WTH America!

On mental health, or the lack thereof in the United States

Perhaps echoing Florida’s account of Moroz’s findings, gun violence isn’t just about violence in media as previous claimed, in as much as teens who listen to heavy metal are worshiping the devil, but moreso about a larger issue of mental health or the lack thereof in America.

I friend posted this on Friday to her Facebook wall. She is not the author of it and I don’t know who is exactly, but the post struck a chord with me.

I don’t typically use FB to comment on negative things, but here goes: As most of you Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States. know, my father’s 50-year academic career has been largely focused on school violence. It’s been a topic in my home for all of my 40 years. The research is clear: School violence has been on the rise since the ’70s. First it was more fights, then it was knives in school, then it was more knives (and gangs)in the’80s, and eventually it was guns starting in the ’90s. The rise in violence can be directly mapped against first high inflation (’70s) and then systemic disinvestment in our country starting in the ’80s. The trend lines parallel one another.

The less we invested in ourselves, the more divided we became, and the more violent our country got. By “disinvestment” I specifically mean: outsourcing of jobs, “trickle down,” and lower taxes that limited what we could invest in our mental health, public health, education and law enforcement systems. Argue all you want about politics and economic theory, but those are the cold, hard facts. People generally only do terrible things like shoot up malls or schools because they are broke, desperate, alone, hopeless and yes — usually crazy. They’re not always crazy, but they’re always desperate. There is no safety net for them, they are hopeless, and they act out like wild animals.

If we want a country full of hope and safe children, we have to reinvest in ourselves. That means we all pay more, and hopefully we get more. It’s a risk, and there’s no way around it. Guns are part of the problem, yes, but fixing the gun issue is merely a band-aid on a hemorrhage. Gun control alone won’t fix the problem. You can’t talk about addressing school violence in meaningful way without talking about lack of jobs, greed and a hopeless generation. Anything else is cognitive dissonance or willful blindness.

Will America have the courage to act in my lifetime? I hope so, but right now I doubt it. We’re four decades practiced in the wrong direction, but it’s not too late. We haven’t forgotten what works, or at least not yet. But if we don’t see ourselves clear to act, this will continue. It won’t stop unless we address the systemic issues of greed, desperation, poverty, isolation, lack of compassion and lack of community. These are the core issues that plague us. Fixing these solves everything else. We used to have a nice little country and working system up until the ’70s. We broke it and never fixed it. We know how to fix it. The research is clear.

This really got me thinking about what else we really don’t talk about in America: mental health.

As far as I am aware, former President Reagan kicked off this national silencing via Reaganomics and his indirect closing of mental health facilities across the nation. I say indirect because he didn’t openly request their closure, what he did was specifically and significantly reduce the national budget on mental health, turning it over to the states thus making his government seem smaller and thus more efficient.

1981—President Ronald Reagan signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981. This act repealed the Mental Health Systems Act and consolidated ADAMHA’s treatment and rehabilitation service programs into a single block grant that enabled each State to administer its allocated funds. With the repeal of the community mental health legislation and the establishment of block grants, the Federal role in services to the mentally ill became one of providing technical assistance to increase the capacity of State and local providers of mental health services (via the National Institute of Mental Health, Almanac)

However, any time the federal government passes more responsibility onto the states, especially without providing any additional funding, the states must decide how to proceed and themselves where to cut costs. In the end, the citizen too often pays the ultimate price for such ‘small government’.

Take for example my hometown of Portland Oregon. By the early 1980’s Portland’s inner Northwest industrial area was losing factory and production businesses fast in favor of overseas or out of state production  and the beginning of the computerization of the mechanical workforce. What the city was left with was many abandoned and otherwise closed warehouses and cheap daily and weekly let apartment buildings. Historically, this part of town now known as The Pearl and Old Town/Chinatown were not the classiest of places, even in their heyday. What had taken their place were many nightclubs, brothels and other establishments of questionable character. It was not a part of town that many wanted to go, much less remain in. However, many missions, shelter and clinics opened up to manage the surrounding community.

