My Turn, My Life

These blogs originate in comments you make, questions you ask. Your insight and wisdom, curiosity and concerns, get me thinking, keep me on my toes. This site bills me as the expert, but more often than not I'm the one who winds up learning.

Every once in a blue moon, though, it's appropriate to change up, to let you know where I'm coming from. For instance, late last week I drove up from San Diego to attend a NAMI CA conference taking place in Torrance, just south of LA. I arrived just in time to catch the tail end of advocate Kathi Stringer's presentation on quality improvement at a pre-conference session.

I met Kathi a year ago through my housemate Paul, and the three of us and others wound up hanging out together a lot at the conference. Kathi is from the aerospace industry, which is big on the concept of having planes not fall out of the sky. The mental health industry, by contrast, has much lower expectations. When our clinicians and providers encounter failure, they tend to blame the patient rather than analyze what went wrong.

But rather than try to change the system, Kathi points out, we can simply demand enforcement of the rules already written into law and government contracts. If you want to strike fear into an administrator's heart, Kathi says, simply utter the words, "corrective action."

Kathi has single-handedly moved mountains on the local level, including actually increasing beds at the local unit in the hospital in her area where everywhere else in CA beds are disappearing. Similarly, she has spearheaded a dramatic reduction in seclusion and restraints at the same facility.

Now, after years as a lone voice in the wilderness, Kathi is attracting attention on state and national levels. Throughout the conference, people were approaching Kathi and asking very perceptive questions. Trust me, if QI takes root, amazing change will happen.

I have commented on author Tom Wootton a number of times in this blog. Tom is the author of "The Bipolar Advantage," and was in Torrance as the keynoter. Tom's thesis is that bipolar (and other diagnoses) are only disorders if you can't control the condition (condition, not illness). His answer is bipolar "in order."

We can lead great lives, he says, if we learn to manage our reactions and other behaviors. Imagine, for instance, staying in productive hypomania without flipping out or crashing. Tom even sees an advantage in depression, which can lead to healing through introspection.

I've known Tom for three years. Love him or hate him, he makes you think. These days, Tom tends to run too far ahead of his audience, which he openly acknowledges. For instance, in his address, he remarked that "depression can be a beautiful experience," which brought grimaces of open disgust from at least one person at my table. And the part of his talk where he volunteered that he benefits from his own hallucinations did not go down too well either, not to a NAMI audience, many who are parents burdened with caring for their adult children with schizophrenia.