Columns

Persons with various disabilities, compared to others, are generally more tolerant of people who are different. Those "mainstream" Americans who, without too much difficulty, have found material success, often do not understand persons with mental illness or other disabilities. The epitome of this is Donald Trump, who has become known as the candidate with the most bigoted and ignorant attitude of anyone running for President.

A symptom of society's lack of understanding is the standard work ethic. Since when can someone get away with taking a day off from work because they are just too depressed to go to work that day? The work ethic decidedly doesn't acknowledge excuses not to perform that stem from something happening between the ears. When taking a day off from work due to a flare-up of mental illness, it is usually necessary to fabricate a physical excuse.  

However, disdain toward persons with a mental health diagnosis cuts across all socioeconomic lines. There are some people well off financially who are quite understanding and kind toward persons with mental illness, and there are disadvantaged people who dislike mentally ill people, and express it without subtlety.  

I was once in a writer's group in San Ramon, and the one who headed the group at one point said she was upset about low income units being built near her. She also was quite mocking of me and of my writing. I was judged either by my appearance or by the fact of my disability, and this person had a preexisting bias making her believe anything I wrote was tripe.  

I was outside a mental health clinic in Concord when a man appeared there, apparently for the sole purpose of ostracizing mentally ill people. He said he could tell that I was "a Prozac." And he said he would let me know if he needed someone to empty his trash.  

I was once placed in a job by a mental health agency in which I was a delivery driver. I called in sick due to neck pain because I continued to suffer from a whiplash of several months before. There was no clear cut procedure for calling in sick, and another driver was deprived of his day going fishing. I was blamed for ruining the off-day of the other employee. But also, the manager, a man in his thirties, said he was worried I would "take off in the van." He wanted me to give back the keys because of this. I gave him the keys to the delivery van. Then he called me because there was more work, and I informed him that I wasn't going to work under those conditions.  

The mental health agency also messed up a potential hiring at an electronic repair shop where I had interviewed. Had I gone alone and not involved the mental health agency I probably would have gotten the job. It is hard to know if the mental health agency was the most bigoted, or the potential employers.  

The belief that a mentally ill person is good for nothing but emptying trash is a part of the disrespect and the stereotyping directed at mentally ill people. 

A video was being made at a mental health agency for purposes of promoting their agency and destigmatizing mentally ill people. When I was being prepared to appear in the filming, I tried to drink some coffee, and was admonished that I could not have any of the counselors' coffee. Another mental health agency has a separate bathroom for use of staff only. What does this remind you of?  

My point is that because I am mentally ill, people have seen it as an invitation to treat me like garbage. Being stereotyped, or condescended upon, is not something we are imagining due to being delusional.  

However, it is a lot harder for persons with mental illness to fight for our equality when most of us are medicated to the point where we can do little or nothing. For example, getting out and demonstrating is an improbability because of how medication affects stamina. Fighting for our rights in the courtroom will not happen either, because it is a rarity that a mentally ill person can retain the services of a private attorney.  

When will the mentally ill stand up for our rights and for being treated in a fair and humane manner? It could be numerous decades in the future, and it could require better treatment of psychiatric disorders, such as medications that do not become a component of the disability. Yet there is no incentive for the drug companies to invent such meds. 

In a decade in which we see a lot of progress for minorities such as the LGBT community, and in which ongoing police brutality and murder toward African American people is now being videoed, resulting in public outrage--as someone categorized as mentally ill, I say, what about us?