Mentality | Mental Health Documentary

Summary

"Mentality | Mental Health Documentary," directed by Garret Morgan, delves deep into the complexities of mental health, presenting intimate stories of individuals battling with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and more. The documentary sheds light on the historical inadequacies in mental health care and the ongoing struggles faced due to social stigma, lack of access to affordable care, and the need for more compassionate treatment systems. Featuring personal accounts and expert insights, it uncovers the real, often ignored challenges tied to mental health in society today, and calls for a reformation in both perspective and healthcare approaches.

Highlights

• The stigma surrounding mental illness still discourages people from seeking help. 💔
• Historically, mental health facilities were more like prisons than places of healing. 🏗️
• Panic and anxiety disorders are often misunderstood and trivialized in public discourse. 😰
• The financial burden of mental health care can be insurmountable for many. 💸
• Integrating mental health treatment and therapy is vital for patient recovery. 🤝

Key Takeaways

• Mental illness manifests in diverse and often invisible ways, shattering stereotypes. 🔍
• The historical approach to mental health treatment was often more punitive than rehabilitative. 🏥
• Stigma and lack of understanding continue to be major barriers to mental health care. 🚧
• Access to affordable and compassionate mental health care is crucial and insufficient. 💊
• There needs to be a shift in societal mentality to treat mental illness with the same importance as physical health. 💬

Overview

The documentary opens with raw, poignant narratives from people who have lived with severe mental health issues, painting a vivid picture of their daily battles and the societal hurdles they face. It highlights how these individuals often struggle alone due to stigma and discrimination, making their stories both heart-wrenching and enlightening.

Exploring the historical treatment of mental illness, the film critiques the harsh, punitive methods of the past, where asylums served more as warehouses than healing centers. The transition to modern mental health care, albeit an improvement, still leaves much to be desired in terms of accessibility and compassion, especially in an era of rising mental health crises.

The film calls for a comprehensive shift in societal attitudes toward mental health, emphasizing the need for equitable healthcare access and a greater understanding of psychiatric conditions. Through personal stories and expert analysis, it underscores the necessity for empathy and systemic change to support those battling mental illness.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 15:00: Introduction to Mental Health Issues The chapter titled "Introduction to Mental Health Issues" begins with the personal experiences of individuals who felt like they were losing their minds, describing symptoms such as numbness in the arms, muffled hearing, and a dream-like sensation. This sets the stage for discussing various mental health issues, emphasizing the real and sometimes physical manifestations of mental health struggles.
• 15:00 - 30:00: Challenges in Mental Healthcare The chapter titled 'Challenges in Mental Healthcare' addresses the intense physical and emotional symptoms associated with mental health issues such as anxiety. It discusses the overwhelming feelings such as the inability to breathe, chest pains, trembling, sweating, and an overpowering sense of doom. These symptoms are described as inhibiting productivity and hindering the ability to complete tasks as individuals may find themselves easily distracted and stuck in a cycle of self-wallowing and lack of motivation.
• 30:00 - 45:00: Personal Stories and the Impact of Mental Health on Life This chapter delves into personal narratives highlighting the profound impact mental health issues can have on an individual's life. It begins with the speaker expressing a lack of control over their thoughts, leading to impulsivity and dishonesty. Feelings of hopelessness permeate their experiences, as they grapple with the notion of recovery, doubting their capacity and even desire to find a way towards better mental health.
• 45:00 - 60:00: Societal and Systemic Issues in Mental Health The chapter "Societal and Systemic Issues in Mental Health" addresses ongoing challenges in the treatment and perception of mental health issues. It highlights the ineffectiveness of traditional hospitalization methods and emphasizes mental illness as a critical issue exacerbated by factors like poverty. It illustrates how historically, methods such as asylums and physical restraints were common, but contemporary approaches are different, acknowledging that mental illness is genuine and has severe consequences. The chapter also points out that suicide rates are alarmingly high, and individuals with mental illnesses tend to have a shorter life expectancy.
• 60:00 - 75:00: Addressing Stigma and Encouraging Support The chapter titled 'Addressing Stigma and Encouraging Support' discusses the visible and invisible aspects of mental illness. It highlights that individuals with mental health issues may appear normal on the outside, making it difficult for others to recognize their struggles. The narrator shares personal anecdotes about financial hardships and mental health challenges, emphasizing that people's minds can break under pressure, thus reinforcing the importance of addressing stigma and providing support.
• 75:00 - 90:00: Concluding Thoughts on Mental Health Progress and Challenges In the concluding chapter on mental health progress and challenges, the conversation addresses a critical case of a 23-year-old female who is suicidal and has overdosed on Cymbalta tablets. She has a history of self-harm and recently began outpatient treatment with Dr. Ingram. Despite the severe incident, the patient has no significant medical issues, and her tests for drugs and alcohol show limited involvement. This situation highlights ongoing challenges in mental health care, particularly in emergency settings.

