Moving On

Today is my last day working at a community mental health center in Philadelphia. Most of the clients I worked with were living in poverty, with dire childhood histories, victims of societal marginalization — virtually all of them diagnosed, at one time or another, with schizophrenia. Some used to abuse drugs. Some had been homeless at one time or another. Some never got beyond 10th grade. Yet I learned as much from them as I did in three years of grad school. And I don’t say that to be a pollyanna. I really mean it.

I saw 150 of them every day in a program that is trying mightily to change their lives and give them hope, a sadly unfamiliar concept. People who had never been to an art museum were going to see exhibits at the PMA. People who’d never seen the ocean went to the New Jersey Aquarium for a first look at marine life. People who had never seen a movie thought about seeing a movie — and sometimes just thinking about doing something is the first step.

I witnessed so many first steps. I met one of the finest poets I’ve ever read, in any context. I talked philosophy with a man who broadened my ideas about religion, and its failings. I watched a baby kick and squiggle in my pregnant colleague’s growing belly. I worked with a gospel group leader who taught me what it is to speak up and value my voice. There’s so much more.

It’s hard to leave a place I feel this way about. The program participants made me feel joy every day. My colleagues made me laugh harder than I’ve ever laughed. I learned a lot of R&B songs that I now know I shouldn’t sing along to because I suck.

Yet it’s time to move on. Why? It’s hard to say, exactly. I guess because my true self is a journalist and a writer, not a Certified Peer Specialist. The mental health system hasn’t quite decided what to do with Peer Specialists. And I haven’t quite decided I want to be one. My colleague who’s a gospel group leader believe I can change the world by writing; it’s macro, he says. I thought being micro would be more immediate, and it is. But I miss words. I miss shaping opinion. I miss editing, perhaps most of all. And — go figure — journalism pays a (comparatively) living wage. So it’s time to go.

Change is hard, under any circumstances. But it also makes me feel alive again. This next week, I’ll be on vacation at a dude ranch, of all things. After that, I’ll be back at PW full-time. But I won’t forget the lessons I learned during the year-plus I was away — both at the Pennsylvania Prison Society and at the mental health center (which I’m not naming due to HIPAA laws). I’ll always fight for those who have less. I know the program participants as friends now. And some of them will be in my life forever. As one of them said, “You’re not getting away now. I have your email address.” So true.

Getting beneath the headlines, beneath the text of the articles, is invaluable. I was never one to leave the PW building much. I didn’t report as much as I should have. I didn’t insist upon it enough from other writers. I’ll never make that mistake again. I did nothing but “leave the building” every day for more than a year now, and I return to the paper a new person, a new editor and writer. A better one, I’m sure.

[Photo by Liz Spikol. Me.]

liz | 10:57 AM | Uncategorized

The Latest Review of the Reviews

The world just gets more meta every day. And the mainstream media has to find more strained metaphors to try to explain things. Hence this odd lede from MSN.com:

Modern antidepressants have been blamed for deadly shooting rampages and violent suicides. At the same time, they’ve been hailed as miracle drugs that transform baleful Eeyore-types into bouncing Tiggers.

Eeyore? Tigger? I guess they’re trying to dumb things down.

While MSN puts study conclusions this way:

Now the latest review of the research claims that the effects of the drugs are only marginally different from those of placebos or sugar pills.

the study itself say it like this:

Drug–placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity, but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients. The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication.

Miracle Drug, Poison or Placebo?

liz | 3:43 PM | Uncategorized

Depression Confession: Kirsten Dunst

I knew I loved her for more than her cutie-pie star turn in Interview With a Vampire and subsequent good-natured appearances in Spider-Man. From yesterday’s Star-Ledger:

She tells E! Online that earlier this year, she checked into the posh Cirque Lodge Treatment Center in Utah — rehab center of choice for Lindsay Lohan and Eva Mendes — because she was dealing with depression.

“I was struggling, and I had the opportunity to go somewhere and take care of myself,” Dunst says. “I was fortunate to have the resources to do it. My friends and family thought it was a good idea, too.”

She says she’s “feeling stronger” now, and decided to talk about her struggles because “depression is pretty serious and should not be gossiped about.”

Good for her. Not so good, however, was the lede of the Star-Ledger’s article: “Kirsten Dunst is not so much a partier as a party pooper.” Isn’t that kind of an odd way to put it?

Regarding Cirque Lodge, the website reminded me a bit of the site for a ranch in Colorado where I’ll be spending my upcoming vacation. From June 1 to June 8 I’ll be out in the San Juan mountains riding horses, nursing my sore muscles in a hot tub, then returning to my cabin — all by myself. I love solo vacations. I expect it to be fully rejuvenating, so I hear what Dunst is saying.

Meanwhile, this blog will be written by Alli Katz, PW staffer, Oberlin alum and all-around delicious person.

liz | 12:14 PM | Uncategorized

New Technology and New Thinking for People With Autism

I wrote something about weighted blankets and a Deep Pressure vest over at the Huffington Post. Check it out here. It coincidentally sits beneath their big story in the Living section, which is about a New York magazine article on autism activism.

