Welcome... I've been expecting you.

Dear change,

Welcome. We've been waiting for you.

Congratulations to US President-elect Obama.

While I don't expect enormous changes coming out of his office in terms of social or political affairs, I do think that the election of Obama speaks to a larger movement.

For me, the election of President Obama suggests that one no longer needs to fit into a narrow definition to be considered a viable, competitive, or important person.

The election of a president who is relatively young, educated, and yes, of mixed cultural origins speaks enormously to the notion that our North American nations may be ready for a world that is more complicated, more plural, and more interesting than ever before.

We, as North Americans, are perhaps ready to admit that we are not a part of one single definable culture; but that we are a beautiful and haphazard quilt of a united ideology - An ideology that speaks towards movement, growth, improvement, and hope for humanity.

Change, this is our house; you are welcome here. You belong here.

Loving the moment,
O.

Arise the Revolution of Hope

Dear Hopeful Persons,

(What is written below is a component of my application for enrollment in an academic program.)

/start quote
Why do you do something even if it is hopeless, when you should rather stop if you are reasonable?
- Anonymous

I was formally diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 16 years old. At that time, this disease was considered "youth's greatest disabler." Schizophrenia is known to detrimentally affect an individual's natural trajectory of development, as it afflicts people in the prime of their lives, during the years where important decisions are being made about life course. The neurological symptoms associated with this disease make it difficult for young people to complete their interrupted schooling, acquire new skills, and to take on new responsibilities. The emotional, perceptual, and cognitive disturbances that the disease presents make it hard for the person to interact comfortably, and sometimes appropriately, in social settings. And those bizarre behaviours that manifest in one who is afflicted; the delusions, the hallucinations, and the interactions therein; affect how we as a society are able to relate to people who live with this neurobiological condition.

Having been presented with a set of life circumstances that is traditionally construed as hopeless, I would like to discuss what I call the doctrine of hope, because in many of the situations life has presented, I have noticed that it is hope that has propelled my action. Where I could not stand alone in a lamentable present, hope could stand with me to direct my gaze toward the future. Hope understands that present circumstances are temporary and faithfully believes that the future is mutable.

Hope, by definition, is a sentiment or a desire for a situation to have an optimal outcome. Although hope does not ensure what can be traditionally construed as a positive or good outcome; hope does reassure that whatever outcome arrives from the range of possibilities may be one that transpires for the benefit of the stakeholder(s). Notice that hope reassures; it does not ensure.

If we are to discuss hope, we need also to talk also about its absence, since the benefits of hope are elucidated by explaining the repercussions of its loss.

I have seen that the primary effect of hopelessness is inertia. Hopelessness is a place where subsistence and survival in the present become consuming and where propulsion toward a future becomes impossible. In hopelessness, a person is left to believe that he or she can only have influence over the circumstances of the present. The promise of hope, that the future is mutable, is lost when a person is locked inside a rapacious present.

The ultimate consequence of hopelessness is loss. If we are hopeless, we lose our ability to dream, since we cannot dawdle on wishes for the future in a demanding and expectant present. We lose our ability to act in our own best interests, since we cannot organize our thoughts to reconcile the present with the future in an effort to conceive of more than what we have and to build on the things we do have. Thus, if we cannot hope, we cannot dream of a future different from the present. If we cannot dream, we cannot act in the present for future intentions. If we cannot hope, we cannot act. Hopelessness robs individuals of their ability to act. Hopelessness infringes on self-direction. Hopelessness infringes on autonomy.

The doctrine of hope is presented here as a belief system. Since belief systems expect that thoughts are turned into reflective actions, a belief system that is integrated within the individual and their experience cannot, logically, exist in thought alone. A belief system must be expressed through acts. Therefore we must also expect that the doctrine of hope would express itself through the actions of its adherants.