Mentality | Mental Health Documentary Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 foreign I literally thought I was losing my mind arms would go numb my hearing actually would become muffled you have a sense of you're in a dream
• 00:30 - 01:00 you can't breathe you have chest pains you might tremble you sweat you just feel really bad you might feel like an impending sense of Doom I get really bad anxiety if I don't do certain things in a certain way you want to be productive and you want to get all of these things done but then at the same time you find yourself very distracted and this self-wallow of like
• 01:00 - 01:30 I can't really do anything I didn't feel in control when it came to my thoughts I was impulsive lying a lot I felt absolutely hopeless I didn't think that there was a way to feel better I didn't think that I wanted to feel better [Music]
• 01:30 - 02:00 it's really hard to talk about even to this day our traditional ways of hospitalizing people it's not working mental illness and poverty those things kill you meds at one point were like four thousand a month the whole Asylum and people being restrained and locked up is not what we do now mental illness is real our suicide rates are higher than they've ever been people who have mental illness die sooner so people are
• 02:00 - 02:30 dying people think that you look at somebody and can see they've got a problem people have mental illness and they look like normal people couldn't afford the house couldn't afford to take care of my micro people's minds break they break
• 02:30 - 03:00 the cranberries and Behavioral Health how can I help you hi Carmen Dr latia you praised me I have a 23 year old female in the emergency room who is suicidal she overdosed on approximately 40 Cymbalta tablets she does have a history of cutting she recently started seeing Dr Ingram outpatient firstly poor appetite her UDS was negative uh her alcohol level was 0.059 at 11 30 a.m she has no significant medical issues could
• 03:00 - 03:30 I get um admission orders for her no no no no no no no no no no no
• 03:30 - 04:00 one more time what is that uh giant pumpkin or what's her name yeah they're outside in the Paris we used to sit right yeah very very good actually my father he wanted one of us to become an actor my dream was always to be a writer and a film director actually but
• 04:00 - 04:30 then I got into medical school and then I I found out that medicine is something that I I like and Psychiatry is something that is my passion yeah and this is peppers with tofu because my son is vegan older one taking care of the brain the mind the psychosocial stressors and and and hearing the compassion means that's what Psychiatry is in my opinion okay let's
• 04:30 - 05:00 let's eat I have two persons my writing and and psychiatry hopefully through this medium this documentary we can actually let the people know to bring your family members right away don't waste time you could just like somebody had a heart attack and if they need a stent placement or a bypass surgery you have to bring them right away if somebody has a first psychotic break or a first manic break they need to come
• 05:00 - 05:30 right away foreign at first you don't know where it's coming from for me A lot of times it happened driving down the road so imagine you're cruising down the road 70 miles an hour enjoying the good song
• 05:30 - 06:00 then all of a sudden you can't hear your arms are numb you can't breathe you you're convinced you're dying having a stroke or you're going to lose your mind right there and there's no safe place to go other than the shoulder of the road and that's the type of fear that people live with that have it they know that when it comes on it's a trauma every time you get re-traumatized with each panic attack and I think that's how the disorder develops once you've had one then you have
• 06:00 - 06:30 another that kind of snowball I was feeling so so dark and nasty inside that I was you know seeking out situations that would would take that feeling outside so that I could rationalize it so that I could say well this is why I don't feel good so a lot of hopelessness a lot of impulsiveness a loss of rationality a loss of sense of self it's mind-boggling it's frustrating it's
• 06:30 - 07:00 amazing at times it's almost like being in this like very toxic friendship you're like oh my God yeah let's go do all of these things and you're like oh my God I have all of these other things at home that I should be doing and you're just like I'm having fun with my friend though and my friend is ADHD what will happen to Fred now what happens to all of them the men and women from every Walk of Life who each year pass through doors like this into the
• 07:00 - 07:30 Mental Hospitals of our land 3 200 men and women all gathered together in a modern mental institution a city in itself complete with every facility for effective treatment a favorable environment and human Comforts are essential in any therapeutic system
• 07:30 - 08:00 thank you foreign [Music] a gross disorganization of the usual patterns and for some reason we don't understand when the patient recovers from the treatment they seem to be in a better State of Mind
• 08:00 - 08:30 you know in the good old days you would hear yeah my my grandmother was in Traverse City State Hospital that she died there you know we hear that I've got one schizophrenic because the grandmother died there as a society we have little tolerance for bizarre behavior so we build huge institutions and look away if we look at all the countries any country you go to the Old State hospitals they're terrible they look like lepers colonies no one seems to think that Mental
• 08:30 - 09:00 Hospitals are the answer at best they're a holding operation until we think of something better about 60 years ago there was very few medications we really didn't have very much treatment as far as psychopharmaculty was concerned even Psychotherapy was not very well evolved you know in the past they used to do lower Tummy in some patients patients used to get restrained sometimes they would lock the patients
• 09:00 - 09:30 in a room for example a bipolar patients with Manic they would just lock them previously a very severe bipolar or schizophrenic there was no way they would be maintained in the community because there was not very many medications but they got a safe place to go but they were locked there they didn't even have a lot of visiting hours and even if there was very little visiting hours the family wouldn't want to come it's like out of sight out of mind
• 09:30 - 10:00 they used to be called asylums and that imagine that history is with people even now my aunt I feel really bad for her because when her mental illness first started she did go into the state hospital right away and I'm not sure how long she was in there but once she got out my grandparents kept her at home she didn't work anymore she didn't go out on dates anymore she just her life
• 10:00 - 10:30 became centered around this mental illness talking to my dad one day he said they never told us about that because they didn't want to burden us as kids and I think it's something that you need to talk about mental illness is real it's something that all of us can suffer from [Music] when I was a kid we used to go to
• 10:30 - 11:00 Traverse City the snowmobile races and I remember how spooky that hospital was nobody in the community even wanted to talk about it because you know we'd ask a lot of questions as kids it was spooky huge fence around it you never saw people you didn't see anyone outside you know it'd be in the summer and there's no one it looked like a prison
• 11:00 - 11:30 [Music] it was voluntary I mean this wasn't a slave's labor like people in town were eventually talking about shape this is not like the Disney World that you are taking the tour okay these are
