Greetings:

Before, I was saying that we need to deconstruct the NAMI moral agenda, namely their passion in re the ‘neglect’ of treatment. Now things are developing, in particular the Chronicle two weeks ago published the NAMI ‘neglect’ polemic: STATE OF NEGLECT — California’s 30-year failure to confront mental illness. So they have ‘upped the ante’ and ‘put their cards on the table’. Right now the Network leadership is acting like they’re confused and a lot of client activists have been expressing serious reservations in re their strategy.

So reflecting on this we have to analyze, “What does NAMI really think they’re doing?” From familiarity with internal NAMI discussions over the summer/fall, it’s plain that they assess that direct confrontation with the Network on ‘forced treatment’ was a loser. They’ve been trying to absorb the implications of that so that they can move ‘forward’ with their agenda. It looks to me like they’ve decided on the approach of getting what they want by behavior modification of the Network.

The ‘paradigm’ of classical conditioning involves training an S-R (stimulus-response) pair by ‘associating’ another S-R pair. The first is called the ‘US’ (unconditioned stimulus) and the second the ‘UR’ (unconditioned response). The purpose is to replace them with a ‘CS’ and ‘CR’ (conditioned stimulus/response). Like training the dog to salivate (CR) at the bell by associating the CS = bell with the US = hunger and making the UR = consuming be replaced by the food response = salivation.

NAMI has figured that the Network is motivated by confrontation = US which produces an unconditioned response like ‘feeling of empowerment’. They mean to use the question of ‘confrontation’, here directed at the ‘30 years of neglect’, to hook the Network into ‘salivating’ = CR when ‘more services’ = CS are provided. They hope that while they take the big prize = substantial influence/control over DMH, the Network can be trained to be satisfied with token involvement in ‘peer recovery’ agendas.

DMH was not willing to ‘play ball’ with last year’s AB 1800 agenda, because it threatened their own sense of well-being = their jobs. DMH is evidently willing to ‘play ball’ with this year’s NAMI agenda because it nourishes their well-being as they understand it. ‘Forced treatment’ is not their issue, it’s whether they can stay in power by traumatizing clients in a routine way, whether or not WIC 5150 is invoked. The mix NAMI is now offering can be shaped by DMH as an agenda for more jobs and ‘compliant partnership’.

The Network has serious problems acting independently of DMH. I’m sure they are going around among themselves saying, “Andrew is trying to destroy the Network.” What they mean by this slanderous misrepresentation is that I’m proposing a process of coalition rather than the clients accommodating DMH, which challenges the current way the Network is involved with DMH. But the source of this kind of lies about me and others who are like-minded is the true knowledge that in recent years some other clients (Geri Kolby, Scott Beach in particular) tried to bring down the Network as a kind of remedy for perceived ills with it.

I pity the Network for getting so confused about what it means to take a positive road to changing its way of doing business. Right now they are looking kind of pathetic trying to meet DMH’s pressures and at the same time getting their urge to confront behaviorally adjusted by NAMI. In effect they are being ‘force treated’ in the public realm by a combo play by DMH/NAMI. And in the end NAMI’s ‘balanced use of voluntary/involuntary treatment’ will be the law of the land — and it is we who will on this account be sad/at risk.

I don’t like the scenario I’ve painted, the Vision of NAMI as I read it. I’m hoping we can have the insight/wisdom to move against it. I’m hoping the opponents of ‘forced treatment’ and the opponents of ‘trauma of treatment’ can make coalition and change the shape and outcome of this important struggle. But, as my Missouri-born grandfather would say, “Show me!”

Respectfully

Andrew Phelps