Getting Personal
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the dangerously unqualified secretary of Health and Human Services, is attacking my mental health with his "review" of medications.
I grew up with a good number of challenges in my childhood, challenges that I overcame through the help of qualified professionals, and which would surprise almost anyone who got to know me anytime after the age of twelve. I did not speak to people until well after my third birthday. After that, I had a speech impediment that hindered my ability to even say my own name correctly, and took years of a speech therapist’s efforts to correct through special education. At the same time, I read years above my age level, was part of multiple “gifted” student programs, and maintained regular honor roll appearances through eighth grade.
I was also undiagnosed with multiple emotional/learning disorders.
As a psychiatrist told me when I was finally diagnosed, purely by chance (I was working in the disability student services department at California State University, and she observed me a few times and noticed certain characteristics), people with high IQ levels are far less likely to seek or get help for problems, because intelligence can often serve as a functional cover for them. My inability to focus on subjects throughout my life if I were bored by it or already knew it; my tendency to hide in books instead of facing social situations that made me incredibly anxious; and the depression I didn’t have a name for but would keep me in my room for long periods of time unable to do anything but stare out a window or at the TV without paying attention to anything actually happening.
My grades steadily dropped from the age of thirteen all the way through graduating from the University of Michigan. Subjects that I used to be a high achiever in became my worst. Other areas where I used to be terrible became my best areas. Right before high school graduation, when I was outwardly appearing to be a massive achiever, I suffered a series of panic attacks so bad that I almost gave myself a stroke by how high my blood pressure climbed, according to the emergency room doctor. These attacks resurfaced years later at Michigan, when I was in a similar situation: succeeding outwardly, having the best grades in years there while juggling two on-campus jobs. This was the first time I was prescribed Xanax, which stopped the panic attacks, but I didn’t even get a suggestion to visit a psychiatrist. My transcripts from U-M tell the story: the subjects that I cared about, the classes that interested me, my grades were solid to great. The subjects I was required to take but did not have interest in and could not focus on were mediocre to awful. I have often looked at my transcripts and wondered how differently things might have turned out if I’d only known that there were solutions for my issues—if I’d only known I even had issues.
I was twenty-six when I was diagnosed with ADHD and depression. I received a prescription for Effexor, the first time I’d taken an SSRI. When the economic disaster of 2007-08 hit, and I lost my job and insurance, I also lost my medical care. I lived in Los Angeles at the time, and they have free health care for people who make less than a certain dollar amount. Because of the way that the county determined those earnings, I was $57 over the limit while unemployed. I had been without medication for two months when I was given that determination, and I begged the social worker for help. The response of the social worker was to call for a sheriff’s deputy to escort me out, even though no harm had been threatened. I had a breakdown at the bus stop outside, because my entire life was falling apart. I was tempted to just step in front of the bus when it came so I didn’t have to deal with this disaster.
Such thoughts reappeared regularly over the following year, including another very public breakdown, until I was finally able to get a warehouse union job (which was drastically underpaid), but at least it had benefits, which meant affordable health care and the ability to get back on medication. About eight years ago, I found a new psychiatrist, who further refined my diagnosis (a little less depression, but anxiety disorder included, based upon multiple rounds of tests and visits), and adjusted my medication. It’s not perfect, but I have had eight years of complete stability. I don’t have suicidal thoughts, I don’t have panic attacks, I can focus on my work and my writing. Between medication and a good therapist, the change in my life is invaluable.
So why does this man want to tear that down?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., some twenty years ago, was an outstanding environmental attorney, who crusaded against polluters and nuclear power plants without proper security and containment procedures. He began taking clients from families who thought their child’s autism came from vaccines, thanks to this discredited 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield, going from investigating to joining those who credulously echoed Wakefield’s junk science. The most notable of that group was Jenny McCarthy, who said ten years ago, “If you ask 99.9 percent of parents who have children with autism if we’d rather have the measles versus autism, we’d sign up for the measles.” Thanks to comments like that changing the thinking of many parents across America, measles, once considered to be a largely defeated disease, is in a raging outbreak in Texas and New Mexico. Measles kills, especially those five years old and under. Kennedy should know this, and probably does, because he committed gross perjury in his Senate confirmation testimony. 83 people out of a population of 200,000 Samoans died in 2019 thanks to his anti-vaccine advocacy on the island. Vaccine immunity requires a 95% vaccination rate in the community to maintain the immunity. That number was well below where it should have been in Samoa. In America, three quarters of the nation currently is beneath that number, with some states running around 78-82%. Even those of us who are vaccinated are at greater risk of acquiring measles, because herd immunity breaks down substantially.
You know what doesn’t kill? Autism does not kill. It may be frustrating, challenging, exceedingly difficult even. My youngest brother is on the autism spectrum. His care is not easy, and dealing with him can be frustrating. But he’s alive. He’s alive and we get to spend time with him and talk with him. He isn’t unhappy. He’s surrounded by loving family.
So when I read that the very first thing Kennedy has done as Health & Human Services secretary was to order a review of approvals for psychiatric medications across the board (quickly revised to state it was for those under the age of nineteen), I became very upset. His record as an antivaxxer makes him dangerous. His views on mental health veer close to what the Nazis believed—he may call them “healing camps,” but forcibly taking the millions like me whose lives are stable and putting us to work for three to four years to “wean ourselves off the addiction of SSRIs” sounds an awful lot like a concentration camp, maybe with nicer decor.
It should be noted here that before the Jews were rounded up into camps, those with mental & physical disabilities, along with transgender people and homosexuals, were the first to be put into concentration camps, and later, outright euthanized before the gas chambers were built.
There are so many things I had to handle on my own, without support or medications, for so many years. Had I only known sooner what they were, and received treatment for them, I feel like I might’ve had a much easier life. I know many have had it worse, but I suffered for years, truly suffered. Battling depression and suicidal thoughts without health insurance means that your only option is to lean on family and friends in the hope they can do enough to get you through, or submitting yourself to a psychiatric facility for an involuntary hold. I learned that the hard way when I walked into a Wayne County facility in 2008, thinking I might be able to see a therapist at low-cost or be able to get back on my medications, only to be told that if I filled out an intake form, I’d be held for an indeterminate length of time because I’d be declaring I was a psychiatric risk to myself. I ran out of there. It was terrifying.
The reason we have experts for various fields, from teaching to medicine to law to engineering, is because issues are complex. My experience is not that doctors are quick to put you on medication—more than one has discussed taking me off of it to see how I’d do—but the opposite. There are hurdles to leap with most medical professionals, a burden to prove that you need more than just counseling. Counseling and therapy alone never made my problems better, but those things combined with the right blend of three medications has done that. It has made my life worth living. The thought of going back to what things were before is intolerable to me, and I’d rather be dead than let a recovering heroin addict and absolute quack like Bobby Kennedy’s failson force me into his organic concentration camps or take away the medications that keep me sane. My life has value, and approving of Lil’ Bobby’s crusade means you do not believe that its value is at the same level as yours.
If you wondered how so many “good people” go along with evil, look around. It’s happening right now. I will not be a victim.