Tag: politics

Mom Is Gone Now and Politicians Are Still Unhelpful

mikegaeta

I’m doing what advocacy I can still, though it is very slow moving. Most recently, I contacted a couple of California State Representatives to let them know I’m available to provide testimony for legislation related to treating people with severe mental illness (SMI). Improving access to treatment and care for people with SMI is getting more attention these days, due to the homeless crisis here in CA. However, as was the case when my mom was alive and we’d try to get her help, politicians and their aides are showing little interest in helping or listening to me. One of the aides of State Representative Buffy Wicks (District 15) actually asked me what my credentials were, when talking to them on the phone! As a political scientist, that perplexed me. As a citizen and tax payer, that disgusted me. Politicians need to be more responsive to their constituents, regardless of status.

I’m “playing the game” for now. But I’m not above harassing them to get a meeting. Below is a copy of a letter I recently sent to Representative Miguel Santiago (District 53), as an example.

Dear Representative Santiago,

I am writing to you because I would like to give testimony for bills and proposals related to the treatment of people with severe mental illness (SMI). I understand that there is currently a bill, AB 1340, that you are sponsoring that is scheduled to be discussed in January. The bill, as I understand it, would amend/modify “Grave Disability” criteria that is a part of the 5150/LPS process. I am highly interested in providing testimony for that proposal, given that I have unique experience and invaluable knowledge in dealing with the 5150/LPS process.

A photo from 2009 of mom and I before we appeared in probate court. I was her conservator for a short time.

Professionally, I am a community college teacher and a Political Scientist. I have been teaching full-time at City College of San Francisco since 2005. I am, also, an advocate for people with SMI and a former caregiver of a family member with a SMI. My mother, a second generation Mexican-American, began exhibiting signs of a serious mental illness around 2002. I started to play a direct role in trying to get her help and treatment in 2007. By then, as a result of no treatment, she was having hallucinations and not taking care of her medical/physical needs, particularly her diabetes. Despite my family’s best efforts, my mother would spend the last 1/3rd of her life with an untreated SMI. In my experience with the mental healthcare system, as my mom’s advocate and caregiver, I largely blame the 5150/LPS process for her needless suffering and premature death.

I found out relatively quickly how difficult it was to get help for my mother, when I began advocating for her in 2007. Though my mother would be 5150ed various times, between 2007-2009, I was told by representatives in both San Francisco County’s and Fresno County’s Behavioral Health Department that it would be easier for them to take her in and treat her if she were homeless! “Really?!”, I thought. “How unconscionable!” I had to get both counties involved, since I was living in San Francisco and my mom was primarily in Fresno, at the time.

Starting in 2010, the unimaginable would happen. My mom would end up homeless, living in a car, due to multiple evictions from apartments. At times, when we could, my sister and I would try to have her 5150ed, out of desperation. She’d show up at our houses exhausted and sick from lack of sleep and rest, and failing to treat her diabetes. The police would show up and, each time, refuse to 5150 her. Though homeless and obviously ill, they would judge her to not be “gravely disabled.”  They would essentially tell us, “She has to be lying naked in urine and feces on a railroad track” for her to meet “gravely disabled” criteria. In these experiences and more, what became clear to me is that her living in a car was considered “adequate shelter.” My mom barely having any clothes to wear, even in Winter, was still viewed as “adequate clothing.” Though she was diabetic, eating primarily high fat and high carb food was viewed as her being able to “adequately feed herself.” My mom having an official diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder did not matter to them. Each time, they would conclude she was “competent” and able to make decisions for herself.

To me and my family, this was an outright neglect of duty by these police officers. Eventually, in 2018, she would develop stage 4 kidney failure. A Modesto police officer took this institutionalized neglect and, really, cruelty, to a new level when he refused to 5150 my mother in January of 2018, when she stopped taking her medications for various serious physical conditions. My mom was in the midst of an acute psychotic episode and stopped taking her medications because “God told her they were poison.” Going on day four, she was unable to eat or drink anything. She did not have an appetite and would puke up anything she tried to drink. She was demonstrating organ failure. Despite this, the police officer determined she did not meet 5150 criteria. My arguments to the contrary and pleas for help fell on deaf ears. The police officer, like many before him, ruled my mom was “competent” and able to decide for herself if she wanted to go to the hospital. My mom could have died at the house. The police were willing to let her die. Fortunately, however, from the urging of other family members, my mom would agree to go to a hospital later in the day and be medically/physically stabilized.

