I would like to open this little essay with an anecdote or two about some of my mental health coworkers and why I should find them at times a little bit concerning. I am part of a workplace that one could call rather hierarchical. At the apex we have the psychiatrists. At the very bottom, the peer support workers, followed by office and clerical staff, case managers, social workers and rehab therapists.
Peer support workers are by far the worst paid, the least respected and the most under-appreciated members of this little workforce. We earn twelve whopping bucks an hour. I would imagine that entry level for the office and clerical staff would be at least twice that amount, and up it goes according to hierarchical positioning.
It is generally assumed in my workplace that peer support workers are going to deserve an offensively low paycheque and for the following reasons:
1. We lack the university and training credentials.
2. Most of us are already on disability pensions, which provide some of my coworkers with a monthly stipend of around one thousand dollars a month. No one should be expected to live on that, and getting an extra twelve bucks an hour at around forty hours a month is still little more than an insult.
3. This I believe to be the principal cause for our low pay and that we are at best patronized by our coworkers. We, the peer support workers have all been diagnosed with a mental illness. Even though many of us have done spectacularly well in recovery (in my own case, I have never been on medication, nor hospitalized), we still carry that stigma, and I highly doubt that many of our highly educated, well-trained, and highly skilled professional colleagues are ever going to forget this or let us forget it, not from ill-will, but because of fear.
I have still, despite the invisible apartheid that exists in my workplace been able to get to know somewhat some of my coworkers. This almost always happens on the fly, since I don't think any of them would be that interested in socializing with us, given that we still carry that stigma of mental illness. I don't believe this to be intentional on their part by the way, nor because of illwill. It's just the way it happens.
I recall being part of a few workplace conversations: for example, while in a car with two coworkers en route to a client. It was springtime and there was an abundance of beautiful azaleas everywhere. I felt shocked and embarrassed when evidently, neither of my male coworkers (one an occupational therapist, the other a case manager) seemed to know what I was talking about when I mentioned the flowers. They hadn't noticed and couldn't even see those beautiful red flowers flaming out from the gardens that surrounded us. Between themselves all they wanted to talk about was cars and sports. Absolutely blind to the natural beauty around them. And this we call mental wellness?
I recall sitting in on other conversations between the higher-ranked staff members in the staff room or at a company retreat. The conversations were always banal, boring, and reflecting people with incredibly mediocre lives and values: shopping, cars, paying mortgages, shopping, cars, mortgages, sports, going to the mall, restaurants. And this we call mental wellness?
What an uninspiring bunch of losers! And all of them making, compared to me anyway, whopping salaries.
And to think that these are the same kind of people who are considered custodians of good mental health treatment, care and recovery. Or you could call it, encouraging our clients to have the courage to come back, as it is known in some of our circles. Well, come back to what? is what I have to say.
It's the bland leading the bland.
In my thirteen years of working in the mental health system I have long felt, shall we say, disappointed in the celebration of mediocrity that my coworkers and bosses try to pass off as the gold standard for mental wellness: turning us all into happy little consumers and effective little workers, but really doing very little to encourage us to broaden our minds, our horizons or to enrich our souls, or to help us to become more generous and more loving, more creative, more beautiful people.
I think this is because we have not really gotten beyond the Adlerian nonsense of self-actualization as being the be-all and end all of mental health recovery. Self everything, without a whit of concern about how we all do as a community, as people who impact and influence one another, of developing a moral compass or a life ethic, of coming into an experience of spirituality that is something stronger and more meaningful than the au courant yoga, mindfulness and meditation kind of nonsense.
For helping to create a culture of narcissism, the mental health industry has a lot to answer for!
And the reason why they are unable to provide any of this for their clients is because they can't even provide any of it for themselves. How can an empty pitcher be expected to fill an empty cup?
We humans really are an incomplete, pathetic, half-baked bunch. Those of us who do and cope well in that context generally do well professionally, socially and materially. Everyone else, regardless of their human potential, falls through the cracks, and because of trauma from being left so vulnerable to abuse and misfortune, often become psychiatrically ill and turn into our clients.
Trauma informs our human nature. It breaks us open and helps us to reach our true potential as human beings. Among the traumatized, the psychiatrically ill, the psychologically damaged are the artists, the intellectuals, the prophets and seers, the very healers that our human race is not only all the poorer without, but perhaps our very future as a viable species could depend on the full participation of such victims and survivors of trauma such as myself and my many peers with whom I am privileged to celebrate the journey of recovery. Not to come back to the vacuous and selfish materialism that is the only real item on the menu, but to come into a full sense of our humanity, covering the spiritual, the ethical, the artistic, the prophetic, the compassionate, and the healing.
Our mental health care providers need badly to learn from the very clients and peers they still regard as their inferiors and we, the survivors of mental illness, have to start taking the lead. Whether they like it or not.
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