Bottle Up and Explode!
I'm pissed.
I'm pissed that I live in a country where health care is a business and part of the "free trade" economy. If one more asshole sends me some patriotic chain email about how grateful I should be to live in a "free" country where the finest doctors are waiting to care for me and my children, I'm going to ask them to take over Bob's expenses for a while and see if that doesn't shut their stupid emailing ignorant asses up. Sure, the finest doctors are there--but the funding for research on mental health issues? Non-existant. Sure, there are psychiatrists out there who specialize in childhood mental illness, but they are few, far between, and most of them aren't covered by my insurance. Or any insurance.
Why?
It's simple.
Take a kid with leukemia. That kid "can't help it." His illness is something that just happened to him. It affects his actions, but it doesn't affect who he is. People feel sorry for him because his illness is the product of random selection and dumb luck.
Now take a kid like Bob. Bob appears perfectly healthy. He's smart, he's strong, he's well-fed and clothed and clean. He lives in a nice house in the suburbs and has nice, intelligent parents. Bob also has an illness, but you can't see it. All you can see is a kid who acts like a raging asshole most of the time. But sometimes he acts normal, so the assumption is that he can control it. So it becomes his fault. And if he can't control it, I should be able to be a better parent and get him under control--so it's my fault.
And 98% of the country feels this way, which is why the state of mental health research is dismal.
Ben says, "there are plenty of bipolar people who eventually figure out how to have a normal life."
Yes, and there are plenty more who end up in prison, hooked on drugs, homeless, and/or dead.
I drive past homeless people sleeping under overpasses on the highway every morning and wonder if one day that will be my child. I listen to Elliott Smith's songs about despair and misery and think of the seriously melodramatic end he put to his own life and wonder if that will be my kid. I consider how I've struggled to be happy my entire life and so often felt like I'm barely hanging on to sanity by a thread, and hope I haven't passed that on to my own son.
So I'm pissed. Pissed because the rest of the world doesn't understand. There are no support groups for parents of crazy kids. There are no fundraisers to help pay for 16-day inpatient psych hospital bills. There are no races for a cure or even as little as an effective treatment regimen. Because crazy isn't tangible. (Or it is, and that's the problem.)
And all I can do is be pissed and wonder what the future holds.
I'm pissed that I live in a country where health care is a business and part of the "free trade" economy. If one more asshole sends me some patriotic chain email about how grateful I should be to live in a "free" country where the finest doctors are waiting to care for me and my children, I'm going to ask them to take over Bob's expenses for a while and see if that doesn't shut their stupid emailing ignorant asses up. Sure, the finest doctors are there--but the funding for research on mental health issues? Non-existant. Sure, there are psychiatrists out there who specialize in childhood mental illness, but they are few, far between, and most of them aren't covered by my insurance. Or any insurance.
Why?
It's simple.
Take a kid with leukemia. That kid "can't help it." His illness is something that just happened to him. It affects his actions, but it doesn't affect who he is. People feel sorry for him because his illness is the product of random selection and dumb luck.
Now take a kid like Bob. Bob appears perfectly healthy. He's smart, he's strong, he's well-fed and clothed and clean. He lives in a nice house in the suburbs and has nice, intelligent parents. Bob also has an illness, but you can't see it. All you can see is a kid who acts like a raging asshole most of the time. But sometimes he acts normal, so the assumption is that he can control it. So it becomes his fault. And if he can't control it, I should be able to be a better parent and get him under control--so it's my fault.
And 98% of the country feels this way, which is why the state of mental health research is dismal.
Ben says, "there are plenty of bipolar people who eventually figure out how to have a normal life."
Yes, and there are plenty more who end up in prison, hooked on drugs, homeless, and/or dead.
I drive past homeless people sleeping under overpasses on the highway every morning and wonder if one day that will be my child. I listen to Elliott Smith's songs about despair and misery and think of the seriously melodramatic end he put to his own life and wonder if that will be my kid. I consider how I've struggled to be happy my entire life and so often felt like I'm barely hanging on to sanity by a thread, and hope I haven't passed that on to my own son.
So I'm pissed. Pissed because the rest of the world doesn't understand. There are no support groups for parents of crazy kids. There are no fundraisers to help pay for 16-day inpatient psych hospital bills. There are no races for a cure or even as little as an effective treatment regimen. Because crazy isn't tangible. (Or it is, and that's the problem.)
And all I can do is be pissed and wonder what the future holds.
posted by Mitzi Green at 6:55 PM
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