All of this is to say nothing of other times the 5150 process and various authority figures and officials failed my mother. I detail this some in a documentary film I made in 2020 titled “Benevolent Neglect.” It is available for viewing on YouTube. (A film trailer is available for viewing here: https://youtu.be/ta08Lo3ULqo ) With this letter, I have focused on the problems my family has faced with how “Grave Disability” is interpreted and applied. It is too NARROW. Dr. Julea McGhee, who is the emergency room psychiatrist in my film, told me this.  She said the problem is insurance companies determine what constitutes “Grave Disability” and that they intentionally define it narrowly. In her opinion, many more people should fit the criteria for “Grave Disability” than actually do. I understand that AB 1340 would amend “Grave Disability” to include “medical self-neglect.” I strongly support including “medical self-neglect,” as my mother’s frequent hospitalizations and deteriorating health were undoubtedly the result of her severe mental illness. As I think I demonstrated, I can speak on this with considerable knowledge and authority. I have much more I could say and contribute in this discussion and debate. Thank you.

I’m a Former Caretaker and The Joker Movie Is Pretty Right On About Society

I’m a Former Caretaker and The Joker Movie Is Pretty Right On About Society

mikegaeta

As a former caretaker, The Joker movie hit me in a raw way. I think the movie accurately portrays how society mistreats the poor and people with serious mental illness (SMI). I saw this, firsthand, in trying to help and take care of my mom, who struggled with schizoaffective disorder.

My mom wasn’t able to take care of herself adequately. She, in fact, had been suffering mightily and deteriorating for years. I couldn’t take it anymore. She deserved to live with a semblance of dignity.

When I started taking care of her full-time, we didn’t have a lot of family around and I didn’t have a lot of money saved up from my teaching job. So, my mom and I were pretty isolated socially and very reliant on the government for her healthcare and welfare needs.

I was able to stabilize her medically (physically) enough and keep her safe for two years, but society made it exceedingly difficult, in every respect, for me to do so. As it was, it never provided us with sufficient help and respect, since the onset of her SMI. My mom needlessly suffered for more than a decade. She would never be treated for her SMI and stabilized. She was discarded. We were discarded.

“They don’t care about people like you, Arthur.”

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Arthur Fleck doing his best to survive.

Those were the words spoken to Arthur Fleck by his government social worker (SW). She was referring to the policy makers (officials) who decided to close her office and, thus, cut Arthur off from his psychiatric meds. But as was clear in their interactions, even the SW didn’t seem to care all that much about Arthur’s struggle. As Arthur stated moments before she told him the news, “You never really listen to me.” He’s of course saying she doesn’t really care about him.

This was all too common an experience in trying to access MH services for my mom. For example, there was the time when an intake worker/clinician at a county Behavioral Health Department, in flagrant violation of county policy and state law, outright denied my mom MH services, because my mom, like many people with SMI, denied having a SMI!

The worker was cold and impersonal from the minute we met. I remember saying, angrily, on my way out of the interview/assessment, “I’m waiting outside, mama. All she’s doing at this point is filling out information so they can get their money for seeing you from Medi-Cal.”

There was the time when a hospital nurse and supervisor unsafely discharged my mom against my wishes. My mom was clearly in a psychotic state and unable to make a competent decision about her own care. My mom didn’t even believe she was in a hospital.

Despite this and her physical condition being fragile (She would be treated for sepsis and was just two days removed from a ventilator.), hospital staff would wheel her to a cab. They couldn’t even be bothered to do a psychiatric evaluation to see if she fit involuntary hold criteria.

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My mom didn’t like hospitals. I can’t blame her.

This incident was an extreme example, but our experiences with various hospitals taught me they don’t give a shit about people with SMI. Whenever my mom started to become non-compliant, due to her psychosis, staff would become less attentive and they’d begin preparing her for discharge, even if she wasn’t medically stable.

And this is what they were willing to do regularly in front of me. I can only imagine what they did all those times I wasn’t with her before she lived with me!

“Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?”

