Struggles of a mentally ill son

A mother wrote me about her son, who has schizophrenia:

When my son’s anti-psychotic medication caused diabetes, he was put on a new med.  Before it took effect he started self-medicating with crack cocaine and alcohol and lost his job and housing.  In helpless frustration and despair, he burned his arms deeply with a cigarette lighter

Now he seems to have frightened himself back into sobriety. He told me he realized that he would have some horrible scars from burning himself. After a day of waging that familiar internal war among my feelings of anger, despair and unconditional love, I returned to the fact that my emotions – once again! – needed to be put away while I worked to bring every service and support to bear on his crisis.

I got him back into his dual diagnosis psychiatric/addiction-treatment program at Center for Human Services, updated his psychiatrist before their appointment, and told him he needs to go to AA every day. This week, his counselor saw him individually on two days, and in group session another day, so I am very thankful for some relief there. He also called Community Psychiatric Clinic for help with finding housing. This whole episode started when his meds were changed through no fault of his, and I still don’t feel sure that the new medication is right for him.

We had a big, semi-rational talk that he initiated the other night. He told me that he hates it when I interrupt him. I apologized … and then did it again about two minutes later.  He raised his eyebrows with such an accurate understanding of my habitual shortcomings: “Do you see what I mean about your constant interruption, Mother?” his eyebrows said. So I apologized again.

And I thought, “What an astute man he would have been, had he not had to deal with schizophrenia.”  It was a touching conversation.  Slow thinkers have always been hard for me, but this is very important to him, so I will redouble my efforts to pay attention and not let my anxiety get the best of me.  It is so important to be respectful.

Companionship for someone isolated by mental illness contributes to their stability and feelings of self-worth. Ideas about how to get started are tabbed above.

Stigma hurts people with mental illness – and those who love them

A reader writes:

I found your blog online and felt compelled to write you. My brother was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia. We were very close and like many mentally ill people, he refuses treatment and has become almost completely isolated. He has already attempted to live on the streets. When he was diagnosed, I knew I was in for an uphill battle.

What I didn’t know was how stigmatized mental illness is! I have had it suggested to me that he did too many drugs (he was not a drug addict), or that he is being lazy and stubborn. I have even had old friends avoid the subject of his illness or change the subject with no apologies. I was previously unaware of the widespread ignorance regarding mental illness in our society. If my brother had AIDS or cancer he would have received more sympathy and compassion!

My point is that this experience has made me realize I need to contribute something. The way the mentally ill are perceived and treated is shocking. There is a gaping hole in public awareness that needs to be filled!

I haven’t decided what exactly my role will be yet, but your site has inspired me! I have felt so very small, up against such a big problem, but your freestyle volunteering is a brilliant way to make a difference. One hour at a time can absolutely add up to change attitudes and lives. Thank you. I respect your service very much and feel comforted to find someone who makes me feel less alone. It also eases my mind a little to hope my brother encounters people like you in his travels. I have somewhere to start while I figure out my own journey.

“Serenade in the key of glee”

I just returned from a week in California – my daughter’s wedding was on Saturday – and as I floated back down to earth from the heights of her bliss I came across a happy L.A. Times column by Steve Lopez. It’s a story about taking Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, who suffers from schizophrenia, on a 6-hour road trip to San Francisco. You may remember Lopez as the author of The Soloist, the story of the friendship that developed between him and Ayers, a former Juilliard student, after he encountered Ayers living on the streets and playing classical music into the blare and grime of L.A.’s Skid Row, on a violin with only two remaining strings.

In his delightful update on a remarkable friendship Lopez describes driving to San Francisco with Ayers, who was to be honored at a conference of the National Alliance on Mental Illness for his achievements in helping to decrease the stigma around mental illness:

He was so eager to make the trip, he called several times to make sure it hadn’t been canceled.

“Mr. Lopez, is the pickup still at 9 a.m?”

“Yes, Mr. Ayers. I’ll see you in the morning.”