It is likely that most of us can agree that due to life circumstances, it is possible, or even likely for some, that certain hopes cannot be achieved or even acted upon based on barriers such as access, economy, and the nature of the aspiration. My greatest concern, as a person who encourages social equality and justice for those who make up minority populations, is not that a person cannot act on his or her hopes due to some form of inequitability, but that a person is not encouraged to hope or provided the resources that may encourage them to aspire. My concern is that a person is not provided with equal opportunity to hope. Aspirations are an equalizing force. And so if one is discouraged from hoping, the likely result is deeper entrenchment of inequality and social injustice, since those hopeful thoughts that precede action are absent.

I discuss the doctrine of hope, because as an adherent, my beliefs have encouraged me to act so that I may achieve the optimal outcome that is reassured in the doctrine. Additionally, I write of the doctrine of hope, because of the injurious attempts that have almost thwarted my capacity to look beyond the circumstances of a needful and greedy present.

Up to 3% of Canadians will experience some form of psychosis in their lifetime. Most of these people are expected to recover and return to their "normal" daily life activities. (Up to 82% of persons diagnosed with psychosis and treated by early intervention programs are in remission at the end of 2 years. This figure is based on PEPP studies.)

Despite these large numbers of persons experiencing a major health event from which they are more likely than chance to recover, pervasive negative beliefs exist in the general population. (Recent CAMH studies report that 50% of Canadians believe that mental illness is an excuse for poor behaviour and personal failure. 25% of Canadians are afraid of being around a person with mental illness.) It is possible that negative beliefs themselves are not the issue. The problem occurs, however, when beliefs become acts. Since we have seen that "beliefs," like hope or faith can transpire to action, is it not possible then, that personal beliefs about mental illness can also propel a person to act? Moreover, if a belief is a negative and stereotyped belief, it begs the question: What kinds of consequences can we expect from these kinds of beliefs?

It is here where philosophy, politics, economics, and personal experience intersect and interact, and it is here where individual experience becomes a part of a larger sociopolitical experience: I have lived with the effects of negative stereotyped beliefs. Because of these privative beliefs, my culture, my society, and my political systems interact differently with me than they do with other Canadians.

The differential treatment I have experienced can be summarized like this:

I am not expected to be a contributor to my society. I am not expected to achive "normal" psychosocial milestones. I am not expected to have goals. If I do have goals, I'm certainly not expected to have the desire or motivation to achieve them.

It seems as though my childhood diagnosis was supposed to be the end of a life worth living. I guess I was supposed to give up on having plans and goals and the opportunity to hope for (or even to achieve) an enviable life.

Since nothing has been (or really is) expected of me, no one really sees any need to make any contributions to what is required to help me overcome my circumstances. My needs have centered around financial concerns, and securing a stable supply of medication. Achieving the latter is surprisingly difficult if you are "not sick enough" to receive social benefits. And achieving the former is even more difficult when you're not sick enough to receive charity, but you are impeded enough that conventional employment expectations interfere with your good health. Other needs focus on empowerment and autonomy, as experience has caused me to question my autonomy and my value to society.

I have no issues with accepting charity. I most certainly have no issues with asking for charity. As the child of a teenage mother with a father who suicided after wrestling his own demons with problems of mental health, my belly was filled by the generosity of Canadians. Thus I fully acknowledge that at certain times in my life, I may be especially vulnerable and so I may have needs that can only be met by the beneficience and graciousness of fellow Canadians.

Yet in light of my condition of mental health, multiple appeals for charity had and have gone unheeded. My appeals have taken the form of requests for academic scholarship, merit, social benefits, and humaneness. Paradoxically, these appeals have been denied most often due to my apparent good health, and my apparent lack of poor health.

I have had a hard time digesting the fact that if I were only a little more ill, I may be entitled to more support to access opportunity. It seems good health does have a cost, a cost that is counterintuitive in light of the gains our institutions, political systems, and social programs claim they strive to achieve; good health, autonomy, economic gain, and elevation of social status being among those things.

I have worked very hard, despite discernible odds, to become the person I am today and have achieved my personal milestones by clinging to that precious doctrine of hope and professing its power.

The experiences and perspectives I've shared with you here are not unique to me, and regretfully, due to constraints of space, they have been generalized to an extent that they have been reduced from concrete events to vague ideology.