That’s what Arthur asked his social worker during one of their sessions. She responded by saying, “It’s tough times. People are struggling with no work.”

Her comment is a reference to the larger political and economic situation the movie is based in. It’s a pretty subtle backdrop, but the movie itself starts with a radio report of a pitched labor battle, a garbage strike, to help make that very point.

It lasts weeks and leads to increasing piles of garbage on city and neighborhood streets. Tensions build and, eventually, protests breakout at what’s clearly deep frustration with economic inequality and uncertainty, and government mistreatment and negligence.

Arthur’s access to his meds and social worker getting cutoff epitomizes how poor people with disabilities are some of the biggest victims of these conditions. Social scientists actually have a name for such government practices. They’re called “austerity politics.”

In a basic sense, we have been living under an era of “austerity politics” for decades. Since the 70s, governments, at every level, have been cutting costs and services (i.e. downsizing), in the name of “fiscal responsibility” and in order to foster a better “business environment.” It’s a process, a project really, that started as a result of a sluggish economy, increased foreign competition and lower corporate profits. The movie is set in the early 80s, the decade when the process accelerates. (My mom would actually lose her job with the State of California in the late 90s, due to layoffs.)

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An abandoned psychiatric hospital

Mental health services have not gone untouched. People like to blame the Republicans and Ronald Reagan for the closing of state psychiatric hospitals. But today, even in “Liberal” San Francisco, we have a local government severely neglecting the needs of its own SMI population. So much so, we have local MH workers themselves speaking out against the inadequate conditions and publicly protesting. In fact, former Chief Psychiatrist of SF General Hospital, Robert Okin, describes the situation as a “war on the mentally ill.”

Arthur’s social worker’s full comment actually was “They don’t care about people like you, Arthur. They don’t care about people like me either.” I’ve had my issues with regular staff and frontline workers. In fact, a friend my mom and I made at her dialysis center even told me, in a private conversation, that her coworkers don’t care about the patients. They only care about the money.

This regime we are living under of austerity leaves me with no doubt, however, that high level administrators and public officials are the biggest culprits of all. They make it too difficult, if not impossible, for even the best and most empathetic workers to do their jobs.

“Society decides what’s fun-ny.” 

Arthur says this after embracing his homicidal, violent urges and becoming The Joker. It’s the beginning of a strident public criticism he makes, while appearing on a late-night talk show, to explain his rage and motives. His criticism really is the first time he says something so politically cohesive in the movie.

In a basic sense, he says society made the rules and the rules were made to keep him marginalized and an outcast. He worked hard and honestly, but he lost his job cause of a dishonest coworker and cold-hearted boss. He wanted to get better, but he was cut off from his meds. He cared for his ill mother the best he could, but in the end, she was his biggest betrayer and abuser.

My life experience hasn’t been so bleak. In fact, there were many people, workers, clinicians and strangers that were nice to me and my mom, and did try to help in some way. And my mama knew I loved her and I know she loved me, even though her SMI strained our relationship.

But I damn well know there are too many people who have it worse, like Arthur. And some of them, unfortunately, do lash out with violence. As it is, I’ll never forget what was done to me and my family. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive. Society will try to focus on individual motives or psychological reasons for behavior it doesn’t like, but the fact of the matter is society, is too often, the monster.

San Francisco Liberals Are Split on How to Help People with Serious Mental Illness. They Also Don’t Want to Spend The Money.

San Francisco Liberals Are Split on How to Help People with Serious Mental Illness. They Also Don’t Want to Spend The Money.

mikegaeta

The homelessness crisis in San Francisco has put a spotlight on another crisis, the plight of people with serious mental illness (SMI) who are too sick to help themselves.

According to the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), approximately 3.3% of the U.S. population (8.3 million) live with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

As any SF resident knows, the intersection between homelessness and SMI is a significant one. According to TAC, around 30% of the chronically homeless are reported to have a SMI.

Of course, mental health services for this group are available. But for too many, they are inadequate, if not impossible to receive. In fact, about half of people with SMI are untreated at any given time. Without effective treatment, too many are left to suffer in the streets or their cars, under bridges or subway tunnels.

