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"STIGMA: A PERSONAL VIEW"
COFA\CMH STIGMA PANEL
April 8, 1992

    Karenlee Robinson, the Administrative Director of County Psych Hospital, invited my
group, Clients & Others for Action (COFA) to present a panel on the stigma of mental illness to
the hospital Treatment Team meeting when I was chair of COFA. When those of us who were to
be speakers met with Karenlee prior to the panel, she said that the moderator would indicate my
sentiment that COFA was "more than cigarettes". This refers to the fact that COFA sold
cigarettes to the patients in the hospital because the county had all cigarette machines removed
from all hospitals. Many clients and staff think that selling cigarettes is all that COFA does. As
indicated below, COFA does a lot more, being an advocacy group.
   Karenlee said that the main purpose of the panel was for us to touch the hearts and
souls of her people and to dialogue with them. Another purpose was to have her staff connect
with people who had been patients and had become volunteers in the delivery of health care.
She emphasized that COFA was a leadership group which was making change in the system into
a subtle issue. She wanted to change from having her people in a paternalistic role to a situation
of having dialog between staff and clients.
    The National Institute of Mental Health requested that I have the panel videotaped for
them but I was unable to have the county do it on short notice. I asked COFA's attorney,
Michael Coleman, about something that I was uncertain about saying at the panel. He said, "Be
supportive -- make friends, not enemies". I decided to use my line about (@@) anyway.
    My talk was titled, "Stigma: A Personal View", Gabriella's was "Breaking the Silence" and
Sandy's was "Subtle Abuse".
    I wanted to make my entire speech, estimated at 7 minutes, totally from memory,
without resorting to notes. I practised for several hours, on tape and with a friend, and felt that I
could do it expertly. I did do it without notes but figured out that I left out 3 key sentences. I
considered my memorization a success anyway. I later expanded the part about unfair firing for
the chapter on losing jobs. The text of my presentation follows.

1. Personal Experiences
    I've had stigma in relationships and jobs. I've been the victim of prejudice from loved
ones and bosses. This is titled, "Stigma: A Personal View". It is about stigma in personal
relationships and job termination and media. There is abundant evidence for stigma and Mental
Illness. National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) research says "most Americans think the two
worst things that can happen to a person are leprosy and insanity".
    Personal Relationships.
    1982 -- Carol-Jean. She was present during my first episode. She later said that there
had been "too much excitement". She proclaimed I could talk to her only one minute a month on
the phone. She said that there were other reasons that the relationship was already falling apart
but that the illness was an important factor.
    1984 -- Amy. She was given my phone number by CMH but never reached me. I tried
calling her from the CMH payphone 43+ times -- I counted -- but she wouldn't answer. This was
after someone had told her that I was in the hospital. We never talked again.
    These have been examples of stigma. Most women that I have been in relationships
with have been ok. with my Mental Illness. This has been two who weren't.
    1985 -- Dian. When I was with her, I took my pills behind a closed door and silently. I
was surprised that she was ok. when she finally found out about my illness. She even went to
my psychiatrist with me.
2. Job Marketing. In the first place, I can't list my Mental Health offices on my resume unless it
is for a rare job in the system.
3. Unfair Firing
    1982 -- Mattel Electronics -- Videogame Programmer. I was unfairly fired for not getting
a doctor's note although she said she would write one. Their personnel person knew that I had
been in a psych hospital. His exact words to me were, "You're terminated! You're terminated!
You're terminated!" I won a Workmen's Comp suit -- took 3 years. I won an amount equal to
about a month's pay -- big deal. My lawyer, seeing his paltry fee, ushered me quickly out the
door, refusing to hear about my other possible Workman's Comp cases.
    1983 -- Courseware -- Instructional Systems Designer. I was talking too fast while with
other employees while I was seated at the computer. They knew something was going wrong.
They fired me for what I call "thinking too fast in public". They equated this with being ill. I led
my team into turning out 8 days' work in one day. They didn't like that. I only lasted there 3
months. They had paid to move me from L.A. to San Diego for the job.
    1985 -- Cubic -- Senior Engineering Writer. I stayed up 29 hours straight on a Friday in
my office or cubicle at Cubic. A Vice President walked in Saturday morning. He was afraid that
I would fall down and sue them, so he took my security badge, said to go home and not to come
back until they call me. They didn't call me. My perspective on this incident was that I gave
them 29 hours labor for the price of 8. They didn't see it that way.
    1988 -- Rohr Industries -- Senior Technical Writer. Rohr, incidentally, makes lithium
alloy airplane bodies. Not the same isotope of Lithium that our meds are made of. I was there
at work while I was up 100 hours straight. My car died with groceries 2 miles away. I hitched a
ride on a truck -- me and my groceries, including bananas and artichokes. We unloaded. At
7:30 a.m., my boss' boss, Nick, walked in and took one look at my bookcase with bananas and
artichokes. Nick turned to someone and said, "Get him out of here!", instantly deducing, I
supposed, that anyone with fruit and vegetables in their office was crazy. The Brown Field test
facility supervisor dialogued with me about science and artichokes.

4. Examples of Stigma in the Media
    That was examples of personal stigma. Now about the media.
    1. I don't watch television but here's an example from radio. About a year ago an
otherwise mellow station told its listeners to be careful because "the outpatients" were out in full
force around midnight at the supermarkets. I thought immediately of calling in a protest but I
didn't. It wouldn't have made me feel any better if they had changed "outpatients" to "mental
health clients who had been discharged from CMH". The next week I wished several times that I
had called in a protest but as time went on it became more and more futile.
    2. Another example. I saw a "Far Side" calendar whose cover showed a client on a
couch. The psychiatrist had a legal pad where he had written, "Just Plain Crazy". I suppose we
in mental health are left with 2 choices -- you don't know whether to laugh or be offended. How
many of you laughed? It's several months too late to protest this one.
    3. Another example that touches closer to home. In January, channel 10 aired 30
seconds of Sue O'Brien, CMH Nurse and SEIU (the hospital employee union) member, speaking
about violence by patients at CMH. She was scared for staff safety. COFA membership voted
that I should write a letter to Kraig Peck, SEIU Field Director, "expressing deep concern over
what was described as scare tactics that the mentally ill are violent".
    One quote of mine from the letter: "The mentally ill are faced with a lot of stigma and
don't need any more stigma coming from those who treat them in the hospital."
    I've just created a COFA committee, "Media Liaison", to facilitate interaction between us
and print and electronic media to work with the City Editor of print and the Assignment Editor of
electronic.

(I intentionally omitted the following paragraph from my panel presentation, but now I feel that it
should be included here.)
5. Things to Do
    Is it stigma when people say, "You've got nothing better to do?" Do they feel that clients
don't have any tasks because of mental disease and therefore mental deficiency?

6. Stigma Panel
    I don't feel that I could be comfortable about telling neighbors -- and any non-psych
people -- that I was preparing to talk on this panel on stigma. Perhaps you could call this the
stigma of stigma. I.e., what if they were prejudiced against the Mentally Ill? Then I'm stuck
living next door to a Mental Health bigot who knows that I'm a client -- or better yet, a mental
patient.
   

  [Three articles that I distributed in the panel are listed in the bibliography in the appendix:
    "Plain Talk About the Stigma of Mental Illness", "The 14 Worst Myths about Recovered
Mental Patients" and "Stigma on Mental Illness Pulls Down Its Victims".]

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