People Think I'm Crazy
The mentally ill struggle with perceptions
By MARTHA PETTEYS Glens Falls POST-STAR
Editor's Note: This is the second in an occasional series on
mental illness.
Claude Pines spent his days in the mental hospital smoking cigarettes and
staring at a clock, thinking about how life would be different when he got
out.
How had he fallen this far?
He was a smart guy. He went to Columbia University. He had been a medical
student at Einstein College of Medicine and even did a term in psychiatry.
Now, he was one of them.
He had fallen into a different class of people. He had been diagnosed with
schizophrenia and depression. The symptoms of his disorder could be treated
with medication and therapy. The stigma of having such an illness, however,
would not be as easy to get away from.
He thought about this as he watched the clock through the haze of smoke.
"I realized I gave up all respect and dignity," he said. "I was now part of a
different class. I went from someone who was valuable and worthy to someone
who was weak and unrespectable."
Nineteen years have passed since Pines spent a year in a White Plains mental
hospital. His symptoms are controlled by medication, but the subtle "mark of
shame" society has pasted on him still causes him great pain.
Friends stopped calling. Employers found "more qualified" applicants. And with
each rejection, Pines' self esteem fell a little further, until it would take
him months to scrape up the confidence to apply for a job bagging groceries.
"You get to a point that you lack faith in yourself because you just seem to
keep failing."
Pines is 59 years old, and he lives in Glens Falls. On this afternoon, he was
sitting in the offices of Voices of the Heart, a consumer-run mental illness
advocacy program based in Hudson Falls. Karen Skellie is director of the
center.
"We are one of the last disenfranchised minorities," said Skellie, who has
struggled for 33 years with mental illness.
She felt the cold sting of societal stigma each time she was released from the
hospital during the early years of her illness.
Friends and neighbors go out of their way to be kind to someone who has had
surgery or broken a bone. If you go to the hospital because of a psychotic
break, the treatment is much different.
"No one knows what to say. No one sends a card. No one would dream of making a
cake or a casserole," she said. "They treat it like a non-issue."
Mind and body
Mental illness is as much a medical problem as cancer or diabetes, but the
way it is viewed in society is very different, said Karen Padowicz, director
of development with the Warren-Washington Association for Mental Health.
You wouldn't blame someone for having diabetes. Or tell them to snap out of
their cancer and go get a job. She said science has long separated the mind
from the body, and as a result, illnesses of the body are considered
"legitimate," while mental health issues are viewed as something you can
control.
In the 1990s, more scientists began to turn their research to the brain.
Education about mental illness has followed, but centuries of discrimination
and stigma will not disappear overnight, Padowicz said.
The surgeon general released a report in 1999 stating that one in five people
will experience some form of mental illness at some point in their life. A
person who has gone through a divorce, for example, could experience a period
of depression.
As many as 50 percent of people with mental illness, however, will not seek
treatment either because they are not educated to recognize the signs or
because they are fearful of being labeled "insane," according to the report.
On the job
For Pines, his disorder became his "dirty secret." During bouts of
confidence, he would tell potential employers up front he had a mental illness
that was controlled by medication. The American with Disabilities Act makes
discrimination based on such disclosure illegal. Pines, however, soon
discovered that the law is the dream of justice, and he was living in the real
world.
On job interviews, people were always very kind, he said. They would often end
the interview by patting him on the back and wishing him good luck.
The times Pines didn't tell an employer about his condition, he went into the
job feeling illegitimate. Keeping the secret caused tension, which aggravated
his illness. If he needed to take a day off from work to manage his disorder,
he'd have to lie and tell his boss he had a stomach bug or cold.
"Do you know what that does to your sense of self worth?"
Having to make up excuses was humiliating. It also reinforced the idea that
his mental illness was a terrible, embarrassing secret, he said.
Skellie, of Voices of the Heart, said she was forced to lie about the
unaccounted-for years on her resume. She had been working as a library systems
director when she had a mental illness breakdown in 1987.
"When I emerged from that, I couldn't get work," she said.
Skellie spent some years on disability while she worked to get her illness
under control. She glossed over the lost time by telling employers she had
chosen to be a homemaker for those years.
She now works to educate people about mental illness. She became director of
Voices of the Heart three years ago. She said ignorance about brain disorders
is the root of societal stigma. Pines agrees.
"There is a tremendous amount of ignorance about mental illness," he said.
"The man on the street doesn't think about it, care about it or want anything
to do with it."
It has been nearly 20 years since Pines sat in the hospital thinking about how
life would change. It has taken him years, he said, to pull together some
semblance of self-esteem.
Six months ago, he got a job at the Warren-Washington ARC working with people
with developmental disabilities. He disclosed to his supervisor a few days ago
that he has a mental illness. He has mixed feelings about telling him. He's
glad the secret is out, but fears people will treat him differently.
A meaningful, steady job has helped him feel better about himself, he said,
but he doubts that the pain caused by years of shame will ever completely
heal.
"I am not what I was."
Perception
Many would rather tell employers they have committed a petty crime and were
in jail, than admit to being in a psychiatric hospital, according to the
National Mental Health Information Center.
o Between 1985 and 1995, Hollywood released more than 150 films with
characters who have mental illness, the majority of them killers and villains,
according to a study at George Mason University in Virginia.
o Nearly two-thirds of people with diagnosable mental disorder do not seek
treatment. Not wanting to be considered "insane" is a reason many of them
cite, according to a 1999 report by the surgeon general.
o A 1996 survey of 1,000 Americans conducted for the National Alliance for the
Mentally Ill revealed that 31 to 41 percent of respondents believed that
chronic depression and schizophrenia are due to weakness in personal
character.
Source:
http://poststar.net/archives/story.asp?storyid=57852&rundate=3/16/2003
This 'Mental Health E-News' posting is a service of the New
York Ass'n of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, a statewide coalition of
people who use and/or provide community mental health services dedicated to
improving services and social conditions for people with psychiatric
disabilities by promoting their recovery, rehabilitation and rights.
To join our list, e-mail us your request and, where
appropriate, the name of your organization to
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Last Updated on
04/08/04
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