When I pulled up, he was standing on the sidewalk playing a skid row reveille on his trumpet. He had a small overnight bag and five more instruments — cello, violin, French horn, clarinet and flute, meaning he had made the difficult decision to leave several other instruments home.

We stowed the gear in the station wagon and caught Interstate 5 for the long haul north. My friend Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, who had never been to San Francisco, was scheduled to be honored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Flying was out of the question because he has no photo ID.

I’ve never looked forward to that monotonous stretch of I-5, but for better or worse, Mr. Ayers was likely to liven things up. Sometimes he can get a tad claustrophobic or edgy, and being trapped in a car for six hours might take its toll.

In other words, I had no idea what to expect. … (Please read the rest of “Serenade in the Key of Glee.”)

You can also watch the speech Ayers made at the convention after accepting his award (though the sound quality is pretty bad).

And please consider becoming a weekly companion for an hour over coffee at a cafe, with someone sharing our public spaces who is socially isolated by mental illness or homelessness, or both. Ideas about how to get started are tabbed above.

Media hinder the hard climb back from mental illness

A fine op-ed in yesterday’s Seattle Times:

Reaction to escape of state-committed patient stigmatizes people with mental illness, By Jennifer Stuber

…Phillip A. Paul escaped from an outing organized by Eastern State Hospital, where he is committed as a forensic (legal) patient. However, what makes this story sad to me was the misinformed and sensational reaction of some news stories and even by local and state officials.

Many of the news stories had a headline that linked mental illness to violence. “Insane Killer,” “Mentally ill killer,” “Schizophrenic killer” were used repeatedly. Research has continuously found that a diagnosis of major mental illness alone does not predict violence. The severity of Paul’s symptoms and his history of violence and criminality are a valid concern, but not his diagnosis alone.

This type of reporting contributes to a public misperception that people with mental illness are violent, which leads to stigma and discrimination that is a barrier to treatment, employment and housing for millions of Americans living with mental illness….

Read the rest at the Seattle Times, and then please open a couple of Freestyle Volunteer stories about how some of our Seattle neighbors with mental illness are successfully building lives for themselves. “Alfred,” “Gerald,” “Mina,” and “Nancy” all have serious chronic mental illnesses, yet they work or go to school, live independently, and are good companions over coffee.

Ned: a homeless kid, not hopeless

Last week I met “Ned,” a doggedly cheerful twenty-something who recently lost his housing when he and his girlfriend broke up. “She kept the apartment,” he explained. Now he sleeps here and there in the U District. Over coffee as we sat on a bench outside a neighborhood church, Ned told me of his plans to get his GED “or maybe even a high school diploma,” with help from Seattle Education Access, on NE 50th near the Ave. He had his first appointment set up there the next day.

Ned isn’t interested in staying at the ROOTS shelter a few blocks away. He patted his sleeping bag. “I’m not afraid of sleeping outside. I’m pretty comfortable with the outdoors. Lived in the woods after my dad kicked me out of the house. I was 7 at the time.”

“You were a handful, huh?” I asked.

“No, he just couldn’t be around kids. When he and my mom divorced, my brother went with my mom. She couldn’t take both of us, so I stayed with my dad. After a while he  couldn’t stand me anymore and kicked me out. I lived in the woods behind his house. Sometimes he left food for me on the back porch. I stole apples from his trees. I can live anywhere.”

Our paths crossed again a few days ago, and I asked him how his appointment at Seattle Education Access had gone. “Great!” he said, and pulled out a fat preparation manual for all the tests. I told him that I enjoyed occasionally tutoring students in GED, ESL, and ABE (Adult Basic Education) course work. When he didn’t look interested, I added, “But you’re a pretty independent guy.”

His reply: “Yeah, I’m independent enough to ask for help when I need it. What’s your phone number?” I wrote it on the inside cover of his book.