When Reagan passed the buck onto the states, many of Oregon’s mental health facilities were forced to close. This includes Dammach Mental Hospital (operational from 1961 -1995 – In 2006 [or 2007] I was an extra in a Art Institute of Portland  student’s film production that was filmed there, at the time it was called “Constantine”or something.) and Fairview Training Facility (operational from 1907 – 2000) However, the Oregon State Hospital, is still operational and famous for being the filming location for the film adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)  has been heavily criticized for the way it handles its mentally ill patients. In fact, what has become standard procedure not only in Oregon but across the nation is that the prison industrial complex, which is increasingly becoming an ever larger for-profit industry handles cases of mental illness more so than hospitals or other institutions.  A 2004 report found that 1623 prisoners in the state prison facilities in Oregon had serious and persistent mental illness. I can only assume the number has only increased since the report initially came out.

Initially, many of the individuals suffering from mental illnesses became homeless, others were able to be set up in some of the daily and weekly let apartments in northwest Portland. However, beginning in the 1990’s that all began to change too. Through a partnership between the city and local contractors, development began to shift the once downtrodden neighborhoods into up and coming places to be. The deal was that the contractors had to replace a small portion of the housing they were demolishing in favor of condos and luxury living, the result was supposed to be mixed use. However, it really didn’t result in the type of mixed use the city needed, thus forcing many more people onto the streets or into prisons.

In this little tidbit from Facilities Magazine, the magazine for facilities managers, author Kristen Hutchings lightly describes the rebirth of the neighborhood, leaving out the more colorful history I mention above:

The Pearl District, before its rebirth in 1994, was a forgotten railroad yard filled with rustic warehouses – with loading docks in place of sidewalks. Now, years later, the Pearl District is a blossoming mixed-use, high-density city of art and creativity. However, the past still plays an important role in the Pearl’s daily life and its future. The warehouses, in particular, are a great commodity.

“When the Pearl was redeveloped into a residential area, these warehouses were converted into loft spaces, and so most of the population here lives in these lofts,” said Jan Valentine, livability chair for the Pearl District Neighborhood Association. “Businesses and residents alike find housing in these areas.” (Pearl in the Rough, 02.05.12)

In fact, the rent has generally increased so dramatically in this part of town that Chinatown isn’t even Chinatown anymore. Most of the Asian community that once flocked to this part of town (at it’s height of popularity, Portland had the third largest Chinatown on the west coast, after San Francisco and Vancouver B.C.). However, now to find Portland’s real Chinatown, or Koreatown or Vietnamesetown one must venture either to Beaverton, a suburb of Portland on the west side (and 30 minutes by train or longer by car) or past SE 82nd Avenue, the once boarder of the city (in my father’s youth), and current seedy section of town – or even farther out to Gresham.

As Alexadar R. Thomas from Northwestern University wrote in the 1988 version of  the Electronic Journal of Sociology,

Conventional wisdom suggests that the reduction of funding for social welfare policies during the 1980s is the result of a conservative backlash against the welfare state. With such a backlash, it should be expected that changes in the policies toward involuntary commitment of the mentally ill reflect a generally conservative approach to social policy more generally. In this case, however, the complex of social forces that lead to less restrictive guidelines for involuntary commitment are not the result of conservative politics per se, but rather a coalition of fiscal conservatives, law and order Republicans, relatives of mentally ill patients, and the practitioners working with those patients. Combined with a sharp rise in homelessness during the 1980s, Ronald Reagan pursued a policy toward the treatment of mental illness that satisfied special interest groups and the demands of the business community, but failed to address the issue: the treatment of mental illness […]

Almost ten years after Ronald Reagan left office as president, the legacy of his administration continues to be studied. What is almost indisputable is that the changes in public policy that were implemented during the 1980s were sweeping and marked a turning point in American domestic policy. Faced with increasing competition from overseas, American business found it necessary to alter the social contract. This would require a realignment of the political economy so as to weaken labor unions and the social safety net. In Reagan, the Right found a spokesman capable of aligning conservatives, centrists, and working class whites (Ronald Reagan and the Commitment of the Mentally Ill:
Capital, Interest Groups, and the Eclipse of Social Policy).

To further drive home my point is another blogger, Fabian writing for the San Francisco Daily Nugget said in June 2004, and his words are still relevant today:

Is it any wonder that California seems to have all of the crazy homeless people? State mental hospitals were taken away by Governor Reagan in the seventies, and federal mental health programs were later taken away by President Reagan in the eighties.