I've done the work I can with the tools I have to promote the social changes that I thought were helpful for persons with a shared experience. I need additional tools of education and language so that I can effectively promote an agenda that I feel passionate and optimistic about; an agenda that would establish a precedent for reformation. I believe that the legal system is the ultimate form of advocacy, and I have a strong desire to contribute to that system.

I am asking for the opportunity to hope; this is the future to which hope has steered my gaze. This application is my act.

/end quote

Lotsa love (from a hungry hopeful),
O.

The Straw That Made the House Collapse

Dear Homeless Dude Who Looked Like My Dad,

I see homeless people in my city every day. Every day I feel sad about homelessness, and everyday I wonder how we can fix it. And everyday, I hope to the deities that the work I do can help to prevent at least one more person from falling through that particularly nasty crack.

Usually it's easier to see how a person falls into homelessness. Sometimes you can see that a person is suffering from symptoms of mental illness. Or maybe you can see fairly obvious signs of addiction.

Note, these things don't justify homelessness, but they are obvious reasons that can explain why a person may not live independently in their own home, managing their own affairs.

Today, as I was on my ride to work, I saw a guy who looked exactly like my stepdad. This guy looked clean, he looked healthy, and he also looked homeless (sitting in a corner of a building's entry with a giant backpack, heavy coat, etc.).

I may be jumping the gun in assuming this person is homeless. I'd like to think he's a traveller, but I can't be to sure of that considering our current economic climate, and considering the things he had with him.

I'm left wondering, at what point do our tenuous lives collapse?

Which thing is it that tears down a lifetime (generations even) of effort to achieve a life of relative comfort?

And if it's no one thing, how do all things combine and conspire to create such loss? [Keeping in mind that homelessness is not just a loss of shelter; it is also often indicative of a loss of employment, relationships, and recognition within a community.]

How can a person find themselves in a place where they are left with nothing?

What can we do? How do we do it?

Searching for stability in unstable times,
O.

Sigh...Failure of Systems

Dear Failure of Systems (refer to my last post for details),

You suck.

Because of you, people are hurt.
Because of you, vulnerable families are torn apart.
Because of you, lives are ended and people become whispers of who they once were.


Fix yourselves. (Preferably sooner than later!)

I'm not making this shit up, and here is proof, as if you should really need it:
Below is a news article from the Globe and Mail on our system's most recent catastrophic failure.
Grisly killings expose system's failure

Hanging my head in grief,
O.
PS. I'm not asking; I'm expecting.

Dear Social Structures

Dear People Who Are the Policy Developers for Our Social Systems,

When you create criteria for your programs, it would be prudent to ensure that there are humans who actually fit into that box. And if so many don't fit into the box, it's possible you may need to adjust your criteria.

Please don't get defensive at the suggestion of change. I know a lot of time and money are invested in the development and implementation of social programs. Sadly, those who are responsible for developing those programs are often the ones who are least likely to need them. So yes, sometimes your policies are woefully inadequate, since the experience and education that would be required to develop adequate programs are not within your grasp. Despite the pejorative insinuation here, I would consider myself lucky to find myself bereft of such an education.

And yes, I feel comfortable telling you why your policies are insufficient to meet my needs. I'm sorry that your ego and education are incompatible with my experience. It's just that your rules affect my life. And who are you to dictate how I am to live? I have broken no laws by being diagnosed with a mental health condition, and so I expect, like every other citizens of this fine democratic country of ours, to be accorded the freedoms and privileges associated with my citizenship.

Goddam me and my uppity notions of inclusion and social equality, you may say. Goddam you and your discrimination, I say.

Furthermore, when someone comes to you for help, and you can offer none, be prepared to explain the next step in the same breath, so the person isn't left dangling in a chasm of despair, for their next step may be a leap into an unknown place... A place where they can never be found... A place they may never rise from if ever they are found.

And in that exchange, do not castigate that person for being inadequate both in sickness and in health. Being forced to bear the burden of illness was not my choice to make. Sadly, these kinds of things are written into the code of our being, and like cancers and other forms of hereditary illness, they are largely unavoidable, although I recognize they are possibly preventable. I worked hard to be as well as I am, and so pardon me for my imperfection. Pardon me for seeking you out and asking for help; pardon me for trying to accommodate this demanding blight that thrives in the dampest corners of my soul.

