Free Writing Exercise with student considering housing and mental health policies

 In almost every class I have taken in the social work department, a topic that has come up has been homelessness and mental health. The idea of homelessness still baffles me and raises so many questions. I think the problem with homelessness in the United States is that it is a multi-faceted problem. There is not one issue that we can pinpoint as the source of the problem. There are so many different factors that go into homelessness. The one factor that I feel we really need to hone in on is mental health. The mental health crisis in America has and will continue to be an issue unless we actually work to create and reform a good mental health care system in our country. Too often, people do not get the help that they need, and they end up on the street. The documentary we watched titled Bedlam was a great representation of the connection between mental health and homelessness. I do not remember exactly what the statistic is for people who are homeless and also suffering from a mental illness, but I know that number is way too high. Instead of putting those who suffer from mental illness on the street to fend for themselves, they should be receiving supportive care to help them live a normal life. 

Because persons with serious mental illness or substance use disorders tend to have a lot more difficulty getting out of homelessness, they tend to remain homeless for a longer time.  Thus, if someone is doing a point-in-time count of unhoused persons, and they are looking at people on the streets and in the emergency shelters, they will find most of the persons they see have mental illness problems and/or substance use problems.  However, if you look at al the people who come in contact with homeless services over a year, or you count unhoused persons including persons in transitional shelters and persons staying with friends or family in informal arrangements (sleeping on cots, couches, or in sleeping bags on the floor), you would find that a smaller fraction of those who experience homelessness in a year do so with a mental illness or substance use disorder. The census of persons suffering from homelessness in Springfield, Illinois typical counts about 25% of the persons as having a serious mental illness. Typically, the serious mental illness count is between 70 and 90, and the total count is around 320 to 350. You have to remember that this is a point-in-time count, so it will overrepresent persons who experience chronic homelessness, which means it is over-representing persons with serious mental illness.

I think most people accept that we may have frictional homelessness, where an individual or family is evicted, hasn't a friend or family member with whom they can stay, and so they must use an emergency shelter.  However, without a serious addiction or mental illness, most of these people can, with support and help from case workers, social workers, employment services, and housing services, be back in an apartment within a month or two, and then be paying the rent for their apartment with money they earn (or at least paying a substantial share of their monthly rent with their own money) within a few more months. So, if we have a certain number of unhoused persons in our community, but the case records show that everyone who shows up in an emergency shelter is housed within eight weeks, then I think that would be a situation that we would call a “functional end of homelessness” and an end of chronic homelessness. 

I think the documentary Bedlam showed that there are not a sufficient supply of mental health professionals, mental health day clinics, mental health oriented supportive housing, or residential facilities catering to persons with serious mental illness. The documentary also showed there is an insufficient supply of affordable or subsidized studio apartments where persons suffering from chronic health and mental health problems could stay, whether they are able to pay the rent or not. 

Another problem with homeless people who have psychiatric problems is incarceration. Too often, those experiencing a mental health crisis will be thrown into a prison without getting the adequate help they need to improve their mental situation. They are not given proper care and their behavior does not change because of this. Putting a mentally ill person in prison instead of a mental hospital is only hurting them. I feel like the culture and taboo around the idea of mental health is improving, but only for certain diagnosis’. For example, I feel as if the discussion around depression and anxiety has been more normalized, but the “heavier” diagnosis’ such as BPD and schizophrenia still have an overwhelmingly negative stigma around them. In reality, people living with these kinds of psychiatric disorders are the ones who need the most support in our world. I cannot imagine how truly terrifying it must be to live in a delusional reality that is not real to anyone besides yourself. That must be the most isolating feeling someone can experience. 

