What I Am Learning from/with My Students

This semester's Good Books class has been wonderful. I am learning so much from and with my students. The choice to add in My Friend Dahmer and 72 Hour Hold has been beneficial. With Derf Backderf's book -which I have already talked about in this blog - students talked about Dahmer's drinking and loneliness and wondered why the people who knew him didn't intervene, or at least ask questions about his erratic and disturbing behavior.

With Bebe Campbell Moore's book, those who read it commented more on the relationships of the characters, especially between Keri and Trina and Ma Missy, and less about the mental illness of bipolar disorder that caused so much stress in their lives. It's interesting to me, as well, that no one really talked about the fact that the book was the only one in the course that featured African American characters.

Thanks to a former student (one who took Good Books with me a few years ago) who pointed out the lack of diversity in my selected course materials, I have done more research on how mental illness is perceived in African American communities. Here are some of the things I've discovered (again, thanks in part to that student who did a directed study with me on issues of race and mental illness in young adult literature).

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, African Americans are not receiving as much from our mental health care system. For instance, only one-third of African Americans who need mental health care are receiving it. Moreover, African American individuals are more likely to leave treatment or stop medications than others. Problems with misdiagnosis, lack of access to resources, and cultural stigma associated with asking for assistance from a frequently mistrusted health system often interfere with individuals being appropriately treated for mental illnesses. One other issue, which is shared with Latino/a community members, is strongly held religious beliefs which may hold options for therapy or medication in less esteem than prayer. The American Psychiatric Association offers a great resource on "Mental Health in the African American Community." See here for more.

Bebe Moore Campbell was an incredible advocate for mental health awareness and the reduction of stigma associated with mental illness, especially in African American communities. Her death in 2006 was a blow to all of us; however, because of her legacy of amazing literature and the NAMI groups she founded in California, we are more informed and better poised to change the stigma associated with mental illness in this country. Here is a link to the NAMI statement about her death and the importance of her advocacy.

I'm glad I know more about mental illness thanks to the books I've read. More importantly, I'm fortunate to have taken away some insights from my students about these texts, including these:

• Mental illness is something we don't talk about often, but talking about the issue is how we begin to overcome the fear.
• Shusterman's novel demonstrated that mental illness isn't something that typically happens all of a sudden but progresses over time.
• Campbell's book showed some of the ridiculous problems people have getting help for mental illnesses and also highlighted the fact that some doctors have bought into a system that is about money and not about recovery.
• Books - fiction and nonfiction -  can help us to develop empathy for those who are living with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, PTSD, drug/alcohol addiction, and other disorders. Literature can also help us learn more about what having a mental illness means not just for the person with the illness but also for family, friends, and neighbors.
• We need to pay attention to our relatives, friends, and neighbors, and offer to support them and help them seek treatment if they have a mental illness. And we need to fight for better access to care for all people.

Thanks for listening. :)

MENTAL ILLNESS in SERIAL KILLERS: The Lovely Bones and My Friend Dahmer

Students in my Good Books class last week read Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones or Derf Backderf's My Friend Dahmer. Reading their postings led me to do a lot of research about mental illness in serial killers.

According to the FBI's "Serial Murder: Pathways to Investigation" report, myths about serial killers (that "all serial murderers are white males who are evil geniuses, and travel around the country killing multiple victims for sexual gratification") perpetuate stereotypes and can interfere with effective investigations (7) . A study of 480 cases of serial murder (from 1960-2006) involving 92 male offenders resulted in the following information: over 75% of victims were female and of those, about half were between the ages of 14 and 29. Before being arrested, about one-third of offenders had been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, with personality disorder and psychotic disorder as the most common - 42.9% and 19% respectively(16). Most offenders knew their victims and used a ruse or con approach (16). Over 80% of the offenders were motivated by sex (18).

SERIAL MURDERS: PATHWAYS FOR INVESTIGATIONS

Jeffrey Dahmer had not been diagnosed with a mental illness before arrest and targeted male victims. He did use a ruse or con approach and was motivated by sex.

George Harvey has not been diagnosed with a mental illness (not arrested) and targeted female victims. He also used a ruse or con approach and was motivated by sex.

While Dahmer was apprehended, tried, convicted, and sent to prison, Harvey eluded apprehension and disappeared.

The Lovely Bones was turned into a film in 2009.

My Friend Dahmer premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last month and is scheduled to be released in theaters in fall 2017.

I'll be watching.

