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On Tuesday, February 6, the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS) is going up to Albany again to educate elected officials.
Why should you go? Go because talking to politicians bolsters your ego. You feel empowered knowing that you are fighting for your rights. Go for the chance to talk for others who are stuck in hospitals, adult homes, or prisons with voices no one will hear.
Those of us who have been in hospitals know how terrible it was. We were treated with disrespect. We dealt with uninformed doctors who thought they knew everything. We were overmedicated and some of us witnessed patients being restrained.
When we go to Albany, we talk to elected officials about the issues important to those of us living outside the hospital with mental illness (e.g. lack of affordable housing). NYAPRS works with the Campaign for Mental Health Housing for the chance to create 35,000 new units of housing for everyone with a mental illness. We will ask for more legal services for those with mental illness. The lack of services for our community is nothing less than appalling.
We advocate for others. We demand that those living in adult homes, the new mental illness institutions, receive better treatment. These comrades are stuck in for-profit institutions, receiving poor quality food, poor laundry service, and living on only $164 dollars a month even with the $30 dollar increase we won over the last two years. Their medical and psychological services are tied to the home. You may have heard about the conditions in some homes like bed bugs the size of cockroaches, unnecessary doctor-visits, unwilling trips to day treatment programs, and an inability to get out of the home once they are placed there. We go to Albany to fight for them.
We fight for those in solitary confinement in prison. When a person with mental illness reaches prison, we can be placed in a 23-hour box know as the SHU (special housing unit). It is often difficult for those with mental illnesses to perform the strict tasks assigned in prison so we are often placed in these dark boxes. This type of isolation leads to psychotic breaks and decompensation and often to suicide attempts or completion. We go to Albany for our brothers and sisters in the SHU.
What is the day like in Albany? We get on the bus in our neighborhoods, eat some breakfast, and sleep till we get to Albany. When we get to Albany, we gather in a huge room filled with a thousand other mental health consumers and hear the issues NYAPRS is working on. Then, we have an awesome lunch and network. Next, we break up into groups of five or seven and talk with one or two different elected officials in their offices. Before we talk with the elected officials, we meet with our team and rehearse what we will say.
NYAPRS has many exciting roles on Legislative Day. Team Leaders and Bus Captains are two positions for Legislative Day. Team Leaders lead the meetings of five or seven people with legislators. Team Leaders work with their teams to determine which issues team members feel most compelled to bring up with their assigned elected official. Bus Captains are responsible for accounting for each person traveling to Albany.