I Am a Threat to Your Library!
The Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) never ceases to amaze. Joe sent me a link to a press release they put out, the sentence of which reads:
ARLINGTON, Va. – (Business Wire) People with untreated severe mental illnesses may pose a greater risk to the future of America’s public libraries than does the invention of the Internet, according to a new survey released in the March/April edition of American Libraries, the journal of the American Library Association.
I needn’t tell you who authored the study. That’s right: TAC. The stats TAC offers in the study are:
Other findings include:
- 28 percent say they have witnessed someone with a psychiatric disorder assault a staff member;
- 58 percent report more library patrons who appear to have serious psychiatric disorders now than when they first started working in the library;
- 61 percent say library patrons with psychiatric disorders utilize a disproportionate amount of staff time; and,
- 66 percent say they have needed to change library rules because of patrons with mental illnesses.
There are so many problems with these stats, it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, there’s that word “appear.” Are library employees qualified to determine who has serious psychiatric disorders? I doubt it. I suspect they wouldn’t identify me as one of those people, but I’m guessing every disheveled person gets tarred with that brush, no matter the issue. And let’s not forget the classicism and racism that makes such observations inherently problematic. If a black guy in dirty clothes comes into a library and spends a lot of time on the web, is he going to be seen as the same as a white woman in clean clothes (like me)? Who’s more likely to be called “crazy,” despite whatever behaviors?
Even assuming that people with psych disorders do use the library — which I know is true, particularly when their situation coincides with poverty — why can’t they? So what if they have odd behaviors? Are they any less entitled to access the resources? People with disabilities have a right to be accommodated.
TAC’s ostensible point is that:
“Our nation’s libraries are turning into daytime shelters for people with severe mental illness who need to be in treatment. The fact that libraries remain a safe haven from violence and life on the streets for people with mental illness is a sad commentary. Doing so devalues human life and the importance of libraries in our communities.”
But the study isn’t about sympathizing with people with mental illness. It’s about making them look like freaks.
The librarians surveyed reported very serious problems in dealing with patrons with mental illness, including, “two librarians murdered by a mentally-ill patron in the early ’90s,” according the study. Others reported being punched, having chairs thrown, and stalking.
The librarians were frank in their comments about dealing with people with mental illness. Included were such statements as:
“Many, many library customers don’t come downtown to our central library because they are afraid of these customers…They perceived the library to be a dangerous place and another homeless shelter and it has really lessened our stature in the community and is disheartening to our staff.”
“Other patrons are often frightened by strange behavior…They tend to hold onto their children more tightly and leave more quickly than they might have planned.”
“A number of patrons have told us they will not be back because of unpleasant encounters they feel are unsafe.”
As Joe points out, where is StigmaBusters on this? Hey, NAMI, get some balls. This is unacceptable.
[This image is of Mudd Library at my alma mater, Oberlin College. It was the awesomest library I've ever lived in. Thank God they let me in.]
Liz Spikol is a Threat to Your Library! | World of Psychology Says:
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Clearly, you have never spent large amounts of time in a large urban library — I have, I have been responsible for running one. Most librarians are very forgiving if you respect the rules which are there to allow *ALL* to use the taxpayer provided services.
I used to work in a public library and certainly we had a number of patrons who exhibited symptoms of various mental and physical health conditions. Was this uncomfortable for some other patrons or staff? Sure. But there’s no law against being uncomfortable in a social situation, and it’s really not on the person who presents the condition to make everyone feel better.
Patrons who actually violated rules (after reasonable accommodation) are another kettle of fish entirely. Some folks who exhibited symptoms and plenty of folks who didn’t exhibit symptoms were asked to leave because of behavior that made the library unsafe or unproductive. At my particular branch, I would say that most patron problems came from the junior high students coming after the school day let out. Would anyone suggest that a library is no place for a student? I hope not!
No, libraries are not caretakers for individuals who cannot behave safely in social situations. But it’s very, very common for behavior that’s simply socially unusual to be labeled as unsafe just because it makes people uncomfortable.