Interview with Backderf about film

Rowdy was born mad. Reflections on anger in Alexie's "Diary of a Part-time Indian"

Sherman Alexie's narrator, Arnold Spirit, Jr., in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, tells us that his best friend Rowdy was "born mad." He writes,

He was always crying and screaming and kicking and punching. He bit his mother's breast when she tried to nurse him. He kept biting her, so she gave up and fed him formula. He really hasn't changed much since then. Well, at fourteen years old, it's not like he runs around biting women's breasts, but he does punch and kick and spit. He got into his first fistfight in kindergarten. He took on three first graders during a snowball fight because one of them had thrown a piece of ice. Rowdy punched them out pretty quickly. And then he punched the teacher who came to stop the fight. He didn't hurt the teacher, not at all, but man, let me tell you, that teacher was angry. "What's wrong with you?" he yelled. "Everything!" Rowdy yelled back."

I reflected on this description for a long time because it's so hard for me to understand.

I have been mad. Really mad. Raging, screaming, losing it-mad. My anger is not pretty. And it is not let loose very often.

However, I have never been in a fight. I have never used my fists to punch another person.

I have not ever, in my recollection, been in a physical altercation myself other than to try to stop a fight.

When I was a teacher, in Wylie, Texas, I did try my best to break up a fight between some young adults at my school. They started out in the boys' bathroom adjacent to my classroom's back wall. I heard them through the concrete, yelling and hitting. They moved next into the hallway: two young men beating on another boy. It was loud, and it was scary. I had to do something.

As a female teacher, especially in the South, I was not expected to do anything other than stand, hands on my hips, and yell for help. Right. Not when they are bleeding on the carpet right in front of my room.

I grabbed the smaller one and pushed him up against a locker. By then, another teacher or coach (I don't remember) came and got the bigger one. Two of the three were expelled. I went to the expulsion hearing. There were no parents in attendance, which in many ways was almost as scary to me as the fight itself.

I don't understand Rowdy's physical expression of his anger. But I am trying to understand his position. Alexie writes, "Rowdy fought everybody. He fought boys and girls. Men and women. He fought stray dogs. Hell, he fought the weather. He'd throw wild punches at rain. Honestly."

I need to review Junior's description of "THE UNOFFICIAL AND UNWRITTEN (but you better follow them or you're going to get beaten twice as hard) SPOKANE INDIAN RULES OF FISTICUFFS."

I need to remember that early in the book, Junior tells us that Rowdy's had a horrible summer: "His father is drinking hard and throwing hard punches, so Rowdy and his mother are always walking around with bruised and bloody faces."

I need to think about why a young man who is taught that violence is acceptable would use his fists to express his anger.

Thanks for listening.

Schizophrenia as a Monster: Toby Allen's Artistic Representations and Lori Schiller's Voices

I want to share some beautiful pieces of art by TOBY ALLEN that are his interpretation of Schizophrenia and Paranoia as monsters.

Toby Allen's Monsters

Allen states that he has anxiety, noting, "It effects me every day of my life and can be a real burden but I have learnt how to keep it mostly at bay." He also points out that he created the images because he wants "to make people aware of how damaging these illnesses are and how much of a burden they can be to those who suffer from them."

(Note: He has a collection of images crafted for each of various mental illnesses).

Reflecting on Lori Schiller's experiences in The Quiet Room for what must be the twelfth time I am teaching the book in this class is challenging. Yet, each time I go back into Lori Schiller's text, I am drawn to a different aspect of her description of her experiences with schizophrenia. In Chapter 3, Lori describes how her fear of the Voices increased during her time at Tufts University and how she frequently felt paranoid, afraid that her professors and classmates could hear the Voices and "now knew the terrible secrets about me they were revealing." She began to believe the Voices that her friends thought she was "scum" and that people were talking about her and would begin taunting her.

Her experiences fit with Toby Allen's description of the Paranoia monster, who "uses its tall ears like a radar, scanning the area for any activity" and feeding on "feelings of anxiety of fear which they unintentionally create within their victims," working with other monsters like Schizophrenia, who "like mafia gang leader[s]" are "rarely seen and like to hide in the shadows."

Lori's monsters seem to work in tandem, with the Voices hiding in the shadows but creating anxiety and paranoia in her mind in a very intentional way.

The Quiet Room WordCloud

I copied blog passages from 20 of my 32 Good Books students in response to their reading of The Quiet Room by Lori Schiller (with Amanda Bennett). I then created a Word Cloud to see how their responses looked when combined- the more frequently occurring words appear bigger. :)
I'm happy to hear that so many students enjoyed the book and felt that they couldn't put it down because it was so engaging. They also mentioned how much the book helped them to empathize with Lori and her family, friends, and medical team.