• 11:30 - 12:00 real patients who were there so you need to just tell them that this is what happened those kind of tools you know they need to be more sensitive to that somebody has a family member who has serial illness so they themselves have a severe illness then they feel they feel they feel terrible about those jokes they don't like those jokes foreign from all the primary care physicians and they will tell me and they will use the
• 12:00 - 12:30 words like this patient you know he's really a cuckoo and and I tell them I tell them I said don't use that word although he said oh the patient is not here I said no but don't use that word you can use words like I think he's psychotic or he's depressed but don't use those words have you ever worked in a mental hospital before oh sure I know all about Looney bands we'd prefer to think of this as a hospital where we treat sick people
• 12:30 - 13:00 well I didn't mean nothing no I realize you didn't a lot of people they said you know man I had a panic attack today I forgot my lunch money or I locked my keys in my car I think that that is so overused it's a little bit insulting because if people understand a clinical panic attack it has nothing to do with willpower it has nothing to do with whether you're masculine or feminine a panic attack has to do with brain chemistry
• 13:00 - 13:30 I encounter professionals who don't know that I have a diagnosis and it's almost like being a fly on the wall because I've heard some really wild things said about BPD when the Assumption was that there was no one with it in the room a lot of people say oh I'm gonna go kill myself and I realize like how offensive and how hurtful that could be and a lot of people just say oh I have anxiety when they're just feeling anxious in the
• 13:30 - 14:00 moment when someone has gotten to know me when a co-worker has gotten to know me and said something ill-informed about borderline personality disorder all it has taken me is to say I have borderline personality disorder and I've even been told well you don't seem like you have BPD well what is it what does that look like even that that's that sensitivity I mean I have to be honest about it it takes some time for like it took a lot of time for me to learn that sensitivity with the words that I use or or about the way I
• 14:00 - 14:30 approach a patient or even the family members um it takes some time but it has to be there Hi how are you doing when I first started having my problems I would get Manic and then I would be depressed and it cycled it cycled like every three or four days it was like being on a roller coaster when I was manic I couldn't
• 14:30 - 15:00 sleep and I couldn't eat and then because you don't sleep I crashed I would be in bed for three or four days and how do you take care of children when that's what's going on with you if things go all right uh in life I can navigate through it and don't be so down you know uh I don't have to have medication people don't really know that living
• 15:00 - 15:30 with pain is just it's just unbearable it's unbearable it was very very difficult because I had no idea what was happening to me the high high high and that's when I did the things that were absolutely not me hypersexuality drinking more alcohol I had an affair feeling that someone cared about me since I didn't
• 15:30 - 16:00 really care about myself and knowing that that was wrong I didn't want to do it I love my family um love my children to death but I it's like I had no control whatsoever I've been in therapy and had this since 1976 probably and it's taken me probably 30 35 years to get past that guilt
• 16:00 - 16:30 I don't have the medicine uh that I need because the co-payment on one of the medicines that did work was 125 in dollars which which actually is kind of stupid because you would forfeit 125 whereas the actual medical with Medicare pays for is 700 for a refill so I can't afford that that's gonna cost me you know but uh but I'm on disability because of anxiety uh
• 16:30 - 17:00 bipolar depression you know and then a lot of times I think if if things were okay I won't have the problem you know one of the first things I hear from a lot of people is that they're stressed about money but directly because they don't have enough to cover their basic needs or indirectly like well I I can't afford to keep a car so I can't get to a job so I can't this and I can't that that's like the first or second thing out of most people's mouths when they come in
• 17:00 - 17:30 who in that situation is going to say well let's tack on a massive medical bill for me to walk into a hospital with this crisis and then to see a doctor and then to see a counselor and then to pick up meds every month it seems insurmountable in the 70s it was like 1977 there wasn't help like there is now I did end up in mental health in Saginaw for several
• 17:30 - 18:00 days didn't help they did a lot of shock therapy on patients and they would come back and they would just set like zombies for a couple of days and I thought oh my gosh this is going to be me if I can't straighten my life out more than 100 000 people are shocked every year this woman is about to get a series of treatments she is in her early 30s married the mother of two children and she's depressed I know in India they used to do it as
• 18:00 - 18:30 outpatient so it was not even done in an operating room many countries it was done in an outpatient so there will be 30 people waiting outside and the psychiatrist will be waiting there with an assistant with the electrodes like okay I'm good I'm going to burst 30 people today and they they used to use that word before very Loosely if a patient is waiting in the line it looked like it's a slaughterhouse you know although we know that ECT works very very well the whole protocol of how to
• 18:30 - 19:00 do the ECT has gone through a lot of revisions in my opinion it's like really giving a jump start to the brain it actually increases the permeability of the membrane so when you take a medication it takes some time easy to does so we see robust response with ecity but uh that visual has still stuck we always are struggling with that I don't think they really knew how to deal with people back then and
• 19:00 - 19:30 um so the big thing was oh you just need more sex it's like no because that's the last thing that I wanted I just I didn't feel worthy to be even touched and it's like no that's you know so I didn't stay with him for sure and there just wasn't the psychiatrist around that were able to help people that was a psychiatrist that was a psychiatrist so I thought well that's definitely not
• 19:30 - 20:00 where I'm going [Music]
• 20:00 - 20:30 I think one of the saddest things I see as parents with kids not helping them become a part of the community so the community can open their world up do you mind uh your mother talking for you that's fine yeah yeah is it is it just easier sometimes the easier the lying words don't come out of my mouth
• 20:30 - 21:00 [Music] so you were saying that there were some medical professionals who wanted to put Nathan away yeah because they stayed it was it was in 2005 I couldn't get really really those old records I did talk to them and he remembers that that um that everybody in the universe yes and I remember doctor telling me that he never felt that he'd be able to get him under control with medications that he was going to need to be
• 21:00 - 21:30 institutionalized foreign we're going to place him in Cairo during that first admission because for some reason they thought he was homeless and had no support and it was like no no no we're gonna work on the medications this is the story of an incredibly persistent