For what it's worth, I'm working to heal and to conceal it. I'm working hard to be like you... average. Know that it would be my greatest achievement to live out a sanguinely average life... but this seems as out of reach for me as it is to pluck the moon from its place in the universe. So please, spare me your cruelly upbeat rhetoric when I ask for help because we all know that appearances are deceiving. And for me, this type of deceit has become a carefully exercised art.

And so I beg you, when we feel every option within our sight has been explored, when all alternatives in our reach have been investigated, and when we wind up at the end of the chain of services with hungry bellies and empty eyes, please don't blame us for our ensuing self-destruction or deviance. If we can't have comforts of the flesh, at least spare us a little oblivion to fool our starving souls into believing they have been filled.

When we are promised everything, but given nothing, what other resort do we have besides deviancy or self-destruction? I'd love to know.

Trying to keep it together despite the odds,
O.

Trying to understand is not the same as understanding...

Dear People Who Want to KNOW,

I read this (excerpt below) in the Toronto Star this morning. This quote is derived from an article about a dad who longs to understand his daughter's experience.

For caring, exorbitant caring – about the meaning of a passing glance from a stranger, the look in a news broadcaster's eye on television, the fixed fired thoughts in one's head – is the psychotic's curse. ("Skinless" is a therapist's term for those who cannot tolerate stimulation.) "To depart from reason with the firm conviction that one is following it," reads a definition of madness from an 18th-century encyclopedia.

And, indeed, inordinate conviction is the chief warning sign of our delusions. For the patient to burn low, to be half asleep, to take no notice, is the medical goal – for the patient to live in a kind of emotional cordon sanitaire. Psychosis is the opposite of indifference. Indifference, therefore, would seem to be its logical cure.

The full article can be found here.

First, I think it is extremely important to say that I respect this father's committment to his daughter and her experience. I respect the raw emotions that his family went through. I respect that the father is trying to enter into his daughter's experience by himself participating in her treatments. And interestingly, I respect that he went so far as to try her medication... although, I know that in practice this is not recommended, nor is it necessarily safe.

My issue with the article is the simplification of the experience. The father seems to endorse ideology of an antipsychiatry and antimedication approach by suggesting that the fundamental purpose of medication is to create "indifference" in the person.

I would like to offer this father a different perspective, having myself crawled out of the long, dark tunnel that is known as psychosis: medication (at its worst) can produce indifference (lack of motivation, apathy, exhaustion, etc.), especially if the dose is too strong, and even more especially if the medication is a poor fit for the person. At its best medication produces the effect of organization.

Consider the neurological "causes" of psychosis: Dopamine is cascading through neurons at an unmitigated and uncontrolled rate. This neurotransmitter is partially responsible for the rate and strength of our transissions, and so the repercussions of this barrage are confusing for a person experiencing it. (Being high on pot feels a lot like the early stages of a psychotic break, by the way... the loose associations, the multiple layers of meaning in any given context, the sense of mental fog, etc. Interestingly, the "high" effect from pot is caused by dopamine cascading though your neurons.)

The problem is not that a person with psychosis "cares" too much about the events around them (suggesting that a person with psychosis is oversensitive), the problem is actually that a person with psychosis cannot control their attenuation of sensory stimulus around them.

The "average" person is able to control the stimuli around them by focusing their attention on the stimulus that requires attention in any given context. Generally this is a passive and almost unconscious process. In the "average" brain, a stimulus from the environment penetrates the neurons which then mobilize to organize the meaning within the context. For example, when walking on the street in a crowd, one generally understands that when they hear a siren, they need to stop to look around and see how they need to respond. And so despite the sounds in the crowd, despite the bustling of moving cars and people, despite the visual stimuli of light, and shapes of buildings and people and trees; the sound of the siren takes precendence above all other stimulus, and so one would most likely focus on that one stimulus and therefore act as necessary depending on the circumstances.

