an equal and opposite power will take over your life. When the psychiatric industry convinces patients that it can do whatever it wants to then all your freedoms are at risk.  Power is an inky black pool that spreads like toxic waste. It has no boundaries unless we establish them and enforce them.  We must push back against those who insult and degrade us. The excesses of psychiatric workers must be met with the strength of the patients. We must make clear that there are boundaries beyond which they may not go—boundaries that we will enforce.  (http://annecwoodlen.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/push-back/ )

What a complaint does is push back.  It says, “You’ve got to stop treating people this way because it’s wrong.”  This is all based on your self-respect.  If you are lacking in self-respect and need some lessons, read your bible.  In 2001 I stopped taking psych meds and started reading the Holy Bible.  What I found was confirmation from God that I was supposed to be cared for: 

⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

⁴¹ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

⁴⁴ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

⁴⁵ “He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

⁴⁶ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Matthew 25

In short, if you don’t help me when I’m in need then you go to hell.  God says so.  That is the authority, and all the authority, that you need in order to file complaints.

Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education and Living

In partnership with ICSPP.org:

International Counselors, Social Workers, Psychiatrists and Psychologists

 Presents

The Empathic Therapy Conference 2012:

The Power of Empathic Relationship

with Critiques of Biological Psychiatry

                        “Bolster your critical acumen about biological psychiatry and false reform”

April 13-15, 2012 in Syracuse, New York State, USA

the Embassy Suites Syracuse Hotel

Register now!  http://www.empathictherapy.org/Conference-Sign-Up.html

 Over 40 Best-Selling Authors, International Experts, Professors and Educators,

Innovative Practitioners, and Advocates

Special Guest Speaker:

An Evening of Conversation

with Bertram Karon, PhD & Peter Breggin, MD

“Bert is among the bravest, wisest and most thoughtful psychologists in America”

Special Guest Speaker:

Award-winning Filmmaker: Kevin Miller, Generation Rx

with discussion and clips of his next big project

Three Exciting Special Panels

with professionals, attorneys, survivors and advocates

 •SSRI Antidepressants: Surviving Tragedy, Cautionary Tales, and Inspiring Recoveries

•Time to Abolish ECT

•The Tardive Dyskinesia Epidemic Caused by Psychiatric Drugs

 Highlights of Dynamic Presenters and Topics

• Peter R. Breggin, MD, Ithaca, New York, Empathic Therapy Center founder, psychiatrist and author of “Talking Back to Prozac” and “Medication Madness”: Practicing Empathic Therapy and All You Need to Know about Psychiatric Medication
• Joanne Cacciatore, PhD, University of Arizona: Attending to Suffering: Mindfulness and Presence as the Key to Healing Relationships
• Kathryn Douthit, PhD, Chair of Counseling and Human Development, University of Rochester: Empathic Approaches to the Elderly and Dementia Sufferers
• Martin Whitely, Australian Member of Parliament (West): The ADHD/Stimulant Drug Fraud Worldwide
• Dr Rachel Bingham BA MBBS MSc, General Medical Practice, London, United Kingdom: Involuntary Treatment and Coercion–’The Breggin Gap’
• Gerald Porter, PhD., Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Forest Institute of Professional Psychology, Springfield, Missouri: Frontiers of Psychotherapy
• Jock McLaren, MD, psychiatrist, Australia: A Critical Analysis of Thomas Szasz
• Michael Gilbert, PsyD, Syracuse, therapist and school psychologist, Advocating For The Social-Emotional Well-Being of Our Children
• Piet Westdijk, MD, psychiatrist, Switzerland: Creating Meaningful ‘I thou’ Relationships in Therapy
• Sarton Weinraub, PhD New York City: How to Set up a Clinic and Private Practice
• Gayle Rozantine, PhD, The Center for Health & Well-Being, Atlanta, Georgia: A Clinic with Innovative Approaches to Stress and Trauma
• Charles Whitfield, MD, Atlanta, Georgia, Addiction & Trauma Specialist and author of “Healing the Child Within”: Empathy, Compassion and Love: Approaches from Core Issue Analysis
• Barbara Whitfield, Atlanta, Georgia: on Empathy, Compassion and The Light: What we have learned from 35 years of Near-Death Studies
• Allison Wilder, PhD, University of New Hampshire: Recreational Therapy
• Yolande Lucire, PhD, Australia: Researching SSRI-induced Violence
• Ty Colbert, Phd, California: Working Empathically with Prison Populations

