New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
James Walker: Discarded? The mentally ill are screaming
I guess you could have called it an angry Sunday night in Bridgeport when anger and rage pierced the hot summer air with the sharp suddenness of the unexpected.
I don’t know if a full moon came calling or if on certain nights when the heat is high, demons rise with the atmosphere and hearken people to them.
But I do know I will never know who or what the anger and rage was directed at that night.
The dark world of mental illness shattered a serene, beautiful night in the Park City that had people out strolling downtown and hanging out on the Green.
A homeless man, who was obviously in mental distress, was screaming in rage as he pounded across the Green.
“My whole #%#/!$ life,” he raged at the top of his lungs. “Not one person. Nobody gives a damn. Nobody! My whole #%#/!$ life. Not one.”
The suddenness of his outburst caused heads to momentarily jerk before people returned to their conversations or whatever else they were doing.
It was a scene I had witnessed countless times in my lifetime.
When I was a boy, my friends and I called men like him crazy and ran away laughing at the men gesturing and screaming at the sky.
We were warned by our parents that people like them were “out of their minds” and to stay away.
And as I grew up, I can only say such scenes faded into the normalcy of my life.
I guess that’s what prompted me to write this column about the man whose screams echoed in fury as he continued to walk away from the Green, and a woman who earlier in the day stood at the corner of State and Broad streets and dammed the world to hell.
The mentally ill are still screaming.
But their screams are now like background noise to society, part of the landscape of life that is largely ignored but tolerated until some disruption demands attention.
I have seen the man
many times when I am on the Bridgeport Green. He is one of the regular people I see down here who is obviously suffering from mental illness.
He is a dark-skinned black guy, small in stature whose outer layer of clothing always appears washed in faded grime — and on this hot night, sweat streaked his dark face and crystallized under the lights on his thick head of uncombed black hair and beard.
Many nights I have watched as his lost eyes scanned the gutter for loose change and discarded cigarette butts while he walked along with his backpack weighted down with belongings.
Like other homeless down here on the Green, a plastic bag is his refrigerator and the portable potties, his dressing room.
But it was the actions — or non-actions — of a police officer in the direct line of abuse from
the woman that really drove home how ordinary the screams of the mentally ill have become.
He or she — I could not make out the gender — did nothing, but I am not sure the officer had any other choice.
The woman’s outburst had been going on awhile when the police car pulled up and parked across the street from where she was; I imagine to take stock of the situation. The woman, who had a baby stroller but no baby, rushed across the street and unleashed a flurry of expletives at the officer as he or she sat in the vehicle.
I expected first responders to show up and take the woman to a psychiatric facility to get help — but none arrived and the officer stayed in the vehicle despite the stream of abuse hurled at him or her. Eventually, the woman moved on.
In the United States, mental health has become a serious challenge. Nearly 7 percent — or 16 million people —had at least one major depressive episode in
the past year that critically impacted their lives; nearly 3 percent of the population lives with bipolar disorder and 1 percent with schizophrenia. And more than 18 percent of Americans experience anxiety disorders such as post traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other specific phobias.
And that is before we get to the 50 percent of more than 20 million Americans who have a combined substance abuse problem and a mental illness.
That is a lot of Americans crying out for help — and it is no secret, many are not getting the help they need.
Here in Connecticut, funding on every level for mental health services has been cut or services eliminated even as advocates cry out for more funding and the streets fill up with more homeless who are mentally ill.
The president’s Fiscal Year 2019 budget calls for cuts of $17.9 billion — or 21 percent — for the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, which is below 2017 levels.
And hard-working individuals and parents are falling under the weight of the health care profession’s motto of pay or suffer as they grapple to help loved ones cope with an illness that wrecks lives and tears apart families.
Maybe that is why the officer did nothing to help the woman in obvious mental distress; there was nothing he or she could do.
But there is something the health care profession and the U.S. can do: stop offering eye on the bottom-line care for the mentally ill in crisis and bring down the costs so people can get the long-term treatment for their loved ones that they desperately need.
There are too many mentally ill people calling concrete their beds and jail cells their homes.
And too many whose cries for help are simply discarded as background noise as the wheels of America keep turning.
Connecticut’s mental health
system is considered to be among the nation’s top as far as access to care, but even with that ranking, the state still falls short and much more is needed.
On a calm and peaceful night in downtown Bridgeport with people out laughing and enjoying life, the raw rage of the mentally ill momentarily screamed through the night — and then disappeared back into the background.
But who or what were they screaming at?
I don’t know.
But I can’t help but wonder readers, as I write this, if it is us. I can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, we are as toxic to them as we make them feel they are to us.
Discarded? The mentally ill are screaming.