• 21:30 - 22:00 mother incredible really this is exceeded everything to fight it's I think only mothers can do this yeah it worked the Community Mental Health movement started in 63. President Kennedy signed
• 22:00 - 22:30 the CMH act the Community Mental Health act in 63 which initially gave Federal funding to sites throughout the country not very ubiquitous though they were in in Michigan about 11 sites and then over time to be frank Federal funding abated mostly because of the Vietnam War and so what happens states start to step up and then the 70s and 80s the state realized people didn't need to be medically incarcerated in State Mental Hospitals so they could begin to live lives that are falling fully in the
• 22:30 - 23:00 community so the cmh's were the ideal support mechanism all right so sure every door has to be for the safety so like anytime you guys walk out just close it feel like you're at a place where people are going to be kind warm that type of thing especially if you've never been in a mental health unit it is the most
• 23:00 - 23:30 scariest thing you can go through because the stigma of mental health is what is our hardest barrier difference as far as the hospitals go I think they're trying to make improvements so you're not seeing people just locked up forever a local community hospital like McLaren Bay region has a behavioral
• 23:30 - 24:00 health unit where people come and they stay in the hospital and the goal of that type of a hospital is let's get them in they might be having suicidal thoughts maybe they're having homicidal thoughts um but they're not safe to be out in the community at that point a danger to themselves or a danger to someone else so we get them into the hospital we get them stabilized on their medication and then they get to go home again
• 24:00 - 24:30 [Music] and how is she presenting right now in the emergency room she's surrounded by family okay so this is very very depressed and yes there's clearly some stressors but she's not she's not forthright with what they are right now okay but but she is agreeing to sign voluntarily so we do
• 24:30 - 25:00 not have to petition her or anything okay so you know admit under Dr Nicholas diagnosis major depression voluntary patient she has no home meds so we will not give anything but she has been drinking quite a bit of alcohol it looks like so let's start on the Alcohol detox protocol with sedex okay and we will give held or five milligram pure IM q6 hours PRN and visceral 50 milligram poq6 hours PRN and
• 25:00 - 25:30 voluntary patient admit under Dr Nicholas and that's about it thank you so much my contact with them is that someone concerned about them petitions the court saying my son my nephew my father
• 25:30 - 26:00 is behaving erratically threatening that he's going to commit suicide so someone in the family files a petition saying this person needs mental health help but won't seek it and doesn't appreciate that they need the help the petition brings them to the hospital's attention and gets them examined then an attorney must call on them that's where I come in come in explain what's happening to them explain their rights and at that point the patient has the opportunity to put themselves back on the path of a
• 26:00 - 26:30 voluntary patient they can sign what's called a request to defer their hearing that is Set It Off indefinitely and give them a chance to follow up on their mental health treatment voluntarily [Music] we have to be upfront with them right in the beginning and it's really hard you know to tell them that their mother petitioned them to come into the
• 26:30 - 27:00 department and then the doctor certified that they agreed with it so that's often difficult but I tell you one thing they don't leave mad our patients don't leave upset they don't leave mad they leave grateful and that's probably the easiest part is to see when you see somebody come in so upset and angry that they were admitted to a mental health unit and you get to see them walk out thank you for the help that you gave me
• 27:00 - 27:30 it's a nice feeling thank you this is what we do usually this is two or three minutes of Warriors man because you know we have five admissions in the night which the I can't spend like a lot of time and I don't need to the decision I have to make is whether I admit or not admit whether it's a voluntary patient or petition the family's supportives is agreeing to come in we'll start the detox from alcohol and then once we evaluate her and we start on the
• 27:30 - 28:00 antidepressant and other things and now our major depression is the biggest diagnosis on the unit here and psychosis is another huge one psychosis is the most heavily diagnosed in the whole hospital because there's just so many things that can cause psychosis it doesn't always have to be mental illness it could be your blood sugar uncontrolled and you're not
• 28:00 - 28:30 thinking correctly so a lot of times when we go down on screen those are the things that we have to evaluate you know is this medical issue because you certainly don't want to put somebody in a mental health unit when they're really suffering from a medical emergency that's related to their physical health versus their mental so that's why we do What's called the screen and we evaluate the patient before they come into the unit what do you have before the mural
• 28:30 - 29:00 so the concern was that painting nothing so it was just it was yeah it wasn't yeah it was ugly how about that so out and I want it to be I wanted it to feel like you were just getting therapy you know like if you have to go to a retreat what does that feel like you know you want to see pretty pictures and where you feel like you're not somewhere where you can't leave
• 29:00 - 29:30 sanctuary Refuge hospital this is no snake pit the doors are locked but it's not a prison that we enter for these locks are meant to protect patients [Music] no longer able to take care of themselves they depend on others to help them live from day to day
• 29:30 - 30:00 [Music] [Music] a state hospital if you think about it provides food clothing shelter incredibly High Staffing ratios and there was a time where State hospitals made a lot of sense the medications were nowhere near as good as
• 30:00 - 30:30 they are now and they were really expensive now people through Medicaid coverage and even not Medicaid can get really good psychotropic medication to live in the community the supports are really good we can help people with housing employment they can get what are called natural supports they can live with their parents their friends their roommates people buy their own homes get get jobs none of which could have happened in the state mental hospital so the only downside of course is that in the State Mental Hospital you're protected from homelessness you tend to have a job of some type
• 30:30 - 31:00 in the community those are harder to come by and if you live in poverty you know there's a low income housing shortage and it's hard to get employment if you're disabled landlord called me and said that they're thinking about buying the building so for me to come and sign the lease because Holly if you don't sign a lease they can get rid of you the next month
• 31:00 - 31:30 and this is true and that did happen so here you got people that bought the building and then the next month these people have to get out each and every one of my neighbors I'm seeing them leave it was awful it's an awful nightmare my increase would have been close to 300
• 31:30 - 32:00 for four months and then five hundred dollars after the four months and don't think a day go past I don't think October the first was the time when they said that I would be having to get out of my apartment and then I know it's silly but then yesterday I said how many more months I got till this lease is up and then sometimes I think what if the the owners
