Vote for Issue 11

Even though Mental Health America has been serving Licking County for more than 56 years, most people don’t seem to know who we are until I mention Paddy Kutz. For almost three decades, Paddy has been the face of mental health information in Licking County. Everybody calls her when they run into a problem that they can’t seem to solve; have a family member who needs help and they don’t know where to go; or have an employee who doesn’t seem to know what is and is not okay in the workplace.

She will be the first one to tell you that she is not a counselor, but she can help people get connected with counselors and other treatment providers. She is passionate about recovery and advocates daily for the simple steps that people can take to get and keep control of their mental health. The steps may not always be easy, but they are, for the most part, simple.

What an incredible community resource she is and her unusual name has become shorthand for all things relating to behavioral health information. If you haven’t met her, or heard her speak, you probably know someone who has.

Paddy’s continuing ability to work for the good mental health of Licking County is at risk.

Unlike her energy, which at almost 71 years of age, seems limitless, the resources needed to support her agency and the 6 others that provide education, prevention and treatment services for mental health and substance use conditions are diminishing at an alarming rate.

Most of the money needed to fund our public safety net—including Mental Health America—comes from the State of Ohio and a county tax levy. As the State continues to have budget challenges, more money is being diverted from the Ohio Department of Health. Since 2008, funding for the Community Mental Health & Recovery Board has been reduced by $1.9 million. (An additional $1 million in Federal stimulus funding will be lost in 2011.) And these dollars are not expected to return. Levy dollars are tied to property values and it has been a while since those have increased.

The only things that have increased are the need for mental health and substance use services and the costs of providing them.

Mental Health America of Licking County has responded to ever-tightening budgets by reducing benefits, freezing wages, furloughing staff, not filling vacant positions; and, when these steps was no longer sufficient, by eliminating programs and terminating staff. Paddy even voluntarily took a pay cut of more than 30%.

Similar steps have also been taken at other agencies in the Community Mental Health & Recovery Board system. There is even a system-wide initiative underway to reengineer how services are provided in an effort to reduce costs by almost $2 million.

We believe that we have acted responsibly to control expenses while not jeopardizing our ability to respond to individuals and families in crisis.

With every indication that additional cuts in State funding are in the offing, even these steps will not be sufficient to fund the Licking County system at its present levels.

It is for these reasons that the Community Mental Health & Recovery Board is asking Licking County voters to approve a .45 mil 10-year supplemental levy on the May 4th ballot.

One of the reasons that people feel so comfortable talking to Paddy is that she has been around for more than a generation. People come to see her because she was able to help their parents. She is a community fixture: it’s comforting to know she’s available even if you don’t have need of her services.

Licking County is rightfully proud of its network of services it has built up—many of which were initiated by Mental Health America (Moundbuilder’s Guidance Center, The Main Place, LAPP, Big Brothers/Big Sisters)—but, like any system, it must be maintained or it will break down and fail, usually when you most need it to work.

Mental Health America is asking for your help to maintain our system so that all of the agencies—including Mental Health America of Licking County—can continue to care.

Declarations

I recently tried to apply for life insurance. I am a person who experiences bipolar disorder and OCD and had always been told that I was ineligible for life insurance. Recently, however, I heard that some insurers would consider me as a candidate.

I thought that I would surprise my husband and apply for life insurance. I would like to be able to leave him with a little money in case of my death, to cover expenses. This is the wish of the average American, to have adequate life insurance coverage for their loved ones. I am not now, nor have I ever been suicidal. I have never been hospitalized for reasons related to my mental health.

I contacted an agent who represents several carriers and who had solicited me online. I did not tell anyone about my plan, because I wasn’t certain I would qualify. I had to fill out a pile of paper work and submit to medical tests, which I find very stressful. I was upfront about my medical history and was told that my bipolar disorder might raise my premiums, but would not necessarily block me from receiving insurance. The submission process took four months, with several emails from the insurer requiring more information.