Special Saturday Evening Desserts and Presentation:

The Power of Empathic Relationship: A Conversation

Bertrum Karon, PhD. & Peter R. Breggin MD

Our “Meet the Authors” Friday Night Social

Friday Evening with the Famous Chocolate Fountain

AND MUCH MORE–Over 40 Best Selling Authors, International Experts, Professors and Educators, Attorneys, Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Physicians, Innovative Practitioners, and Advocates

More than 25 Continuing Education Credits

Register today to attend this exciting, forward thinking conference ~ Join Peter and Ginger Breggin and the other conference speakers in Syracuse, New York State, April 13-15, 2012!

Sightseeing in the Finger Lakes region of New York State–Adventures Await!

What People are Saying about our 2011 Empathic Therapy Conference Presentations:

 ”The Empathic Therapy Conference surpassed my expectations. You expect a professional conference to be informative but this was much more. I left with new ideas but more importantly I was inspired and reinvigorated in my work. The healing power of empathy was enlaborated on and explored from every angle. This was a rich sharing of ideas and affect, humane clinical practices, and a thoroughgoing critique of the status quo in mental health. Dr. Peter Breggin in producing this conference has shown himself not only a passionate and informed critic of psychiatric drug therapies but has given voice and thereby empowered those who have been abused by those very therapies. Beyond the critique the conference offered many constructive and viable alternatives that are cost effective and affirming of the humanity of patients.” Gerald Porter, PhD, Dean of the School of Natural Arts and Sciences at Bastyr University.

“I just returned from Dr. Peter Breggin’s Empathic Therapy conference in Syracuse, New York. It was a great conference, and wonderful to be surrounded by hundreds of people–psychiatrists, neurologists, family doctors, psychologists, social workers, recovered consumers, family advocates–from all over the country who see the falseness and harm of the biopsychiatric model. For once, I felt like I wasn’t stranded on an island by myself.” Mark Foster, D.O. from his blog on “Mad in America.”

“Wow! What a nice experience at the Empathy Therapy Conference. Much, much more than I expected (with years of conferences). Ginger, the planning, execution, and oversight was flawless! I’ve never experienced anything like this working so smoothly. More specifically, the choice of presenters was great — each one well prepared and having something unusual and stimulating to say. And there was a ryhthm about the whole thing,– a lack of sameness, some more emotional, some more intellectual. The panel of “victims” of antidepressant malice had me, along with this huge professional hockey player beside me, in tears. Thanks! This conference brought the whole thing together about antidepressants in a more profound way. I liked the interaction with presenters and participants alike. Bottom line: I wasn’t bored once — and that’s, I think, a first! It was so good to be with people — really smart people, that I felt so much respect for, who approach troubled people (aren’t we all, at times) and their issues with a similar philosophy and understanding. The most important benefit most likely in the long run: I don’t feel so all alone!” John Snyder, EdD, psychotherapist and author of Flying Lessons.

“It is Tuesday, 2 days post conference, and my head is just beginning to wind down. The talent and collective wisdom that gathered on that early spring weekend in Syracuse surpassed everyone’s conscious or unconscious expectations. Peter’s leadership and Ginger’s guidance produced a professional experience that will be studied well into the future as a standard by which learning as a group will be measured. I believe that the film of this event, and the training film Peter produced, will spur growth and health in our professions, and will stand as permanent, undeniable statements of what is possible in the provision of truly therapeutic services. I, and all our current and future patients, thank you.” Richard F. Gottlieb, MSW, psychotherapist.

See our 2011 Conference brochure here~

Life gets tiresome and boring along about February.  Every day—the same routine, the same choices.  Wake up, check the computer for what’s new, get cleaned up, tidy the kitchen, have breakfast, maybe or maybe not do my spiritual work.  The basic choices are unchanging:  read, write or watch television.  I wish some strange looking animal would come along.

