Overview

This book is a series of poetic diary entries before, during and after a psychiatric hospitalization in 1990. The truths it tells about psychiatric care in the United States are not only still true, but the situation has degenerated remarkably since then. In my case, I was the victim of Northern California HMO psychiatric care. The HMO model which we, in our collective greed, are fleeing to is nothing short of an outright abandonment of our most vulnerable citizens. The San Francisco police, when I once called them about a woman trying to commit suicide in front of a building I was guarding put it most brilliantly. They explained that they had attempted to save that woman before, (a woman who was literally diving into rapidly oncoming rush-hour traffic repeatedly), but that San Francisco General Hospital would only hold the woman for 48 hours and then turn around and let her go, knowing full-well that it was unsafe to toss her back on the streets. (This is the way our families and our State do budgeting, just so you know.) A homeless man I know who had been all over the world, unfortunately as a refugee in most cases, said that while hostility toward the poor and neglect of the weak were to be seen the world over, No place on earth could equal San Francisco in the scientific torture of the poor. Even the Congresswomen who represent the Bay Area have been quoted as saying, after touring Kaiser, (which, as HMOs go is the one I most deeply detest), This should be a model for universal health care in the future. And indeed, Obamacare itself has, as its central feature, the expansion of Medicaid to the uninsured. This inclusion of the uninsured into Medicaid will result, in California, in the enrollment of millions of people into Medi-Cal, a health care system so brutal that it is unmatched for cheapness and cruelty, even in some of the most shocking parts of the third world. The provisions, the detailed rules of Medi-Cal, were people to understand them en-masse, would shock and confound not only most US citizens, but persons from other countries who explain these provisions to actually think I'm joking. The gross and evil neglect inherent in HMOs and Medi-Cal are so strange and sickening that people in other countries can't even understand the regulations I quote to them, not due to their lack of English skills, but rather due to their inability to comprehend a culture that not only rationalized away its neglect of the mentally-ill, but also enshrines into law, formulas for care that are beyond description in the harshness and coldness and hard-heartedness. Stunningly, this is all a product of the punitive Puritanism that informs not just traditional religion, but also the meaner and colder sides of the New Age movement and virtually all of the prosperity gospel. Not even hard-core Atheists are immune to this sub-conscious abhorrence of the weak. We, as a public, are not victims of this hideous mental-health system, whose neglectfulness is really the greatest cause of all the mass shootings going on now, but rather we are co-creators of this system. It is our continual state of denial that even permits politicians to conceive of health care systems as incompetent and cruel as Medi-Cal and HMOs.

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9781482362855

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Mel C. Thompson is a poet, photographer, musician, graphic artist, novelist and performance artist. His work, even purely visual work, is conceptual, meant to indicate meanings and messages beyond the words and images themselves. Whatever medium he uses, it's all conceptual art, all an attempt to say something about life and the land and the people in it. Currently he is anthologized in the Poetry Salzburg Review, (University of Austria at Salzburg), Beatitude Golden Anniversary Issue (1959-2009), The Las Positas College Anthology and Poets From Hell (New American Underground Poetry). His works are also archived at numerous universities across the United States. Mel C. Thompson is a product of the San Francisco open mic scene and was first published in their underground zine Bullhorn in 1990. At that time he started Mel Thompson Publishing under the labels of Cyborg Productions, Blue Beetle Press and Citi-Voice Magazine, where he published such literary figures as Michael McClure, Kurt Lipschutz (klipschutz), Daniel Higgs and Bruce Isaacson. In the '90s his poetry was also published in such magazines as The Chiron Review, The Bay Area Guardian, Wordwrights and the The Haight Ashbury Literary Review. He featured extensively in such venues as the Paradise Lounge, Cafe Babar, The Exit Cafe and the Chameleon Club. In 2008-2012 he was published frequently online at such sites as poetrysuperhighway.com, nthposition, com, silencedpress.com and languageandculture.net. He also appeared internationally in print journals such as The World Poets Journal (China), Glimpse (Canada), 48th Street Press (Venezuela), and Over The Transom (USA). In the last few years he was also featured at The Berkeley Poetry Festival, The San Francisco Beat Museum, The Frank Bette Center For The Arts, the San Francisco Park Branch Library and at the Felix Kulpa Gallery in Santa Cruz. He has been written about or interviewed by media outlets ranging from USA Today, The Los Angeles Times and Canadian Public Broadcasting.

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