From my experience, the passive process of stimulus absorbtion, interpretation, and organiation is detrimentally impeded in a person with psychosis. A person with psychosis is unable to filter through and focus on a particular theme or element of the stimulus that exists in the sounds of the crowd, the siren, the glare of the sunlight, the red of the emergency vehicle. And not only are they neurologically "forced" to attenuate to all of any incoming stimuli at once, their ability to make sense of the stimuli is also altered.

For me, it wasn't that I cared in particular about what I was taking in around me; it was that I could not control what to take in and what not to take in. I could not organize my attention for the life of me, and so all at once, everything became significant, even the things that were completely irrelevant to the context.

During a psychotic break, a brain that is unfamiliarly overridden with stimuli (caused by an influx of dopamine) also recieves a second punch: Not only does dopamine open the floodgates to hyperstimulation, but this chemical also primes the brain to make connections in an effort to "organize" those stimuli. And so in our human brains that are innately compelled to create order and to explain chaos, we now begin to make bizarre associations and start to manifest delusions in a very literal attempt to organize the influx of information.

Let's make no mistake, it's not so much that people with psychosis are more attuned, morally weak, sensitive, or lazy, or stupid, or any of the pervasive negative myths that tend to circulate: A person living with a psychotic brain is a person who is living with an overworked brain. A brain that won't stop revving its engine, so to speak.

From what I understand about biology, all organisms need rest. And rest often involves having a "quiet" brain. It was my brain's inability to passively organize the intake of stimulus that made up the greater part (and the most exhausting part) of my psychotic experience. My brain needed help to quiet itself so that it could better work through the process of organization. Part of helping my brain to be quiet was taking medication, but another significant part was ensuring that my environment allowed my brain some quiet time.

Futhermore, there was a lot of "training" involved... but that's complicated, and perhaps the subject of another post.

Organizing for clarity,
O.

Memories of My Era: The Age of Turmoil

Dear People who Sell Fear (and Those who Buy It),

When I hear people describe or reminisce about times gone by, the say things like, "It was the age of innocence!" or "It was the era of the enlightenment!" or "It was the Quiet Revolution!"

It seems that the days of yore have a lot of positive ascriptions. And I wish I would be able to remember my history with as much reverence.

Unfortunately, I don't think I will be able to have a positive regard for the days of my youth. The times I have grown up in are times of confusion, frustration, and of deep dark closets creaking open.

In my short life-span on Earth I have seen major advancements in technology, and I have witnessed how it has torn us apart (as it paradoxically unites us in a vast network). These advancements have motivated people to question our human capacities and motivations; as we now, like never before, have a capacity to do the work of the gods.

I have seen how the scope of war has changed. It seems that wars are just easier to initiate, since all we really need to do is push a few buttons and move around a few big toys. And it seems that wars and strife have become a tool to suit economic needs instead of relieving oppression and promoting freedom. (Although, I'm sure a cynic could argue that most wars, in the end, are about economy, and always have been.)

Relating to the issue of war, North America is currently suffering as the economy reorganizes itself around emerging countries who are introducing new competition; thus destabilizing the status quo. All political figures recognize this as a period of transition, and all are scrambling for control so that their nation will wind up at the top of the heap at the end of the day. (Whenever that comes!) And in their scramble for economic success; leaders are engaging their citizens in battles at home and abroad that are exhausting and tormenting their people.

I'm now watching two countries endure elections. Elections that have major consequences for all. And as I watch the media coverage, all I can see is that the candidates are more interested in pointing out why their opponents are bad choices, instead of why their own candidacy is the good choice. In this, I see our fellow countrymen more divided than ever, and more rigid in opinion and ideology than ever.

To add to the list, political scandal and health and environmental crises compound the problems enough to whip the ordinary citizen into a froth of fear.

It seems the time of innocence is lost; and that our modern era of technology that was once hailed as the new enlightenment has come with a heavy burden: Change. And with change, comes turmoil. Welcome to the age of change; welcome to the era of turmoil.

Hiding behind my hands until it's over,
O.