No One Cares if I Live, But God Forbid I Say I Want to Die
Being mentally ill and poor is just dying a slow death
Notes from day 15,274 of my sad life.
Living with a mental illness in today’s uncaring world is just struggling day after day to survive, with this vague hope that maybe today will be the day things turn around. Maybe today will be the day things get easier. Maybe today will be the day that someone cares.
Maybe… but not very likely.
When you have a mental illness, people have this idea that you aren’t getting better because you aren’t trying hard enough. They think that you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps and make a better life for yourself. They think they understand your struggles, because hey, everybody struggles.
But not like this.
When you have a mental illness, your own mind is your biggest enemy. The thoughts that run through your head at 2am when you can’t sleep. The voices that whisper how useless and worthless you are. The ingrained, physical responses that happen in your brain in response when something bad happens. The shaking hands, rapid heartbeat, the tears, the terrible fear.
If you live with a mental illness like I do, odds are pretty good that you have thought about suicide at some point.
According to Pew,
Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States. In 2020, nearly 46,000 Americans died by suicide, and an additional 1.2 million adults and 629,000 adolescents attempted suicide. Federal data shows that the nation’s suicide rate increased 33% across all sexes, races, and ethnicities over the past two decades.
When you tell someone you want to commit suicide, they probably respond in one of two ways:
- They tell you all the reasons why you ‘should’ be happy
- They get mad
Even the people who really want to help you and do all the ‘right’ things, like taking you to the crisis center or helping you call the suicide hotline can’t help you get your life back on track in the way that you probably need if your life has reached the lowest of lows.
Why? Because here’s the truth, folks:
Society doesn’t care if mentally ill people live.
Sure. They say they do. There is Suicide Prevention Month every September. There is a hotline for you to call. The ER has to take you.
But what about when you leave?
Fuck you, that’s what.
Society wants you to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and be fine. Or hell, just appear to be fine. Or go be ‘not fine’ somewhere you aren’t so visible.
I was in crisis care at the end of January because I was feeling suicidal. I had gotten kicked out of where I was living and consequently lost my job. So I went to the crisis unit to learn some coping skills. But then, after 5 days, they told me I could ‘come back any time’ and sent me off into the world to go find a job and a place to live.
It took me over a month, but I finally did find a job. Only to *drumroll please* have a panic attack at work and leave in tears. After a week and a half.
I do all the things I’m supposed to do. I go to my weekly therapy appointments. I use my coping skills. I take my medication. I do yoga. But I still fall apart.
I need a job so I can live. But I also need a job where, preferably, no one yells at me, talks to me, looks at me, or asks me to do anything particularly difficult. (If you happen to know of a job like that, let me know in the comments!) Because, for the love of god, if I am having a bad day and any of those things happen, I am likely to have a panic attack and go all to pieces. Then it will probably take me a week or so to stop feeling so panicked and like I might be able to pretend to appear normal for a few hours again.
I have PTSD, anxiety and depression. All of these are considered to be disabilities.
And yet, I got declined for food stamps and Medicaid. Probably tomorrow I will try to go into their office tomorrow and cry and beg for them to at least let me keep Medicaid so I can keep going to therapy.
I’m in the process of applying for Social Security Disability (for which PTSD supposedly qualifies me), but it can take anywhere upwards of 6 months to get approved. I was also told it isn’t likely to get approved either, without several appeals and possibly a lawyer.
So, what am I supposed to do with myself in the meantime?
Right now, I can pay about 2 more months of rent. Then, I’m out on the street with no access to food.
But it gets better, right?
Society isn’t invested in helping the mentally ill
I can only get access to basic services like food, water, shelter and medicine if I can either work, or prove that I am so incompetent that I need to be hospitalized.
But, even if I do get hospitalized and go back to the crisis unit, it isn’t a long-term solution.
According to the Newport Institute,
Short-term treatment generally refers to a hospital-based program that requires less than three months of residence. Mental health inpatient treatment in a hospital is likely to be far shorter than that — as short as an overnight stay or several days. In general, 30 days is the maximum time for inpatient treatment for mental health in a hospital-based program.
So what happens after my hospital stay is over? Well, I get sent back out into the world to do it all again. I get to try again to get a job. Try again to find shelter. Try again to appear functional for any length of time.
I guess I can try — like many of the mentally ill do — to stay with friends or family again until they get sick of me. But as anyone with a mental illness knows, people lose patience with your mental illness more and more as time goes on. They don’t feel sorry for you anymore once they realize you probably aren’t going to get better.
So I — like so many other mentally ill — may end up on the streets.
According to Mental Illness Policy,
In January 2015, the most extensive survey ever undertaken found 564,708 people were homeless on a given night in the United States. Depending on the age group in question, and how homelessness is defined, the consensus estimate as of 2014 was that, at minimum, 25 percent of the American homeless — 140,000 individuals — were seriously mentally ill at any given point in time. Forty-five percent of the homeless — 250,000 individuals — had any mental illness. More would be labeled homeless if these were annual counts rather than point-in-time counts.
If society really wanted people with mental illness to get better, there would be longer hospitalizations, more transitional housing, and less wait time to get on disability.
Mental health gets worse when you are under chronic stress. Constantly looking for housing, food and a job is pretty stressful.
You do the math.
The way our current system is set up, life as a mentally ill person is just a slow downward spiral until you die in the gutter somewhere. It is cruel and inhumane. But no. Don’t you dare talk about wanting to commit suicide.
Honestly? If mental healthcare is a privilege and not a right, I think that anyone who wants it should have access to medically assisted suicide. We euthanize pets with a low quality of life so they don’t suffer. But people? Oh no. That’s against God. That’s against nature.
Society would rather allow the mentally ill to die under a bridge somewhere than to either help us get better, or let us commit suicide.
But who knows? Maybe it will get better tomorrow.
Because you know, tomorrow on day 15,275 of my sad life I do have an appointment with my psychiatrist. Maybe she’ll up my antidepressants or something.
The thing is, though, whatever happens to me as an individual is so much less noteworthy than the suffering of millions of people worldwide who are mentally ill and suffering every day. My sad little voice is just one voice begging for someone to listen, someone to care, someone to help me. So many others have gotten too tired to even beg anymore, and have just surrendered to their fates.
People who are mentally ill need more help, both on a personal level and on a social level. We need advocacy and activism from others to help support our cause, so that we can lead fulfilling lives, instead of just slowly wasting away into nothing.