Finally, I received a call last week telling me that I had been rejected “because of my eating disorder.”

I do not have an eating disorder. I have never been diagnosed, nor treated, for an eating disorder at any time. I went to see my psychiatrist, who confirmed that there is no past record, nor current diagnosis, of an eating disorder in my files. This was not the diagnosis of my general practitioner, nor the two gastro doctors and the internist, I saw in Columbus.

I have been physically ill for the last year and did seek attention from several specialists who ruled out a number of illnesses. Each doctor passed me along to another for more tests, until I ended up at the Cleveland Clinic. There I was subjected to another battery of tests, until my gastroenterologist admitted that she did not know what was wrong with me, and suggested I see a neurologist to address the other, non-gastric symptoms.

Somewhere along the way, someone decided that my symptoms included “psychogenic vomiting.” This archaic term means that I am vomiting by choice. Psychogenic: (1) Of mental origin or causation.psychogenetic. (2) Relating to emotional and related psychological development or to psychogenesis. A phrase I hear all too often –“it’s all in my head.”

This change in diagnosis (and attitude), came after the local neurologist, who I saw in January of 2010, saw my medical history. This is not the first time this has happened. The doctor at the Cleveland Clinic was very dismissive after she learned of my psychiatric history. I have walked away from this process feeling angry and exploited.

Time and time again, I am frustrated by medical personnel who only see me as a mental illness diagnosis, not as a person. Everything I say immediately becomes suspect, I must be delusional and unreliable. My physical illness must be a result of my mental condition. If I have questions about my treatment, I am oppositional. Every thing I say or do confirms their diagnosis that I am simply crazy. My psychiatrist is never consulted.

The first time I visited an E.R. after my initial bipolar disorder diagnosis, I was experiencing severe vomiting and dehydration. I was confronted by a doctor who had not learned that patients with mental illness are not deaf, nor unable to speak for themselves. Once he had seen my medication list, that doctor spoke only to my husband, not to me, and assumed that I was unable to make my own health care decisions. He later spoke to my sister (a hospital employee, who did not know about my illness), and asked her how long I “had been crazy?” When I was admitted, my physician made notes to my record commenting that my mental illness was a basis for not consulting me on my treatment, although there was no indication of inappropriate behavior on my part. My own physician was never consulted, and I was denied access to all of my regularly prescribed medication for four days, resulting in serious physical withdrawl.

On another visit to the ER caused by a medication-induced seizure, my explanation was met with disbelief. I was suspected of drug-seeking behavior and a lack of judgment. It was not until my sister, a hospital administrator, was called, that her authority changed the attitude of the staff.

Incidents like these are not, unfortunately, uncommon. I hear about them from consumers every day. Insist that your care provider speak to you directly and include you in creating your health care plan. I recommend that everyone who experiences mental illness carry a list of all medications with them and a copy of your Mental Health Advanced Directive.

A Mental Health Advance Directive offers a clear written statement of an individual's medical treatment preferences or other expressed wishes or instructions. It can also be used to assign decision-making authority to another person who can act on that person's behalf during times of incapacitation.

I plan to appeal the decision to deny my life insurance coverage. It has taught me an important lesson about keeping current on what is in my medical files. Learn from my experience and keep up to date on what is in your files.

--Kristen Frame
Compeer Coordinator

Celebrating Awareness

Winter in Ohio; now 6 more weeks of winter? I used to love it – when we got real snow that was feet deep for weeks and I could go sledding or build snowmen. I remember when I was little how our neighbor built a huge snow fort with the neighborhood kids and we played in it for weeks. It was nearly the size of their house! (as I recall). And it just didn’t melt. Now I look at winter in Ohio in a whole new light. Will there be school cancellations? Can my son drive safely to his job? What’s my drive time going to be like today? Am I scheduled in a school that has a delay? (I hope, I hope!) Growing up is not all it’s cracked up to be. But I still love a good snow day!

