Game On

Dallin Paul Look­ing Good

Con­grat­u­la­tions to my youngest brother Dallin Paul who grad­u­ates from high school today. After high school, many stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties are offered the oppor­tu­nity to to par­tic­i­pate in some type of post-high edu­ca­tion pro­gram. Dallin Paul is grad­u­at­ing with an excep­tion­ally large cohort of peers in spe­cial edu­ca­tion and because of poor plan­ning on the part of the school dis­trict his options for a post high edu­ca­tion have been severely limited.

Long story short, the school dis­trict picked the wrong fam­ily to try and place a stu­dent in a con­verted gym for a class­room with lit­tle oppor­tu­nity for com­mu­nity involve­ment or inter­ac­tion with any nondis­abled peers. If any­one from the school dis­trict is read­ing this, did you not real­ize that the Phillips fam­ily has mul­ti­ple Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion degrees, a Master’s degree in Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Coun­sel­ing, Part of a Doc­toral degree in Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Coun­sel­ing and a Juris Doc­tor­ate? On top of that we have a com­bined lot of years as teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors in spe­cial edu­ca­tion and direct care of per­son with dis­abil­i­ties. Game on.

Mad Pride

Newsweek tagline: “Why some men­tally ill patients are reject­ing their med­ica­tion and mak­ing the case for ‘mad pride.’”

From The Grow­ing Push for “Mad Pride”.

I am famil­iar with var­i­ous move­ments that cel­e­brate the pos­i­tive aspects of dif­fer­ence such as Dis­abil­ity Pride, Deaf Pride and Crip Pride, but only recently came across the idea of Mad Pride, a move­ment that cel­e­brates the pos­i­tive aspects of men­tal health diag­noses. The move­ment has been around for awhile, but a recent Newsweek arti­cle was the first I learned of it, at least that I remem­ber since I received my own men­tal health diagnoses.

There is much good that comes from accept­ing a men­tal health diag­noses and “com­ing out” to friends and fam­ily. Ben­e­fits include an increased under­stand­ing, a sense of com­mu­nity with oth­ers with like expe­ri­ences and a greater open­ness to receiv­ing help and man­ag­ing lifestyle. Of course there can also be neg­a­tive con­se­quences, but I believe that the per­cep­tion of those is gen­er­ally greater than the reality.

On the other end of the spec­trum from “mad pride” there are many who suf­fer from the debil­i­tat­ing effects of “mad shame”- an unwill­ing­ness to acknowl­edge a men­tal health diag­noses in ones self. In between those two extremes are the masses of peo­ple who have a men­tal health diag­noses that treat it as an ill­ness man­aged through some com­bi­na­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, self-medication or other treat­ment options.

When first diag­nosed with a men­tal ill­ness, I found myself some­where in the mid­dle– never ashamed, but nei­ther was I anx­ious to shout it from the rooftop. Since that first diag­noses there have been long peri­ods of dark­ness and frus­tra­tion, I’m in a good place now with a com­pletely dif­fer­ent diag­noses (ADHD). I now freely share my diag­noses and am feel­ing suc­cess­ful in work and fam­ily life and my ADHD is a an impor­tant part of that success.

Addi­tional Resources

• ‘Mad Pride’ Fights a Stigma (New York Times article)
• Mind­Free­dom (non-profit orga­ni­za­tion focused on human rights and alter­na­tives for peo­ple labeled with psy­chi­atric disabilities)
• Mad Pride Wikipedia Entry