In a given year, maybe 6% of people will have some serious symptoms of a depressive disorder, and maybe 10% will be dealing with an addiction.  If we include the immediate families of all these people, I'm sure we're looking at about a quarter of the population either experiencing depression or addiction directly or through a close family member or intimate friend. That's about 85 million Americans with experiences with those sorts of problems.  With psychotic disorders, we might have 0.3% to 0.4% experiencing schizophrenia or something related to it, and maybe 1% of the population lives with someone suffering from such a disorder.  So, that's about 4 to 5 million Americans either living with a psychotic disorder or having a close family member or intimate friend who is dealing with a psychotic disorder. 

We have room in our prisons and jails for a couple million incarcerated persons.  There are about a million persons with psychotic disorders.  With medication and family and public support, probably 600,000 to 700,000 of those persons with psychotic disorders can live fairly independently and have nearly normal lives, with friends and family visiting them.  They may need to live modestly, as most of them will not be able to hold employment, but they won’t need to live in a state hospital or a locked mental health facility, and they certainly would not need to be incarcerated. However, I think about 400,000 to 300,000 persons with psychotic disorders probably are not responding well to medications, or they do not have social supports and families who have the time and money resources to take care of them. We certainly have not made it a priority to help these hundreds of thousands of persons get into safe and secure long-term living facilities where they would receive the support they need to live safely.  Tens of thousands of these people will end up incarcerated, and it seems to me that over half of them are living in desperation on the streets and in emergency shelters.

In an ideal world, we would have a mental healthcare system setup that is universal and effective. Everyone in the United States needs access to mental healthcare whether that is in person or online through telehealth. If we could provide services free of charge for everyone, I feel as if a lot of lives could be saved/improved. It also needs to be able to provide services such as everyday therapy to drug rehabilitation. Having a wide array of services means that the system would need to have all kinds of professionals on teams to work with people. I also feel as if we should do regular screenings for mental health and certain conditions and start these very early on in life. When intervention can happen early in life, the disease can be managed, and this will improve the person's life as they continue on into adulthood. We also need to be able to provide good hospital spaces and halfway houses for those who need more attention than others. Some people cannot live through their lives by themselves if they have a very serious diagnosis. We need to be able to provide safe spaces for people so they do not end up on the streets. The last place someone with schizophrenia should be is homeless on the street. Overall, I feel like the general attitude towards mental health and mental health crises needs to change. There are so many people who still do not really believe in mental health, my own father is included in this. To be able to move forward as a society and continue research, people need to have an open mind that mental health crises are very real and can be harmful if they are left untreated. While I do feel like we are making some progress, we still have a long way to go before we can formulate a good mental healthcare system that works for everyone, especially the most unfortunate of our population. 

I believe the costs of regular screening of everyone aged 18 to 30 for prodromal symptoms of schizophrenia and then providing intensive cognitive therapy to everyone who seems to be developing the prodromal symptoms would be expensive, but would prevent so many fully developed cases of schizophrenia that the net costs would be less than the current situation where we allow schizophrenia to develop, even though we have methods that can usually prevent it.  Likewise, we are clearly putting too little investment in the sort of psychological and social training that would prevent addictions.  And, obviously, we are not investing sufficiently in treatment for addictions and mental illness. A city such as Springfield with about 110,000 inhabitants ought to have fewer than 1,000 persons with schizophrenia (probably slightly fewer than 500 persons with schizophrenia). With about ten full-time caseworkers we could do a lot for the 200 to 300 of those persons who would need lots of supports and help with securing and maintaining themselves in safe and dignity-enhancing housing. Salaries and benefits and administrative support for about 10 full-time mental health professionals would be less than $1.5 million.  It seems to me that for every 100,000 persons in a county or city, the county boards or city councils out to budget about $2 million for local mental health services (to supplement state and federal and public health and private mental health care).  The expense of $2 million per 100,000 residents ought to just be a normal budget item for local governments, just like the expense of providing 2.4 sworn police officers for every 1000 residents, or a certain standard amount for libraries, fire protection, and public works. 

