Blog Action Day: Poverty and the Seriously Mentally Ill

My wife is a social worker. Her clients are SMI (Seriously Mentally Ill). The seriously mentally ill have problems such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression or (the scariest to me) traumatic brain injuries. Why do I find traumatic brain injuries so scary? Because they can happen to anyone. Traumatic brain injuries can be caused by car accidents, falls, assaults or any number of other things that happen to ordinary people. One day you are living a normal life, and the next day you can’t. Your life turns on a dime. Traumatic brain injuries are among the hardest mental disorders to fix or improve. Once a piece of your brain has been damaged, there’s no chemical or therapy that will repair it.

Not all of the seriously mentally ill live in poverty. Many work jobs (from minimum wage on up) or have support from their families. The majority, however, are dependent on some sort of assistance, either from the government or from the community at large. Those who receive Social Security can count on a monthly income, but it isn’t a whole lot of money. For some it is as little as six hundred dollars a month. For those who managed to maintain jobs before they were hit by mental illness, the assistance will be a bit higher, but not enough to live comfortably without additional assistance.

Even with social security, their financial problems don’t go away. People with mental illness severe enough to warrant social security often have poor life skills. They can’t handle money. They have vices such as drugs that they can’t get control over. In many cases they must be assigned an executor who will watch over their money for them and make sure they are fed and have a place to live. Sometimes, even the executors do more harm than good. Not everyone involved with the seriously mentally ill has their best interests at heart,

The members of the SMI population who don’t get social security, family assistance or manage to hold on to a job must still find a way to live. These people are homeless, living on the streets or in shelters. Mental illness is a daunting problem to deal with even if you have a warm home, food in your belly and a loving family. Without those, it is a crushing burden to bear.

What my wife does is try to assist these people. She doesn’t give away handouts. The biggest thing she can give away is a bus pass and (if it has been a good week for donations) some clothes. What she does is direct them to shelters where they can spend the night. She arranges for them to meet with doctors so they can get the proper medications. She helps them find jobs so that they can both have some money and have something other than their illness to think about all day. She helps them sign up for programs such as social security, welfare, food stamps and medical care. She helps them. She doesn’t do it for them. She helps people help themselves.

It isn’t always easy. There are people who feel entitled and want everything done for them. There are people who are angry or scared and sometimes dangerous. There are government agencies that care about every detail but the person. There are clients who won’t take the assistance you offer. At least a couple of times a year, one of her clients dies. Suicides and murders are common among this population, especially those living on the street.

I’m not offering a solution. I don’t have one. I just want you to be aware that these people are out there, because we often forget. Help if you can, but at the very least, have a little sympathy for those in poverty, because you don’t know what brought them there.

Team Building: A trip to the dark side

I apologize for the lack of posting this week. I’ve spend most of the week being psychologically assessed, and the process proved to be more painful than I had imagined. Did I see a psychologist or check into rehab? I wish. No, I was being analyzed by my peers, a group of people with no experience or education in the process. I, in turn, was expected to do the same thing to them. Does that sound like Alcoholics Anonymous? No, this was a work function. It was a team building exercise.

The first part of this appalling experience began simply enough. About a month ago I (along with the rest of my department) was told to take the DISC personality assessment. Nobody asked if I thought this was a good idea or if I wanted to do it, I was simply told to log in and take the assessment.

The DISC assessment is a series of questions that involve statements that “most” or “least” describe you. You get a list of four statements. You pick the “most” and the “least” and you ignore the other statements. Additionally, in other parts of the assessment, you rank a series of statements in order from the most descriptive to the least.

