Opinion:

Change

by Bob Bennett

It’s difficult to walk through downtown Reno, or any city, for that matter, without being asked for change.  Change was also the theme during the Presidential campaign, from both major candidates.  Obviously Mr. Obama had better credibility, or at least was seen as providing hope that change for the better would be in store.   

I just got back from a week in Buffalo N.Y., a city which has lost over half its population in the last decade.  Shuttered storefronts make up the major portion of downtown.  While I thought the political campaigns, both nationally and here in Nevada were nasty, they were almost models of civility compared with the ads and campaigns in western New York.  Yet, even in Buffalo, I met people who were working to make it a better place to live.  People there had heard of Reno’s art community, and are hoping to bring some of our innovations to their city.  They have a stunning waterfront, and while they have depleted much of their fishing stock, they hope to return to more sustainable models of managing their resources.

Innovative ways of thinking are needed for change for the better to take place.  Change which will benefit all the people -- and the environment which supports other life forms as well.  The last few decades have seen unprecedented power transferred to the hands of a few, and it has been power which has been wielded with amazing short sightedness and with concern solely for maintaining the wealth and power of the privileged.  Even though some disagreed with Saint Ronnie (Ronald Reagan), when he said, “A little bit of greed is a good thing,” almost all his disciples decided greed was the new god, and devoted themselves whole heartedly to it.

Working quietly behind the scenes, however, growing numbers have been putting forth new models and ways of looking at things.  Should figures for inflation disregard food and housing costs?  That’s the way it’s been for more than 50 years, but for the average person, it can easily make up 50 to 75%, or more, of their entire budget.  This may have alerted The Federal Reserve and other economic entities about the pain their leverage of assets was inflicting on the common man and woman.  Should the cost for disposing of a product be figured into its purchase price?  Should the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) begin to replace the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)? The Gross Domestic Product is simply a measure of the volume of market transactions in an economy, whether they represent activities that increase well-being or detract from it. Increases in national insecurity that cause us to buy more weapons, increases in sickness that cause us to buy more health care, and increases in crime that cause the victims to buy replacement products, all increase GDP but reduce well-being. The GPI corrects for these factors to better measure the economic activity that improves our lives.  (www.redefiningprogress.org)

The National Institute for Mental Health has begun to offer change, even for some who have been standing on street corners asking for it.  Its new strategic plan (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/strategic-planning-reports/index.shtml) touts a change to a recovery based system, which is really welcomed after decades of holding homelessness, imprisonment, or near coma, induced by drugs as the only options available to those of us diagnosed with a mental health problem.  It recognizes that the DSM- IV, the bible of psychiatry, doesn’t reflect the latest scientific knowledge (many claim it is nothing more than a political document which uses fear and greed to stigmatize many) and is abandoning the belief that people should be allowed to hit rock bottom before anything should be done to help them.  While I can find some minor things to quibble about in it, overall it is a ground breaking departure, which I welcome.  If President Bush has a positive legacy at all, it will be in his New Freedom Commission, which played a major part in spawning this new strategic plan.

One area of the strategic plan shows perhaps the great promise for young people diagnosed with ADHD:   Youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have delayed patterns of brain maturation—three years in some regions, on average. The delay in ADHD is most prominent in the frontal lobe, important for the ability to control thinking, attention, and planning.  Research has shown that individuals with a more active left frontal lobe, demonstrate greater happiness, enthusiasm, joy and alertness, and that mental exercise, particularly the use of imagination and meditation have been proven to increase the size and activity of the left frontal lobe, it would seem to be a crime to automatically put children with this diagnosis on drugs, which do not have this proof of benefit.  Instead it would make sense to begin prescribing acting courses, painting courses, meditation and other activities, such as music, which do have this benefit.

The sister agency of NIMH, the Substance Abuse and Mental Services Administration (SAMSHA) is tasked with supporting the delivery of services to build resilience and support recovery.  While they were not able to release information on the proven ability of peer mentoring to aid recovery from mental illness in time for inclusion in the strategic plan, they expect to be able to formally release this information within the next six months; all that remains is getting all involved federal agencies to sign off on the wording, a daunting task in itself.  However, this points to the environmental factors involved in both the onset of a mental health problem as well as in the recovery aspect which NIMH now acknowledges.

Environmental factors are diverse.  It could include being in a wilderness area, be it sagebrush and canyons, or old growth forests by a stream in a roadless area.  It would also include being in an economically depressed city with little variation from boarded up storefronts or opportunity, or a community which seeks and finds skillful ways of exposing everyone to the best that can be offered.  It would include who your associates are; be they gang members or members of the debating team.  We are responsible for our environment, we help to meld and transform it, as we ourselves are transformed by it.  Little things count, and even the little people can help change the environment into one which will benefit all life and not just promote the destructive dominance of the favored few.

The new administration in Washington will need people who can look at things from different perspectives, and arrive at conclusions that can have wide ranging positive impacts.  Among these people is Dan Fisher, who served on the President’s New Freedom Commission, along with Nevada State Senator Randolph Townsend.  Fisher is a man who had his education interrupted by stays in psychiatric hospitals, and later was a Psychiatrist at the same hospital.  Dr. Fisher obtained an M.D. from George Washington University Medical School in 1976 and completed his Residency in Psychiatry at a Harvard teaching program at Cambridge Hospital. He earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1968 and an A.B. in Biology from Princeton University in 1965.He would be an excellent choice to be the new head of SAMSHA.

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On November 1st, Bob will be presenting Enhancing What’s Right: Alternative and Complementary Treatments, at the Alternative Mental Health Convention in Buffalo, N.Y.

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More information about recovery from mental health problems can be found at my website www.approach2balance.org .

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To contact Bob Bennett, go to bob@approach2balance.org.

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Mental Illness: A Guide To Recovery is available from Trafford Publishing Company. For more information, or to place an order, click here http://www.mentalillnessrecoveryguide.com