Something else that should be on our minds in February is the whole idea of love. Sitting by a warm fire, sipping coffee, watching the snow fall and cuddling with that special someone. Valentine’s Day! Expressing the dearest and kindest of thoughts about the one (or ones) we love. It really shouldn’t just be once a year though. Just think about how we need healthy relationships with other people to survive, to feel connected, to feel like we belong This is a good time to share with others about how and why they matter to you; we could all use some extra warmth. Aside from Valentine’s Day, February is also cause to celebrate Black History Month, Relationship Wellness Month, International Boost Self Esteem Month, Adopt a Rescued Rabbit Month, American Heart Month, Library Lovers Month, National Weddings Month & several more. And don’t forget President’s Day (Happy Birthday George and Abe), the Super Bowl, and now, Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month.

There are so many reasons to celebrate (just look online to see all types of February celebrations!), and now here comes another “awareness month”? How do we celebrate that? Teen Dating Violence? Do we really need another “awareness month”? Well Vice President Joe Biden, author of the landmark 1994 Violence Against Women Act, said this: “After fifteen years of working to end domestic violence, we have learned that teens are not immune from abuse in relationships. Teen dating violence is all too common, and ends up leading to vicious and unhealthy cycles for years to come. Our responsibility - as parents, teachers, mentors, and community leaders – is to guide our young people towards respectful relationships free from harassment and abuse; teach them that it’s ok to walk away from a bad situation; and encourage them to speak out when they see a friend in trouble. In many communities, teens themselves are leading the way in organizing their schools and communities to stand against violence. I commend them.”

I certainly hope that most teens have those wonderful memories of snow days and sledding and building a snow fort, but what about those whose most powerful memories come from their greatest fears? Studies show that one in five teenagers in a serious dating relationship report being physically abused by their partner. This issue is so serious that Ohio Governor, Ted Strickland, has signed into law House Bill 19, or the Tina Croucher Act, named for an Ohio teen who was murdered by her high school ex-boyfriend. Tina's Law requires Ohio schools to adopt a policy that prevents and addresses incidents of dating violence at school, provides staff training on dating violence prevention, and includes dating prevention education for students in 7th through 12th grade.

January was Stalking Awareness month. How convenient. From stalking to teen dating violence. What is the world coming to? We really need to be talking with our children and our young adults. This kind of violence must stop. We as the adults must model good behavior in their lives. Why would anyone think that stalking or domestic violence is okay or acceptable? If you are not sure how to have that kind of talk with your own children, please let us help you. We offer programs to children in preschool all the way through college. We talk about healthy relationships of all kinds. We also share media literacy with our county seventh graders because that’s where they get so much of their education it seems. Last year Rihanna and Chris Brown were in the headlines. Today the name is Heidi Montag and her never-ending plastic surgeries. What are we letting our children learn without talking to them about consequences or positive role models? Technology is a fabulous thing – if you know how to utilize it properly.

So maybe we can utilize this latest awareness month and the cold weather to do something really important. We can talk with our children, especially teens, about some of the violence in our lives. Do you remember families spending time together? Around the radio, then the television set, playing board games or even a Wii? There’s that whole initiative to get families to eat supper together again. We need to just talk; re-open the lines of communication. Remind ourselves and our children that love is not abuse and that love is never supposed to hurt. Can we spend time sharing healthy habits or modeling better behavior? Get those board games out again. Stop acting like you have the right to anything you want just because you want it – or her, or him – and think about that other person. Those family times together were great fun, but they also allowed us to share ideas and improve our communication skills. How can we raise awareness of issues like stalking and teen dating violence if we are afraid to talk about it? If we don’t spend time with the adults who matter to us? If we as adults, aren’t modeling better behavior? So can we listen to the words of our governor and vice president? Students need to learn about dating violence, but not by experiencing it. Through education and communication. By spending some time with friends and family that they love, students should be able to reduce violence through better behavior. By using words to describe how they are feeling instead of a fist or a threat, they can resolve conflicts more peacefully. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Then maybe we can go back to those days of hot chocolate and snow forts, when things seemed simpler.