A typical set of statements would be something like this:

• I am very helpful towards others
• I don’t like tempting fate
• I don’t give up easily
• People like my company

By going through this process, they determine your “behaviors” and your “values”. The behavior categories are as follows:

• Dominance – Independent thinkers motivated to succeed
• Influence – Social people who like the company of others
• Steadiness – Amiable people who like harmony
• Compliance – People who prefer accuracy, structure and control

These explanations are slightly more simplistic than the ones our facilitator gave, but only slightly. The other portion of the test assessment measured our values, putting them into the following categories:

• Theoretical – Values knowledge and truth
• Utilitarian – Values money and security
• Individualistic – Values power and influence
• Aesthetic – Values beauty and harmony
• Social – Values people and relationships
• Traditional – Values codes and order

I’m not going to reveal the results of my assessment. But I will say that I found the assessment very difficult because there was often little difference between the things I thought least described me and the things I thought most described me. In the end, I felt as if most of the items described me in some way or another, and it was only a matter of degree that separated these things. In some cases, I could have claimed the exact opposite answers and still been just as comfortable with my choices.

The real problem for me was the team building exercises we went through this week, based on these assessments. Many of us were uncomfortable with the results. I’m sure that some people enjoy getting information about themselves, but I felt as if I was being labeled. This was made worse by the fact that I was forced to share these labels with the rest of my group and have them interact with me based on this assessment.

One of the interesting things about their reactions is that they didn’t believe the results of my assessment. They wanted to put me in an entirely different category, and not for what I considered to be positive reasons. Most of their descriptions of me came from the negative aspect of the category rather than the positive. That hurt.

I didn’t feel particularly singled out in this treatment. It seemed like everyone was looking to point fingers and talk about how other people annoy them. They probably had these thoughts before, but now they had some sort of pseudo-psychology on which to hang their criticisms and the excuse that they were trying to work together as a team. After all, we had two whole days of training in this sort of analysis. That qualified us to pass judgment on each other. Right? Heck, were encouraged to point fingers by the end of the third hour.

The problem for me was that, up until this week, I really liked the people I worked with. Unfortunately, I no longer feel as if they like me as much as I like them. One of the reasons I kept this job, despite some pretty good indicators that I should move on, was that I liked working there. I looked forward to coming to work. I’m not looking forward to it now — so much for team building.

Well. If you stuck around until the end of my rant, thank you. With luck, I’ll start to feel more like myself (minus the labels) tomorrow. I’ll try to get back on topic as soon as possible.

Off Topic: My Spiritual Beliefs

I’m not usually one to open myself up for a religious discussion, especially on a site that is not about religion. Because it is coming up in the comments though, I will give in this one time and write a post about my beliefs. I want to point out that these are my beliefs, and as such, I would appreciate it if people show them the same respect that they would want their own beliefs to be treated with. It is all right to disagree with me or with others, but please do so with respect and kindness.

My beliefs

• I believe that God is infinitely wise and intelligent.
• I believe that because God is infinitely wise and intelligent, God knows that even if God wrote down for us exactly what we should and should not believe or do, we would misinterpret it.
• I believe that because God knows this, God has never written a single word of guidance for us.
• I believe that humans, inspired by the presence of God, have written many words about God. Sometimes those words are wise and sometimes they are not, but those words are interpretations of God by humans and not the word of God.
• I believe that God is very interested in us, but that we are not God’s sole concern. The Earth and mankind are a tiny part of a much larger creation with goals that the human race will probably never fully understand.
• I believe that God occasionally steps in to guide or help the human race, or even individuals, but that God does so quietly and it is impossible to know for sure whether something was God’s work or our own work or blind chance.
• I believe that because it is always possible that God did step in and help out in any given situation, it is all right to be grateful when you think God has helped you or others.
• I believe that overall, God prefers that we fix our own problems.
• I believe that the universe, while a creation of God, was built to follow rules of science.
• I believe that because God’s creation of the universe followed the rules of science, the scientific explanation of the creation of the universe does not in any way require a discussion of God’s role, which we cannot fully understand anyway.
• I believe that when science and our interpretation of God are at odds, science is generally right and our interpretation of God is generally wrong.
• I believe that religion, like most intoxicating things, is fine when used in moderation but dangerous when used in excess.