After my rather unfortunate experiences at high school, followed by some minimum wage factory work, I decided it was time to exercise the old brain. Last July I signed up for a Certificate in Social Services, which should eventually lead me into a Diploma in Counselling.
Cliché, I know. The patient wanting to become the helper. I have no intention though, of working with people “like me”. I’d love to become a child psychotherapist one day, and work with young kids with behavioral problems. This interest has sprung forth from my part-time work as an after-school care nanny. But that is a blog for another time.
On my very first day at school, I was grouped together with 24 other students. We were all doing the certificate in hopes of either gaining entry into a Social Work qualification or a Counselling qualification. So these were all people wanting to “help” people. I could already see which of them were a walking God-complex in the making. Those that talk about the mentally ill as “them”. Then there was the group of people that just didn’t know what to do with their lives, and this certificate was a short-term commitment, so not too much of a risk. There were those that were well into their adulthood and had decided to make a 180 degree career change. And then there was me. A bit of an outsider. Wearing long sleeves to hide my disturbing personality, and trying my hardest just to blend in.
On these first days they always try to make the group “bond” with exercises that force us to “meaningfully” interact. The exercise we got stuck with was called the “Bomb Shelter Exercise”. The gist of the exercise was this:
World War III is raging all around you. Nuclear bombs are detonated left, right and center. You are a high official and are safely tucked away in a bomb shelter along with other important people (your group members). A group of 10 survivors knocks on your door. They all want to take refuge in your shelter. The problem is, there is only enough space, food and water for another 6 people. These 10 people leave it up to you, the high officials, to decide who these 6 will be. So in your groups you must decide which 6 people you will take on, and which 4 you will basically leave to die. Keeping in mind that these 6 people might be the ones that have to repopulate the whole earth.
This is all you know of the 10 people waiting impatiently outside your shelter:
* 16-year-old pregnant girl, low IQ
* 75-year-old clergyman
* 28-year-old ex-policeperson. Kicked out of police force for aggressive behavior. Not willing to give up their gun
* 42-year-old female physician, can no longer have children
* 36-year-old violinist, served 8 months in jail for drug related charges
* 38-year-old prostitute, has been retired for five years.
* 22-year old black militant
* 25-year old lawyer, married, refuses to be separated from his wife.
* 26-year old wife of lawyer, spent last 10 months in a mental hospital, heavily sedated, refuses to separate from her husband
* 52-year old architect
So the whole point of this exercise was to show us how we stereotype. How everyone would probably think that the militant was a man, the violinist was a woman, etc.
But something far more interesting emerged. For me it was obvious we would at least take on the pregnant girl, the doctor, and the young couple that seems very committed to each other and are young enough to still have tons of kids. But I was very alone in that opinion. My group was very opposed to taking on the “loony”. “She’s fresh from the loony bin, probably psychotic, she might kill us all.” “Yeah, she’s too much of a liability.” “What if she gets aggressive?” “If she is sedated she probably came from the isolation cell.”
I was taken aback by how much opposition arose from the simple fact that this woman has spent 10 months in a mental hospital. People end up there for numerous reasons. And if you take a closer look, most of them are not aggressive and won’t be psychotic. But I was soon outvoted by all my group members and just like that, the lawyer and the loony died during World War III.
When we came back into the classroom, every group got to read out whom they had decided to let into their shelter. I was gobsmacked to find out every single group had voted lawyer and loony out. They were letting a young couple that obviously love each other very much, die, because they were scared the wife might go bananas. When this was discussed everyone was very much in agreement she was just too much of a risk.
As a borderliner undercover, I felt very uneasy. I should have said something, but didn’t, not wanting to give away my cover. I am ashamed to say that the prejudices my classmates were holding up of people like me, were the same prejudices that stopped me from speaking up about how ridiculous it is that this class full of social science students is scared of people suffering from a mental illness. I was scared that, like the lawyer’s wife, I too would be shunned and left to die.
In that classroom was the next generation of mental health professionals. And they had already bagged, labeled and thrown out our future loonies.
What is to become of the next generation of borderliners when tomorrow’s mental health professionals have already written them off?
Thank you for reading.
Yours truly,
GI
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