Not unlike those in the Mad Pride movement (which the HuffPost also references), some activists who have autism/Asperger’s Syndrome want to promote their identity as a strength. The activism became especially pointed after those horrible, horrible ads (pictured) put out by the Child Study Center at NYU, which apparently has a completely inept communications department. (As a former communications manager for a nonprofit organization, I sympathize with the need to get attention for a cause that people don’t invest in. But, I mean, please.)

To read the original NY mag story, go here. To read the HuffPost story about the story, go here. To read the blog post about the post about the story about the article … oh, forget it. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.

liz | 2:23 PM | Uncategorized

Quote of the Evening: May 26, 2008

“Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.”

Courtesy of Kent R. Thanks, Kent.

liz | 9:55 PM | Uncategorized

Money Isn’t Everything

New reader Angela Rocchi left me a comment saying, basically, Get over yourself. Who cares if you were in the New York Times? Move on. Okay, Angela, I hear you. I’m sick of me too. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Today the International Herald Tribune had an interesting article about what it’s like to lose a high-paying job on Wall Street. I think many people hold the view that if you work on Wall Street, you’re already incurring a certain amount of risk. And I know there are other people who feel that if highly paid stockbrokers lose their jobs, it’s not much of a tragedy. But isn’t pain the same, no matter how much money you make? Writes Sarah Kershaw:

Losing a job is one of life’s great traumas. For some, there may be relief in saying goodbye to what therapists call the “psychological terror” that has haunted the corridors of troubled financial institutions since summer. But what follows – the unknown – may be no less frightening. …

“These are people’s lives,” said an investment banker in his 30s who was laid off in November at a Bank of America office in New York. “It’s not head count. We’re not cattle.”

Psychologists who study the lives of such workers say that in some ways they’re better equipped to handle major change because they’re accustomed to it being a part of their work life. On the other hand, they’re already emotionally fragile:

Cass and other psychologists and researchers who have worked with Wall Street employees say they are more prone to anxiety, depression, substance abuse and other mental stresses than the general population because they are drawn to the intensity and volatility of the work. They drive themselves hard. Working 10, 12, 14 hours a day is not only expected, it is also a badge of honor.

For these employees, I hope there’s not too much of a stigma associated with getting psychological help during these bleak economic times, because chances are, there’ll be more banks closing and more layoffs at investment firms.

The psychic pain of the high-income layoff

liz | 4:23 PM | Uncategorized

What It’s Like to Be a Spokesperson for Mad Pride

This is my latest column from the print edition of Philadelphia Weekly. It can also be found online here. It’s about what life is like after appearing in The New York Times. One-word answer: freaky!

I seem to have become a spokesperson.

Last week I was just me, Liz Spikol, the person who talked a little too freely to the cashier at the convenience store. Or Liz Spikol, the person who fell asleep on the trolley and dropped her umbrella so someone almost tripped over it. Or Liz Spikol, the columnist/blogger who people read (or didn’t read) between doing other things that were probably more important.

But that was before I was me: Liz Spikol.

Now that I’m famous and a spokesperson, those two words look different. It reminds me of what Shania Twain, whose real name is Eilleen, said once about seeing her name in print. She said it’s okay when articles about “Shania” make her seem like a stranger because she doesn’t really know her either. She’s just Eilleen.

I wish I’d remembered that before I spoke with a reporter from The New York Times a couple weeks ago. I might have considered a name change.

There’s something about seeing one’s name in The New York Times—as I did two Sundays ago—that makes you really see it for the first time.

What kind of name is “Liz”? It’s one letter longer than an exhalation. And while “Spikol” may have its roots in nobility—or it may not—it’s an uncomfortable jumble of letters whose only merit is that, after the S, they’re all in a line on a keyboard. It’s QWERTY-friendly—that’s the very best thing you can say of my last name.

It would also have been good to change my name to dilute, just a bit, the surprise of family and friends when they said, “You look so gorgeous in that photo!” as though photographer Shea Roggio had dumped a bagabigabyte of Photoshop onto my face to make it look so pretty.

I’ll have you know Roggio doesn’t even use Photoshop or a digital camera. He lives on a mountaintop in a yurt with just a film camera and some modest indoor plumbing.

But my name is the same, and so it is that “Liz Spikol” now means something that it didn’t mean 14 days ago.

The piece “‘Mad Pride’ Fights a Stigma,” by Gabrielle Glaser, was about people with mental illnesses being more open about their experiences. She equated the “mad pride” movement to gay pride, and quoted the Icarus Project’s Sascha Altman “Scatter” DuBrul talking about his “dangerous gifts.”

Were I not featured in the article, and photographed for it, and were it not on the front page, above the fold, of the Sunday Styles section, perhaps I’d be able to tell you more about the content of the piece. But by the time I ran to the Wawa with my parents on Sunday morning to see the paper itself, I had no such brainpower. I could think only one thing: I’m in The New York Times!

My parents and I did a little dance in the Wawa. I made my mother swear she wouldn’t tell anyone I was in the paper, even though it was Mother’s Day and I was being very nice.