I also think local governments ought to create parastatal (private non-profit organizations that are governed by rules established by the elected government and with directors who are appointed by elected officials) housing development corporations that would work with planning and economic development offices at the city our county level to regularly increase the supply of social housing.  That is, the government ought to set up some non-profit housing corporations that build new housing or renovate and improve existing housing so that there is an ever-increasing supply of non-profit housing available in the local housing market. When bonds or mortgages are being paid off, as no profit is being taken, the rents in such housing would typically be 5% to 10% lower in cost than in the private sector.  Once mortgages or bonds are paid off, so that the only need for rent is to pay into escrow for maintaining the physical structures, paying for insurance, and paying property taxes, the costs of rent on such non-profit properties would drop to about 30% to 40% below private market rental rates.  Once 20% to 30% of rental housing in a community was being run by the non-profit housing corporation, private sector rents would also decline steeply because of competition for residents.  Even in Springfield, Illinois, where housing costs relative to median incomes are some of the most affordable in the nation, this sort of non-profit housing development corporation is needed so we can increase our supply of affordable housing by about 1,000 units.  In unaffordable places like the major cities of the west coast or the northeast, such housing development corporations are absolutely necessary, and it's shocking to me that allegedly progressive or liberal city administrations in those cities are not creating such entities or funding them sufficiently to have them significantly increase the supply of public housing.  There are models people could examine to see how this can work: Singapore, Hong Kong, Vienna, The Netherlands, Denmark, etc.  

Police and Mental Health Training

  I believe law enforcement agencies need to increase mental health training for police interventions. Approximately 10% of all police interactions involve a citizen with debilitating mental health issues; the mental illness issues not only increase the chances of police interacting with people, but also escalate the risks.  Persons with manic or psychotic symptoms may break laws or appear dangerous or threatening to others, and depressed persons may demonstrate an intention to self-harm, and police facing people having a mental health crisis may respond in ways that harm the disturbed person.  Currently, I’m only aware of three prevention/response models used in regards to handling mental health crises: the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Model, the co-responder model and mental-health based responses.

CIT training is not mandated, it is a purely volunteer oriented program. The training in this model consists of 40 hours of coursework wherein mental health conditions are recognized, in addition to suggestions on how to de-escalate tense situations. Role-playing is done to get a feel for the environments that the officers in question may be up against. The offers can also refer citizens for treatment if they feel that they need it. I personally feel like mental health training should be mandated. I think that if we had the training, we could avoid a lot of issues that turn into horrible situations. 

A fairly recent example would be the Sonya Massey case. Sonya’s mother called into the Sangamon County Sheriff’s department on July 6th, 2024. Apparently, Sonya was having a mental breakdown but the department was not informed of this fact. The situation was not handled correctly, the situation escalated and Sonya Massey was shot and killed by a deputy. Body cam footage was revealed, and while she did hold a pot of hot water that might have been interpreted as a “threatening” movement, the deputy did not need to threaten to throw water in her face. She apologized and ducked before he shot her 3 different times. The entire situation could have been avoided with more training regarding how to handle mental health issues. This was just one example but there are plenty more. For example, police were present here in Springfield when paramedics killed Earl Moore Jr., who was suffering from alcohol withdrawal and hallucinations. And a Chatham police officer shot Greg Small, Jr. after his mom called for help when he was suffering a mental health crisis and running around with a knife (threatening to self-harm, not threatening others).  Mental health training should be mandated, not optional.

The co-responder model allows the situation to be handled by a mental health professional on site with them collaborating with the police rather than the local police department handling everything alone. Yet, this method has raised some concerns by the police officers, as some of them think this is not as effective as the police officers handling the situation themselves. The question is, is it effective with the population? There needs to be input from the community and family members as well as tests on this method. Without looking at all the data, we do not have all the facts and do not know how effective it actually is. One question that needs to be asked is if by adding another player into the occasion, are we hurting the officers’ egos? Staffing has also been an issue as the availability of mental health professionals may be lacking. This is because of the hours needed for these calls and the burnout that the stressful encounters can cause. These issues especially may be inflated due to the federal funding freeze brought on by Elon Musk and the Trump administration. I could go on and on about that but I digress.