I appreciate the time it takes librarians to deal with all those unrelated-to-materials issues they/you you do every day. That my local librarians are lovely about assisting me find information on random topics, like if chickens can see in color and other desperately urgent inquiries, makes me really really appreciate librarians.
It troubles me, though, that it is the oooh-scary-crazy people who sorta seem to keep getting the pointy end of the stick. Again and again.
I’ve been in grocery stores where short-tempered parents behave abysmally toward their children, or the reverse, yet I have never ever seen or heard anyone gather statistics or stroking our beards over what to do with them.
In fantasy land all the statisticians would just use all that calculating energy to help figure out a better way to support the people who have no support + a mental illness who make libraries and everywhere else so uncomfortable.
And people were “uncomfortable” with desegregation, the answer isn’t calling for violating the ADA nor fear-mongering to make people MORE uncomfortable, the answer is for people to become more tolerant of difference of all kinds and to stop assuming they know who has a diagnosis and who does not. Give me a random sample of pictures of let’s say University professors and psychiatric patients (who may also be University professors of course) and I bet I can’t and you can’t pick out who’s who….
TAC has pulled the danger in our libraries stunt before, but now they did their own “study”. How, um, repetitive? Desperate? Have to get my Rogets out for a word…:)
Enjoying your tactfully blunt approach to raising awareness about mental health issues. I added a link to your blog on mine called, “Pennsylvania Mental Health Issues” (http://pamhi.wordpress.com) Think my readers will enjoy your take on things, I know I am.
Our library has allowed our homeless (and maybe crazy to boot)to have access to not only books, but also the web, they write e-mails to their families. Most are very polite and observe the library rules (albeit a bit disheveled). They also have one spot on the north side of the building where they smoke,chat and laugh. My chief complaint? The teenagers and people who run up and down aisles yelling to each other…especially if I sit in the aisle when the books subject matter is on the lower shelves
I don’t know what your particular beef with TAC is, but you are being very unfair to public librarians here. “I’m guessing every disheveled person gets tarred with that brush, no matter the issue.” You have absolutely no grounds to make that assertion. All patrons are welcome to use the library, and do, as long as they can conform to standards of acceptable public behavior. But many untreated, “street” people with mental health issues just can’t. We understand that, but we have to think of the well-being of other patrons and the staff as well. Librarians could be your allies on mental health issues. But you are not making any friends here amongst them with this dismissive attitude.
Restrictions on people using libraries should be based on behavior, not on what they look like or what the library staff feels about them. The TAC would have people with any kind of recent — or maybe even not so recent — psychiatric diagnosis be banned from library usage, just like they would have them (us) be banned from almost all other aspects of mainstream American society. This is what the beef with the TAC is all about – their desire to have people be treated based on who they are rather than on what they do.
I think most urban libraries are probably pretty tolerant of a wide variety of different types of people using their buildings, but that would change if the TAC had their way.
I also know from personal experience that library staff are capable of jumping to false conclusions about people and acting rashly based on those assumptions, just like anybody else is. A couple years ago I was browsing the stacks at the main library of my city’s university when two university policemen approached me and “asked” if they could talk to me. They said they suspected me of writing in the books, but wouldn’t say why, and despite my repeated denials and total cooperation, they ended up taking my ID, walking me out of the building, and telling me I was banned from ever setting foot on the campus again. Only later did I find out that the library’s staff had told the police they were absolutely certain that I was the person who had been leaving notes threatening the president (I guess maybe by writing in the books, or by leaving notes next to them, or something like that.)
Since they wouldn’t tell me why they suspected me — or even exactly what they actually suspected me of — I kind of thought it was because I wasn’t dressed very well and looked like I didn’t fit in there. I was fuming for several days, but then at the end of the week a spokesman for the campus police called me and apologized (but I never received any apologies from any of the library staff – they were very satisfied to remain anonymous to me). He said it was just a case of mistaken identity, and that they had set a trap inside the library and had caught the guy who was actually leaving the threatening notes, and I was no longer barred from the campus or the library.
