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doctorpema's comments:
on Lewis & Clark's New President
Due to the fact that a college education never benefited me financially and I spent decades applying for the positions that required Bachelors' and Masters' degrees under the false impression that the degrees would make a difference, I wasted time, energy and money for nothing. No jobs that I ever had later (after the degrees) were as good as the first job (with no degrees) with Ma Bell as a Telephone Operator. If I had understood that with the good benefits of the job I could have completed my degree and the phone company paid for all of it (which I did in by going part time and pulling a 4 point), and simply kept my job and retired instead of pursuing a graduate degree (pulling a 3.83 in graduate school) and jobs with degree requirements, things would have been fine. College and education for fun for free is great, but the expectation that, particularly for a person of color, education will make a difference in employment or income is the mythical equivalent of ye olde' urban legend, and not supported by either the facts, or personal experience.
posted 1 year, 9 months ago
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on Lewis & Clark's New President
Development of a working educational model in apartheid America is made more timely by the perfect storm of the continuing financial crisis of 2008 - 2010, and the demonstration by those of us who did go the way of undergraduate and post graduate work to prominently display how well that worked, nor does not take in depth reporting or investigative effort as to how ineffective higher education has been in addressing the inequalities of income, poverty, and homeownership, as income for white families increased by 50 thousand dollars over the the past few decades, income for black families increased by 17 hundred dollars during the same time period, and in some cases among blacks in lower income brackets, income was unique in that it actually decreased over the same time period while no other demographic can make that same claim to fame; more education means less monetary income. So much for Affirmative Action. So much for higher education. I can think of no more damning indictment of the value of higher education than to demonstrate as education goes up, income and financial stability go down. So if you are Black and want to be really poor and really homeless? Just get a Phd, it's a guarantee.
posted 1 year, 9 months ago
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on Getting Back to Work: Jobs and Identity
I was constantly pushed to do something. Get a degree. Get another one. Get a job. Get another one. Finally all the people pushing me went away, and now that I am disabled I am no longer working I am the happiest I have ever been. I never wanted to do all those things, I just did what other people wanted me to do, which oddly enough never seemed to make them happy, so all of us were miserable. All those things they insisted I do never had anything to do with me, who I was, who I am, or what I wanted to do, because all I ever wanted was to not work, and although my family had the ability to make that so, they choose not to for reasons I will never understand because they constantly said they wanted me to be happy. So now they are all gone, I am very happy to not be working and all I can say is the Lord works in mysterious ways.
posted 1 year, 11 months ago
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on Involuntary Commitment
It seems for there are several issues at answer here. For Ms. Savage there is the issue of the potential for life threatening infection that needs be treated as a seperate medical condition requiring hospitalization and at which point hospitalization would be discharged to a recuperative nursing facility, the situation would deteriorate into paranoid symptomology generating into the pattern of AWOL, re-infection, and re-admission to hospital for emergency treatment then the only hope would be pattern recognition over time that the only thing that is making him worse is him, and hopefully over time each recuperative period would be longer and longer as familiarity reduces the internal pressure to run away which means the hospital must be the same each time, as must the place of recuperation. Once he stops running away, the underlying condition can be discussed, but not until he is willing to stay in one place of his own free will. Otherwise commitment is al there is. In the free will paradigm reality testing rules. If he is being poisoned in the shower, you have to turn on the shower and step in, if it is the food you have to eat it, if it is the room then you have be able to ask the guy in the room next door to swap because he will have to see when you get wet nothing happens to you, same when you eat his food, same when he swaps rooms, same for the guy who moves into his former room. This type of reality testing is tedious and labor intensive but it is the only way to engage his attention and reinforce the reality of the situation. You can not just say, you must do, and by doing so prove, in the face of each allegation, and just like with children you must be consistent and "prove" every time, and at least you will have opened dialog.
posted 2 years ago
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on The State of the State Hospital
I also survived employment at OSH Cornerstone Program when it was Co-Ed, and as a part of my undergrad. degree studied the PSRB when it was Sunset and brand-new. Unfortunately some very high profile events permanently affected the way they (PSRB) do business, while other events (such as the death of Francke) have been largely ignored. Particular populations were excluded (post partum women who killed their own children), and as we have seen, the current influx of domestic violence deaths which are again outside the pale, and in the hands of potential victims who must get on a plane, fly to Canada and apply for Sanctuary. The politics of programs, competition for funding (filling the beds), and overlapping jurisdictional practices of law enforcement from the Feds (DEA & ATF) to the locals at the state, county and city levels create information constipation as they all compete for some portion of the biggest wallet on the block. Deciding behavior based on past behavior (PSRB), and a program driven system unfortunately creates a default standard of one size fits all that proliferates itself throughout all decision points and affects all the individuals involved.
posted 2 years, 1 month ago
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on The State of the State Hospital
The Oregon State Hospital suffers from the overall paradigm that Heraldo built his investigative reporting career on in the '80s that resulted in many psychiatric institutions being shut down and patients being released into the community to join the ranks of the homeless. While the standard of sedative medication and physical restraints was discontinued, and screening to identify the physically disabled from the mentally ill was re-evaluated, the use of criminal codes to mandate treatment continues unabated. Where as a particular demographic adjudicated as NGRI and under the supervision of the PSRB, and the D&A population adjudicated through criminal codes are "mandated" to treatment, treatment by definition is a volitional choice, reguardless of diagnostic categories. The one paradigm that has demonstrated effectiveness is with children, when placed as individuals in particular types of communities. When the efficacy was demonstrated, parents from all over the world rushed to place their children and were turned down. As community members pointed out, changes in behavior and mental attitude were due to the embeded effects of the larger supportive community. It was not "treatment" it was the experience of a functional loving environment. Treatment mandating results in a permanent population of the non-compliant and mentally ill. Transition back into a culture/environment in which the original diagnosis/behavior was developed makes some form of long term and/or intermittent intsitutionalization inevitable.
posted 2 years, 1 month ago
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