• 32:00 - 32:30 of the old place coming by this place too so I do still I have a lot of anxiety about that this is just some of my Wonder Woman stuff
• 32:30 - 33:00 I've got Wonder Woman lava lamp Wonder Woman Gal Gadot like you would buy in the store not Barbie brand when I grew up in the very fundamentalist charismatic movement as a kid I think I didn't have a full-blown panic attack but I had something akin to it we went to see a play called judgment morning Ministries she had endeavored to train the child he's of the Lord well let's see what happened to them on
• 33:00 - 33:30 Judgment Day and these people would they were a traveling troop and they would go from church to church the play opens up and you can see Heaven on one side people are dressed as Angels very smoky and it looked beautiful but the other half of the stage was dark and they play this ominous sound
• 33:30 - 34:00 and the Darkness actually opened up and Men came out dressed as demons they had skull faces and it was just black lights and the red it looked like real fire behind them and even as a kid I had that same numbness that I couldn't articulate at the time I just I grabbed a hold of my mom and I whispered in her ear I said I can't stay in here it makes me kind of feel bad for that little boy I mean I was I knew I knew who I was
• 34:00 - 34:30 a very bad experience one of my patients stopped the medications because the family said that you don't get medications and God will save you and he had a very serious suicide attempt he almost died thank God he survived but uh that actually really opened the eyes of the whole family uh I got another patient a gay man he killed himself because they try to convert him
• 34:30 - 35:00 and I'm just going to show you I'm not ashamed as a kid growing up when other kids were when we'd play War they'd have guns my first grade teacher helped me make uh construction paper bracelets that were yellow and she cut out the red stars on them so they'd shoot at me and I'd it's a pretty cool teacher and then the gal ghetto version of the
• 35:00 - 35:30 headband I wouldn't wear this in public I did once as a on a dare but just certain things speak to us I was always involved with the music and the drama and the youth group it was the the spiritual connection that I think meant a lot to me but I always knew there was something different about me that I could not talk about got engaged to the music directors daughter and then
• 35:30 - 36:00 probably six months before we got married I said Stephanie I gotta be honest I can't do this I'm gay they actually had a church service when they were trying to pray the gay away they were trying to cast the demon of homosexuality out of our family and it crushed my parents and it crushed me at the same time and that kind of made me feel like I was flawed somehow that I would come out of the closet and it's like all right I disappointed God now I've made God mad I don't deserve to be part of this community what I didn't
• 36:00 - 36:30 know was that genetically I was predisposed to panic disorder and that was the right impetus to trigger it I had this horrible internal struggle it's like you know if I were to die tonight on my way home I'd go to hell if one in five of us have a mental illness and only 48 or 40 percent or so get help that leaves a tremendous amount of people out there in pain um our suicide rates are are higher than they've ever been
• 36:30 - 37:00 um people who have mental illness die sooner 26 28 years sooner than people that do not have mental illness so people are dying there was actually a time where I actually like had a plan for me it was a lot of different circumstances I think it was just like where I was in my life and like the feeling of unhappiness and then having depression on top of that and then
• 37:00 - 37:30 feeling alone and not being able to essentially talk about my feelings in a way that I feel confident today growing up in my community a lot of people don't talk about their emotions my life has always been like living in trauma and that was just because like you you never really know what to expect growing up black in America at any moment you know what I mean someone can decide that you're not worth it
• 37:30 - 38:00 I actually remember coming downstairs one morning and mom was gone I thought well she must be sick something she hurt herself and he took us there and he just said oh Mom's sick and I'm like okay six seven years old you don't question anybody you just take what they're saying for word and I remember her coming home and
• 38:00 - 38:30 giving me this puppet that she had made and I thought well wow I'm not sure what kind of sick she was but she had a good time when she was there and it wasn't until I was probably about 12 you know it took about five years before anybody even talked about it nobody said well your mind was in a mental hospital she was had problems they just told you that she was sick so he as a six-year-old you
• 38:30 - 39:00 think she hurt her stomach she hurt her leg broken arm you know I didn't know and it wasn't until about 12 and I think Mom actually brought it up to us and said well this is what really happened to me and I look back now and I'm see the puppet and I'm wondering yeah I can see why you know it was a therapy thing for her I at six didn't understand why she had
• 39:00 - 39:30 left I knew that she was there for a couple months of you know they explained to us that Mom and Dad's getting divorced we understood as much as a six-year-old's going to and that they're not going to live together mom's there for a couple months and then all of a sudden dad's there and Mom now moved out and we didn't know why and they didn't explain to a six seven-year-old why
• 39:30 - 40:00 but keeping it from us probably wasn't the best answer either because we had questions but we never felt like we could ask those questions we just kept it inside never talked about it it was a hidden subject I look back on those years between the mid 1970s and 80s and keep saying who was that person then whose coffin began seeing a therapist regularly during the
• 40:00 - 40:30 1990s but it wasn't until nearly 2000 that she said she got the help she needed when this article first came out um had your mother told you ahead of time that she was working with the Bay City Times she did she did and I remember when the article came out my dad why does she got to put our last name on there he he was still very embarrassed to be associated with mental
• 40:30 - 41:00 illness [Music] you guys want to go potty wanna go potty come on outside Kaiser let's go potty come on I think it's important that if anyone even suspects it to go to a mental health professional and let them evaluate you I mean because they'll ask the right questions they'll put things into words that you couldn't put into words before I didn't know panic disorder and what it
• 41:00 - 41:30 meant but once I went and saw my first therapist he said do you ever feel this way I was in shock because I thought I'm not going crazy There's an actual list of things that people like me have and he said I've got some good news for you Noah he said it's treatable and then he said but I have some really bad news it's never going away he said you will learn how to to manage it but it's never going to leave
• 41:30 - 42:00 when this started I would sit on my husband's lap crying um and the doctor said family doctor that he'd seen for a long time well if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps okay this would be better you could handle it and then when I went to someone else they would say when I was manic it would be you know you just need to go taken out behind the barn and
