Cauac Sky Ruler of Quiriguá 725-748 | ||||||||
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Being a new-comer to all of the mental health lists, and viewing and participating in some of the debate and dialogue, and frankly, having just watched the 2nd presidential debate — I hesitate to tell a story that might offend some of you. Many years ago when I was in Medfield State Hospital, in MA, once again on chumped up criminal charges, we the other patients tried for an hour at least to get together a card game of spades or hearts, there was a lot of cajoling, “Oh come on, it’ll be fun, we got nothing better to do,” and of course we didn’t. Whist was the other favorite game. Anyway after a lot of bantering, we got the partners together, found a deck of cards, took out the two-deuces, agreed or not to use the jokers, decided who was gonna keep score, we were on a tear .. cloud nine!!!!!! Played one hand, can’t remember who won, who lost, evryone appeared to be having fun, hand was over, not the game, you play at least to 250 points or 500, and guess what?? End of game, this one wants a cigarette, the other one loses interest, someone else spaces out, could care less. Is there a point to this? Sounds a little like the mental health politics I’ve seen lately. Is this meant to be stigmatising? No, did the folks have the capicity or desire to play sometimes, yes, sometimes no, it was something we did on are own. .. Some of those card games were pretty stimulating, fun exciting, broke up the boredom of being confined to a locked unit. Today at work where it is very un-structured, I took a risk. We had a group scheduled, it was actually a medication rap group, suppose to be facilitated by our new doctor who hasn’t actually signed his contract so to speak, people were just sitting around not doing much, normal for the drop-in center. I asked my co-workers, “What do you think about doing a group?” Answer, “What group?” The med. group was on the board, the doc ain’t here we can do it our-selves, if there are any experts about meds, gotta be us. We moved the tables, set up the chairs. We got out the chocolate chip cookies, and orange juice to entice the guests and guess what we had a group, there were about 15-20 people all talking about meds, side-effects, plus & minuses, empowering our-selves with the doctors. They enjoyed the group; the group was facilitated by myself and other staff who are consumers, so we had a little self-disclosure, and credibility. I think that’s what I’ve been missing lately from all the ideologues — the difference between thoughts, action, taking risks and being real. Gerald Minskab-34 Lamp | ||||||||
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