I’ve never figured out why February is the bottom of the barrel for me. Is it because of the lack of sunlight?  But I use a lightbox every morning.  But is that enough?  Is there more to sunlight than light?  Maybe it’s the cold.  But I have all the indoor heat I need.  Maybe it’s that the cold leads to social isolation.  But I have Call-a-Bus and can go, well, not anywhere I want to go, but I can get out.  Maybe it’s the snow—oh, we’ve hardly had any this year.

So I don’t know why February is the bottom of the barrel for me, but it is.  Last February I spent most of the month in bed—only got outside twice and they were both trips to the grocery store.  This year is so-o-o much better!  I get out for at least a couple hours most days.  The cause of the improvement is the indwelling catheter.

My kidney disease—a rare thing called nephrogenic diabetes insipidus caused by an incompetent psychiatrist—caused me to have to get up to go to the bathroom pretty much every two hours.  What I’m talking about here is every two hours every night for ten years.  Believe me, I was tired.  Then, this summer when I was in the hospital, Dr. James Tucker overrode several of his hospitalists who were refusing to order an indwelling catheter on the basis that it wasn’t “medically necessary.”  What kind of idiot doctor thinks sleep isn’t medically necessary?

Dr. Tucker prescribed the catheter.  Dr. Tucker is my hero.  I went home and started to sleep, and you know what happened?  I got better.  My blood pressure went down.  My glucose went down.  And my GFR went up—and up, and up.

GFR is glomerular filtration rate; it is an indicator of how well the kidneys are working.  It should be above 60.  Stage one kidney disease is from 59 to 50; stage two is 49 to 40; stage three is 39 to 30.  Stage four kidney disease, also called end-stage kidney failure, starts with a GFR of 30.  Mine was 32.  I was in serious trouble.

With the indwelling catheter, I started sleeping all night.  Specialists will tell you that what matters is not how much sleep you get, but how much uninterrupted sleep you get.  Mothers of newborn babies will tell you the same thing.  My sleep was no longer interrupted by trips to the bathroom every two hours and, the next time we did blood tests, my GFR was up to 50.

I had moved from almost-end-stage kidney disease (also known as death) to almost-normal kidney function based on one single thing:  sleep.  Sleep heals.  Sleep is awesome.  And can you guess just what I’d like to do to all the hospital doctors and physician assistants who wouldn’t give me an indwelling catheter so I could sleep?  I so totally hate those sons and daughters of bitches.

So now I’m sleeping and ain’t that grand?  Don’t need no pills or potions, just need some major sleep.  My most recent blood test shows that my GFR is now 56.  Almost normal!  Awesome.  But it’s still February and February is the pits.  I was reading the Holy Koran and came to a passage about facing trials and tribulations and I thought, “Here it comes—some admonition of how I’m supposed to be high-minded, rise above it, focus on caring for others—I just can’t do it.”

What the Koran actually said was be patient and persevere.  How about that?  Unable to cope, I was not called to do what I can’t do.  I was just told to hang in there.  Or, in the words of my late fiancé, who was a Marine, “Chin into the wind and keep marching.”

So it’s February, the bottom of the year’s barrel, and there’s nothing you can do about it except hang in there.  The daffodils are three inches high and spring will come.  Wait for it.

Doctors keep charts on patients.  Why shouldn’t the patient do the same?  Most patients trust their doctors—or at least they start out trusting them—and would not be inclined to keep notes, but it doesn’t have to be a matter of distrust.  Does the doctor keep notes because s/he distrusts the patient, or simply because s/he needs to know what’s been done and how the patient responded, and doesn’t trust to memory?

Likewise, the patient should keep a record of the doctor’s actions and the patient’s reactions.  If the patient can’t do it, then it would be an excellent idea for a friend or relative to do it.

The practice of psychiatry is an imprecise and messy business and it helps if you have a record of what’s been done and said.  For example, the woman who is journaling, i.e., keeping a chart on the doctor, reports that the doctor has said that Ativan is not addictive.  That’s grounds for filing a complaint against the doctor’s license.  If the doctor doesn’t know that the drug is addictive, then the doctor needs supervision, or to be sent back to school for re-education. 

My psychiatrist did not know the signs and symptoms of lithium toxicity even though she was prescribing the drug.  I now live with an indwelling catheter because she was an incompetent physician.  I should have kept notes and filed a complaint against her license so that other patients would be protected.