--Jan GreenRiver
Dir. of Prevention
PAVE Coordinator

Sad Genii

There is an apocryphal story about the legendary blues musician Robert Johnson trading his soul for musical talent at a rural Mississippi crossroads. According to the story, he gave his guitar to a mysterious man who tuned it, played a few songs and then returned it and, in so doing gave Johnson his talent. Told often enough in the 70 plus years since his death, it has taken on enough truthiness to have spawned songs, books and at least one movie starring Ralph Macchio. Hoping for lightning to strike again, would-be musicians make the pilgrimage to Clarksdale—although there seems to be some uncertainty as to the precise location of this mythical intersection. (I envision scruffy, guitar-carrying hopefuls accosting strangers asking them to tune their instruments like it was open-bar night at a troubadours’ convention.)

Waiting for the devil to give you talent, or for that matter, lightning to strike, is a trap that many of us fall into and something that occupies me both personally and professionally. Making cheap jokes about musicians is just too easy, but I have to admit that I am envious of anyone who knows what they want and is prepared to pursue that goal.

At some point in our lives we each of us have had access to some sort of instrument even if it was a toddler’s color-coded xylophone. We could have worked at it and become the best color-coded xylophone players in the world, but life had other adventures in store for us: we reached the crossroads and turned the corner. Those who make the journey to Clarksdale are making a commitment to music and are hoping that music commits to them. They have bought into the inspiration-perspiration paradigm for success and, having invested the perspiration, they are hoping for transformational inspiration. Practice might get you to Carnegie Hall, but you had better have something to say once you get there.

I feel a strong kinship to this story because I feel as though I have reached my own crossroads without my instrument.

I have a hard time thinking of myself as a middle-aged man and yet as I engage in the inevitable stock-taking that comes with each turn of the calendar page, I recognize that I bear almost all of the hallmarks of the old clichés. (And if I thought I could afford a little red sports car….)

I have always tried to do what I thought was the right thing. I think I work hard and color inside the lines and yet it seems as though every year I have less and less to show for it. I want more and better for my near and dear and can hardly afford to tread water. And while I struggle with that challenging reality, I am acutely aware of those who receive vulgar rewards for doing the wrong thing and erasing the lines.

Staying the course and delaying gratification are hard-wired into my DNA but as I hurtle toward another milestone birthday I am wondering how much longer I have to delay, defer and deny. The longer I have to wait, the angrier I am getting.

My brother is just on the other side of a milestone birthday and he is every bit as impatient, just as angry and just as uncertain about how to change his fortunes. Which corner do we turn and, perhaps most paralyzingly, what if it’s the wrong one?

We want to take control of our lives, but aren’t certain how to do it.

Much to my wife’s dismay, I watch a lot of televised poker. I am just old enough to fall between the poker booms. When I was growing up nobody I knew played cards, let alone gambled. When Texas Hold ‘em exploded a couple of years ago suddenly everyone was playing.

What is fascinating to me is that players make decisions based on the bare minimum of information and are prepared to back up those choices with some or all of their chips. They can even go “all-in” at any point putting all of their chips into the pot.

I don’t know how people can do that. Sure it’s a game and the sun will still come out tomorrow even if you lose, but still….

To be confident enough to risk all your chips on the turn of a card…, what must that be like?

My parents were born during the Great Depression—the last one—and they had a real respect for risk: it was to be avoided. And if it couldn’t be avoided it had to be managed. As a result, I have a real appreciation for the Law of Gravity and I know all about falling: people fall out, they fall off, they fall down and they fall short. If you are to stay safe then you have to stay on the sidelines.

To play poker at the highest levels is to have enough respect for risk to know when to ignore it.

