RERUN: Originally Published in 2012. 

Arizona Department of Health Services Is On Facebook: Herein, an essay, beginning with discussion of another means for civil disobedience and open dialogue- well, not open dialogue, but what else is new with ADHS?

     This will be brief. I spent about twenty minutes last night looking through the various entries on the Arizona Department of Health Services official Facebook page, and was pleased to see literally hundreds of critical areas of public health concerns that the ADHS "team" works to contribute to in terms of everything from education, to expansions in (some) services, events and opportunities for children to engage in healthy activities, and oh gosh, I am a lost giddy over the complexity of it all. They do such a great job, covering every base imaginable, in such thorough fashion, and just look at those smiling faces, it's so overwhelmingly pleading to the eye that I….. Wait…. Critical areas of public heath concern? Events, opportunities? Smiling faces?

    What in the hell am I saying? Have I finally lost track of reality? 

    Of course it is wonderful to know that the good folks at ADHS are putting out so much positive propaganda and involving themselves (the "team") in so much good stuff. But it only begs the question: If Will Humble and his various droogs are able to address myriad issues of almost ever possible shape and form, why in the hell can't they take an honest step or two towards ethically resolving the substandard care and practices at The Arizona State Hospital? For christ's sake, it's right there on East Van Buren! It never moves, fluctuates, or otherwise dodges attention, and yet the problems that I witnessed and experienced during my thirteen months of hospitalization at ASH have been going on since the dawn of time. It is like a nervous tic, it is a sore toe, a potentially quick fix right there, it and the problems associated with it. So why can't they see this? Why won't they fix it? What is the problem, exactly?

     Why? What? I'll tell you why and what: Because seriously mentally ill/disabled persons are amongst the most marginalized human beings in our world, that's why. I don't know if this universally the case, from one culture to the next, and throughout the ages, but it applies today. People like me, and my peers at ASH, are quite literally swept under the proverbial carpet, kept at a comfortable distance ("As far out of sight as possible, thank you."), ignored, and even detested. I attest to having acquired- while at ASH- the awareness that mentally ill and disabled people (like me) don't generally rate so much as an even, fairly shared place in a line for service at a food counter. I saw this, I felt it, I was the subject of it. I was subjected to it, day in, day out. Otherness, alienism, freakishness, dehumanization. I was feared, I was shunned, I was less than human in the eyes of most ASH staff, and I deserved less than humane treatment in their views. And this is how all of the patients at ASH are treated, even if they can't recognize it.  

     But I refused to accept it. I believe, too, that this was nothing short of a luxury, in comparison to how many of my friends at ASH experience "life" there. Many of them have been subjected to the consequences and impacts of their respective disability for a good portion of their lives. Institutionalization, too, does happen, and for these sorts of reasons, many of my peers at ASH knew no other way or had forgotten any other way to exist or be treated; while I, on the other hand, had spent most of my pre-ASH (48-49) years of life living as most reasonably privileged Americans do, with little to no fear of being treated like a nit (you hear that, Patel?) or abused or harmed by others, outside of the criminals on the streets. I was in, fact, and not too long ago, one of those who would cross a major street in order to avoid having to share the sidewalk with a man or woman talking to themselves, and I realized/remembered this while I was there, at ASH. It was an amazing and very disturbing array of self realizations and awarenesses to experience, my "life" at ASH, but my experiences there never pushed me off my own personal ledge of basic integrity (although, try they did try, the rat bastards, in every way I believe they knew how, through intimidation, abuse of authority, ridicule, and insult).

     I survived ASH only because I knew then, as I do now, that my integrity as a person is so inalienably tied into my very presence here on this rock, that even the rudest and/or most ruthlessly power hungry staff person or doctor at ASH never so much as nudged me from my sense of self as a human being. It shook me up at times, and it aggravated my willingness to consider death as a better way to exist, and of course my feelings were hurt. But I refused to be like them, and I knew, that if I was not very, very careful, I would in life become just like them. Mentally ill people are, as a rule, systematically dehumanized by the majority of our given culture. This is common knowledge amongst the few, sadly: dehumanization, and stigmatization. It is the root reason for why congress enacted the Americans With Disabilities Act and explicitly included a variety of provisions specific to the rights of such, the mentally disabled. Because the mentally disabled are very highly at risk of abuse and unlawful exploitation, not as consequence of something nearly so obvious as physical disability (in many cases), but rather because of who they are in terms of personality and behavior; and it this aspect of the condition, mentally disabled, that creates the graphic disconnect between the healthy and the not so healthy in this specific context. Equally common is the undeniable fact that, if given the opportunity to avoid the fundamental precepts of common good in a civilized and contemporary society such as ours, certain forms of our own species will seek the easiest way to do things. They will cut every corner in the house, and evade every direct responsibility that they can, all in order to stay afloat. In order to maintain their status quo. So as to earn a living. All justifiable, in the minds of such people, on the basis of one dog eat the other,  while always looking out for number one. 