• 42:00 - 42:30 given a good whooping because that would take care of what you're doing right now that isn't true that isn't true at all you need some kindness some understanding good people can do bad things and bad things aren't because you want to do them many times it's because of the things that you go through in life I'm proud of her you know we do bad things in life
• 42:30 - 43:00 things we can't take back things we can't change but we can still make it better and this article helps some one other person just one makes a difference [Music] I think doctors weren't sure what to do with me and
• 43:00 - 43:30 this was like in the early 2000s so like things have changed now but I've had a lot of labels attached to me that I don't think really apply a lot of them are still stuck to me all these labels were given to me to like get me the services I needed to get me on these medications and to get me these like therapies and stuff that I was given Maybe I needed to have those labels applied for insurance reasons I don't know
• 43:30 - 44:00 I do think doctors were just like trying to figure out and like pin something down to like write off and say this is it and this is what we need to do but I got like a dozen different diagnoses instead and wasn't really treated for what I needed to be treated for which was autism it's really something you have for life
• 44:00 - 44:30 and is fundamentally the way your brain works differently versus something you might develop and learn better coping mechanisms and be able to fit in better with Society a lot of times I'll say something that like seems obvious to me and I'll have someone around me say like oh I didn't like understand it that way a lot of times the same thing happens with like neurotypical people like they'll say something I'll be like oh I didn't see it that way and it turns out like everybody else sees it that way
• 44:30 - 45:00 this is like kind of silly to say but like I don't know what's unique it makes me unique uh makes me lets me see things differently I guess I actually requested recently from my mental health services all my records dating back over 10 years um what are you hoping to find through those records all the stuff I don't remember I've tried Zoloft there was this other prescription that
• 45:00 - 45:30 was for like low birth pressure but there's been studies on it that helps with anxiety and it just made me feel like a zombie Zoloft also made me feel like a zombie and honestly it was just a very huge turn off with a typomanic episode it felt like finally after all the struggles I finally have arrived at this place where I feel like the perfect version of
• 45:30 - 46:00 myself next thing you know I feel so great the rules they don't apply to me Adderall one way I'll call the other way there was one night where I had somehow walked myself out of my apartment and so I kicked in the back door and then that broke off these wood shards from the door frame next thing I know I'd taken one of those shoved it up my chin and I
• 46:00 - 46:30 found out I'm sort of getting drug out of my apartment full restraints I'm being wheeled on a stretcher sedated me woke up nobody came and checked on me I'm in there for six hours restrained staring at the ceiling found a dual diagnosis facility dual diagnosis meaning Mental Health Plus substance it was like five or six AAA type meetings a day and then I saw a psychologist once
• 46:30 - 47:00 the entire two weeks that I was there so I left so it's just a fully developing untreated manic episode something that stands out is dehumanizing for me was taking this medication that I knew wasn't right was making me feel terrible was making me feel sedated and verbalizing that you have to do your best to be on your best behavior and be nice and calm or otherwise you know you you can't get your way or your your manic or you're out of line or you need
• 47:00 - 47:30 to go settle down so I was verbalizing that this medication wasn't working for me it wasn't I wasn't feeling like myself and that was written down in a book as a strike against me it was a bad thing that I had done so I realized at that moment that I really can't advocate for myself here that's what it felt like I felt like I couldn't advocate for myself or because I was being unruly or non-compliant and at the time I didn't feel that there was anyone there to advocate for me
• 47:30 - 48:00 either none of us are perfect but do you know how it is Doctor you get to know some of these patients get to like them some of them patients like Mr Rusk a few others get better I thought I was not something real big for a while something where I was doing some good and I messed it all up
• 48:00 - 48:30 [Music] it's hard enough to walk in and say I need help and then we have so many requirements regarding paperwork so when someone walks in we need to be welcoming and we need to say we're here to help you and I think that we try really hard to do that but when you have to do a full assessment on the first day
• 48:30 - 49:00 and you have so many days to get the person in I think those are all really good rules but it's also a burden in the fact that then you're not sitting there with the person in front of you and not worrying about paperwork we've been doing this for a long time we need to make improvements we acknowledge that but I don't think it's broken I think we're serving a lot of people I think that we're doing it better than we've ever done it we know that about 43 percent of people
• 49:00 - 49:30 who are dealing with mental illness don't come into treatment this is a treatable illness that people can get help for and can live full lives you really need to see a psychiatrist and get some therapy because even psychiatric care having the medication doesn't take care of it you have to have therapy along with it to be able to work out your issues I know I wouldn't be here if it wouldn't
• 49:30 - 50:00 be for the psychiatric help that I found the medications and my children and grandchildren they're not all willing to realize that they have a problem or that there's help out there and it's okay to ask for help we all need help occasionally in life and it's not
• 50:00 - 50:30 bad to ask for it it shouldn't be embarrassing to say you have a problem and to ask for help part of the barrier in my own recovery and getting started was my mom had to figure out where to get me Insurance because we didn't always have it then my mom was always someone who worked two three four jobs and now I see working in a community mental health we have people who have state insurance
• 50:30 - 51:00 which is great if you happen to be lucky enough to qualify and get a ride into DHS and have someone to help you fill out paperwork if you need help and get to the hospital for your initial appointment now once that's all set up yes sure we can go grab somebody and we'll we'll bring it in we'll come to your house I mean I beat doors down all the time but the disconnect there is that especially in especially in rural
• 51:00 - 51:30 communities there are a lack of free clinics there's a lack of transportation to get folks in to just get the help they need let me get myself together because I don't want to be crying I think the biggest challenge we have is funding and not knowing if we're going to continue to have funding um and because we are Medicaid and the majority of the people that we serve are
• 51:30 - 52:00 pretty severely disabled um not just with mental health issues but the majority of our funding goes for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities who have significant physical as well as as cognitive issues and so you know if Medicaid gets cut or if our system gets privatized my biggest concern is that we won't be able to serve the individuals that we're serving the way we're serving them um so that's the biggest thing is is
