The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) seems an inventory of the predictable pain and suffering in the human mind. If you or a friend or family member has a mental illness you will have directly encountered the DSM or it may have been gently translated for you by your therapist.  Either way the DSM is a volume of woes that offers the diagnosis can lead to treatment, relief, and safety, or to a burdensome label you can’t shake off.  As a career human services professional and concurrently a parent, I was frequently asked to speak to family groups and occasionally law enforcement.  I would use my metaphor of Russian Roulette. As parents or care givers of a person with mental illnesswe were too often expected to wait for the “dangerous crisis” before affordable services could be offered. In my talks sometimes I would describe Mental health Russian Roulette as a metaphoric six crisis revolver. Five chambers of the six shooter of crises might qualify us for services and safety and the last chamber that was too often lethal rendering those services unnecessary. With an almost helpless gesture I would offer that if your loved one’s crisis turns out damaging or lethal, don’t blame yourself for the sad outcome in the stretch of chances we are required to endure to qualify for help.  Your loved one, like you, must live their lives to learn. You will not always be the teacher and God knows, we have never had control.

Humble Suggestion for Good

First of all families of the mentally ill deserve better than the Russian Roulette for the mentally ill  We in this nation do have gifted, dedicated therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists and mental health aids, along with many citizens who simply care.   Yet too often for families to  get their loved one’s to safety, the family must let the lethally loaded chamber of possible crisis spin on the hard streets of America. In order to prove potential harm to self or others, your loved one often must brush close to injury or death in the most vulnerable stages of their lives and illness. Good decisions are very often hard, but never harder than in matters of mental illness. This writer admires a system that is so cautious about taking away an individual’s personal agency in a time when we have a government right now that really doesn’t care about personal agency.  That said, we need a much stronger and far more accessible ramp of services to safety for the person whose brain has gone into chronic disorder.  As a society we need to make teachers and mental health workers the heroes of service compensated at a living even elevated wage.  We need to recognize the gifted of those mental health workers at the level we make our military personnel heroes of service to America. Mental health needs our full attention, funding support, and respect right now in this  age of spectacular rapid change. Working these decision points that can wrap our ill loved ones in safety and care.  Our minds in league with our human bodies were built for helping and caring. Let us invest our attention on mental health for the culture of America and the people.  Politics will self correct if we do so and that would be good.