First Person, Singular: What It Feels Like

A while back, I asked Adam Black to write about what it’s like when he feels suicidal. This is what he sent in:

“where i am”

in a pitch dark room, stone floor, stone walls, alone curled, sitting on my heels, knees tucked into my chin total silence this thing you call emotion, hitting me, mercilessly like a many-tailed whip, laying open my back the blows keep coming, they never stop i know help is not coming, will never be coming i can’t be helped, i’m too much of an aberration blows so fast and neverending, my back doesn’t have a chance to heal i’ve been here so long there is nothing left to scream about sometimes i think that time has stopped i know i deserve this and i try to accept that its only emotions and nothing for it but control at my feet, a knife, always taunting offering the possibility of an ending far too final why is it always either agony or death?

i breathe in emotion, scream in emotion, bleed the emotion can’t even imagine what help would look like no longer know what safety feels like there is no answer to this room but endure, or not this night i’d give my life to have it stop

[Photo by Patrick Denker]

liz | 3:31 PM | Uncategorized

No, the Altoona Mirror isn’t in the next installment of Harry Potter

It’s a Pennsylvania newspaper that features a pretty good article about suicide behind bars:

Death behind bars
Prison suicides linked to risk factors, inability to cope
By Phil Ray

Nathan J. Aughenbaugh of Morrisdale was placed in Blair County Prison June 21 for a probation violation after his vehicle was stopped by Tyrone police.

The 27-year-old college student told a judge that he suffered from chronic pain, anxiety and depression. He was on prescription medication for the pain and other problems.

* * *

Aughenbaugh wasn’t a typical criminal. He wasn’t selling drugs or committing robberies. He wasn’t violent.

His father, James C. Aughenbaugh of West Decatur, said his son was smart, on the debate team in high school and a student leader at Edinboro University.

Mostly recently, he attended Penn State Altoona. He wanted to teach political science and become a college professor.

‘‘He had so many friends at Edinboro, Altoona, Clearfield, Philipsburg. … He just couldn’t control the drug thing,’’ the elder Aughenbaugh said.

The courts went easy on Nathan Aughenbaugh, placing him on probation without verdict, a disposition that focuses on treatment as opposed to jail.

A letter presented in court from a Tyrone doctor pointed out that Nathan Aughenbaugh suffered from chronic pain because of an accident and outlined the medical treatment he was receiving.

* * *

Nathan Aughenbaugh was the type of prisoner who raises red flags when he enters Blair County Prison, based on the mental health history and mental status of the inmate upon incarceration.

A screening test indicated he should be placed on suicide watch, meaning a corrections officer should have checked on him every 15 minutes.

An inmate on watch is gradually phased into the prison population and finally placed in a cellblock.

His progress is monitored by Jennifer Feathers, a forensic specialist and an employee of Altoona Regional Health System.

The hospital is under contract with PrimeCare, a Harrisburg-based company that provides medical care to inmates, and Feathers assesses the risk factors of inmates coming into the jail.

If placing the inmate on watch and working with him to identify problems and establish treatment goals doesn’t work, the jail can petition for a 90-day mental health commitment, Feathers said.

Male inmates are sent to Warren State Hospital, and female inmates to Mayview State Hospital.

More »

liz | 1:20 PM | Uncategorized

I forgot my meds

I go to the Jersey shore pretty much every weekend in the summer, for various activities usually involving boating, fishing, wading, beachcombing, boardwalking, candy-eating, and old motels. It’s very fun, and I’ll be sorry to see it all go. We love to load our little truck up with things — including a cooler filled with food and drink — and set off on adventure, and we’ve been to just about every town you might imagine, and even many you’ve never heard of before. My favorite part is staying in the odd little roadside motels — not franchises, but motels named M&M, or Seaside, or Tennytown, or Royal Flush, or some other name that an immigrant owner thought might attract natives wandering by. Usually there are some people living on the premises, and that’s always a little sad, imagining children growing up in a motel because their parents don’t have enough stability to own a home, or even rent an apartment.

Anyway, this weekend’s idyll was disrupted by an unprecedented event: I forgot to bring my meds. All I had was one Ativan. That meant I’d have to go for one night without my Seroquel, Lamictal and Effexor. I’ve gone without the Seroquel and Lamictal before, and I find it rather unfun. But I’ve never gone one night without Effexor, and it scares me. I’ve heard so many horror stories about brain zaps and what have you, and I was afraid that without the Lam. or Eff., I could have a seizure. I was so terrified, that I drove all the way home and all the way back in the dark. I got back to the little motel at 11:30 p.m., exhausted but appropriately medicated.

The whole thing made me so upset. I hate depending on meds this way. On the other hand, thank god I have them in my life. To enjoy a weekend — that seemed impossible for so many years.

liz | 10:44 AM | Uncategorized

If only I lived in Pittsburgh

The old Mayview State Hospital is closing down, forcing 220 residents out to find their way in a world without sufficient psychiatric services. Though it’s generally cause for celebration when people get out of the hospital, we’ve seen, especially in cities like Philly, how deinstitutionalization failed many former patients, who ended up homeless and hungry. If I lived in Pittsburgh, I would buy a video camera and spend five years documenting 10 patients leaving Mayview, and see where they ended up and why. Those with supportive families, I’m guessing, won’t end up homeless. Those without families and without money? It’s a tougher road, no matter the goodwill intended.

