Beyond Blue

I know that I usually feature "Friday's Question" on Friday, but since this is Mental Illness Awareness Week, I'd like to post a few articles on some successes today--a victory in the House to require health plans to cover treatment for mental illness on the same terms and conditions as all other illnesses!--and where where have to go: an article by Beyond Blue reader Larry Parker on stigma, and a letter from Group Beyond Blue SoberToday revised from Bek Oberin on what we want to say to those living without depression and/or anxiety.

To read more Beyond Blue, go to www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.

Let's start with the good news, of course. From NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness):

By a vote of 263-171, the House October 3 gave final approval to the Paul Wellstone-Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (HR 1424). President Bush is expected to sign the legislation later. 

A Triumph for Consumers and Families

This victory in the House ends a nearly 20 year effort to require group health plans to cover treatment for mental illness on the same terms and conditions as all other illnesses. NAMI is extremely grateful for the tireless work of advocates from all over the nation that contacted their Senators and House members to push for this landmark legislation. The advocacy voice of people living with mental illness and their families made a tremendous difference in securing this long sought victory.

NAMI also salutes the leadership of the sponsors of parity in Congress including Senators Pete Domenici (R-NM), Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Representatives Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Jim Ramstad (R-MN). Today NAMI also remembers the contributions of the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) in bringing parity forward. After nearly 20 years, their efforts have resulted in mental illness treatment no longer being subject to 2nd class status in our health care system.

What Happens Next?

President Bush is expected to sign HR 1424 very quickly in order to restore confidence in sagging credit markets. The parity law becomes effective 1-year after enactment of the bill. This will mean that group health plans will no longer be able to impose limits on inpatient days or outpatient visits or require higher deductibles or cost sharing for mental illness or addiction treatment that are not also applied to all other medical-surgical coverage.

There is a special effective date rule for collective bargaining agreements that would delay imposition of the parity requirements until the next collective bargaining contract goes into effect. The law requires that the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Treasury issue regulations within 1 year, although failure to issue such regulations will not delay the effective date of parity.

In the coming weeks, NAMI will be developing educational materials and guidelines on how parity will impact insurance coverage for consumers and families. For now, NAMI advocates can celebrate a landmark achievement!

To read more Beyond Blue, go to www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.

Thanks to Beyond Blue reader Larry Parker for writing the following post as part of "The Doxieman Blog" which you can get to by clicking here:

I fight the good fight against stigma against mental illness. But I was taken aback by the truth of something I read recently in Pete Earley's seminal book "Crazy." (As he notes, the description is of the system, not the people in the system.)

The federal government (i.e., the NIH) says mental illness is a chemical imbalance, and because of that it's a sickness and not something ... that anyone seeks or wants or deserves to get any more than he seeks, wants, or deserves to get a cold. 

But deep down, we really don't want to believe that's true. Because if we did, we would have to admit: It could happen to us. It could happen to me. And that is such a frightening thought that we quietly search for explanations to prove that the mentally ill aren't really like us and they somehow deserve the torment they suffer.

Why is it, for example, that a no-brainer, common-sense reform like community mental health care -- closing down the horrible Gothic mental hospitals and bringing people who could largely if not entirely live on their own into small group homes -- was given up on immediately? Even as more dubious social reforms of the 1960s, such as Aid for Families with Dependent Children (an oxymoron if ever there was one -- welfare broke up families BY DESIGN), persisted for three decades?

Because it meant that mental health consumers would be among us -- not "safely" in Bedlam in London or Bellevue in New York. (Of course mental health consumers are always among us, but "don't ask don't tell" allows plausible deniability.)

I will fight the stigma against mental illness until the day I die. But I think my fellow Beyond Blue member Melzoom is more on track as to how this will finally start to end.
In America, 1 in 11 people have mental illness. And that means a lot more people are touched by mental illness in some way or other -- to see a friend or family member as human instead of a monster.

I'd make an analogy to the racist patriarch whose son or daughter marries someone of a different ethnic background and has a family. Suddenly he must accept his multiethnic grandchildren or destroy his family.

Likewise, the families and close friends of those with mental illness must accept us or lose us. I think more of them are making the right choice.

But it's still heartbreaking -- to us personally, and to our society -- that some don't.

To read more Beyond Blue, go to www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.

Thanks to Group Beyond Blue member SoberToday who revised and edited this letter authored by Ben Oberin about HEP C to speak to those of us who live with depression and anxiety. You may read her discussion thread at Group Beyond Blue by clicking here.

Having depression and anxiety means many things change, and a lot of them are invisible. Getting help means many things as well, again most of them not quite visible to you. Unlike having cancer or being hurt in an accident, most people do not understand even a little about depression and anxiety and its effects, and of those that think they know, many are actually mis-informed. 

In the spirit of informing those who wish to understand ... These are the things that I would like you to understand about me before you judge me...

Please understand that being sick doesn't mean I'm not still a human being. I have to spend most of my day in considerable emotional turmoil and exhaustion, fighting thoughts that make me feel insane and fighting the voice in my head that says you cant do this anymore just go. And if you visit I probably don't seem like much fun to be with, but I'm still me stuck inside this body. I may worry about life and work and my family and friends much more than the regular person, but I still want to know how your doing.

Please understand the difference between "happy" and "healthy". When you've got the flu you probably feel miserable with it, but I've been sick for years. I can't be miserable all the time, in fact I work hard at not being miserable. So if you're talking to me and I sound happy, it means I'm having a moment of remission. That's all. It doesn't mean that I'm not suffering, or that I'm cured, or any of those things. Please, don't say, "Oh, you're sounding better!". I am not sounding better, I am sounding happy and maybe even hopeful for the moment.

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Also on Beliefnet's Bipolar Resource page is my article on the intersection of spiritual life and bipolar disorder.

I don't think I'm romanticizing my bipolar disorder in saying that my real faith, the engine that propels me to love better and be better, was born during my severely ill days, that my mood disorder has been a helping hand in teaching me what I'm made of.

Not only can bipolar disorder act as a refiner's fire, purifying the faith of a believer, but manic depression itself, can mimic the behavior of someone growing in her spiritual life. That's great news for me! The next time I get manic and tell an inappropriate joke to a colleague, I can say that I'm just getting closer to God, that's all. A confusing statement, but a true one, I believe.

Carmelite scholar Kevin Culligan, O.C.D., explains this concept in his fascinating essay that was published as part of Dr. Keith J. Egan's book, "Carmelite Prayer: A Tradition for the 21st Century":

The spiritual life can also easily mask a bipolar disorder or what has traditionally been called a manic-depressive condition. As a mood disorder, depression has usually been linked in systems of classifications of mental disorders with mania, an agitated mood that is at the other end of the affective continuum opposite a depressed or dysphoric mood. Manic symptoms are many: inappropriate elation, excessive irritability, severe insomnia, grandiose notions, increased talking, disconnected and racing thoughts, heightened sexual desire, markedly increased energy, poor judgment, and disruptive social behavior. These symptoms may suddenly appear in a person committed to the spiritual journey and life of prayer as making dramatic prophetic gestures, for example, standing on the street corner denouncing abortion or announcing the imminent Second Coming, or giving away one's financial savings to charitable causes.

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According to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness): Since 1990, mental health advocates across the country have joined together during the first week of October to celebrate Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW) and Bipolar Disorder Awareness Day. In 1990,...

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