• 52:00 - 52:30 managing the public funds and providing the care that we need to provide for the individuals that we serve I don't even know where to start with that hmm foreign group where he couldn't stay on our insurance after what was it 18. we paid cash
• 52:30 - 53:00 it all adds up and you buy all these medications you pay a thousand dollars for your script and it doesn't work after taking seven of them and you throw that one out and you start all over again and his teeth the Medicaid dilant ruined his teeth when he was a kid and now he's having to have all of his teeth crowned because he clenches his teeth at night so he's fractured all of his teeth and then they're all wore right off so that's that's like two thousand dollars
• 53:00 - 53:30 for two teeth maybe the insurance I didn't cover much of it did it oh my God no by the time he was in he had no insurance we couldn't even afford to pay for his insurance he doesn't have insurance to his job and we tried to get him on Medicaid but since he lived with us his household income was too high to get him on Medicaid so we just had to pay for everything meds at one point were
• 53:30 - 54:00 like four thousand a month and obviously melting cows he couldn't pay for him grab me a cleaner it is really very unfair because the insurance companies don't look at mental health the same as they look at the physical health they don't and it is uh it is still an issue so you know the private insurance should cover the mental illness
• 54:00 - 54:30 what do you like to do my cows what do you like to do for fun you do anything fun we're working my workshop you just finished that one about a month ago and tarsia you just cut these pieces out and you put them back together like Puzzles you know and and it takes quite a lot of patience to
• 54:30 - 55:00 cut them out good and a lot of Sandy I can do that one man this is one you're planning on doing soon yeah here's one of his this is a cutting board that he made that's black oak or a black walnut Oak and white oak so you still don't talk a lot it's all up here
• 55:00 - 55:30 he just can't make it come out of his mouth the way he wants to you know the community is probably the biggest reason he's as functional as he is because the community helps him he does his own banking they help him the auto parts store guys know him everybody's there and supportive yeah it takes the village to raise a kid you know
• 55:30 - 56:00 it's really unfair when you talk about someone who needs attention or needs care can't afford it I've had patience right now who have to make a decision about medication and they'll tell me listen uh I can't afford three dollar medication I need the one dollar medication so you would say well come on three dollars but if someone's really struggling that much and saying I need that one dollar medication at this
• 56:00 - 56:30 point there's other things are going on with it so I think that's part of the issue it's not a priority for us in our country we view it as you know this is America get yours like I got mine patients who don't go will go without treatment they cost us now if you look at the number of patients we're seeing in the forensics in the jail setting many cases these are folks who failed outpatient Readiness the shift is going from basically Outpatient Treatment to criminal justice treatment at the time which is much more
• 56:30 - 57:00 expensive our whole system needs uh could be uh corrected and need to help at this point not just Mental Health you know one look at a State Hospital and any layperson would say okay this is a prison in fact some asylums like the Upper Peninsula Asylum were literally converted into prisons since the end of the Asylum model we have seen the rise of mass incarceration when there was de-institutionalization a lot of these
• 57:00 - 57:30 patients did become homeless and they were arrested by the police and put in jail this is something that we see all the time when I was in prison I received two quote unquote official mental health assessments these were given simply because the majority of my time spent there was in trying to get transferred into mental health court but in order to
• 57:30 - 58:00 get into that Court period you have to prove to the first judge that your crimes were causally connected to your mental health disorder what they did is they just scheduled me for one first assessment they read off some generic questions things like at the time that you committed the crime did you feel that you had a superpower the answer is no but there's a whole lot of other things I thought I would definitely not
• 58:00 - 58:30 say that prison is the best place for people experiencing mental health disorder to get the support that they need it seems like that they are already the easiest to neglect and so with that mentality I think you also get this sort of a Dumping Ground that goes back for centuries just wanting to remove people from society when somebody goes to the prison for a crime that they're committed because of their psychiatric symptoms it's very hard to release them and then
• 58:30 - 59:00 transfer them to the state hospital this is unbelievable so many patients they just are their their life is done once they go to the prison there are studies showing that a lot of them have been assaulted they have been raped then they become worse because of the whole trauma but that's something that uh that has to change that has to change I don't know what's going to happen next [Music]
• 59:00 - 59:30 hello so let's see uh well things are I mean things are going well considering there's a lot to be nervous about a lot to be anxious or depressed about I just think we live in a time that's uh limbs itself to people becoming you know afraid of
• 59:30 - 60:00 people living in despair we've had an uptick in suicide the biggest threat to public health and safety in some ways is mental health if people can't function within Society within their jobs if they can't function in their roles as a parent if they can't function in school then it's it's as debilitating as having you know a deadly or or infectious disease ball has been
• 60:00 - 60:30 it it is a hard time of year and every time October rolls around there there is a bit of dread you know something's gonna happen again I left my position in social work um I started working another low stress
• 60:30 - 61:00 job so that I could get back to school and then the world went topsy-turpy in terms of my mental health I saw a relapse or uptick in symptoms I was able to speak with a psychiatrist to change my medications I now talk to my therapist via text I can't really imagine anyone in the world right now walking around
• 61:00 - 61:30 just hunky dory with the way that things are going I think that we are all experiencing anxiety and depression a lot of my patients suffered a lot some of them lost you know their near India ruins the worst thing is like our patients particularly depressing anxious patients we tell them to to socialize to to help them with their depression and anxiety
• 61:30 - 62:00 and this is the first time we told them to not socialize October is always a scary month for me I actually hold my breath metaphorically and literally as the month changes and I'm going to share something that I didn't share before the reason I don't share this is a lot
• 62:00 - 62:30 of people would say that's what made me gay but October started being a bad month for me when I was raped I was 18 years old and I was raped by somebody who was my Superior at a fast food restaurant and they got me extremely drunk
