Give ‘em a Square State

The following post is for entertainment purposes only, I only hope this will sound as ridiculous as it is supposed to.

I read this article and I laughed, and when I stopped laughing I cried a little, because where I saw the humor in it they were being serious. So I thought to myself maybe this isn’t a bad idea, I mean it wouldn’t be the first time America has herded off a subset of the population in to their own little area. I’m not saying that we have to herd all Christians off, no, just those special few that don’t know how to play well with others. We can start with a few of our Republican presidential hopefuls, I’m looking at you Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee; Bill O’Reilly you can go ahead and come down to the front of the class, anyone associated with Pat Robertson and the 700 club, and we can’t forget everyone’s favorite County Clerk Kim Davis just to name a few.

Now that we know who we’re dealing with we need a place to put them, a place where they can start over, and forge their happy little bigoted communities from scratch. Now a friend of mine suggested West Virginia, and he made some pretty valid selling points, but I think we should give them a square state it makes it easier to put the fence up. Kansas or Wyoming would work, Utah’s already filled with Mormons so we could just mix them in with them, the Dakotas could work in a pinch. Regardless of which location we settle on we just need to make sure it’s got adequate square mileage to support its new population. As for the existing population of the state we would just relocate them into new states of their choosing.

Now in order to roundup our denizens we simply need to run a media campaign, probably just run some advertisements during Duck Dynasty or pretty much anything on the Fox News Channel. Now just to show this isn’t punishment no expense would be spared, we would fly them first class into their newly fenced off sanctuary, and once they landed would give them a Bible and a copy of Bill O’Reilly’s latest book. From that point on they are on their own, no government intrusion, no pesky Supreme Court rulings, and no silly Bill of Rights to get in the way of their religious views. Now this also means they will receive no help from our government, no funding, no loans, or subsidies of any type. Let them live off the land, and build a biblical economy. Hell let them start swapping their daughters for goats, they want to live by the Bible.

Should by some strange chance someone find living in a biblical sanctuary to strict we here in the grand old United States of America would be happy to accept them with open arms guaranteeing they pass the test. Due to the special nature of this sanctuary anyone requesting reentry into the great United States would be required to pass a re-entrance exam just so we can weed out any potential espionage situations, make sure there’s no double agents trying to pass through our doors. Once they pass the exam they are welcome back.

              

          So now that we have solved the problem of what to do with those who can’t embrace the changes that are happening in the 21^st century now on to solving the federal deficit.

World Suicide Prevention Day.

               September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and today is World Suicide Prevention Day. A day designed to reach out to those affected by suicide and raise awareness. More information is available at http://www.nami.org/suicideawarenessmonth/hp .

I will start off by saying that I am not a medical or clinical professional, I am just one woman armed with facts, opinions and personal experience. Nothing that say here today should be taken as the diagnosis or treatment of an illness. If you suspect that you have a mental illness please seek out a medical or clinical professional. If you are contemplating suicide please reach out to a friend, lover, religious person, The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or call 911 immediately.

Comedians Robin Williams and Richard Jeni have something in common, and it is not that fact that they were both funny men, it is the fact that they both committed suicide. Robin Williams August 2014 death brought a host of opinions from people, some people called it tragic, where others called him selfish or a coward. These reactions are not surprising considering the stigma that is placed on mental illness. Now I am not going to go on a big rant about stigma, I have done that here before. I just want to talk about suicide, its myths, some facts and my own personal experiences.

              

Myth one: Suicide is Uncommon

               That sad, but true fact is that it is more common than we think it is. In 2014 alone 9 million adults had serious thoughts of suicide, 2.7 million made suicide plans, 1.3 million attempted suicide, and 40,000 died by suicide. That breaks down to one suicide every 13 minutes, one veteran commits suicide every hour. More people died by suicide in 2014 than by automobile accidents. So as you can see it more common than one would think. I have known five people in my life that have committed suicide and all them did it before I turned 25, which may not seem like many but when you consider that they all took place between the ages of 13-25, five people in 12 years is nothing to shake a stick at.

Myth Two: Shake it Off

               I have to admit that I am guilty of telling a quasi-suicidal friend that they just needed to “buck up and get over it.” Take in mind I was a much different person back then. There is however a largely held belief that a person who is contemplating suicide just needs to “think happy thoughts” or “Pull it together” and that is simply just not true. A vast majority of those who attempt or commit suicide are suffering from a mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression. Those are not diseases that can be cured with “happy thoughts.” Mental Illness is a contributing factor in 90% of suicides and the risk of suicide increases more than 50% in individuals experiencing depression.  You must remember that mental illness affects the brain and its pathways, meaning that suicidal thoughts or actions are due to chemical misfires in the brain in most cases. Now I’m not saying that every person to commit suicide has a mental illness, but even those who don’t have a mental illness still need professional help, a suicidal thought, or suicide plan is not something one can simply “walk off.”

Myth Three: Only Cowards or Selfish People commit Suicide

               For many who commit suicide they are so deeply depressed that they feel that their removal from the world will ease the burden on their loved ones. They feel that they are being helpful or for some people they feel that no one will miss them so their death will be no great loss. Despite what many people think suicide is not a well thought out action, in fact 25% of those who attempt suicide do so within five minutes of their initial decision, and more than 70% do so within the first hour. This is the time when a person is not thinking clearly, they don’t see this as taking the easy way out, they see it as the only way out. Suicide is not an action about crying out for attention, nor is it something done to purposely hurt someone else. I can say this because I have been there.