The mental health based responses model involves mental health professionals who are not sworn officers to assist with the calls coming from individuals who are experiencing mental health crises.  These “community service officers” (as they are called) are able to provide crisis intervention as well as social services to the population, while also diverting them from further involvement with the criminal justice system. However, while this model resulted in the most amount of crises dissolved on the scene, it also led to the most arrests. More information would be needed to see why the arrests increased during this time but as the crises were dissolved at the scene this method somewhat worked. Once again, data would need to be collected to determine how effective it actually is from those involved.

Mental health crises are no joke, and situations tend to escalate quickly when they are not handled properly. I know from experience that even minor bouts of anxiety are seen by some officers as an unnecessary inconvenience. A few years ago I was in a car accident and I got hit by a pickup truck. The truck hit my little Toyota so hard that it turned around in the complete opposite direction on the side of the road. I was having a panic attack, and having some trouble breathing. The officer at the scene told me that my emotions were unneeded and that I had to get over them quickly so that I could give a statement. My only thought process was: if that was the response to me, what are they saying to others with more serious bouts of mental issues? Therefore, I will say once again that mandatory mental health training needs to be implemented and that the amount of training needs to be enough to see some tangible results.

Work Cited

ICJIA | Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. (n.d.). https://icjia.illinois.gov/researchhub/articles/responding-to-individuals-experiencing-mental-health-crises-police-involved-program

I am also often wondering about this issue. Police departments typically cost about 20% to 30% of a city operating budget (when benefits and retirement pensions for retired police are added to current costs of maintaining a force).  I believe the national average is 2.4 sworn officers for every 1,000 residents.  What intrigues me are studies showing that police may only spend less than 5% of their time thwarting property crime or violent crime or catching perpetrators of those crimes, and mostly police are doing other things.  Could we perhaps divide the police force into two groups: one group would spend 20% to 50% of their time stopping crime and catching criminals, and another group would do the mental health interventions and many of the other things that police are doing?  What would happen to crime and public safety if we had 1.4 sworn officers for every 1,000 residents, but had 1 community services officer for every 1,000 residents, and all these community service officers were trained in mental health, conflict resolution, emergency medicine, and legal issues (like police)? Would that make us safer?  

As state and federal governments aren't adequately serving persons with mental illness, it seems to me that cities and counties need to step up, and perhaps city and county budgets should allocate about 4% or 5% of their revenue toward hiring persons who can deal with people in mental health crises, or caseworkers who can help people who are prone to the complications that come with serious mental illness. This might require local governments to trim 1 or 2 percentage points of their operating budgets from infrastructure, law enforcement, fire departments, libraries, and parks, so there would be some decrease in spending for those vital local government services, but would the resulting improvements in mental health care and interventions with people in mental health crises provide a benefit that would offset the loss of force size in fire and police departments or the decrease in money allocated for libraries or infrastructure?  I suspect that this would be a wise use of local public investment, but without good research and some good examples, I'm left guessing this, rather than able to claim that I know with certainty that it is true.

I have heard that crisis intervention teams and alternatives to traditional police responses have been effective in places like Portland, Maine, and Eugene, Oregon; but I'm not sure about Nashville, Tennessee; and there are controversies about whether social workers can participate in coercive enforcement of the law. 

Prisons are not Adequate Providers of Mental Health Services

  I will always remember when I first learned about mental illness and the affects it has on the individual suffering with it. I was in the 7^th grade and was utterly fascinated to learn about the types of illnesses, but yet so saddened to hear about the treatment they receive. After learning I had friends and family members who suffered from mental health issues, I had a strong urge to become an advocate about emotional health. I try to keep myself educated on pressing issues which deal with mental health and treatment. Therefore, I was extremely upset to learn about the mentally ill being placed in prisons.

