Richard’s Notes

NPR’s Talk of the Nation had a great show on today: Balancing Public Safety, Forced Mental Treatment.

It’s also available through the iTunes Music Store as a podcast: Podcasts/NPR/Talk of the Nation.

This show both describes a broken mental health system and some of the good that’s come from advocacy groups helping psychotic patients learn how to live in a world that doesn’t understand them and is frightened of them.

Two things:

I’ve been with people having serious psychotic episodes two times in my life and these were the scariest experiences I’ve ever had. I would guess that the reason we find these things so frightening is that we can easily project ourselves into the psychotic person’s place. Dealing with someone who is seriously mentally ill is maybe one of the hardest things any family member or friend will ever do. This show will give you a taste of it from all sides.

As a person with a learning disability (LD) I latched on to the psychiatric rights movement (The Madness Network in my day) because there was no LD adult advocacy movement in the early days. I think social, political, and educational support for LD adults is still way behind the general disabilities rights groups as well as the psychiatric rights groups.

The most heartening voice on the show, to me, was that of David Oaks who is “out” as a psychotic adult and leads a successful psychiatric advocacy group. He both told it like it was and is and offered hope outside of traditional mental health support services which these days are all about psychotropic drugs.

This show is worth listening to.