Chart on your doctor—what’s good for the goose is good for the gander—and it will help your self-esteem.  And if you ever need to sue the doctor, he will have medical records to defend himself.  What will you have?

I tried.  It didn’t work.

Then I thought that my depression was caused by a chemical imbalance in my brain.  If I just took the prescribed medications for the rest of my life then I’d be all right.

I tried.  It didn’t work.

Then I thought that my depression was caused by genes.  Research showed . . . didn’t it? . . . that there was a genetic basis for depression.  Besides, like homosexuality, nobody would choose to live this life, so it must be something that was thrust upon us by different genes, or at least different biology, right?  The problem was that sexual identity is the result of a combination of genes, chromosomes, organ development, hormones, the brain, and life experience.  What causes depression?  A combination of psychology, neurology, immunology and endocrinology—and/or life experience?

I didn’t know, and there was nothing to try.

Then I stopped taking drugs, got my brain back, allowed myself to feel anger, and took action to change my circumstances.  And it worked. I stopped being depressed.

So after sixty-five years of living—forty of them spent being depressed—what do I think now?

I think that depression, and just about everything else called “mental illness,” is caused by bad human relationships and can be cured by good relationships.  Maybe, as in the case of schizophrenia, it is unseen trauma.   A boy is raped by his coach in the showers or his priest in the sacristy.  He tells no one but after he leaves home he starts acting weird.  MRIs are unclear, drugs are ineffective, and his behavior scares everybody so he gets locked up for the rest of his life.

Maybe, as in the case of depression, it is unexpressed anger.  A girl is taught that she’s not to raise her voice or talk back to her mom and dad.  All that anger gets driven underground and she learns to hate herself and think that she’s a bad person.  Unable to get angry at the people who are hurting her, she gets suicidal.  Chemistry is unclear, drugs are ineffective, and she bounces in and out of hospitals for the rest of her life.

It’s all about the way we treat each other, and the basis for our relationships is laid down by Mom and Dad.  Sorry about that, but Mom and Dad are responsible for teaching children how to relate to other people.  They do it by role modeling, as well as instruction.  

Nowadays, more and more stuff is being diagnosed as mental illness.  Is it?  Is there more mental illness, or just more intolerance of difference?  If you’re parenting techniques aren’t working, your kid is in trouble, and you don’t know what to do, then you take your kid to a professional who makes a diagnosis.  That’s what professionals get paid for.  They don’t get paid for saying, “He’s just a kid going through a phase.  He would benefit from spending more time with his grandfather.”

Whatever happened to grandparents?  Kids need them but now they’re growing up five hundred miles away from them.  The infamous “studies show” that kids who are partially raised by their grandparents turn out better than kids who get gifts cards from their parents on Christmas and birthdays.

My friend Marilou has been babysitting her grandchildren for a few days a week since they were born.  Sometimes she spanks her grandson with a wooden spoon.  Later, she tells him about spanking his father with a wooden spoon.  Imagine how comforting it must be to know that even in being bad, you are just like your daddy—catch a football, take care of the dog, get spanked by Grandma—“Hey, I’m just like Dad!”  Imagine the lost loneliness of Mom spanking you and you feeling like you’re the only person in the world who’s ever been so bad that you had to get hit.

Kids need “quality time” with their grandparents and that doesn’t mean trips to Disney World.  It means hanging around the house, getting bored, going out to the kitchen to see Grandma, and getting your first lesson in how to bake a pie.  Kids are learning nothing these days because their grandparents are too far away to teach them, and their parents are both working because they “need” the money.

I had an aide who was working in manufacturing with her husband.  Their kids were turning into teenagers and the parents decided that Mom would quit her job and go to work as an aide so she’d be home when the kids got out of school.  Problem was, Mom hated aide work.  So they decided that Mom would quit her job and stay home all the time.  They would live on one income.  Things they used to buy, she would make.  They would take fewer vacations and teach their kids more ways to entertain themselves.

I knew a security guard who was working two full-time jobs so that he could buy each of his kids a stereo and a television set for their bedrooms.  I told him his kids don’t need stuff; they need him.  When I grew up, we had one television—in the living room—and we had to learn to share.  When are the security guard’s kids going to learn to share if they have everything they want?  How soon will they be diagnosed with narcissism?

