psychiatry

My Husband’s Testimony in Austin or I Could Really Use a Wish Right Now part 2

So, yesterday my husband, Bob Flick, testified in Austin to the House Appropriations Committee regarding Article II of the House Appropriations bill aka HB 1.  I am going to post the video link here.  It is seven or so hours long.  This is all about testimony related to funding for health and human services funding in Texas starting September 1, 2011 through August 31, 2013.  By then our daughter will have graduated from high school.  This is the work (public sector mental health and developmental disabilities) I have done just about forever. 

If you want to see what Bob said (and I am so very very proud of him), click on the link and then scroll on the video link to 6:33:40.  Bob’s testimony lasts three minutes (the limit) and ends at 6:33:50.  I am understandably biased but I think he says in three minutes the crux of the whole matter. 

http://www.house.state.tx.us/video-audio/committee-broadcasts/committee-archives/player/?session=82&committee=010&ram=11021807010

Also you need Real Player to watch the clip.  If you want to watch the whole about-seven-hours of testimony, here it is.  If you want to see Bob’s three minutes, scroll to his part near the end. 

If you just believe that we should continue to care for those with mental illness and developmental disabilities in the state of Texas (knowing that God loves us all so very very much) and you happen to live in Texas, please please please let your local state senator and representative know.

If you don’t live in Texas, please say a prayer for those of us who do, and especially for our sisters and brothers with mental illness and developmental disabilities and their families.

Wishing alone won’t get us there.

I Could Really Use a Wish Right Now

B.o.B.’s song “Airplanes (I Could Really Use a Wish Right Now)” keeps running in my head these days–especially the whispered refrain “wish right now, wish right now, wish right now.”  And I ask myself, should I be wishing?  Or should I be praying?  And where is faith these days?

I am pretty ambivalent about the season of winter.  On the one hand, if I happen to be in a place where it is snowing and where I don’t have to do anything but watch it fall, I love the sense of peace and quiet and beauty and stillness that winter brings.  I love fireplaces and drinking spiced tea and curling up while the winds blow outside.  On the other hand, being in the dark both driving to work and driving home from work makes me feel imprisoned.  I drag jackets and coats and scarves everywhere I go and then leave them and forget where they are.  I miss the sun.  It feels pretty hard to just get up and get the basics of life taken care of in these winter months–when I am at home, at work, and having to navigate daily life (and not on a beautiful mountain somewhere rocking by a fireplace while beautiful snowflakes fall outside).  I want to sleep more.

And, in the midst of this hibernation longing of mine, the state legislature is convening in Austin.  Our Texas lawmakers are proposing a budget for the next biennium that could cut up to half of the current general revenue funding for community safety net services for persons with mental retardation and autism spectrum disorders.  This budget could cut up to twenty percent of public mental health services funding, leaving thousands who have serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia with no treatment options.  Human services work has always been an uphill endeavor–the struggle to advocate for and care for those who, but for the grace of God, could be any of us (and are some of us, as pretty much every family is touched in some way by these conditions).  Brain disorders and disabilities are as biological as heart disease and kidney disease and all other medical conditions.  No one asks for a mental or developmental disability.  In the realm of unity, of no separation, of our sisterhood and brotherhood, we are all one and anyone’s pain is all our pain.

Pray for grace and wisdom to shine in the hearts of the decision makers.  Pray for healing of the brokenness we all in truth share.  There are no easy answers.

This season of winter will soon pass–but for those who bravely live with mental illness and developmental disabilities, and for their families and those who love them, the struggle continues.

I could really use a wish right now.

What I Remembered that I Forgot that I Learned Working on the Adolescent Unit

Many years ago, when I was a child psychiatry resident in training, I spent six months working on an adolescent inpatient psychiatry unit.  While I learned a lot about child and adolescent psychiatry during this experience, I also learned a lot about myself and about life.  I learned a lot that seems to have slipped in and out of my mind over the years, and as my psychiatric work has grown more administrative in nature as it is embedded in the context of a resource-scarce public sector environment, it can be easy to begin to lose sight of my original hopes of becoming a healer.

But these are some of the lessons I remember from my work with the kids on that unit all those years ago:

  • Be yourself.  Kids know right away when you are trying to be someone else and it really gets in the way of just about everything.
  • Show up and pay attention.  Those around you may not tell you, but it makes a big difference if you don’t show up.  It also makes a big difference if you do show up but are not really present.
  • Be ready to be surprised.   We don’t know everything that will happen and we can never really know what someone is experiencing inside, so it is a good idea to be open to life as it happens and to practice compassion for everyone.
  • Don’t take anything too personally.  Sometimes when others are grumpy, they are just trying to clarify their boundaries or become themselves a little more fully.  Some folks precipitate conflict because it is easier than to face sadness or separation or loss.  Usually it has little to do with anyone else.
  • Music really is the universal language.  If you want to know someone, listen to their music.  Listen to your own music.  Sing, play an instrument, bang a drum.  Music evokes memories and brings us together.  It even helps with math, so they say.

I had wise teachers in those early days of becoming a fledgling psychiatrist–wise supervisors (whose shoulders I do my best to continue to stand on), wise colleagues (from whom I continue to learn), and most of all, very wise young patients, who so many years later still guide my conscience, reminding me that helping any child is helping all children–indeed is helping us all.

May we always honor and love and care for all the children and adolescents among us, for they are in truth the future and they are in truth the harbors of grace.