Prison is not a mental health facility, so the individuals who suffer with these problems do not belong there. According to Carolyn Zezima’s (2020) article titled “Incarcerated with Mental Illness”,  at least more than two million people with mental health issues are arrested yearly, and that many of the ill may stay in jail longer than someone who does not have a mental illness. “Roughly 9% of the population (more than 210,000 individuals) experiences serious mental illnesses including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression and fewer than 13% of these individuals receive care in the public mental health system” (Zezima, para. 4). This is extremely disheartening to learn about, especially since prisons seem to contain more people with poor emotional states than psychiatric facilities do. “Experts say jails and prisons have become the nation’s largest psychiatric facilities” (Zezima, para. 1). Furthermore, the problem with the mentally ill being incarcerated deals with treatments. These individuals either receive poor treatment, or no treatment at all. 

I remember reading an article in a social problems class I took at the college I transferred from, and this article described about penitentiaries using solitary confinement as a punishment. This is when they isolate the prisoners from others, and it is honestly horrible, especially for persons suffering from serious mentally illness. The way solitary confinement affects persons with mentally illness are very severe. According to Teddy Basham-Witherington’s article “Class Action Hero: Denied Mental Health Care, Patrice Makes a Stand for Human Rights”, Patrice Daniels was a mentally ill inmate, and he was placed in solitary confinement many times. Daniels discusses how he “feared his own mind” as his symptoms worsened, and even got charged for illegal contraband when he harmed himself (Basham-Washington, 2018). This honestly makes me really mad when I read about this because Daniels was crying for help, but the guards completely ignored him. Daniels’ illness continued to go untreated as he was constantly denied treatment by the Illinois Department of Corrections (Basham-Washington, 2018). Being denied treatment is wrong on numerous levels, and is honestly a violation of human rights. Therefore, the mentally ill do not belong in prisons.

Moreover, I feel that in order to address this problem is to advocate for the mentally ill. I feel that more people need to actually educate themselves on mental illness. There are people in this world that associate mental illness with being violent, and the shootings that have occurred in the past have not helped resolve this issue. This is why people need to get rid of that stigma and realize that not everyone who suffers from an emotional problem is “violent” or “crazy”. In addition, a huge number of the homeless population deal with poor mental states and go untreated. So, I believe that there needs to be better funding for mental health facilities and maybe better funding could grant easier access to treatment for these individuals.

References

Basham-Witherington, T. (2018, October 05). Class Action Hero: Denied Mental Health Care, 

     Patrice Makes A Stand for Human Rights. Retrieved September 29, 2020, from 

     https://www.impactfund.org/social-justice-blog/ patrice? 

     gclid=Cj0KCQjwk8b7BRCaARIsAARRTL4wmQTSWHcMrYU8shnpH7m

     Q3Gf_NUfNT1NyjxdmU77TR8nRFenljJcaAs5PEALw_wcB

Zezima Carolyn Zezima, C. (2020, August 12). Incarcerated with Mental Illness: How to Reduce 

     the Number of People with Mental Health Issues in Prison. Retrieved September 29, 2020, 

     from https://www.psycom.net/how-to-reduce-mental-illness-in-prisons

I find it a nightmarish wonder that we are still using solitary confinement with prisoners. The “skilled tormenters” of Illinois are still applying tortures that we have known do no good since the 1820s!

From my cousin George Ives’ book about penal methods written by him over 110 years ago:

...Thus the new torture was begun; but the “reformers” reached a deeper level of horror when in 1818 the legislature of Pennsylvania resolved to construct a penitentiary for enforcing solitary confinement without even work ! At another prison a trial of solitary confinement was made upon eighty convicts. In 1822 they were shut up for ten months each in a little cell 7 feet long by 3-1/2 feet broad, and were not allowed to leave it at any time or for any purpose. ...