Good parenting is learned from good parents, and parents can’t learn that when their parents are a thousand miles away.  You want to raise healthy kids?  Go buy a house within walking distance of your kid’s grandparents.

That’s a pretty good question to ask.  What are the antecedents of survival?  Is courage genetic?  (Is schizophrenia genetic?)  Is there a gene for strong-heartedness?  (Is there a gene for depression?)  This question isn’t about how I recovered; it’s about how I survived, like you might ask Senator John McCain how he survived the Vietnamese POW camp.

The answer is that I come from a long line of strong women who lived close to God and the land:  Anne Woodlen, born of Elizabeth Copeland, born of Mary Hope, and so on back to Hannah Hope and beyond.  “Beyond” was an unnamed Hope woman who saw her husband off on a ship to the New World sometime before 1672.  They were Quakers and she and the children stayed in England.  She had no certainty that she would ever see her husband John again.  What kind of woman has the strength to do that?  To give up her husband and to support her children in the 1670’s?  Maybe a woman of strong faith.

A few years later, she and her children also took ship and went to the new country, where they rejoined John Hope, lived in a two-room log cabin and farmed the land.  A couple generations down the line, we come to Hannah Hope, who also had a husband and children, and lived in the same two-room cabin, except that by now more rooms had been added and it had become a farmhouse.

Hannah stood on her front porch with her youngest children, watching while her husband and oldest sons went off to war.  The British were coming—in fact, they were twenty miles away.  (Imagine that it was World War II and the Germans were in the suburbs of your city.)  She and her husband had renounced one of the basic tenets of their church—“Thou shalt not kill”—and they would now bear the consequences:  they would be expelled from their church.

Hannah’s husband died fighting.  She was left alone to raise the children and continue farming with the boys who did come back after the Revolutionary War.  What gave her the strength?  Was it keeping close to the land?  The generations passed.  The Hope women knew that if their husbands did not plant and harvest then they would starve, and the Hope men knew that if their wives did not preserve and cook then they would starve.  Marriage was a mutually dependent relationship; they understood it and respected each other as equal but different.

By the late 1800’s it was Mary who was living on the farm with her parents, Sidney and Clarence Hope.  The farm had been deeded to John Hope by William Penn and, two hundred years later, the Hope family still lived on it.  They were as unchanging as the land, and deeply grounded in it.  Sons and daughters were all children, and children were equally expected to work.  It was a farm and the cows had to be milked every morning before school. 

After completing local school, Mary—my grandmother—went away to school.  Whether she went to finishing school or college is unclear, but after one year she refused to go back, saying that she wasn’t allowed to whistle there, and Mary would whistle!  She stayed home and got married, saying that her wedding day was the happiest day of her life because she knew she’d never have to milk another cow. 

On the farm, you do what needs to be done whether you like it or not.  It is not about self-actualization; it is about cows moo-ing with urgency.  Mary’s husband, Richard, had been raised on a farm but was working in labor relations at the steel mill.  They built a house just down the road from the farm.  Every spring Clarence Hope would hitch the plow to the mules, walk them down the road, and plow Dick and Mary’s land for the garden—the garden where Dick would plant and harvest, and from which Mary would can and preserve.

The Hopes were decent, God-fearing Presbyterians by now, and when baby Elizabeth was born, she was properly baptized.  Betty lived within walking distance of all thirteen of her cousins until she got married at the age of twenty-two:  family was everything.  The farm had been divided in two, the Upper Farm and the Lower Farm, which was the original farm.  Betty spent her entire life insisting that she did not grow up on the farm, not understanding that one mile down the road hardly qualified as separation from the land.

The Upper Farm had been out of the family for a few decades but had come back in.  On the Sunday nearest to the Fourth of July the Hope family would gather on the farm for reunion.  Decades later, locked in the state psychiatric center and being served meals on paper plates, I would remember the paper plates at these reunions.  Great-grandfather Hope’s Will stipulated that the farm was to be sold at public auction:  Dick and Mary bought it.

In middle-age, they went back to the land.  Mary, menopausal and frightened, asked Dick if they had done the right thing by buying the farm.  He replied, “We won’t know for twenty-five years—if then.”  Betty was already married and away, starting her own family with her husband Milton, a teacher.  In 1946, I was born.