     Such people feed on the weak. It is inherent in there way of doing things, and they have to find hidden away pockets in the given landscape if they are going to survive. They know this. So they learn, either through trial and error, or by field research and personal education, or for some of them, it comes through instinct; they acquire knowledge of where they can exist as they need to, and then they flock there, almost as one. State mental hospitals such as ASH are perfect examples of such places. "Public mental hospitals are still  snakepits for abuse" (The Council on Human Rights, 2009). They are "health care" facilities managed by shortsighted, and far too often, corrupt state government, where the most vulnerable, defenseless, voiceless, and at risk (of abuse) clientele are kept. Sites where the otherwise unemployable can find safe haven (hear that, Akhter?), where their patient-clients cannot so much as raise their voice to a tone of frustration without being subject to punitive forms of unregulated power. Power that imparts itself through the actions of ill qualified "health care professionals" who effectively exploit the lives of human beings who are seen by far too many people, even today, as something other than human. Human, like you are human, and like I am human. Below, between cracks; beneath deserved respect, dignity, and heartfelt concern.

     In the ADHS/BHS network- er, I mean "team", (don't I, Humble?)- of caregivers and service providers, the mentally ill patients at ASH occupy an obscured, at best, no man's land, mired deep in the tapestry of the state's most needy health care clients. Many of them arrive at ASH via the criminal courts, and despite reckonings in such venues that have come to determine that this person is not a criminal, this person is sick, that specific process inevitably leads to the belief that ASH patients are, in essence, convicts. It was not too long ago, in fact, that the parlance of the field- long term psychiatric patient hospitalization- actually employed that exact word to refer to anybody who just so happened to wind up in the nuthouse- convict, and I still find the word springing up time to time in my research today (although happily, that usually only occurs in relation to older text). So what you end up with, you see, is a pickle of an especially deadly variety; or a recipe for disaster, that is, and a guarantee of something far less than the norm. Something below the standard. Substandard. With substandard health care "professionals" who are so entrenched in selfishness or self loathing that they really have no choice but to conjure the thought: The expectations of greater society and culture be damned, because this is not the real world, this is ASH, and these people are insane, they are deformed in the brain, they are immoral at birth and inherently criminal in character, and nobody cares about them! Nobody else care about them, so why should I?  

     As already stated, this is how all of the patients at ASH are treated, at some time or another, even if they can't recognize it. For their sakes, my friends at ASH, I may even hope they can't, for I can only imagine that it might be easier that way. But I also cannot deny the fact that some of my closest friends at ASH feel the pain and torment of this mistreatment just as vividly as I do, even today, almost 6 moths post-discharge. Day in, day out, they and I still do. I have friends at ASH who will be institutionalized for the rest of their given lives, and if things at ASH remain unchanged, these friends will live every day of their given lives in abject misery, and not due to the the worst aspects of thier illness, but because of the cruelty of the worst staff at ASH.   

In Closing: So much for brief. If I was stupid enough to fall for Will Humble and the ADHS Facebook page's line of molded baloney, this would have been brief, I suppose. I am preparing to draft some essays about my experiences at The Arizona State Hospital for publication in one or another of the scholarly reviews that I have agreed to contribute some of my writing to. Essays, sort of like what I learned to love in junior high, only essays of substance, that I can write from the heart, rather than off the cuff, or from the hip. Essays, then, as I learned to write to near perfection in college honors programs, expository expressions of experience and awareness, with thesis' statements and structure. You want to hear my thesis in relation to this article (which is nothing more than on off the cuff essay, I will admit to that)? Here it is: 

    1) The good folks on the "team" known as Will Humble's Arizona Department of Health Services are so goddamn busy with remaining focused on anything other than one particular line of activity or service, that they are simply incapable, on any level,  of slowing down enough to even consider something as bizarre as what I call common decency in the most uncommon places. As such, the Arizona Department of Health Services is a classic state division/agency, not at all unlike the DMV: Overstaffed, underfunded, and way too crowded with paper pushers and shortsighted mid level managers. Not to mention the corruption, state agency corruption, dereliction, and greed, good old greed. 

    2) While ADHS internal agency, Behavioral Health Services, shares each and every aspect of disarray that its parent so overtly displays, with the additional feature of being grossly under funded-underpaid and staffed by thugs and malcontents who are assigned the direct responsibility of caring for the full breadth of affairs and care needs of the most marginalized, vulnerable and at risk (of abuse and exploitation) population in the community. This goes right to the heart of my aforementioned recipe for disaster. TNT and nitroglycerine in one only one example of state managed activity in Arizona. And while I cannot thank enough, the ones at ASH who do, in fact, meet the obligations of their positions (because, as I have stated time and time again there are many good people at ASH, but they are still the minority), far too many of them are bottom feeding sadomasochists, barracudas, dunces, and gorillas (or otherwise unemployables) who flock like deranged seagulls into the cavernous underbelly of this agency- ASH- where they can grovel in their ineptitude and depravity as one pulsating blob, covering each others backs, guarding all secrets ("What happens at ASH, stays at ASH- that's what HIPPA's for, remember?"), and swearing off second thoughts about anything, because who can afford to lose their job in this day in age? 

     Please visit my April 30, 2012, "Resource Ideas" article. Better yet, if you are up to it, contact your elected representatives, and do it in writing. Help me in getting those sorts of people involved. There is no better time than the present to pull all the stops out when it comes to these matters. Patient abuse is inhumane and criminal, and the associated failures of our state officials and their various staffers to directly address the substandard mental-medical care and practices at The Arizona State Hospital is 100% unacceptable in any reasonably civilized society. As though you need someone like myself to remind you of this. I am nothing special, but I am good enough to do the right thing, and so are you. 

paoloreed@gmail.com