My name is Steve Bell, and I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This is an exciting opportunity that the editors of Behavioral Healthcare magazine have given me. So before I begin this blog I want to say thank you to Dennis and Nick for allowing me to have this space to share some personal thoughts and observations about the past, present and future of behavioral health from a peer perspective.
It is my intent to raise difficult questions, say things that are often unspoken and to stir the pot and keep the heat on. Transformation in our field must be more the policy statements and 'flavor of the month' initiatives. I invite every reader that reads this blog to return here often. Share your thoughts and feelings as your reflect on what you find written in this space.
During my teen years my mother alternated between being immobilized by depression (stayed in bed all day, often moaning) or downing a third of a bottle of bourbon to soothe her emotional pain. This was after she had been discharged in 1964 from Agnews State Hospital in Santa Clara, CA. Like many of us who live with a psychiatric disability, my home was a place of rage, sadness and confusion. So, not unlike many other teens of any generation, I found another place to hang out. This second home was an Assembly of God church in Manhattan Beach in Southern California.
We sang from old hymn books, accompanied by a grand piano, an out of tune electric organ and a trumpet. One of my favorite hymns is The Love of God, which I first heard in that small congregation of 75 people. In the hymnal the third verse was attributed to 'author unknown'. I asked the pastor about the mystery, or more precisely, the story behind that stanza. . He said that the writer of the first and second stanzas and the chorus was a famous songwriter who found the words of the last stanza penciled on the wall of the 'cell' of an 'inmate' of a old prison. How , I wondered could such wonderful, hopeful words be written by a convict at the turn of the 20th Century?
Here are the words: "Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made; were every stalk on Earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade. To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky." Even today, just reciting the lyrics aloud gives me goosebumps.
There is much more to the history of this song , but it's time to get to my point. The poet in the 'cell' was not an inmate in a California prison. He was a nameless patient in an insane asylum. Did this man have lucid moment of sanity that caused him to write such wonderful verse? Was it a symptom of mental distress manifesting itself in a surge of creativity while in the midst of a psychotic episode? I believe it was a man reaching out to God in gratitude, feeling loved in an unlovely place.
According the Recovery Support Strategic Initiative, delineated by SAMHSA after months of gathering input and feedback last year from peers (consumers, patients), caregivers, providers and family members from around the country, the fourth dimension is titled, Community. In that description one finds the words love and hope.
I think we are ignoring a fifth dimension of recovery, at least in professional descriptions of the term. Many of us in recovery have found spiritual life, whether as a member of an organized religious community or as part of a solitary walk of meditation, prayer and reading of inspirational literature...to be a place of inner peace, love, joy and hope. Recovery literature in behavioral health often mentions the value of spirituality.
Maybe it's time to go beyond short chapters and footnotes. Maybe it's time to put down the patient files, the notepad and the DSM. Maybe all of us touched by serious mental illness and substance abuse (family and providers included) should try sitting still, closing our eyes and reading the writing on the wall.
