Jonathon McClellan recites an original poem during a performance by the Emmy Award-winning Turtle Creek Chorale at Carnegie Hall in New York City on July 9, 2022.
(Photo courtesy of Turtle Creek Chorale)
JONATHON McCLELLAN | Special Contributor
jonathonmmcclellan@gmail.com
Editor’s Note: May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
Before I entered the courtroom that summer day in 2012, the judge had already made up his mind. After a trial that lasted about 10 minutes, when he delivered his verdict, it was no surprise that I was found to not only not be in my right mind, but that I was also a danger to myself.
I had voluntarily entered a behavioral health institution in Dallas, following an attempt to take my own life with a firearm at my aunt’s home. For two weeks I had refused to take their medications because no one would explain to me what was going into my body and what the side effects would be.
Patients at the behavioral health institution who refused medication were not allowed to leave. Now, no one was going to release me without a fight. By law, patients who entered an institution following a suicide attempt were only required to stay for 72 hours — unless they lacked the insurance or means to cover the expenses, then they were forced out.
While wearing paper-thin blue hospital garb, I spent my time reading the Book of Psalms in my room. I attended almost every counseling session, too, so when I felt ready to leave, I was not expecting that I would have to plead my case in court as to why I no longer wished to harm myself.
When my insurance ran out two weeks after the judge’s verdict that kept me confined, I was finally released.
To this day, it feels as though I’m still on trial in the court of public opinion, though my many stints in behavioral health institutions ended a decade ago. And this is because a mental health diagnosis, once it is made, stays with you like a tattoo, the kind you almost certainly regret getting done when the decision was made in too much haste.
In my early 20s, I began hearing voices. This snowballed into life-threatening depression. In only a few years, I had lost my career and livelihood, my friends, and, especially, my sanity. I did not even know that I had schizophrenia before the illness had taken everything from me.
People who have never experienced a mental health issue tend to consider poverty in one dimension, usually financial. However, as though light is passing through a prism, we experience poverty in an array of emotions. The emotional poverty of a mental health issue has devastating consequences.
It feels very cold when you are standing in a room trying to convince everyone around that you are not crazy. Heavy gazes are filled with pity, and you notice their conversations are getting quieter the closer you approach.
Then, before you have the chance to speak, your diagnosis tells your story for you.
But a diagnosis is never your whole story. Very rarely do we who struggle with a mental health issue have autonomy over our own narratives. It is not uncommon for those of us who are struggling publicly to be stripped of the dignities that most ordinary citizens enjoy.
We do have life, but not liberty or the pursuit of happiness.
Such was my experience after I lost everything. I became a vagabond and hitchhiked across the United States. I slept on pavement under secluded bridges, raided chicken restaurant dumpsters, was harassed by the authorities for begging and carried around a piece of cardboard that said, “NEED FOOD.”
While on the side of the road, for every vehicle which stopped to give me a ride, hundreds more sped up when they saw me. To most of the world, I suppose, I must have looked like a mad man waving his thumb in the air.
But why are those of us with a mental health condition having to plead for our humanity? Society is relegating us into obscurity. We need not only programs that treat our symptoms, but also institutions that adhere to an ethical standard and a society that diligently seeks to re-integrate the mentally ill with respect.
Mental health treatment must dare to see beneath the outward appearance of an ill condition. What I never experienced was a behavioral health hospital that gave me a say in how I would be treated. Instead, decisions were made according to their own institutionalized logic with all decisions trickling down from the top.
Should not the governed have a vote?
While searching for the dignity that was almost completely out of my reach, I found a nonprofit that offers science-backed, mindfulness-based mental health care to marginalized and underserved communities. Kula for Karma’s programs are designed by and led by individuals who possess actual lived experiences with mental health issues.
It feels different when I am explaining my condition to someone who has struggled with their own behavioral health challenges. There is always more empathy and understanding. They offered me mental healthcare through mindfulness practices in the form of awareness, movement and breathing, and my only side-effect was inner peace.
I was informed and educated by them along the way; that, sadly, is a rare sensation.
There is clearly a right way and a wrong way to approach mental health. Regardless of the plethora of opinions being discussed surrounding this issue, the voice of an outside observer should never replace the voice of an insider’s experience. As someone who is African-American and LGBTQ, I can say this is especially true for marginalized communities for whom mental health issues are particularly taboo or particularly deadly.
I found my silver lining when I took back autonomy over my treatment. And I found my dignity, too, amongst friends who shared the same struggle. I have realized that if mental health is to be a noble cause, then the humanity that rests within each of us can only be perceived with kind eyes.
You will see, then, that we who live with mental health challenges are innocent and have committed no crime.
Jonathon McClellan is the award-winning author of Messages of Hope and The Ant’s Palace, an internationally recognized speaker and poet, and the host of the upcoming docuseries, Rising Tides. Jonathon is helping to create effective mindfulness-based mental health programs for BIPOC and LGBTQ people experiencing trauma, addiction, and mental health conditions by serving on the board of advisors for the nonprofit Kula for Karma, KulaForKarma.org.