To address this crisis, local State Assembly representative Scott Weiner, with support from SF mayoral candidate London Breed, is sponsoring SB 1045. The bill would make it easier for a court to place a conservatorship on individuals who are deemed unable to adequately take care of themselves, as a result of their serious mental illness. As a former conservator, I understand they are absolutely necessary for many people with SMI, but Weiner’s and Breed’s solution falls well short.

In socially liberal San Francisco, from Patient and Disability Rights groups, to the ACLU to social justice activists, the bill has plenty of critics and opposition.

Yet, how humane is it to let people with SMI suffer from psychosis, and in many cases, untreated and deepening psychosis? The research is clear that the longer people go without adequate treatment for their SMI, the more difficult it is for them to recover. This group is also extremely vulnerable to physical and sexual violence. On Twitter, Wiener regularly makes this point.

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And the reality is current law already allows authorities to involuntarily hospitalize (i.e. 5150) someone. Part of the problem is that the legal concept “gravely disabled” is interpreted far too narrowly.

Basically, one is gravely disabled when he or she is unable to provide food, clothing or shelter for themselves, as a result of their mental illness. However, authorities, from police officers to field clinicians, often say that homeless people are “self-directing” enough to not warrant a 5150 hold “as long as a person on the streets can say where they are going to sleep for the night,” even if it means sleeping behind a dumpster.

This despite the same person endangering themselves by running in traffic thirty minutes earlier and not actively being under psychiatric treatment for their known SMI.

Weiner’s bill recognizes this absurdity and includes a person’s medical and psychiatric history in evaluating whether or not a person needs to be involuntarily hospitalized and placed under a conservatorship.

Where will these people be treated, however? As mentioned above, about half of people with SMI are untreated at any given time, meaning their chances of experiencing acute psychotic episodes are very high. They will require immediate stabilization. For many, that means both medical and psychiatric stabilization and treatment.

Are there enough inpatient psychiatric beds available for the necessary medium to long-term stays? Nationally, the number of inpatient beds available has been slashed in the U.S. over the course of many decades. For example, from their historic peak in 1955, the number of state hospital beds in the United States had plummeted almost 97% by 2016.

This no doubt has contributed to the fact that prisons and jails are the biggest mental health treatment centers in the country.

Beyond a small number of advocacy organizations and outraged family members of loved ones with SMI, nobody talks about this national disgrace. As one such family member, imagine my surprise when I learned SF mayoral candidate Mark Leno makes this very point.

From his webpage: “Mental health policy experts recommend supplying 50 in-patient psychiatric beds for every 100,000 residents in the total population. In San Francisco, that would add up to over 430 beds. And yet, a 2016 policy analyst report showed that San Francisco only offers 163 beds.” He goes on to say that he will add 200 inpatient mental health beds, doubling the supply.

homeless-chicagoWithout doing this, Wiener and Breed are putting the cart before the horse. At worse, it looks like they are trying to appease business interests in the city that want the streets desperately “cleaned up” more than they are trying to help those with SMI and their families.

Because you have to wonder, why is this all of a sudden an issue now? No SF official was interested in helping me when my mom was living with me in SF in ’09. In fact, SF General Hospital released my mom prematurely on more than one occasion, even though she clearly needed psychiatric treatment. They fail to treat or release people prematurely because they don’t have the bed space. A representative in SF Behavioral Health told me as much.  I was her conservator at the time and the city failed to help me help my mom.

So again, why? Yes, part of it is the increase in the homeless population. The other part is the “nuisance problem” being caused by increased homelessness. It is hurting the business climate, plain and simple. This should not be the main basis for helping people that are homeless, especially those with serious mental illness and addictions.

The U.S is ranked 29th among 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in supplying psychiatric beds. It is a sign of inadequate healthcare, not freedom.

Tribute: My Beautiful Mom Showed Me What Strength and Courage Are

Tribute: My Beautiful Mom Showed Me What Strength and Courage Are

mikegaeta

“The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.” –Michel Foucault

Despite my family’s best efforts to care for her and make sure she received adequate medical and mental health treatment, my beautiful mama passed away prematurely on February 27 at the age of 66.

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My mom at around eleven years old

My mom was the daughter of Mexican immigrant farm workers and the youngest of eight children. She graduated from high-school and received her Associate’s Degree from Fresno City College, despite having to work in the fields with her family starting from a young age. She would marry her high-school sweetheart, my father, shortly after his return from the Vietnam War.

