sensitivity training

since all the political correctness has been in the general
consciousness (since forever, at least since i was in high school) we've
also heard of such things as "sensitivity training." like,
gender-sensitivity training, or cultural-diversity sensitivity training.
there's another kind of sensitivity training that i think could be very
important both for educators and religious leaders.

i'm talking about mental-health-sensitivity. this year i've dealt with
mental health issues, both my own and others. the first boy they sent
me to tutor, his mother explained to me, was out because of "severe
depression." she then explained how difficult it was to find the right
meds, the right doctors, etc. this was back in the fall before i really
had any understanding of mental illness. they had to keep cancelling
our tutoring appointments because he wasn't feeling well enough to do
any work. At first i was like, why can't he just get motivated? of
course, not understanding that depression is a physiological condition
for some people and it's not their fault they are experiencing it.

then i read the bell jar by sylvia plath and prozac nation by elizabeth
wurtzel. of course, i read all the biographical information on sylvia
plath in the pages before the story begins, so i knew that the story was
autobiographical, just like elizabeth wurtzel's. so both these
autobiographical documentations and my own experience in therapy have
led me to believe that yeah, it is a physiological condition. since
i've been on SSRIs i've noticed a lot of changes. some might argue that
this is a placebo effect, and that i've been feeling better because i
believe the drugs are working. i guess i don't really have any proof to
argue against that, unless i have the pills i'm taking now analyzed and
find out that they are, in face, placebos. but i know that when i
started therapy i was against the idea of medicating myself. i was
afraid it would make me a zombie or take something away from my
personality. but that's not the case. as i've said before, they
haven't made me happy - i realize i'm responsible for my own happiness.
but what they have done is taken away some of the anxiety/depression
issues.

i had this discussion with my shrink yesterday, so that's why i've been
thinking about it today (and i don't have much work to do so i've got
some free time in which to appear busy.)

in january i started tutoring another boy with some kind of mental
illness. i don't know exactly what was wrong with him, but he is
friends with my sister and she said he had described his life like "he
was on a game show." i'm guessing he had some kind of break down. he
was out the entire semester.

as i mentioned before in my account of these tutoring experiences, his
teacher had delayed for almost an entire month before giving me any new
work for him. thus, we were a month behind where i wanted to be and had
to cram everything into two weeks. i told my mom about this, how his
teacher wasn't responding to either my emails or my HAND-WRITTEN-NOTES.
and one day my mom asked her about it, and she was told that the teacher
was having a problem with him not being in class - he isn't getting the
same experience that the rest of his classmates are getting. then, with
his last packet of work, she had written a little note to me telling me
how it was "ridiculous" how much school ryan had missed and how it was
so hard with all his absences the previous semester.

maybe she wasn't aware that he was out because of some mental issue,
and i don't expect the guidance department to inform the teachers of why
a student has to go on homebound leave. but i think teachers should
take the homebound-leave at face-value and realize that there is a good
reason the child is not in school; if his parents and doctors have gone
through all the trouble of filling out the paperwork to get a student on
homebound leave, there has to be a good reason. this kid isn't just
playing perpetual hookie. i think if she had been more aware of
depression/anxiety and its debilitating symptoms, she might have been
more sensitive about this kid's situation.

and what it has to do with religious leaders: i'm sure that within some
circles anti-depressants are looked on and people don't believe in
chemical imbalances. their answer is prayer. but can you see the
downward spiral that could cause a depressed person? if depression is a
physiological disorder, no amount of praying is going change that
chemical imbalance (although some people might argue otherwise if they
should secularize themselves enough to believe in chemical imbalances.)
so what happens? let's take my experience. 2001. my depression year
(more bi-polar with a very high high and very low lows.) it was my
third year in college and the first year i had decided to "leave the
fold." but i was so depressed when school started up again that i went
back to CCC because i did have a lot of people i called friends in that
organization and it was the only thing i knew of that might make me feel
better.

but what happened? i tried talking to my "discipler" from the previous
year, someone who was kind of supposed to be my "spiritual guide," with
whom i'd meet on a weekly basis to discuss things of that nature. she
was someone i'd considered a friend. but maybe she just couldn't handle
the depressed phone calls, my reaching out for someone to save me from
the abyss. but the answer was, with anyone i talked to, to pray about
it. but i could pray and pray and pray, and maybe feel a little better
for a little bit, but i'd end up feeling like i wasn't doing it enough,
or i wasn't doing it the right way, or i wasn't good enough, or i didn't
really have any faith at all. i never really felt like i bought it all
ever. i would pretend i did, convincing myself that what i felt was
genuine, but then i would sometimes see people around me getting all
emotional, putting their hands in the air, and i couldn't help wondering
why i didn't feel that? am i not good enough? i must not believe! so
i'd start out depressed, would try to get better by praying, have no
results, feel like there was something i was doing wrong, then feel like
i wasn't good enough, and then i'd be more depressed.

my shrink mentioned this case in our discussion: remember that woman
who drowned all of her kids in the bath tub? she had mental issues.
she was very religious. her husband was some kind of religious leader.
in her ideology she was to pray about her mental issues, not take
medications. maybe she wasn't even aware of having a mental illness
because of this. it's like the same bull-headedness that causes people
to morally oppose embryonic stem-cell research. it has so much
potential but because they refuse to accept that an embryo outside a
uterus has NO CHANCE OF BECOMING A HUMAN we're having all this political
flack with this issue.