I describe the lack of treatment and understanding as being erased
disgraced, displaced, and misplaced: four distinct steps that severely undercut
the well-being of this vulnerable group of people.
A homeless person faces erasure—not quite human, unworthy,
and despicable. Disgraced—no place at any inn to take them in. The housed
ignore them, their chapped hands out for money standing on street corners. The
authorities round them up, pushing them to another place, still one more place.
Forever maligned and displaced. Some end up in prison. In fact, 40% of American
prisons and jails are filled with the mentally ill, while thousands more are
simply left homeless, wandering from place to place, riding buses or finding
public library seats to keep warm, pushed along by police from one homeless
camp to another.
Christian missions and private charities have opened their
doors to these labeled misfits—those who are homeless and mentally ill—but such
facilities lack the resources to intervene in any meaningful way. Where are the
psychiatrists, the medications, the secure lodging on a 24-hour basis, the
meals, the daily care plan? Such facilities have none of these, despite their
doing the best with limited funds.
My son, Michael, suffering from bipolar disease and panic
attacks, confronted this four-tiered stigma when he was home invaded and forced
out of his apartment by thugs. Although he was never arrested, he endured each
of these. He was effectively erased from the human race, and allowed to sink
into the depths of homelessness for over a year. His identity as a responsible
renter evaporated as landlords and even mental health staff treated him as
incompetent, discredited and humiliated.
As Michael wandered the streets seeking assistance—food, medicine,
rest, a friendly face—he was constantly rebuffed. No room in the overcrowded
mission, no food in the pantries, no medical care on the premises. Empty. The
missions tried but accommodating Michael with his dual diagnosis of drug
dependency and severe bipolar condition, made worse by cold, hunger, and
loneliness, added to his sense of being totally misplaced.
When Michael experienced a mental health crisis, and
increasingly a number of physical health crises—pneumonia, kidney failure, or
other medical catastrophe—he was often in for only an overnight and shunted out
the next morning with prescription in hand, but no transportation to get to the
pharmacy to have the prescription filled. Hospital visits became one more
misplaced accommodation.
Still, my homeless son persisted, seeking help, being
cooperative, and even sharing his limited food or cigarettes with others, Mike
humbled himself to find an opening in the mental health system to squeeze into.
And that help opened up in a two-fold process. The first facility offered a regular
bed and meals program; primarily a place to recoup mentally and physically. Mike
needed to be resocialized, take directions, and learn to live in a congregate
setting.
Succeeding in this facility meant he could graduate to a
full intensive recovery program available with a separate, shared bedroom, work
program, therapists, classes, and a reward system. After the candidate had completed
the program, he could apply for independent living. Mike had reached the
pinnacle: Securing an apartment to live drug free and with mental health
assistance.
I suspect my son’s two-year journey through the stigma maze is
a miracle. Many of our society’s mentally ill face a lifetime of rejection and
stigma. In the wealthiest country of the world, how is it possible that our
mentally ill population continues to grow; a festering wound at the heart of
every American city and town.
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