cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com
This is Part 2 of my interview with Maria Doe, a former NIH-sponsored researcher who struggles with chronic mental illness, tumbling from the tenure stream into contingent appointments and the prospect of homelessness.
MB: How do you think the academy should address chronic mental illness?
MD: You would think that academics, and especially social scientists who supposedly stick up for the poor and marginal, would be more comfortable with and forgiving of mental illness, but they are not. It’s part of a larger social phenomenon of stigma. There’s a lot of work being done on mental health recovery (not cure) being done at Yale. One of the team there came to the VA here to give a talk, I can’t remember his name. He pointed out that meaningful engagement in productive work was a big part of recovery. The idea is no longer to get someone completely stable and then back into the world, but to foster recovery by getting people back into the world with support. He then pointed out that employers were very reluctant to hire people with psychiatric disabilities, and that was a problem difficult for the care community to address. Employers often have to be given financial incentives to hire people in psychiatric vocational rehabilitation services.
MB: Not just academic employers, all employers?
MD: Right. These are almost all low wage employers. Clients placed in those jobs tend to leave after six or seven months, and that was thought to be a problem until somebody noted that six or seven months on the job was typical for all employees in these sorts of jobs. At any rate, I wish I had access to that literature to back up what I am saying.
Somebody in the audience asked the speaker what he thought about insurance parity for psychiatric care. He said it was great for people with relatively minor conditions. For those with more severe conditions, unless they have extensive personal or family wealth, they will end up very poor. As I can attest.
When somebody else asked him about social-skill training for the mentally ill, he laughed and said it was overrated. Many of his high-powered Yale colleagues have horrible social skills.
MB: That’s true anywhere — plenty of lawyers and plumbing contractors have poor social skills. So what should the academy do?
MD: Well, first it should live up to its ideals. One finds an ideology of enlightened inclusiveness in the social sciences and the humanities, but when it comes down to real colleagues, stigma takes over. What should we do, send everyone to NAMI talks? Maybe. What if all the members of the academy who have struggled with mental illness were to “out” themselves? It would shake up the whole academy when we find out that at least 20 percent of us have struggled with mental illness, and not just garden-varity take-your-Prozac depression that often seems fashionable. I say, let’s tell the world about the voices, the suicides, the ECT, the antipsychotics you take that make you fat, the failed relationships, crushed hopes, the shame, the debilitating insomnia … I think that I deserve a hell of a lot of credit for my considerable accomplishments given the difficulties I’ve had. Give me, and others like me, that credit!
The issue is not only stigma, but trust. Let me just add that we are all one happenstance — an illness, an injury —undefined from disability.undefinedIn five minutes, your whole life can change.undefinedAs they say in the old Army training films, This Could Happen To You.
MB: How would you characterize the relationship between the tenure-stream faculty and faculty serving contingently?
MD: I think benign neglect would be a good term. Work is more than just money, work is identity, dignity, and social relationships. Contingent faculty don’t have those things. Why should permanent faculty reach out to contingent workers when the contingent workers may not be here next term?
I also think that there is classism involved. Adjuncts may be invisible to TT faculty, the same way service workers are often invisible. TT faculty may also feel disdain for adjunct faculty. Why bother with losers?
I was fortunate that my colleagues in my first job were supportive of me. As a full-time faculty member, while not TT, I did have daily interaction with colleagues and was able to form those professional relationships that are so important for professional development. And for the pleasure of friendship. I had time and office space to give to students, which most adjuncts don’t have.
MB: Why don’t more more employers understand how important that is to the educational relationship?
MD: Money. What did the religiously affiliated school do to cover my classes after I resigned? It hired an adjunct, at $1,800 a class. The adjunct was willing to teach all eight classes. Do the math: That is $14.400.
MB: What’s the worst thing about serving contingently?
MD: Pay. Lack of other resources to do a good job. Lack of professional relationships. Lack of professional respect. Lack of belonging.
MB: What is your next step? What do you hope for now?
MD: I was denied SSDI. My most important goal in life is to prevent myself from becoming homeless. My next goal is to stay “homed” and able to keep my dog with me, too. I am now in a 3-week 75-hour course to become a Certified Nursing Assistant. It’s pretty tough work, but health care is the only sector of the economy that is hiring. In fact, the enrollment in these courses, in my case offered by the Red Cross, has increased dramatically due to the recession. My class has 31 students, and many of them have degrees. Many are desperate.
MB: So a lot of people doing this work originally hoped to do something else.
MD: The work of a CNA is often hard, demeaning, and dangerous. Nursing assistants often suffer from back and shoulder injuries and are frequently assaulted. Pay is low, about $10 an hour. I cried for two weeks when I realized it may be my only option to prevent homelessness. It’s important work, needed work that deserves more remumeration that it gets, but I worry about my ability to do it, physically and emotionally. My illness makes it dangerous for me to work overnights. Someone who is familiar with job turnover studies will know what I mean when I say that I am going into this work with “the intent to leave.”
However, I am trying to make something of this by approaching it as a opportunity to be an anthropologist. There is a ton of ethnographic research on nursing homes. There is a ton of research done on nursing assistants. There is nothing written from the NA’s point of view.
MB: It’s all from the point of view of patients/customers or management?
MD: I am extremely concerned about patients in long-term care and their families. But there is nothing about the content of the CNA courses or the way CNA’s are trained. Most of the research on CNA’s is based on survey data. It’s an opportunity. I’m keeping a journal of the training and doing content analysis on the textbook. I’m all over Google Scholar looking for literature. It’s out there. Unfortunately, without access to an academic library, it is very difficult to get full text papers, and next to impossible to get the scholarly books. I was rebuffed by a librarian at the public library here when I approached her as an “independent scholar.” I wonder if in the world of public libraries, “independent scholar” means “quack.” At any rate, getting a scholarly book through ILL in my local public library is not free, and it certainly is not easy.
Library! Give me a library!
My postdoc mentor has responded so positively to my approach to being a CNA, and that is a gift from heaven.
My hope is that I can produce some scholarship that will improve the working lives of first-line caregivers as well as the people they care for. All the literature I’ve see indicates that where nursing assistants are better off, nursing home residents are better off. I think low-wage workers and the frail elderly are vulnerable groups whose voices need to be heard, and whose needs deserve to be addressed. That’s me, the critical social theorist.
MB: As an anthropologist, do you see issues with academic culture that you’d like to see explored?
MD: Real versus ideal behavior. Anthropologists tend to be socially, economically, and politically liberal, some even radical. But it is easy to make moralistic statements about social justice from a position of relative financial and social priviledge.
Right now, my anger and resentment make it difficult for me to formulate clear, unbiased research questions. I’m angry, I have my share of self righteousness, but if you were to offer me a place at the banquet, I’d fawn all over you.
Next, video featuring Paul Lauter, Paula Rabinowitz, Gary Rhoades, Jamie Owen Daniel, and others. Contact me if you’d like to tell your story: I’m particularly interested in talking to faculty serving contingently, graduate student employees, and undergraduates working while in school.
