Mental Illness and Politics

So, I have spent a good portion of the past couple of weeks dealing with mental health issues in politics. This is not calling my opponents crazy or anything like that. I am talking about working with people who have serious psychiatric illnesses. There are so many levels to trying to deal with these issues:

• Level 1: As a Party leader I need to balance the safety of the the organization and our members with the right of all people, regardless of whether or not they have a psychiatric illness, to partcipate.
  
• Level 2: Assisting local leaders, all volunteers, who may or may not have experience working with mentally ill people. There are a lot of misconceptions out there plus, sometimes, these people can behave in scary ways.
  
• Level 3: Just the sadness of it all. In the cases I have had to deal with the past couple weeks the individuals in question are incredibly intelligent and really sweet people. I myself have a fairly mild case of depression. Two pills every morning and I am OK. But I remember how frustrating and almost soul crushing it can be to so caught up in feelings and thoughts that, on some level, you know do not make sense. And that was depression, I cannot begin to imagine the pain of more serious illnesses like Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder.
  

It all came home for me last night. I was working on a campaign database when one of my best friends called. They had just found his sister's body and since she had Bipolar Disorder there is a good possibility that it was suicide. I left the campaign and spent the evening with him.

A couple years ago another friend had a brother who committed suicide. In that case he had actually tried to get help. But because of cutbacks in social services by the Pawlenty Administration he was not able to be seen for several weeks. He didn't make it to the appointment .... the pain got too great and now we don't have him anymore.

I guess the two things I want to wrap up this rambling post with are:

1) We have got to get serious about health care, including mental health, in this country ... before we lose more people.

2) Please remember that the vast majority of people with mental illnesses are no danger to you, they are more likely to be victimized themselve than hurt others. We may have to make hard decisions about how to interact and facilitate their participation but never forget that they are human beings and citizens who have a voice that desperately needs to be heard.