...But the new torture, solitary confinement, was never meant to be applied that way, and never was by the skilled tormentors. In the experiments just glanced at, the zeal of the too ardent disciples of “discipline” defeated their object. Death and insanity were so wholesale and universal that no amount of figures and “philanthropy” could explain staring facts out of the way.... 

Jails ought not serve as our primary care facilities for persons with mental illnesses

This is a student’s editorial written as an open letter to our governor:

Governor Rauner,

Are you aware of how many residents in the state of Illinois are in jail or prison because they suffer from a mental illness? As of December of 2015, there are 11,000 mentally ill persons in our jails and prison systems that need care rather than a punishment (Tribune Wire Reports, 2015). This means we are paying not only to house these persons as inmates, but also for their mental health care. If we were to place those who are mentally ill in a treatment clinic center rather than jail or prison we would be paying a tenth of the current cost. That is, community mental health centers can treat persons with mental illness for a fraction (about 10%) of the costs to our state when we fail to treat those people, they commit crimes, and our justice system and corrections system then must take care of them. I attended the recent Advocacy Day in early April presented by the Illinois chapter of the NASW where we discussed the lack of a budget and the cost that are building up due to lack of a budget. Sheriff Thomas J. Dart of Cook County spoke to us about the crowding of persons with mental illnesses in his Cook County Jail. 

There are so many options to save the residents of our state money and to create money to actually pay and fund a budget that is either proposed by yourself or the other members of the Illinois government. You and others in the General Assembly ought to be creative in thinking about what policies can save taxpayers money in the long-run, and sometimes it will be wise to invest state spending in some areas, like education or mental health care, because in the long run those public expenditures save public money or raise revenue by avoiding costs associated with incarcerating so many people.  By changing the housing of those with an illness to treat the illness, we can create jobs, lower public spending, and open up more resources. Just in Cook County’s jail, on a daily basis there is a 25% housing rate for mentally ill persons (according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office of Mental Health Policy and Advocacy). This is one jail, representing one county in our state. If this statistic is true for all jails in the state, we are looking at thousands of mentally ill persons who are not getting treatment in the best environment, eating money of the state, taking up time for people who should be dealing with criminals rather than dealing out medications, or getting medical care for an inmate. Think of it, a quarter of the inmates in Illinois jails and prisons (!) There are more people in jail and prison than in our hospitals with medical needs regarding mental health (‘New study finds more mentally ill people in jail and prison than in hospitals’, 2016).

In order for Cook County to deal with the large numbers of mentally ill inmates they have created a program to assist care for those individuals (Collins, 2015). This has become one of the top mental health facilities in the state and it’s in a jail. There is no need for this to exist, let alone lead in treatment for the state. This is backwards from how the system should work. 

We need to put more effort into bettering our mental health clinics, homes, and centers including the treatment in hospitals. Our department of corrections system should not be shouldering out mentally ill persons and treating them as convicts. They should instead be given help, guidance and medical treatment to better their lives. 

References:

New study finds more mentally ill people in jail and prison than in hospitals. (2016). Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://www.thejha.org/node/54

Cook County Sheriff’s Office of Mental Health Policy & Advocacy. Office of mental health policy and advocacy. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://www.cookcountysheriff.com/MentalHealth/MentalHealth_main.html

Collins, S. P. K. (2015, September 18). What happened when an Illinois county rehabilitated mentally ill offenders through treatment. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/09/18/3702804/cook-county-mental-health-treatment/

Tribune Wire Reports, (2015, December 24). Illinois settles class-action suit on mentally ill inmates. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-illinois-lawsuit-mentally-ill-inmates-20151223-story.html

Persons with mental illness are brave

Reaction Paper 2

The video of Elyn Saks from youtube.com that we viewed in class caught my attention and I had many thoughts and feelings regarding the video. So much so that I went home and shared the video with my fiancé. We discussed the video in depth and he shared new insights with me. Watching a woman who is so successful and yet a woman who suffers from a mental illness that many would fall broken to. Her strength is grand and inspiring to watch, her story needing to be heard. 

