I HAVE A DREAM, OR MAYBE JUST A PARANOID DELUSION

“Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.”

— Frances Wright

There is a frantic sheriff’s deputy at my door, knocking with the obnoxiousness peculiar to cops. He wants me to open the door. I tell him to take a hike. He says he cannot leave until he sees me and sizes up my well-being. My affirmation that I am just fine does not fly, and we are at an impasse, each one either side of the door. He is a persistent motherfucker, and we argue; neither budging. We strike a deal: if I open the door and he lays his eyes on me, he will be satisfied, but I know he’s lying because I am a former federal agent and I have a law degree.

If this were a criminal housecall, I would not even acknowledge his presence without a warrant, but this is a mental health affair. Some nameless and concerned idiot called because I posted the phone number to the Suicide Hotline on Facebook. Nothing more, but that’s all it took, and now I have to answer to this armed jack-ass. If I do not convince him that I am not about to slit my throat, he can kick down my door, seize me, deposit me behind locked doors, with no warrant, the commission of no crime, no right to remain silent, and no writ of habeas corpus - the bedrock American warranty against illegal government detentions- can free me. AND it can all be based on nothing more than conjecture. In my home state of New York, I can request a hearing before a judge, in about three weeks time, where I can attempt to convince his honor to rule in favor of a psychiatric patient and against a physician (thus risking his judgeship). The hospital is not even allowed to disclose my detention to family or friends because the illusion of my right to privacy trumps my right to the equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment because I have a psychiatric diagnosis, which is manic depression.

Before its detection and treatment, I carried a .357 Magnum revolver on my hip while on duty as a United States Border Patrol agent, and slung in my jeans when off-duty. Magically, and despite what I read and hear about myself, managed to shoot no one, not even myself. Today, I am disqualified from carrying a weapon because I have been tossed in a mental hospital, against my will, by the one figure who has more power than the police- the American psychiatrist. Apparently, Second Amendment rights can be infringed, with ease. Judges have made an unnecessary morass of equal protection law by chopping up equality into separate categories that each garner varying levels of legal protection and permissible discriminatory government infringement on the right to equal treatment that only lawyers can keep straight. The underpinning of illegal discrimination is the doctrine of immutability, which asserts that immutable traits - those beyond a person’s control or is central to personal identity-upon which second-class citizenship has been justified, is the most heinous form of disparate treatment and exactly what the 14th is designed to protect. Hence, equal protection doctrine examines race, ethnicity, gender, sex, disability, each in their own legal microcosms where battles over who can use what commode next to who, but there is never any discussion of the right of psychiatric patients to be free from discriminatory treatment at the hands of the government.

The exclusion of psychiatric illnesses from the protected classes of immutable traits arises out of, I strongly suspect, the sanctimonious concept of our God-given free will that teaches people they and they alone are responsible for their behavior, and those who cannot control themselves to whatever degree, are perceived as weaker and lesser beings undeserving of their status as fully human. This smug, self-serving, self-important, contemptuous fantasy breeds the delusion of moral superiority of the kind that humans have used for millennia to justify the gruesome things we visit upon each other for no reason other than our differences. The Fourteenth Amendment is monumental progress for humanity, but not for those we perceive as less than human.The second-class citizenship, nay, the outright abuse and mistreatment, of psychiatric consumers is so glaring, so casual, and so accepted world-wide that it makes feel like I’m staring straight into the sun.

I greatly admire the work of Bill Maher for his ability to shred flimsy ideas with uncommonly searing insight, but one joke changed all that. During a Real Time monologue, he asked with a mix of flippancy and annoyance from where does Donald Trump get his news? A passing mental patient? Trump is the butt of the joke, but only if we all accept as true that passing mental patients lack the capacity or intelligence - or maybe they are drooling on themselves- to understand the news, and the process, he stereotyped the one in five Americans who fall under the umbrella of mental patient as subhuman - our now reliable refrain- and not only did he do it on national television, but people think it’s funny.

Maher’s schtick lambastes the utter folly of our national obsession for political correctness, but I doubt he uses the word nigger or faggot in private conversation as punchlines, nor would he endorse the inhumane treatment of anyone. He is simply uninformed, just like the rest of the population not living life classified in the inexplicably named Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. So I fired off a letter to ask him if he knew that passing mental patients get their news from him? because the real tragedy of the situation is that Maher suffered no backlash. Not a single advocacy group called him out. Even worse, there was nary a peep of pushback from Maher’s colleagues; not from Richard Dreyfuss, not from Jim Carrey, nor Russell Brand, nor Francis Ford Coppolla, nor Catherine Zeta-Jones,nor Dick Cavett. Not even Jane Pauley. Why?

The shackles we have put psych patients in, whether restraints, or chemical injections, or locked wards are still in persistent use because of the existence of the greatest shackle of all: the silence of shame. It is true that more people are speaking up, but they tend to be celebrities or a few politicians. No one is discussing lithium at the water cooler in the office, because if you do disclose your DSM diagnosis, not only will the ignorati completely dismiss your credibility and call you psycho behind your back, but even the well-meaning empaths will interpret most or all of your behavior through the prism of what they think they understand that you suffer from. You will be asked if you took your meds today. You will be instructed that everyone is, in fact, bipolar.There will be no more invites to happy hour (are you sure you can mix vodka and pills?). And that’s in a office that considers itself understanding; the more stark reality is an conspicuous culture rife with slurs, ridicule, defamation about psychiatric illnesses that discovery of your crippling anxiety, or your hidden depression, or your therapy appointments, or your mother’s suicide is an open invitation to suffer the slings and arrows of shame, humiliation and alienation. So people keep quiet because who wants to hear about how suicide is an act of selfishness when you just buried your son who hanged himself in his bedroom? This is the stigma of psychiatry that paralyzes humanity’s ability to learn to understand, tolerate and accept the idea that our differences do not make us less human.