crazy and on air

Madness Radio is no MAD TV.

Coproduced by the Freedom Center and Icarus Project, the show airs on Wednesdays 6-7pm EDT on Pacifica Affiliate Valley Free Radio WXOJ-LPFM and south-central Alaska’s KWMD in Kasilof.

The Freedom Center, based in Northampton, MA, is a grassroots group which offers support and activism for people labeled as severely mentally ill. Though their DIY approach to mental healthcare may not be condoned by everyone, the group has done a wonderful job of making people otherwise on the outskirts of society feel more in control and accepted. Much of their efforts go into helping consumers get off the drugs that are causing unbearable side effect.

It’s as if Terry Gross just chose to focus on the human psyche and psychotropics, Madness Radio may be singular in its subject, but it spans the globe. Some recent shows include Capetown South Africa, survivor activist Moosa Salie  who talks about mental health organizing in Africa and beyond and  author Charles Barber on his new book, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation.

The tree that falls

Bravo to the Science Times today for their important story on mental health clinics in Goa, India. Depression and anxiety have long been considered Western illnesses, the illness of wealthy people, an urban illness.

The new clinics that are being set up in the town of Siolim have the potential to change how mental illness gets treated in the developing world. If concepts such as “depression” or “anxiety” don’t exist in the lexicon of a community, then society believes they don’t exist as ailments in people. But if a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, it will still make a noise.

In India, the stigma of mental illness remains strong. To minimize the problem, health workers avoid using the words “mental illness,” “depression” or “anxiety” with patients, relying on more commonly used words like “strain” and “tension.”

Moreover, the model uses social workers (trained for a week to a few months) instead of just doctors to screen patients,. This is a more economical approach to bring mental health care to a larger group of people in a less developed place.

Separate and Equal

Mental Health Parity–the idea that insurance companies should cover mental health at the same level of care as other medical conditions–is being closely watched by all in the mental health community. The Mental Health Parity Act of 2007, which passed the Senate with unanimous consent, now waits to be reviewed by the House. The Act won’t require that insurance companies provide mental healthcare, but if they do, the care will need to be up to par with everything else.

Currently, there are 11 states that do not have mental health parity laws to regulate equality of care. Mental health consumers such as 12-year-old Couper Harding of Arizona rely on the mercy of insurance and the distant opportunity offered through red tape, as the Arizona Republic reported today:

Couper, now 12, has bipolar disorder, Tourette syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder – serious mental illnesses, diseases of the brain. If he had leukemia or cancer or most any other disease, the insurance company would have to treat him differently.

But in Arizona, unlike many other states, health-insurance companies don’t have to treat mental illnesses the same as physical illnesses, a double standard that mental-health advocates say leaves families like Couper’s struggling to get the care they need and often turning to taxpayer-funded programs to pick up the bills.

Politicians worry that the bill will make health care even more costly, but what’s most devastating is that whatever the cost, this still won’t be enough to ensure that the seriously mentally-ill get the care they need.

Take for example New York State’s Healthy NY, the government-subsidized health plan to give coverage to self-employed New Yorkers and small businesses. Mental health is currently not covered, which depending upon the plan signed up for, can cost about $300 a month. If the Parity Act passes it won’t matter. Mental health care will still be excluded and care will remain uncomprehensive.

Britney, Posterchild

Van Gough cut off his ear; Britney shaved her head.

It seem at once ridiculous and perfectly sensible to begin a blog about mental health with Britney Spears. For every generation there’s a new brand of crazy and there’s a new genius. Though I will happily line up behind those who say Britney is spoiled and nuts–and heartily agree–her recent escapades and the collective cultural consciousness seems to have suddenly declared “mental illness! bipolar disorder!” without any sort of understanding about what this means. It leaves me puzzled and interested in how much stigma still runs rampant in our society.

As Noel Irwin Hentschel blogged last month on the Huffington Post:

If Britney Spears was diagnosed with diabetes requiring ongoing medical treatment, as a community would we not be empathetic to her condition? We would acknowledge how tough it must be for this young girl, her children and her parents to have to go through the tragedy of a debilitating and potentially fatal illness. We do not label those with other medical conditions; why then is it still acceptable in today’s society to place hurtful and damaging labels on those struggling with mental health issues? Mental illness has had a stigma attached to it since the middle-ages. We should have moved beyond this by now.

I will probably say it again and again on this blog as it progresses, but mental illness is the last socially acceptable stigma in our society. Britney is in essence the ideal candidate to go through a public dissection, diagnosis, and (hopefully) recovery, because the public and the media are already so used to humiliating her. As MSNBC’s Michael Ventre said in a recent commentary, “I’d call this a cautionary tale about the effects of global celebrity and Hollywood excess except nobody seems to be exercising any caution, especially certain segments of the press.”