This morning I found myself as the only man attending a networking brunch sponsored by the Milwaukee Muslim Woman’s Coalition at the Islamic Center. The guest speaker was an African American woman from the National Alliance for Mental Illness,(NAMI) talking about “The Stigma of Mental Illness.” I was there because of my deep interest in the stigma of mental illness, something I have experienced and written about, just a week or so ago having a letter to the editor on the subject and having been part of the local newspaper’s forum on mental illness at Marquette University law school and many other related activities.
Sadly my interest in mental illnesses and the stigma it generates began when my son, Peter became ill in 1992 and has lasted through his death in 2010. Through him I got to understand the terrible weight of stigma and how stigma stains the soul.
The sponsor group, The Milwaukee Muslim Woman’s Coalition, also got my interest since I have been impressed by their activities and the important role they play in the community, particularly in the Muslim community. The American stigma of Muslim Women is easily erased when you meet these women.
The speaker from NAMI was excellent when talking about how mental illnesses are like any other illnesses, like cancer or diabetes and should be treated that way and not as a character flaw. However, NAMI, locally, has joined a growing number of social agencies and politicians calling for the tearing down of the present Behavior Health Complex and replacing it with community based program. I am no fan of the mental health complex in Milwaukee. I have seen its deterioration in the hands of politicians, Democratic and Republican, by lack of funding for mental health. However, tearing it down and using the money for community programs is not the answer.
As the speaker suggested mental illnesses should be treated as any other illnesses, injury or disease with a comprehensive mental health care system with hospital, rehabilitation and treatment centers as well as community program. No one is talking about where the money for hospital care, treatment centers will come from.
In the 80’s where there was a massive amount of people put away in major institutions there was a call to empty the homes for mental health and give them community care. Thousands and thousands were released from mental health institutions only to find there was no money for building medical care hospitals, rehab centers, home and community program. Do we need to learn the lesson all over again, closing institutions without money committed for a comprehensive system like other illnesses will just mean, as it did in the 80’s, more men and women with mental illnesses on the streets and in jails.
When we will ever learn that moving money from one underfunded type of care to another underfunded type of care and not dealing with the sources and treatment of mental illnesses will just cost us more.
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