a Vision

1. I recall Berkeley 1969, Reagan’s martial law, with the National Guard platoon lined up, bayonets fixed, on Dwight Way just above Telegraph: From the Red Balloon, the 2nd story window above them blared Dylan, The times they are a-changing. Today the mental health system passes us “rolling blackouts” of M.H. services, while seeming to be similarly oblivious of the reality they have made a habit of dissing. My Humboldt correspondent writes Doomsday! 65 SMI’s were .. told that as of Feb. 1st, MH would no longer be billing MediCal for day treatment services. New services, provided by two other SMI’s, plus volunteers, will pick up the slack to those who want it. Friends in the Alameda County Network tell me that county-run ‘peer recovery’ is set to drive them out of business — and so it goes, manifested in local variants up and down the state.

2. ‘New services’ under AB 34 are touted, but they don’t meet the measure of standing problems: Instead, I hear tales of woe, over and over, as a certain hybrid notion of ‘recovery’ is imposed top-down, as a dependent and inferior replacement for already deficient services. Something is out of kilter: While individuals indomitably persist in doing kind and creative things, in the global frame of policy a ‘regulated’ system of empowerment has been derogated and its ‘supply side’ has been “deregulated.” For the local systems don’t suddenly heal of their hard-won boundaries, of their habits of traumatizing and control, far from it, they just adjust to what DMH/‘the partnership’ (that exclusionary top-down scheme) wants of them. CIMH pays good money for a small and select group of clients, the Recovery Task Force, to offer dreams — but expects them to broker for its ‘Recovery Model’ fig-leaf, RIGHT IN THE FACE of the empowerment Visions of the rank-and-file client activists.

3. We have to ask the author of this policy, Dr. Mayberg, What’s up, Doc? Can you easily fix this mess? What about the “energy production plants” that are needed and that will take years to come on line? Having decided to cut a deal with the clients, Dr. Mayberg is responsible for making the choice to cut out and vilify the client activists who are creative and willing to be accountable, rather than learning to work with them, seeking out instead those who want to be ‘successful’ and don’t particularly care to be accountable to the clients. He brought us no standard for constructive contribution, let alone a good and wise one: Today’s standard is a negative one, a performance standard, conforming to the script of King of the mountain, with attacks on those who are ‘in the way’, on those who, it is whispered, are controversial. What illusion does he want us to adopt, how then ‘ought’ we fool ourselves to suit policy objectives, why does he pander to ‘maya’ (the veil of illusion), WHERE IS THE RATIONALITY that would “thoroughly free and cleanse our understanding” of what Francis Bacon called “the Idols that interfere with the Interpretation of Nature?”

4. Recently a new President has reminded us of the words of Joseph Addison (The campaign, 1705) An Angel rides in the Whirlwind and directs this Storm. I beg Dr. Mayberg to reflect on that perspective being presented, as the system is challenged by hints of “meltdown,” as good energy is desecrated — for this Angel will come upon us, NOT ONCE BUT MANY TIMES. And the clients will reflect, when they see the Angel, on the words of Ecclesiastes (9:11) the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, .. but time and chance happeneth to them all. The clients know that living with the seeds of madness is part of what it means to be human, the system however continues to find itself ‘in denial’.

Andrew Phelps