But it just goes to show that people, including librarians, can be wrong, even about things that they are absolutely sure of. So I think library staff certainly have the right to take action against anyone they see doing something that they shouldn’t be doing, but not against someone just because they look like they are probably a “street person”, or “untreated”, or in some other way have the appearance of someone who is guilty of something. If you make these kinds of assumptions about people, some of them are going to be wrong. Probably not every disheveled person gets tarred with the brush of suspicion, but some do, and though it may be a minor thing to you to take some kind of punitive action against an innocent person based on their appearance, I assure it is no minor thing to the person against whom you take such action.
I’d like to state for the record that I’ve never assaulted library personnel or used up a disproportionate time of their resources…although I was “shushed” once at the computer lab area (GASP)
When my daughter was very ill, having gone through five involuntary hospitalizations in just nine months, I reached out for additional help when she was going to be released from the hospital yet again. I had hoped they would offer a decent residential program where she might receive the support she needed in a healthy environment for a beautiful 20 year old woman who didn’t believe that she had a mental illness and constantly stopped taking prescribed medications each time she was released from a hospital. The social worker in charge of her discharge from the hospital said that all that was available was a homeless shelter run by the Sisters of Charity but that she couldn’t be there between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. They said she could be in a “day program” three days a week during that time. I naively asked where she would spend the other two days when she couldn’t be at the shelter (not that I would actually have considered allowing them to send her to a shelter) and I was told that when she couldn’t be at the shelter she could hang out in a park or public library. At the time she was highly psychotic (hearing voices) and delusional (thought she had ESP) and probably would have been too paranoid to be near anyone.
I think you missed the main point in the TAC article which is not to criticize the homeless person who is in the library or the staff but rather to criticize our mental health system which does so little to help those with a mental illness that the only place for them to go is the public library.
http://media-dis-n-dat.blogspot.com/2009/04/controversy-arises-over-report-on.html
It sounds to me like you have something against TAC in general. As a parent the absolutely loves my child who has a severe mental illness I applaud TAC for all the work they do to bring attention to the need for changes in laws that want someone to become “DANGEROUS” before they get the help they need. Unless you have ever watched someone you love, who doesn’t believe they are ill, go from being a loving son, husband, father, and soldier to someone you can not even recognize you will never understand the appreciation you should have for TAC.
Great job Liz.
To those who wrote in support of TAC I ask you consider the broad brush TAC uses to promote its agenda. It trades on the misconception that persons with mental illnesses not taking medications are per se violent where studies have shown that nothing could be further from the truth. Moreover, here the message only serves the messenger, TAC, in “successfully” promoting Involuntary Outpatient Commitment in a mental health system where too few who assertively seek treatment can access it let alone the care which can make a difference. Trading on fear rather then appealing to reason is always despicable.
“persons with mental illnesses not taking medications are per se violent where studies have shown that nothing could be further from the truth.”
What studies are those? I thought the relationship was over exaggerated versus public perception but that it was still there, particularly when substance abuse was involved.
And by “nothing could be further from the truth” do you mean that people with severe mental illness who are not taking medication are actually less prone to violence.
I’m sorry if I sound skeptical, but I thought the best study on this was the MacArthur violence study, and I don’t think it supported that.
And then there is just common sense. I’ve been psychotic and if there was ever a time I would have been violent…you get the idea.
I too am a librarian. My library is in a little city surrounded by a Very Big City. We are relatively isolated from “problems” our urban library colleagues face. Our population of “homeless” actually live at a Salvation Army shelter and are required to be clean and sober and actively seek employment. We are pleased to extend our hospitality to them, even though they live outside the city’s borders. To reiterate the experiences of others, it’s kids who cause the greatest disruption. I’ve pulled them apart when one jumped another. A person with a (perceived) mental illness has never caused that kind of problem.
As to people who “take up time”, I learned the most important lesson of librarianship many years ago from someone in the profession much longer than I was at the time. It’s this: many people who stop by the reference or circulation desk to “chat” may be experiencing the one significant social interaction of their day or their week. It is a public librarian’s highest duty to make sure that interaction is satisfying. We can’t cure them; heck, my meds don’t cure me. We can listen for a little while, though.
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