Stigmatizing people with serious mental illness and severe developmental disabilities

Recently, I came across an article on the Huffington Post Website by Liza Long, the mother of a son with bipolar disorder.  The article, “5 Reasons I Wish We Would Stop Talking About 'Recovery' for Serious Mental Illness And the Word I Wish We Would Use Instead” (1/30/15), was written after a friend’s 22-year-old son, who had paranoid schizophrenia, committed suicide. The young man’s death was all the more poignant because the mother and son had been featured in a series of articles in USA Today on “The Cost of Not Caring”. The son was finally receiving the treatment he needed and seemed to be on the verge of successfully managing his illness.

The author reflects on the way we talk about mental illness as possibly contributing to the stigma experienced by people with its most severe manifestations: 



“There's a popular quote floating around mental health advocacy circles: ‘Mental illness is not a choice. But recovery is.’ I know people will disagree with me, but today, I'm tired of that sentiment, and I wish we would retire the word ‘recovery.’ When local and national mental health policy is shaped by high-functioning consumers who have been able to manage their illnesses rather than by the sickest patients and their families, it's the equivalent of only allowing stage 1 cancer survivors to drive the narrative and take most of the funds. While their courage is admirable and their struggles are genuine, too often, we lose sight of those who are suffering the most. They become invisible to us, marginalized on the streets or in prison. Or they die young, like Zac….I wish we would stop talking about recovery and replace it with a more useful, less stigmatizing word: hope.” 



“...The concept of recovery increases stigma, both within and outside the mental health community. ...if people recover, why aren't you recovering? …Recovery seems dependent on a prescribed set of treatments that may not work for everyone.”



“…Mental illness is not a choice. But hope is. Even in the face of tragedy, today I choose hope.” 



As the mother of two adult sons with profound developmental and intellectual disabilities, I see striking parallels in how disability rights advocates, intentionally or not, marginalize and stigmatize people with the most severe developmental disabilities. 



Disability advocates talk about high expectations rather than recovery. Low expectations, they say, are barriers to achieving independence, productivity, and full integration into the community that all people with disabilities can be expected to achieve. These admirable goals may be achievable by some people with even the most severe disabilities, but certainly not by all. What about 38-year-old Danny, who functions at the level of a 6 - 12 month old infant and needs total help and assistance to accomplish anything. Independence and productivity are pipe dreams for Danny, but maybe we can blame that on his mother who hasn’t expected enough of him.



And why pay for all the things that Danny does need, such as competent and compassionate care in a setting that offers him comfort, pleasure, and a meaningful life, when these things will never change him into a person who can meet expectations set by others? What does "full integration" mean for a person who can't communicate in any specific way or take care of himself? For people with disabilities who really can overcome barriers and achieve ordinary and sometimes great things, doesn't their association with a person like Danny make them look bad? What could be more stigmatizing for Danny than being set apart as a person who is using up Medicaid funds that should go to people who are more "deserving" and who "can really amount to something"? Even his existence may be an embarrassment for those attempting to show that people with disabilities are worthy of public support.



The Home and Community-Based settings rule from CMS, the federal agency that regulates Medicare and Medicaid, threatens settings most likely to serve people with the most severe disabilities such as center-based work programs, congregate residential programs, day and pre-vocational programs, and other congregate settings that serve more than a few people with disabilities in one place. 



State and federal Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) systems are being overhauled by the 2014 federal Work Innovations and Opportunities Act (WIOA). According to proposed regulations for WIOA, “The foundation of the VR program is the principle that individuals with disabilities, including those with the most significant disabilities, are capable of achieving high quality, competitive integrated employment when provided the necessary skills and supports.” These are high expectations, indeed, but simply making that assertion does not change the capabilities of individuals with disabilities. What are we to think of people with disabilities who will not be able to find work under the condition that it be both competitive and integrated with work done by non-disabled people? Are they lazy? Unmotivated? What other excuse could there be? 



At an oversight hearing in February 2015, Kathy Greenlee, the head of the federal Administration for Community Living (ACL), testified before the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. The ACL includes the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities that oversees programs funded by the federal Developmental Disabilities Act. Greenlee stated early on in the hearing that the core idea behind her agency was that people who are aging and adults with disabilities should be able to live independently and participate fully in their communities.  Later, (at about 1hour and 38 minutes) she was questioned by Representative Steve Womack from Arkansas about whether the goal of her agency was to eliminate long term care facilities for people with the most severe disabilities. Her response was that “We have become extraordinarily good in this country at serving people with significant disabilities in home settings and we continue to improve our ability over time." 

When we look at the facts on how well we, as a country, take care of people with significant disabilities, we may come to a different conclusion: 



(from the Madison House Autism Foundation Website via The DD News Blog)

• There are 3.775 million people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (I/DD). 77% of them do not receive publicly funded residential supports.
• Of the 23% (1.127 million people with I/DD), who do receive publicly funded supports, 56% live with family and 44% do not live with family.
• Of the 44% who do not live with family, 27% of those live in their own home. The other 73% live in group homes, foster homes, nursing facilities, and less than 1,000 live in psychiatric facilities.
• 77,000 are on a waiting list for services needed in the next year. 853,000 are living with caregivers aged 60 or over.

According to the 2014 UCP Case for Inclusion, almost 317,000 people are on a waiting list for Home and Community-Based Services.



In Michigan, the Medicaid-funded Home Help program, that is intended to allow people who are aging and people with disabilities to remain in their own homes, is fraught with problems, including low pay for direct care workers who are often poorly trained and not up to performing tasks that are increasingly of a more complex medical nature. Many workers were found to be unreliable. Some workers being paid by the state were felons, although the state seems to have cracked down on this with background checks.

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Before we give ourselves a collective pat on the back for how well we take care of people with significant disabilities, we need a reality check. We can’t take care of people with the most significant disabilities well, if we do not admit that we have far to go before we can claim that “we are extraordinarily good at it”. We can’t take care of people with the most significant disabilities well, if we do not acknowledge, first, that they exist, and then that our expectations of what we would like them to achieve do not magically translate into their being capable of those achievements.

Hope is in my vocabulary, also, but it does not come from believing that Danny and Ian will overcome their disabilities. I know that my sons can be cared for compassionately by people who are up to the task because I have seen it happen and Danny and Ian have had the good fortune to experience some (but not enough) of that. Where do we go from here? We should start with seeking out and learning from individuals with disabilities and their families who experience the heart breaking dysfunction of our system of care and not allow ourselves to be distracted by false ideologies and wishful thinking.