The idea that a person with a mental illness cannot succeed professionally or in any aspect of their lives is obscene and unneeded. Did she struggle when the illness was at its worst? Yes, of course she did, but she rose above with the help of psychotherapy. The ideas of those she spoke with, regarding mentally ill persons reflects the views of many of the population. Many believe that those who suffer with mental illness don’t mind being strapped down, but those restraints are often uncalled for, and the persons with mental illness are still humans. She pointed admitted how she isn’t so different from those people being strapped down to control them because she suffers as well, but in the  eyes of people who don’t know about her mental illness, it seems she could not be anything like those who suffer mental illness; her higher education and status in society makes it seem impossible that she too could suffer from a chronic and severe condition. It seems like it surprises people to hear about members of society who are in higher paying positions that suffer or have suffered in the past from mental illness. 

On the other side you hear about common professions where a mental breakdown is almost expected such as those known as celebrities or those in the media spotlight. Britney Spears broke down and shaved her head when the pressure became to much. Kurt Cobain committed suicide and has gone down in history with Heath Ledger and others, and after each breakdown or suicide there follows a few days of absolute shock, but then come reports of how those who were close to the person watched them slide downhill and break before their eyes. 

To many people it’s okay to place a person who suffers from mental illness in a box, and leave them isolated from the majority of the world; yet those who battle an internal illness of the mind may be the strongest in society. Imagine fighting your own thoughts every day just to get out of bed, or eat a meal, let alone drive to work, spend upwards of nine hours there dealing with tasks and other people, drive home, shower, care for other family members, go to bed, and do it over again the next day. Or consider the person who goes to therapy every other day after work to keep in control of their life. Imagine the person who has panic attacks just by walking into a room where there are people and must now lead a discussion group. There are people who “suffer” mental illness every day and those people are the ones who are pushing the world to work and keep progressing. Maybe it’s time to call those with mental illness out to run our world. 

Eric’s comment:

You make some important observations here.  

1) Mental illness is frequently overlooked because it does not always manifest in ways we easily perceive. Thus, persons who appear to be very successful or high status may suffer from mental illness without people being aware of their struggles. 

2) We have a tendency to dehumanize persons suffering from mental illness, subjecting them to unnecessary restraints, or dismissing them as dangerous, or as failures.  However, persons with mental illness may use more courage, fortitude, and mental strength in their inner lives than those who sail along through life without the problems associated with facing a mental illness.

3) Social work values force us to consider how persons with mental illness may be good role models, or we may use our social work perspectives to see that persons with mental illness offer strengths that could make contributions to others.

4) Sometimes when people have mental health problems, the people around them don’t know what to do for them.

I would like to point out that for most people with mental illnesses, a cure would be most welcome.  the fact that anyone must endure a chronic and severe mental illness is a great tragedy.  Of course we may find some ways to appreciate the nobility of how people cope with mental illness, and their struggles against diseases of the mind may give people opportunities to accomplish things that make a great different in their lives.  In some sense, all problems in our lives are cases that allow us to demonstrate our quality, or help us grow and develop. 

 Persons with a mental illness are perhaps very much like people with the flu, or persons with cancer, or persons with heart disease.  They may recover or enjoy a cure, or they may suffer for the rest of their lives.  But, just as almost everyone sometimes has a physical illness, diseases of the mind or brain abnormalities strike almost everyone at some point.  Depression or some related mood disorder, or an anxiety disorder, or a substance dependence, or a learning disability, or some other sort of mental illness, perhaps mild and not especially dramatic as a source of impairment to functioning, afflicts almost all of us at one time or another.  The psychotic disorders tend to be the most florid and interesting, although personality disorders and dissociative disorders are quite intriguing as well. Sometimes when people speak about persons with mental illnesses it seems they really only mean these sorts of things.