State to close Mayview Hospital

liz | 5:47 PM | Uncategorized

R.I.P. Liam Rector

The Remarkable Objectivity of Your Old Friends
by Liam Rector

We did right by your death and went out,
Right away, to a public place to drink,
To be with each other, to face it.

We called other friends – the ones
Your mother hadn’t called – and told them
What you had decided, and some said

What you did was right; it was the thing
You wanted and we’d just have to live
With that, that your life had been one

Long misery and they could see why you
Had chosen that, no matter what any of us
Thought about it, and anyway, one said,

Most of us abandoned each other a long
Time ago and we’d have to face that
If we had any hope of getting it right.

Liam Rector, 57, a Poet and Educator, Dies

liz | 11:21 AM | Uncategorized

A mother’s pledge

Stephany speaks from the heart:

I, too, am a parent who loves my daughter and respects her illness [and my own]. It’s been a long road for her, and myself as well. One thing I have learned, which sounds too simple–is that I cannot make her well. I can walk alongside of her the best I can, and I’ve seen her sleeping in urine in ERs, Ive seen her stop traffic with her body.

She is the same person, the same daughter who I will love forever, though I may not like how things are, it’s imperative to respect the person. I have learned to embrace what you said here: “If you had talked to this woman, as I did, you would want to wrap her up in your arms and tell her everything’s going to be okay. But I couldn’t do that because it’s not true.”

I am learning that I will simply love my daughter forever, and that it’s okay if things are not okay.
It’s important to support a person without wanting to control a person, or their life. I want the best life for my daughter, yet what I want for her may not be how her life is, and that is what parents need to understand. It’s important to let go.

Thanks for sharing, Stephany.

liz | 5:19 PM | Uncategorized

Sadly, Least Surprising Headline of the Day

We knew while it was happening mental health problems would be severe. We pretended to care about that, and prepare for it. Now research shows victims of Katrina are not one bit better, mentally, than they were a year ago, and many are worse. That is a huge failure.

Katrina victims struggle mentally

liz | 3:42 PM | Uncategorized

Those wiley crazy people

Someone sent me a link today to lackofinsightmi.org, the website of a group of concerned relatives who feel the mentally ill people in their lives don’t understand their condition enough to make rational decisions about treatment. I’m surprised I never saw this website before, but it’s interesting.

As a longtime advocate and journalist who has worked with and spoken to countless family members, I naturally sympathize with their frustrations. I recently spoke to a woman who was quite elderly and frail. She was in despair because her son, who suffers from schizophrenia, was sleeping on the floor because a delusion made him throw out his bed, which he imagined was evil. His living space is so filthy that he’s sleeping in urine. He calls her three or four times a day, completely delusional, and her heart is breaking. When he takes medication, which has worked for him in the past, he’s able to live a healthy life. But he always stops taking it, and then moves into a space where he believes the world is populated by demons and ghosts. He has no ability to understand his illness at all. She’s worried he’s going to die like this, but she’s powerless to get him help.

If you had talked to this woman, as I did, you would want to wrap her up in your arms and tell her everything’s going to be okay. But I couldn’t do that because it’s not true. She can’t help her son — and what could be more painful for a parent? Anyone who has children can understand the agony this woman suffers, knowing her “little boy” is sleeping on a floor crawling with bugs. She loves him.

On the other hand, this woman I met isn’t part of Lack of Insight Mental Illness. And I’m glad of it. On their homepage, they take language from TAC, saying:

Please note: the mentally ill are NOT stupid, and they do learn how to “work the system” to avoid treatment. It is extremely frustrating for concerned relatives — fathers, mothers, sisters etc. — to not be allowed to contribute information to doctors trying to treat a patient who can’t or won’t provide truthful information.

The persistence of this notion of “the mentally ill” as Other makes these folks seem less caring than they claim they are. In order to love someone and do right by them, you have to, in some way, be able to see them as you see yourself. You have respect them. You have to honor them. You can’t think of them as crafty and sly and “working the system.” It sounds like you’re talking about a dog who keeps jumping the backyard fence.

Every time I think I might be able to find some moderation in this debate, people say absurd things like the above. I wish we could figure out a way to get people talking in a creative, mutually respectful fashion.

liz | 11:51 AM | Uncategorized

Future imperfect

From Joe G.:

The words on September 3, 2002:

The recovery-oriented service system shall be notable for its quality.
– Excerpted from [Connecticut DMHAS] Commissioner’s Policy Statement No. 83, Promoting a Recovery-Oriented Service System, September 3, 2002.

The deeds as of today:

The Department of Justice report [on CT's largest state run psychiatric hospital, Connecticut Valley Hospital], obtained Tuesday, follows the agency’s 20-month investigation into Connecticut’s oldest, largest state-run psychiatric hospital. It concludes that suicide risk remains high, that patients are restrained as a “first resort” and as a “convenience” for staff, that one shift doesn’t talk to another about high-risk patients, and that treatment practices are often “grossly inadequate.
– Excerpted from U.S. Report Blasts CVH, Hartford Courant, August 15, 2007.

liz | 2:49 PM | Uncategorized

Tazey days

Another recurring topic on this here blog: the use of Tasers on people who are mentally ill and/or out of control. Did use of a Taser thwart a man’s suicide, as the company is claiming in its press release? Here’s the news account:

Carnival employee stabs girlfriend, then himself [Farmington (New Mexico) Daily Times]

liz | 1:53 PM | Uncategorized