In Texas Hold ‘Em, the worst starting hand is a seven and a two. With those two cards, the odds of having the winning hand are the longest compared to any other combination. This is one of the first things you learn about the game and yet there are players who will regularly play and win with that hand.

To paraphrase the philosopher Kenny Rogers: you do have to know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em and when to go all-in. Folding I have down to a science; it’s holding and going all-in that I have no skills at.

So, why don’t I play more poker? That would be way too risky.

Part of what makes Texas Hold ‘Em work on TV is that the structure of the game is finite. Like life, Hold ‘Em ends. Two players in each hand are obliged to make forced bets—the big and small blinds—in order to start the pot. At regular intervals during the game the size of those bets goes up. This keeps people like me from staying at the table and not risking anything. You can’t help but get in the game. And if they don’t actually play a hand, just put in their blinds and fold their cards, sooner or later they will be “blinded out”. The cost of these forced bets will consume all of their chips. This too is most life-like.

As we have been talking about this over the last month, what I have come to realize is that my brother and I share this emerging sense that we are being blinded out of our lives.

He asked me the other night whether I thought there was such a thing as a “sad gene”. He asked me via text message and I misread it thinking he had typed “sad genii.” Was there some foundational reason why we can’t get to where we want to be? Did we reach our crossroads only to meet the Sad Genii?

The answer to this question is yes and no. We know that depression is part nature and part nurture. Like poker it’s partly the cards you’re dealt and partly the skill with which you play them. But we know too that skilled players can win with lousy cards.

Almost as powerful as our respect for risk is our sense of regret. We know too much about the bad choices we made and the roads not taken. I know in my own case that I have tried for too long to not add to my personal regret chip stack and now, perversely, it is the fear of getting to the end of my life and having too much that is spurring me forward to take more risk.

Robert Johnson got his musical gift from a mysterious stranger he met at a crossroads. In our own ways, my brother and I have each come to our own crossroads and met ourselves which I think may prove to be just as great a gift.

Time to shuffle up and deal.

--Graham Campbell,
Associate Director

English is a Funny Language

English is a funny language. There's a world of difference between "going to jail" and "going to the jail." You see, I "go to the jail" twice a week to offer parenting programs. Oddly enough, it's one of the things I enjoy most about my job. The men and women I meet at the jail come to my class voluntarily, so they tend to be interested, involved, and they are some of the most appreciative people I have ever met. Mind you, I wouldn't want to stay locked up, but so far, the sentries have always let me out, so it's all good.

Back to enjoying my job. "Enjoy" isn't the right word, is it? I should have said "rewarding." It's a painful time for most of them--sometimes it's the first time they've ever been away from their children. Often they feel horrible about the effect a bad decision has had on their families, especially when an addiction is involved. And I'd bet addiction to alcohol or other drugs is involved about 80% of the time, even though the charge may not involve substance abuse. (I asked a deputy and a jail social worker to guess, too, and all 3 of us came up with 80% on the nose.)

I ask parents at the jail to fill out a short survey at the end of the workshop. One of the questions is "Because of this workshop, I plan to __________________________________." Here are a few of the answers I've gotten in the last month:

• "Talk differently to my children."
• "Change how I handle issues that arise daily in our home."
• "Be a better parent."
• "Watch my words."
• "Use the tools I learned."
• "Keep my son as a priority."
• "Positive environment, specific encouragement."
• "Be there." (Especially meaningful for someone in jail.)

And my personal favorite: "Keep going. I love it."

You don't have to go to jail to attend parenting classes. All our programs are free, although they require a reservation. We normally schedule classes on Mondays, 6-8 PM; Tuesdays, 10 AM-noon; and by appointment at other times. For example, temporarily we have a class on Thursdays 4:30-6:30 PM to accommodate a dad's schedule.

As one dad in jail said: "Be there!" But remember to call me first at 788-0300 to make a reservation. (If there's not enough registration, we may not meet.) You can also call me if you'd like to volunteer to work with parents.

--Judith Allee

Parent Support Coordinator