Documenting my journey through the mental health system

I’ve completed the health screening for my new part time renal care job. I have latent TB and completed a course of rifampin to ensure I never develop an infection and that always raises eyebrows when you do patient care, so I had to bring all my documentation for that and hope they don’t make me get yet another chest X-ray. I’ve had more of those than most people should, especially since my dumbass pursued a healthcare field of work.

But everything seemed to go through okay. They took labs and showed me on a map where my orientation would be on Monday. Today I will not have IOP because of these obligations and Monday and possibly Wednesday next week I will also miss IOP. I hope not Wednesday, I don’t want to get too far behind in a really important part of the therapy. But it is possible I will be orienting to the floor on that day. Then I’ll be tossed to the wolves Thursday night, but I can do the job in my sleep, honestly. I’m taking Monday and Tuesday night off at the VA to attend the orientation.

My screening was done at exactly 9:20am this morning, and IOP starts at 9:30. I could have made it, but my brother called on my way home, so I answered on my car’s Bluetooth. He’s going through mental health court for assault charges, and they keep him on a pretty tight leash with therapy, seeing a PO weekly, and other requirements. He’s buying the car my mother rejected, the 1995 Mercedes E320, but doesn’t have a license yet, and needs a ride to yet another legal obligation, most likely therapy related like mine. He too is in a similar court ordered IOP program. I have been there myself. Mental illness seems to be a long running theme in our family. All of my brothers and I have had suicide attempts.

We’ve shut down a massive number of inpatient psychiatric beds over the last 50 years and that’s forced the criminal justice system to pick up the slack. The way it intersects with the mental health system is downright disturbing. Other countries don’t have this problem.

We were talking about triggers in IOP and a common one is people – others who were involved or remind you of the trauma. Police scare the shit out of me – I don’t hate them, I’m not anti-cop, it’s not like that. I don’t have strong opinions of police either way cuz I’m white and I can get away with not caring. But they scare me, they’ve been there when I am having a mental health crisis. Who else do you call when someone is trying to kill themselves right in front of you? I don’t blame the fire department for bringing them in, I just replay it in my mind over and over, their hands on me, manhandling me toward an ambulance gurney. It’s not like they were mean. It’s just they were there, and there was no one else to call to enforce the laws that require detainment of suicidal people.

My brother spent his 20s on heroin and has a long criminal history. He’s the baby of the family. He got clean but replaced the addiction with research chemicals off the internet and broke into a house he thought was mine with the intention of visiting our mom. He drove me nuts with his overuse, even in my own house. So he assaulted whoever actually lived in the house and they hit him over the head pretty good. But we do have cutting edge justice programs in Spokane and other cities and towns have looked to us as a model for what to do about a burgeoning and uncared for mental health population that has grown while seeing a decline in resources. He was sent through mental health court, a novel new restorative justice program designed to avoid jail and find other solutions. Even my brother’s victim felt bad for him and told him in court he didn’t wish him any ill will and to just get better. My brother is one of the few participants with a job, it’s one of the few things he does have going for him. His PO is strict though, and once sent him back to jail for a couple weeks because an inspection revealed some liquor bottles in his room. He was in jail while I was locked up in the mental hospital. Then his PO made him go back to rehab after his release from jail.

The biggest provider of mental health services in this country is the justice system, whether we are in jail or prison or not. When I got my DUI I was made to submit to drug and alcohol assessments and they made me go through IOP for substance abuse. Over half the participants with me were court ordered to be there. I was sent through veterans court at the time, and the VA provided the treatment. I spent a week in the psych ward just before, withdrawing off weed and alcohol, and trying to stay alive.

The whole situation is really depressing and my whole family has been strongly affected by it.

I had another trigger today, on the way to employee health for my new job. Places was another type, and for me it’s driving by the mental hospital. I can see the brightly colored interior courtyard’s high walls. They built the hospital around the outdoor courtyard spaces. I hate it when I have to drive by it, but it’s in the hospital complex area. I always have to sit in my car a minute and breathe and try to use mindfulness and acceptance, and everything else. And I better get good at it quickly, because I’ll be driving by it every time I go to work at this new job. The hospital in which I got the job is where I was detained 10 years ago, violently, and that too is triggering. When I went in today for labs, I recognized the interior. I really hope it gets easier.