Katie Tate

• 

  Tuesday

  Anne C Woodlen

  • Being fat is a result of taking antidepressants. Read the Physicians Drug Reference. All antidepressants carry weight gain as a side effect. And it’s not about ‘expressing your depression;–it’s about expressing the anger that is turned inward and causing your depression.

• 

  Tuesday

  Katie Tate

  • I take it you’re taking antidepressants then? Are you really this thick, literally?

  • And it’s called a “Physician’s Desk Reference”

• 

  Wednesday

  Anne C Woodlen

  • I am not taking antidepressants. And thanks for the PDR correction–it seemed out of whack when I wrote it.

• 

  11 hours ago

  Katie Tate

  • No problem – Studies have proven that behind weight issues are psychological issues. Perhaps you should see a therapist and address whatever issue you aren’t currently facing. You are overweight for a reason…you should find out why. Take care.

• 

  5 hours ago

  Anne C Woodlen

  • I am overweight because I took antidepressants everyday for 26 years. The damage they caused included–but certainly was not limited to–immune system dysfunction that resulted in chronic fatigure syndrome, which means I can’t exercise. “Studies have proven”–there are no studies correlating antidepressants and weight gain. We have an obesity epidemic in this county–and, in this country, antidepressants are the second most-prescribed drug. How about doing a study on that? And what kind of stupid, arrogant bitch tells a complete stranger how she should live her life? I am overweight because I took psych meds, and what is your problem that you are so obsessed with my weight? Kindly go fuck yourself.

• 

  about an hour ago

  Katie Tate

  • You’ve got to be kidding me. Only a dumb bitch like you would blame a drug for a weight problem. Put your cheeseburgers and doughnuts down, join a gym and shut the fuck up. You’re a sorry excuse of a human being if you’re sitting around blaming everyone and everything else for your issues. I’ll tell you what kind of bitch tells you this: An advocate for the National Alliance For the Mentally Ill, A girl who got a degree in the sciences of Neurology, a guest speaker on National Public Radio, a published writer, a six foot tall gorgeous – popular woman. I don’t blame anyone or anything for my problems. I own them and face them one by one. You’ll be fat and miserable for the rest of your sorry life, good luck with that.

• 

  37 minutes ago

  Anne C Woodlen

  • Ah-h-h-h, NAMI. That explains it. Take your drugs and don’t ever, ever, ever admit there are side effects. You still taking drugs? Can’t go it alone?

• 

  36 minutes ago

  Katie Tate

  • Let me explain something to you. There are only a handful of antidepressants that cause weight gain. Biologically they cause the person taking them to crave carbohydrates. Once the drug is discontinued, the person stops craving carbohydrates and normal habits are acquired. This is what drives me crazy – people who go around making statements without having the education to back them up. You’re a moron, go back to college.

• 

  35 minutes ago

  Katie Tate

  • You think that members of NAMI are patients?? LOL Most of us are Doctors….God…fat and dumb. How do you not commit suicide.?

  • Sorry, have to go back to work – I’m blocking your ignorant, fat ass. And that Susan Kingsley…whatever the fuck. Poor, white trash. You guys all belong together. Ignorance should stick with ignorance.

  REPLY FROM NAMI:

Dear Anne,

Thank you for contacting NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We recently received your email critical of Katie Tate as an advocate.  [I did not send a “critical email.”  I sent the link to this blog, whereon were posted Katie’s words without any editorial comment from me.  ACW]

I am sorry that I do not know Katie Tate from the thousands of advocates NAMI has.

We have means to work out differences in the NAMI hierarchy, however. If you have a grievance, I will be glad to tell you how to report that complaint. Just reply to this email with details about your concern and how NAMI is related to Ms. Tate.

_________

Most issues between NAMI members and staff are effectively resolved.  [This is not between a member and staff.  This is between a NAMI advocate--presumably a member--and a complete stranger.  ACW]

We hope this information has been helpful. Please feel free to contact NAMI National Information HelpLine at 1 (800) 950-6264 for further information between 10 a.m. & 6 p.m., ET, Monday through Friday, or visit our website at www.nami.org.

Sincerely,

Loren Booda

Information Specialist

NAMI National Information HelpLine

3803 N. Fairfax Drive Suite 100

Arlington, VA 22203

loren@nami.org

703-524-7600