But my father—who counts himself as quite reserved—found himself saying to the cashier, “A member of my family is in the paper today,” perhaps to explain the skyscraper of tree we were purchasing.

By the time I got featured on the Huffington Post—as “the mad pride movement’s most hilarious, if unofficial, spokesperson”—my email inbox had started to fill up with queries from literary agents and acquisitions editors at publishing houses. I was even contacted by a couple documentary filmmakers.

Why? Because now I was Liz Spikol. Not the Liz Spikol of Sat., May 10. But the Liz Spikol of Sun., May 11. Hurrah.

Most of the agents were quite flattering, as agents are wont to be. But one of them told me she didn’t think I’d be getting much interest without the mad pride angle. Sure, Liz Spikol was all well and good, if you wanted to ride a trolley forever. But spokesperson Liz Spikol was the marketable Liz Spikol.

I started to worry about being a spokesperson for mad pride specifically. I’m very open about having bipolar disorder. Everyone knows that. But am I proud to have it? Why should I be? Did I do something special to get it?

Pride is something I associate with accomplishment. I can type really fast. I’m bilingual. Am I proud to have asthma? No. Am I proud that I get migraine headaches? It’s not like I’ve been practicing to perfect the act of lying on my bed in the dark.

The pride we feel should be in recovering from our mental illnesses and living fulfilling lives, and then having the courage to speak out. I’m proud to live honestly. I’m proud to struggle each day with an illness and win every battle against it. I’m proud to serve as a role model for others who haven’t come as far on the journey. I’m proud that I’ve survived.

I hope that message will be marketable enough so that Liz Spikol will still be Liz Spikol for a while longer, because it’s been kind of fun being a different person. But if not, that’s okay too. Shania is really a stupid name.

[Note: I had no idea that Shania Twain was in such a personal muddle when I wrote this, so I apologize for saying a mean thing about her name. The news that she and her husband Mutt are divorcing is actually quite sad for Eileen, I’m sure

liz | 3:55 PM | Uncategorized

Some Final Words for Julie

If you recall, Julie wrote in to get some advice from Team Trouble: She believes her nanny has bipolar disorder and is behaving irresponsibly for that reason. She wants to do right by the nanny, Mary, who she considers part of the family. On the other hand, she is concerned about her children. So what should she do? We’ve been giving her some advice in the past couple days, and this last comment (below) comes from Scott.

I think we ought to view bipolar and asthma similarly and with equal stigma or lack thereof. But I go to the basics here: she took your son out without clearing it with you, she shoplifted with him in her care and subjected him to that, she has been in trouble with the police before. The issue is not that she is bipolar, but that she is acting the way she is with this particular illness. I think the protection of your sons is paramount here. I would do what you can to help her, be her friend, etc, but not employ her as your nanny anymore.

I have to agree with him, Julie. I think your kindness and empathy comes through, and I admire that. But I also think Mary is out of control and is obviously not getting appropriate treatment for her illness. It is not always to a person’s benefit, when they’re ill, to allow them to “get away with things,” as bizarre as that sounds. Perhaps she has to understand the seriousness of the situation before she can doggedly pursue the treatment she clearly needs. That was certainly the case with me in the past.

And, of course, the children do come first — not to sound like a politician. Imagine if her behaviors were caused by addiction to crack or heroin. You probably would be more likely to dismiss her. (People are far less tolerant of drug abuse, I’ve noticed.) What if she were just behaving badly, and there was no illness involved? Ultimately, you would probably decide you had to look at the bottom line: is she someone you can trust to take the best care possible of your children at this important stage in their lives? It doesn’t sound like it. She may not be culpable for that fact, but it remains a fact nonetheless. I would not risk employing her again, sad as I am to say it. As Scott says, it doesn’t preclude her place in your life as a friend.

Again, this is just my opinion, and I might have no idea what I’m talking about. But I wanted to give you my thoughts.

liz | 12:01 PM | Uncategorized

I Agree With This One

Once again, for Julie, from Fallingleaf:

How would you treat a nanny with no mental illness, who exposed your child to shoplifting and negligence? Ultimately, the nanny’s state of health shouldn’t supersede the safety and development of your children.

liz | 6:56 PM | Uncategorized

More Advice for Julie, Whose Nanny May Have Bipolar Disorder

From Team Trouble member David:

Absolutely the children come first. My question would be whether this is a one strike and you’re out deal or whether setting ground rules going forward would suffice. In this specific case, the fact that Mary has already exhibited irresponsible behavior would indicate that she really shouldn’t be taking care of children on her own.

This is a tricky issue though. A couple years ago I opened up (spilled my guts) in a small group setting concerning my struggle with depression. When I got home there was a message on the phone from one of the attendants who was a first grade teacher struggling from depression. She had been told to make sure none of the parents learned about this. And this just points once again to the stigma and often enforced isolation and silence concerning something (depression) that can be managed effectively.

We want people to be honest but we punish them when they are. I personally WANT people to know about my condition. It’s going to come up eventually anyway. There’s a lot of gray area here, dont you think?

More advice to come…

liz | 9:42 AM | Uncategorized