My story

I didn’t do it for attention, I really thought the world was going to be a better place without me. I was 18, and was in a really bad relationship, not physically abusive, but mentally and emotionally abusive. I was in a really bad place because we had just bought a house, and I really wasn’t sure how to leave. I just knew that the decisions that I had made had been terrible, and that my existence was making the world terrible for everyone else. So one night at the height of my depression I was home alone and I decided that the world would be a better place without a fuck-up like me, and proceeded to swallow the better part of a bottle of Aleve. I got very lucky, because I got very sick and I threw up every pill that I took, passed out, and slept for the first time in three days. Within a week I was out of a bad relationship, living somewhere new, still depressed, but I knew I needed help and I was working on getting that. I was lucky that I threw up, I was lucky that I woke up the next day, and I was very lucky that I didn’t end up in the hospital. It was almost a year before I told anyone what really happened that night, and now I’m happy to tell the story, because I want others to understand what it’s like to reach that point. I was also lucky to have someone around who helped me through my depression and was there for me to reach out to. That night was not the first time I had suicidal thoughts, it was just the first time I acted on them. So I can say from experience it is usually a rush decision.

Final Thoughts

               Suicide is an irrational action, committed by people thinking irrationally. We as survivors be it those who have lost someone or those who have survived an attempt must make a stand for those in need. If someone you know expresses suicidal thoughts or actions you need to you get them help immediately, don’t dismiss them as seeking attention or tell them to shake it off. If you lose someone to suicide don’t blame them and don’t blame yourself. Blame the illness that took over their mind and disrupted their brain, and if it was a rare case where mental illness was not involved blame the irrational thoughts that drove them over the edge. Also remember that love can’t cure mental illness, but it helps those of us suffering from it to know that we are loved and it can help our perspective on life.   

Breaking the Stigma

This video and my own personal experiences inspired this post:

I don’t have to say it, but I will there is a stigma with mental illness. There is this belief that it’s all in your head, and that you can just shake it off. I can’t tell you the number of times I was told that my anxiety problems were nothing but a “bad day”, or that I just needed to “get out more.” You wouldn’t tell someone with a broken leg to just “walk it off” so why would you tell someone suffering from depression to just smile more?

I think the answer to this question is simple, and it’s because mental illness is, in essence all in our head. It’s something intangible, you can see when someone has the flu, or a broken leg, they visibly look sick, but for a large percentage of those of mental illness we simply don’t look sick. I know there are exceptions to this rule, and that there are people who do show physical signs of mental illness, but a larger majority of people are high functioning and show no physical or outward signs of their illness. If someone sneezes we give them a tissue, we may even make them chicken soup, but we can’t take that same route for someone with mental illness, there is no tissue that can wipe away depression, nor is there soup that can repair a chemical misfire that makes one manic.

There is also the medical community, having a mental illness is a difficult road to navigate. First there is insurance, assuming you have some, you have to find out if it covers mental health services. That’s the first negative, the first way we treat mental illness different from physical illness. I don’t go to my doctor and wonder if they’re going to cover the flu, or be concerned if I broke my leg that suddenly I wouldn’t be able to get coverage anymore. This however is how it can feel for someone with mental illness, they wonder first if they can get treatment, and then they wonder if the medication prescribed for that treatment will be covered under their prescription drug plans. Now if you don’t have insurance or are dependent on state or federally sponsored programs this can be an even trickier road to navigate. Medicaid is the largest payer for behavioral health services in the country, but low state reimbursement rates drive providers away from the program. Leaving coverage gaps that can prevent someone from getting the care that they need.

Then sometimes it is the patient themselves that gets in the way, I know this one from personal experience. I was sick a long time before I got diagnosed and there were times when I told myself that there was nothing wrong with me or that I could handle it myself. This is where the stigma is the worse, because we can truly be our own worst enemies.  I remember a day I went to see my primary doctor and was talking about my panic attacks and he gave me this questionnaire to fill out and one of the questions was something like do you ever feel like things are going crazy, and I looked at him and said “doesn’t everyone feel that way sometimes?” and he said no, and told me that I was probably suffering from some depression. I remember feeling like my world just collapsed, “Me, depression, no way.” I thought. I drove home thinking I couldn’t be depressed, I was happy and even if I was depressed I didn’t need pills I just needed to be happier. It was two months later that I had my first suicide attempt and my eyes were opened that I couldn’t go this road alone. Several years and several diagnoses later I look back at that experience and see that I looked at mental illness with a stigma, with a fear that I would be one of “those people”, but I now know that’s not true. Now I am just another person who has a mental illness. I look just like the “normal” people.

It’s time to break the cycle, the cycle of stigma. It’s time for those of us with mental illnesses to stand tall, to show that were not a stereotype, that were not dangerous, that were not all criminals, to show that we have families, and finally to show that we are more than our illness. I don’t introduce myself as a person with a mental illness, I merely introduce myself as me. There is no asterisk next to my name that redirects to some fine print that says: has a mental illness. It’s time for us to show that for every misconception there is someone holding down a job, for every piece of misinformation there is a mother or father raising a family, and for every time someone says “those people” there is a friend or a lover who is just trying to make it through the day.

So if you are struggling don’t be afraid to reach out, to a friend, a family member, or medical professional. There’s nothing to be afraid of, and it’s not your fault, the brain is a funny place, and a few chemical misfires can cause strange things to happen. Thankfully medical science has come a long way and whether its therapy or psychopharmacology there’s something out there that can help you. The biggest, and greatest thing that I can tell you is that you’re not alone there is a world filled with people that are having experiences similar to yours, and there are places to reach out to find people who will understand.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

1 (800) 273-8255

Hours: 24 hours, 7 days a week

Languages: English, Spanish

Website: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

National Alliance of Mental illness

https://www.nami.org/

This video is also inspiring: