Putting lyrics from two Bob Dylan songs together, Subterranean Homesick Blues and Blowin’ in the Wind we get:

“You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows”

“The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

These lyrics come to mind today since we had planned to go a chili fundraising concert today in Pulaski where both my grandsons were playing in jazz bands. But my wife, Pat, listening to the weatherman last night got scared of the long drive back and forth it takes to get to the high school and home. It turns out the weather was not that bad and the real cold and maybe snow weather is for the next two days when she needs to go to work in the library. When schools close library stay open for they are heating places for homeless persons. Homeless people often need to leave shelters during the day and public libraries are good places to be.
I was especially disappointed not to go to the grandson’s jazz concerts since we had to miss it last year as well.

Also I am disappointed at the constant weather reports geared to be sensational and making persons afraid, rightly or wrongly. I am old enough to remember the days before wind chill numbers and constant weather reports. My guess is that my grandchildren who live in a rural area and who all three take the school bus together, grade, middle and high school, will have school where city kids will not. Snow not cold would be another thing.

The answer for many things, besides weather conditions, is ‘blowin’ in the wind. There is constant talk these days about our broken mental health system in this country. Persons with mental illnesses, it has been shown, commit less crimes than ‘normal’ persons but the crimes that are more sensational, like the recent University and Mall shootings, make national news. Locally there are all kinds of ‘solutions’ going around including closing the poorly run, underfunded county Behavior Health Center.There is talk, just like in 80’s about going to a “community base system”. This idea failed in the 80’s mostly out of lack of funding and will probably fail again today when tax cuts are popular with politicians and spending for ‘common good’ is not.

However, the real answer why changes of the mental health system failed us in the 80’s and will fail us again is simple, the answer is blowin’ in the wind. The answer, my friend, is that we do not recognize mental health illnesses as we do others, like serious accidents, cancer and heart disease. If a person has a heart attack or a person suffers sever injury in an accident, the person, conscious or not conscious will be taken to a hospital and treated. However, an adult with a severe mental illness breakdown cannot be hospitalized without his or her consent, and even with consent will stay in the hospital or behavior health system just a few days, not until they are healed enough to go to a community based program.

Health insurance companies, stigmas on brain illnesses and lack of insight by sick person make it that way. We have a County Behavior Health Center that is not a hospital and been cited over and over again for lack of proper medical care for persons. Many poor persons with mental illnesses end up in jail, prisons or homeless shelters.

Our hospitals will only take persons who consent to be admitted and have health insurance. And then it is for a few days not till the person is healed to go back for community based care. Mental illnesses are brain illnesses and very physical but are not treated by society, health professionals and insurance companies as other illnesses like heart disease and cancer. We even had special hospitals for cancer and heart illnesses but full medical hospital for mental health brain illnesses.

I have a young adult friend who was seriously ill in his brain but could not be admitted to any hospital or good treatment center. One night he was severely beaten and left with a serious external life threatening head injury. He was taken to the emergency room and admitted. When he was out of danger with the external brain injury his parents asked if he could be put in the mental health section of the hospital for his ‘other’ brain injury. At the time he had no health insurance and the hospital said if he wanted treatment they would need to send him to the County Behavior Health Center, which would most likely refuse him, since he was, at the time, ‘not an immediate danger to himself or others’. He was released. Over the years he and his parents did seek treatment for his ‘other brain injury’, mental illness, and for various reason, lack of his consent or proper health insurance or facilities has not be admitted or released too soon. He continues to survive from crisis to crisis and there seems to be not much anyone can do about it.

Recognition of mental illnesses as regular illnesses seems like an oversimplified answer but it is the answer ‘blowin in the wind’ that we need to understand before we can move on with healing. We do not need a talk show, news report or weather man to know which way the wind blows with mental or brain illnesses.

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