Today I saw Ned again and said hello, but didn’t mention tutoring or anything related to it. Two hours later my phone rang at home: “Do you have any time this week?” He and I will meet for an hour of tutoring on Thursday.

My point is that a few brief friendly encounters begins to feel like a relationship.  More can be built upon it, because people need each other, and because most of us love more readily than we hate. It’s a wonderful life!

Please consider tutoring at or donating to Seattle Education Access. Or just invite one homeless person to meet you each week for coffee at a cafe. Ideas about how to get started are tabbed above, but you already know that getting started is pretty simple. It starts with “Hi!” and a smile and a minute to spare.

P.S. There are now 1 million homeless children in the U.S. These are kids with families, not “unaccompanied youth” like Ned. My article about homeless schoolchildren, “Back to School Homeless,” is at Crosscut.

Mental illness makes news – if story fits stereotype

An article by reporter Diana Hefley in the Everett HeraldNet tells the sad story of two Washington state residents with serious and chronic mental illnesses who were recently imprisoned for murder.  The stories of the millions of mentally ill people who manage to create stable, productive lives for themselves don’t make the headlines, of course. Nor are news media much interested in mentally ill victims of violence, whose numbers far exceed the numbers of mentally ill offenders.

Frankly, I feel a little torn as I write about Hefley’s article. I’m reluctant to perpetuate the myth that mentally ill individuals are invariably dangerous and must be carefully avoided, but I also want to plead for better treatment of individuals with mental illnesses. We need a more effective, well supported mental health care system to help the vast majority of chronic sufferers who are totally harmless to remain stable and constructive, and to keep the violent 1% (http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/14/1/1.pdf) from becoming dangerous to society. And we need a more compassionate citizenry, tolerant of differences and willing to connect with people who share our public spaces, people who aren’t dangerous even though their minds may work very differently from one’s own.

But Hefley describes so well the world that the men responsible for the killings lived in, and she shows that these deaths were almost certainly preventable. Perhaps her excellent reporting may help a few more of us see the need for countering the social stigma of mental illness and improving mental health care in our nation.

As Hefley shows, both men had long histories of problems clearly rooted in psychiatric disorders. But like more than half of Americans with mental illnesses, they did not receive adequate psychiatric treatment – they feared the palpable social stigma surrounding such illnesses, and they fell through gaps in the system. The community needs protection from offenses that might be committed by people, including by those who are healthy and well. But turning prisons into America’s biggest asylums is cruel, costly, shameful evidence of our society’s habit of ignoring people suffering from mental illnesses until one of them is led helplessly into tragedy by symptoms they can’t manage without help.

I hope you’ll read some of my stories about individuals living in Seattle who are successfully managing serious, chronic mental illnesses,  in How I started Freestyle Volunteering, tabbed above. Please read them after you read Hefley’s story in the Everett HeraldNet, “Two murder cases show that the mentally ill often have nowhere to go, until they eventually end up behind bars.” My coffee companions  “Alfred,” “Gerald, “Mina,” and “Nancy” will lift you up again, with the inspiring truth that individuals with chronic mental illnesses are some of our most heroic, as well as interesting, neighbors.

For him, mentoring homeless people is a kick!

A recent AP article by Suzette Laboy (“Fashion-forward Miamian helps homeless land jobs“) in the Seattle Times features Frank Kelly, who was Esquire Magazine’s “Best-Dressed Real Man” in 2007. Kelly mentors people stuck in homelessness so that they are ready for – and so that they actually land – good-paying jobs. He works with the Community Partnership for the Homeless in Miami, a shelter where approximately 700 of the more than 4,000 homeless people in Miami/Dade County sleep each night.

Kelly’s initiative is called Project Vacant Streets.  His online pitch for the project is a slick Wayne Dyer-style self-promotion that combines reality-TV physical challenges with Complete Makeover.

