"A Change is Gonna Come" - Sam Cooke

Gnawbone will focus on mental health issues going forward

The focus of Gnawbone going forward is going to change. Instead of current events and cultural trends I’m going to focus exclusively on mental health issues, including trends in diagnoses, new (and, we hope, improved) treatment options, interviews with mental health professionals, and some review of the field’s checkered past.

It’s said that Covid-19 provoked a real spike in demand for mental health services, something that has not abated. Likely, this spike was related in part to fear of death, but also the isolation and loss of employment that so many suffered from during the “lockdowns.” We also hear that teenage girls today, on average, are suffering their worst mental health ever, which is something that must be looked at. The staggering homeless problem in America with people living “rough” on the streets, as the British would say, is inextricably related to serious mental health problems in many of the instances.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 50 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in their lives, and one in 25 currently lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression.

My qualification to write a mental health newsletter? My father, whom I did not know well, spent two years in a psychiatric institute in New York in the early 1950s, and my oldest brother, who’d spent time a state psychiatric facility in Galesburg, Illinois, died by suicide at the age of 24. I can also report on some personal experiences. This was all during the great age of stigma – you just didn’t talk about these things in public, even to teachers and counselors at school. Indeed, I was condemned by my mother for once writing about my oldest brother’s sad experience, and my only surviving brother has accused me of exploiting tragedy by writing about it. I don’t understand either of these criticisms – secrets, like mold and disease generally, fester in dark, moist caverns.

I have written professionally about mental health issues in a British publication, Asylum, the Radical Mental Health Magazine. It is not available to read online, so I may repurpose a couple of pieces I did for them. I also wrote numerous stories about mental health issues, including interviewing patients, during my 25-year journalism career, mostly at The Indianapolis Star. An old television commercial for a brand of aspirin once employed an actor from the then-popular Marcus Welby, M.D. show that had this infamous punchline: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Well, I am not a doctor, either, and am not offering therapy, but I know some things, and will learn more as I produce this revised newsletter going forward. Mental health is a public health and public policy issue, so all citizens should be better informed.

I hope to present useful data and critiques, as well as do occasional interviews with mental health professionals – again, I’m not a doctor and will not be meting out advice as such – but the people I interview will be mental health professionals or advocates, or former or current patients (also known as “clients,” as the late, legendary psychologist Carl Rogers would say).

And I will be independent – not a shill for any pharmacological company, not a mere purveyor of the standard line that “help is available” (because it is not always available, or of good quality), and I won’t engage in any rants, either. Just useful information – I may fall short on occasion, but the above is my goal.

The newsletter will be open for Comments, hopefully creating a kind of forum for people to respectfully comment back and forth, and I welcome suggestions for specific topics or interview subjects. It will take time to grow an audience for this new direction in Gnawbone, so feel free to pass the word along. I’m not sure of the frequency yet, but I’m aiming for a biweekly, maybe even a weekly newsletter.

Thanks,

Abe Aamidor

Before you go, be sure to check out my latest collection of short stories, “Don’t Go,” from the Stephen F. Austin State University Press (978-1-62288-929-7 Paperback), available from the publisher at https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781622889297/dont-go/ or from any online bookseller, or order through your local bookstore (they’ll appreciate the business).