• 62:30 - 63:00 and it was probably the lowest point in my life there's a part of me that is still haunted by that in October we opened the windows to let the death out the cold air is purging
• 63:00 - 63:30 and the Decay around us is imminent it's beautiful in some ways and so it's not easy in October we're heading and sliding into winter so that's very difficult for me because I'm finding that I'm already getting depressed I had to increase my
• 63:30 - 64:00 medication yesterday I mean I'm exhausted but I wake up in the middle of the night for two or three hours and can't go back to sleep because I kind of have things running through my head so that's what I'm hoping that with the increase in the medication that I will be able to sleep all night given the current climate of the nation and with the pandemic it's my understanding that more people are are suffering more and that's causing a need for more
• 64:00 - 64:30 mental health care and you can't have a bunch of people sitting in a waiting room for a half hour as I kind of exited social work I saw a great rise in the need for it so since then I've been kind of volunteering my time and my skills as much as I can while not being affiliated with an agency a lot of the peers that I'm still connected to are providing services online or over the phone via Zoom calls
• 64:30 - 65:00 like this one we've really adapted to the state of the world and we adapted quickly the pandemic has been challenging truly was homeless for 44 days before I like secured this space and was able to move into it my roof collapsed and with that there was like a leak so I was pretty
• 65:00 - 65:30 much like couch surfing it was hard truly to not only have to advocate for myself while being homeless while also trying to find a place to live it was the longest 44 days of my life um and on top of that where an epidemic it was finals week so it can be hard sometimes truly to find
• 65:30 - 66:00 yourself in all of that you balance and yeah especially when you don't have the space to do that thank you in the past year well
• 66:00 - 66:30 Nate decided to quit taking his meds this summer so we had an event basically wound up with medication changes that's actually been a blessing because we've changed medications from the Risperidol to invega and it's actually been a good thing [Music] you know a person is like oh my God here we go but we didn't wind up with an
• 66:30 - 67:00 admission the new medication worked immediately and we only had like a bad week after that and things are doing quite well you like the new meds don't you yeah in fact a speech is better talks more he's we're just at the beginning of starting the medication so we'll see
• 67:00 - 67:30 it was a good experience this day his copay on it is negligible I think what was it it's like 14 dollars there are improvements in the way mental health is treated things have gotten better how generally are you doing
• 67:30 - 68:00 good foreign
• 68:00 - 68:30 I've never been to a protest I've never led a protest so going to that protest here in Marquette the protest was for George Floyd um it was a say his name protest um and it was shortly after millions of people watched that video of him being um sorry of him being choked to death by a man knoing on him um yeah I it was very
• 68:30 - 69:00 very hard to watch I think I see trauma and I think that it's years of trauma that like no one has ever been able to talk about I literally like afterwards like broke down and cried like I had to sit down and just like it was like whoa all of this raw emotion is happening and I don't understand it and but all I know is that like I have to I have to do something social justice for us mission is to
• 69:00 - 69:30 uplift the marginalized voices amplifying the voices of marginalized people in the Marquette Community people that aren't being hurt I joined social justice for us about two months I think after they were formed officially two days after their initial formation I had gone to a protest and met up with them what makes the SFU is so unique is that we are all on the Spectrum some way somehow whether that's a spectrum on the lgbtqia or we even have members that are
• 69:30 - 70:00 autistic we have members that suffer from like deep anxiety issues deep depression issues so broad living and battling life in a way that truly Inspire us to make it better yes Milo with you know high blood pressure and heart and you know lung issues running in my family I wanted to make some Life Changes
• 70:00 - 70:30 because I I know as I age my metabolism slows down and and I learned to cook when I say cook I'm talking about boiling eggs but but I learned that I felt better if I ate that way my blood sugar was stable I was more hydrated and it's minimized what probably would have been more catastrophic for my mental health in terms of my ability to cope with my anxiety even with the meds
• 70:30 - 71:00 I'm never going to be a homeowner again I just that's something I have no interest in it's a change and it's a needed change [Music] the only changes I had was you know getting mom's groceries getting my in-laws groceries that you know their elderly and we didn't want them at the stores to go anyplace to what do you mean I'm elderly but we
• 71:00 - 71:30 didn't want them to get any sickness or illness that they couldn't recover from I I usually I'm a jewelry maker I made these bracelets I'm real good at it I used to make purses and stuff but I've always been an artist too so this gives me so during covid-19 in the middle of the night sometimes my favorite time I just stood up and I I go to Pinterest and try to find something that I can draw and now you're
• 71:30 - 72:00 about to see what I can draw I want it to be more natural but this is a bird's eye view of a bird's nest [Music] portrait I always wear a hat but that's that's my self-portrait I'm just moving from a little apartment in Saginaw to a slightly bigger
• 72:00 - 72:30 apartment inside now um I took a place uh that was a little cheaper because my um employment was impacted by Colvin and I am going back to school just found a place that was a little bigger I've got a great big dog to look after so they needed some space thank you
• 72:30 - 73:00 is there anything burning in your heart that you want to share with the world no no do you want to tell the world anything no perfect hopefully you know this crisis will go away and people will go back to where they
• 73:00 - 73:30 are you know seeking help whenever they need it but please get help when you have mental illness um you know go to your psychiatrist go to your therapist don't think that you you are your diagnosis please don't you're different you have a lot of strengths we got a lot of patients who do very well if you are really at your low point if you are suicidal already psychotic or
• 73:30 - 74:00 manic and if you have to go to the mental health unit for a few days don't feel bad about it [Music]
• 74:00 - 74:30 foreign has made enormous progress from the days of the asylums therapy and medication saved my life and they've saved the lives of millions of people who have been able to live happy productive lives in their communities but Millions more are being forgotten asylums were never abolished only
• 74:30 - 75:00 rebranded as mass incarceration as a homelessness epidemic as skyrocketing medical bills the first asylums were not only Built to treat people with debilitating psychiatric illnesses they were also prisons for gay people autistic people rebellious women anyone our society wanted to forget we cannot fix our Mental Health Care System until we change our mentality about people with psychiatric illnesses
• 75:00 - 75:30 we are not problems we are people and we are not going to be forgotten anymore
• 75:30 - 76:00 [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]
• 76:00 - 76:30 [Music] thank you [Music]