My mom was a devoted wife, mom, sister and aunt and would defend her family fiercely from all injustices and dangers. One of my earliest memories of her protecting me involves her confronting an older boy who was bullying me when I was in first grade. In talking with him, she convinced the older boy to act as a bodyguard for me against any further bullying from anybody.

When she was not busy working or advocating for us in our schools, my mom enjoyed hosting and feeding extended family and our friends. Whether with her lasagna or albondigas soup, my mom would regularly showcase her excellent cooking skills. Her menudo was particularly good. To this day, my dad adamantly says he has never had menudo as good as my mom’s. In recent weeks, my cousins have reminded me how central my mom’s love, charisma and generosity were to our larger family’s closeness and happiness.

My mom also loved and served the Lord dutifully. Indeed, the two things that made her happiest were being with friends and family and praising and sharing the “word of God”

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My mama with my sister and me.

with others. Her faith in and love for God shaped most of her relationships and many of her decisions. The joy she expressed in her faith would provide the ultimate benefit to one of her childhood friends when they would reach their 20s. My mom gave her friend religious testimony and counseling that literally saved her friend from a dark, depressing time. I learned about this in the tribute my mom’s friend gave at the funeral service. “I wanted that joy,” my mom’s friend said.

While the immediate cause of her death was kidney failure, I know the main culprits are a negligent and abusive healthcare system and callous and inhumane government. My beautiful mama began exhibiting signs of a serious mental illness as early as 2003. She began claiming people were out to get her and that microchips and hidden cameras were being used to track her movements and interfere with her thoughts.

After years of witnessing her neglect her diabetes and put herself in dangerous situations numerous times, I began intervening to try and get my mom help in the summer of 2007. By then and much to my agony, my mom was hearing voices and talking to herself. Little did I know how virtually impossible it would be to get the help my mom desperately needed.

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My mom and me at my graduation from U.C. Berkeley.

From top to bottom, the healthcare system showed a constant disregard for my mom and our family. Medical doctors and hospitals had little patience and sympathy for someone who frequently would become distrustful and non-compliant (Patient Dumping from a Son’s Perspective). Skillful and caring counselors and psychiatrists we’d interact with were few. Even then, there was little they could do, given my mom did not believe she was ill and refused to take psychiatric medicine.

And while there is a legal basis to involuntarily hospitalize someone against their will, authority figures would regularly find my mom “self-directing” enough as the reason for them not to take action. For example, numerous police officers would say like pre-programed robots, “A person has to be lying down naked on the railroad tracks for us to take them in.” Hospital social workers would ask me “What does your mother want?” when I would request a psychiatric evaluation. Me saying “She wants to be with her family,” would garner little sympathy.

When she was homeless and living in a car for a time, I pointed out to a representative from the Californian Department of Public Health that she meets involuntary hospitalization legal criteria, since she was homeless as a result of her mental illness. I was told that, “Technically, a car roof is a roof over one’s head.”

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Mom and me visiting Monterey, CA in Dec. ’17.

Ultimately, in the end, though they were claiming to respect “civil rights,” they all were actually aiding and abetting a system that refuses to provide quality psychiatric hospitals and treatment and, instead, prefers to leave too many people to suffer, estranged from family and friends in the streets or thrown away in jails or prisons.

I moved my mother in with me in February ’16 because I could not continue to see her suffer and estranged from the family she loved and did so much for. I lost my mama twice, the first time to her mental illness and the second time, years later, to her physical illness. I was never able to have her be a fully healthy part of my life during most of my 20s and all of my 30s. Now I am 42 years old and will have to figure out how to rebuild and live my life without my beautiful mom.

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Mama was laid to rest wearing her favorite peach dress and white sweater and the necklace I bought her for Christmas.

I am currently seeing a grief counselor and it is clear I have a lot of trauma, emotions, and anxiety to work through. What will help me heal and prosper are the strength and courage my mom showed through her adversity. She never wavered from principles or lost her faith in the Lord or her will to live. I hope to become half as strong and half as principled in my life, particularly in my advocacy for a better healthcare and support system for caregivers and families. We deserve better. My mama deserved better. We love and miss you mom.