If You Actually Look at This… It’s Kind of Insane

This isn’t how I usually write.

But if you step out

side the mental health system for just a minute…and look at some of what we do as if you were seeing it for the first time…

It gets hard to ignore how little sense some of it makes.

Start with something simple.

"You become like the people you surround yourself with." Everyone preaches that.

But if you told someone outside the system that we put people trying to rebuild their lives in rooms where everyone else is also struggling…they’d think it made no sense.

And yet…we take people who are trying to rebuild their lives…and place them in environments where almost everyone around them is also stuck.

ALL day. EVERY day.

We call it support.

Or take “activities.”

Grown adults are spending their time doing things that look more like elementary school or assisted living than actual life.

Bingo with prizes like coloring books. Basic crafts like popsicle stick projects. Structured groups designed to fill time - daily check-ins, repetitive discussion groups, things that keep people busy but don’t really move them forward.

We call it engagement.

Support groups.

Anxiety groups. Depression groups.

Where people come together and talk about those exact things…

over and over again.

At some point, you have to ask:

Is this helping people move forward?

Or just keeping them in place?

Then there’s this message - the one people hear constantly:

“You’re not ready.”

Not ready for work. Not ready for relationships (or sex). Not ready for more independence.

Sometimes for years or even decades!

At what point does that stop being guidance…

and start becoming a ceiling?

Medication becomes the center.

Compliance becomes the goal.

Showing up. Following directions. Doing what you’re told.

And somewhere in all of that…

The actual person starts to fade into the background.

None of this is usually done with bad intentions.

That’s part of what makes it so hard to see.

But if you step outside of it for even a moment…

and look at it the way you would look at anything else…

You start to notice something:

A lot of what we call “help” would raise serious questions ANYWHERE else.

If we’re serious about helping people with basic, normal, human mental health struggles…

Then we need to stop embarrassing them by treating grown adults like they’re incapable of having a real life.

Because that is NOT help.

That’s taking their life away from them.

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References

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). (2012). SAMHSA’s Working Definition of Recovery: 10 Guiding Principles of Recovery. https://store.samhsa.gov/product/SAMHSA-s-Working-Definition-of-Recovery/SMA12-4847

Drake, R. E., Bond, G. R., & Becker, D. R. (2012). Individual Placement and Support: An Evidence-Based Approach to Supported Employment. Oxford University Press.

Bond, G. R., Drake, R. E., & Becker, D. R. (2008). An update on randomized controlled trials of evidence-based supported employment. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 31(4), 280–290.

Anthony, W. A. (1993). Recovery from mental illness: The guiding vision of the mental health service system in the 1990s. Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal, 16(4), 11–23.

Slade, M. (2009). Personal Recovery and Mental Illness: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals. Cambridge University Press.

Deegan, P. E. (1988). Recovery: The lived experience of rehabilitation. Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal, 11(4), 11–19.