When Ronald Reagan was governor of California he systematically began closing down mental hospitals, later as president he would cut aid for federally-funded community mental health programs. It is not a coincidence that the homeless populations in the state of California grew in the seventies and eighties. The people were put out on the street when mental hospitals started to close all over the state.

Seeing an increase in crime, and brutal murders by Herb Mullin, a mental hospital patient, the state legislature passed a law that would stop Reagan from closing even more state-funded mental health hospitals. But Reagan would not be outdone. In 1980, congress proposed new legislation (PL 96-398) called the community mental health systems act (crafted by Ted Kennedy), but the program was killed by newly-elected President Ronald Reagan. This action ended the federal community mental health centers (see timeline on this link) program and its funding.

In closing, the next time you pass by a homeless person in downtown San Francisco screaming to themselves at the top of their lungs, remember Reagan. And if your kids need to go out and get jobs at age 9 to pay down the national debt, be sure to tell them that they can thank Ronald Reagan, and now President Bush, for their misfortune.

I bring this up to illustrate that what Reagan began, no other presidents have necessarily challenged. That means that states have to rely on private organizations to pick up the slack where their people refuse to via tax dollars. I don’t mean to say that more money thrown at the problem will help, it will likely only provide a band-aid for it. I also don’t mean to say that the redevelopment of Portland’s neighborhoods is a bad thing, it isn’t per se. However, Florida and Moroz both argue (above) that people who are not as advantaged as the rest of the population have a harder time socio-economicaly and  thus are potentially more prone to gun violence than those who can afford the time and money to find alternate solutions to their problems.

In conclusion

So, if now isn’t the right time to talk about gun violence when is it the right time? Can we talk about the fact that gun violence isn’t simply a second amendment “right to bear arms” issue but one that involved the mental health of the community and individuals before the violence takes place?!

Communities and individuals across America are traumatized with fear. Fear of another terrorist attack because we STILL live in the age of the “War on Terror”; fear of a natural disaster like the floods in Vermont in 2011, hurricane Sandy in 2012, or serious droughts in the Midwest (from 2011 and 2012) or even simply severe cold or warm snaps at odd times of the year that also destroy food crops and disrupt the economic livelihood of American citizens. If it isn’t fear of one of those things it is fear of the unknown economically speaking. The national unemployment rate is dropping, finally but it is stalling somewhere near 7.9% and does not include people who have given up looking for work or who have been removed from receiving benefits.

One aspect of this that I have previously written on in amazement was “extreme couponing” as a traumatic response to the economic downturn. It is just one of many, including the 99% or Occupy Wall Street movement or even the Tea Party, although I think they are more morally and religiously driven than the other movements and so have slightly different goals or ideas driving that train.

Economic uncertainty, just as much as uncertainty after a natural disaster destroys a persons sense of basic safety. This basic safety includes being able to eat and drink (water, at least), have shelter, to sleep, to reproduce, and simply safely exist. Our ancestors agreed to live by  the Social Contract, removing us from living apart as possible savages and allowing us to live together as a collective community because we all agree to abide by the same rules.

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

This means different things to different people, but at its most basic level, this means that as Rousseau put it himself, “The heart of the idea of the social contract may be stated simply: Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole…”

Does this mean today that the general will is to let your neighbor suffer? What if your neighbor doesn’t know where to turn, or know that there is even a resource out there for them to turn to? What if there isn’t in fact a resource for them to turn to, then what do you do?  What are we to do? We are failing at the Social Contract and our politicians are failing us for not supporting us in supporting each other. It shouldn’t be that only after a tragedy do you see a town come together, no matter what size it is – we should be finding ways to support each other before the tragedy, in the good times.

I can’t say that America was ever a perfect place, to assume as much would be naive and looking unrealistically at the world.  However,  what I do know is that thanks to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, and the countless hours, years and decades of struggle that people have endured so that other, next generations wouldn’t have to suffer the same disadvantages or atrocities. Can we not apply the same ideas to changing the way we treat and support each other in our daily lives regarding mental health? Sure, I imagine it will not really be easy, especially since much of mental health is inward and not always focused outwardly until it is too late – but that is my point, can we not get to know each other better so we can at least try to support each other. Can we not demand that our politicians actually act on their words of support and community rather than offering us platitudes, and sound bites that they hope will get them through the next election. I don’t want to necessarily close on an overly Pollyanna-like view of things, but if there is no hope for the future, especially in a time like this then what do we have?