But Kelly could obviously be doing far more hedonistic things with his time than generously mentoring homeless people, and the principles driving Project Vacant Streets are SOUND. Seek out people roped off in the social ghetto of homelessness. Choose individuals you can sit down and talk with. Set up regular meetings for ongoing companionship. If you can add some mentoring, the person’s life will almost certainly change for the better. (If you can’t, you’re still giving the weekly gift of drawing an isolated individual back into the wider human circle.)

Watch the entertaining, inspiring, moving video at Project Vacant Streets.

And please check out my articles on this and other subjects at Crosscut.

Visit <a href=”http://freestylevolunteer.wordpress.com/about”>Freestyle Volunteer to get started</a> on meeting a homeless person at a cafe once a week for coffee and conversation. And please check out my articles on this and other subjects at <a href=”http://crosscut.com/account/JudyLightfoot/”>Crosscut</a>.

Wonder what homeless days are like?

A reader writes:

Ever want to understand what a homeless person endures? Dress up like a transient and walk around downtown Seattle. People go out of their way to avoid you. Women clutch onto their purses as you walk by. Street thugs hassle you. You get treated like a dog. You feel as if you could be a victim of violence at any given moment. Not to mention the obvious of being hungry, cold, lonely etc. Could you imagine living like this for several months, years or a lifetime?

People that are kind to the homeless are found in the strangest places. The young kid that makes peanuts flipping burgers at Dick’s (Broadway) or the grocery clerk at Safeway (U-District). But mostly, the people that look out for homeless are other homeless or formerly homeless people.

It’s hard to understand the plight of the homeless until “you’ve walked a mile in his shoes”.

Please consider choosing one person who shares our public spaces but is roped off from mainstream life by homelessness, and meet in a cafe weekly for coffee and conversation. Ways to get started are tabbed above. Thanks!

Homeless bird-watcher

Shortly after Seattle’s tent city called Nickelsville moved to the University Christian Church parking lot last fall, a writing workshop for residents began meeting on Monday nights. The workshop was called In Tents Writing, although we met across from the encampment, inside the church.

There a 26-year-old man wrote this observant description of birds he spotted while living in the woods the week after he and his girlfriend broke up and he became homeless. He told me that the birds reminded him of growing up in his grandfather’s house in the country and that they were a hopeful sign he would soon find shelter and companionship.

An auspicious sight met my eyes last Sunday – a woodpecker family. First I saw a baby woodpecker about, oh, four inches long fly to a tree in the woods where I camped. There was a tint of bright red feathers on top of its head, and my first thought was, I wonder if that is a pileated woodpecker? Standing there I wondered where the parent birds were.

Then I perked up my ears, hearing the clear, distinct sound of a woodpecker knocking on wood. Following the sound, I came across a very long fallen tree on the side of the hill with two fully grown pileated woodpeckers. Pecking away for bugs in their habitat as they were, I noticed the great red fans on top of their heads and the black stripe on the eys, then white below, and another white and black stripe, followed by the giant black body that looked ten inches high. It was a great bond with nature for me.

Please consider choosing one person who shares our public spaces but is socially isolated by homelessness, and meet once a week at a cafe for an hour of coffee and conversation. Ideas about how to get started, along with other Freestyle Volunteer stories, are tabbed above.

Homeless Mississippi memory

Here’s another piece of writing by a homeless individual – a poem written by B. W. at a series of writing workshops for Nickelsville tent city residents last fall:

Mississippi Memory

Back when the water was rising
and barrels floated
in the rising water

we baked gingerbread cookies
and the rain fell
and leaves turned red
and yellow
and brown.

The river ran deep,
muddy and wide –
paddlewheels, smoke, coal –

off in St. Louis
with my grandmother
and Mark Twain
before the Arch
after the Fall.

With a home at Freestyle Volunteer now, this poem’s no longer homeless.

And you? If you have a home, please choose one person sharing our public spaces who is isolated because homeless, and meet for coffee once a week at a cafe. Many of these individuals are interesting, inspiring companions. Ideas about how to get started are tabbed above, along with other Freestyle Volunteer stories.