Is it a matter of us being slow learners or just that the chickens are coming home to roost?
In October 1967 with my newly minted Ph.D. from Duke University in hand I started work as a clinical psychologist in the inner city of Baltimore. The community mental health movement had just started and I was one of the first hires in one of the first programs. I thought I was to be working as a psychologist.
The State of Maryland and the University of Maryland wanted the prestige of having a forward leaning program. They would send new young staff along with residents and medical students into the center of Baltimore to deliver mental health services. But the young staff found something no one intended. The suffering of the people had not so much to do with mental illness as it did with just plain poverty. The people were overwhelmed.
The mental health establishment wanted glory and the people wanted relief. As a bunch of twenty somethings we put our feet down. We would not accept untrained medical students or residents to do “therapy” with the downtrodden. The powers that were found we were immovable objects. We set up a system where we did intakes in the morning and that afternoon went to work finding resources to help them. We had a division of vocational rehabilitation counselor in each center and sent many of our clients to them to get trained and employed.
And then in April 1968 Dr. King was assassinated. Baltimore erupted. The city burned around us and we became much clearer about what was happening. The people we were serving felt left behind and mistreated. And then came the terrible blow of Dr. King’s death. The long and the short of it is that the story of what happened in Baltimore recently was well under way back then.
The police had been instructed to handle the problems with the truly mentally ill and that often meant handling the homeless as well. People were “arrested” for assessment and many were sent to the state hospitals. The police were unenthusiastic. As were the people.
Jobs in the center of the city were being lost and more and more buildings were left vacant. To find employment people had to endure long commutes often out into the suburbs if they could find employment at all. Baltimore was shrinking from a city of almost one million to just over six hundred thousand.
We struggled to find all kinds of resources. Not at all amazingly we found that when we helped people with their problems including physical health care issues that they were less anxious and less depressed. This was not rocket science. It was compassionate reality.
We managed to get a new classification of employees so we could hire and train local residents for much of the basic work which did not require M.D.s , Ph.D.s etc. We could prevent hospitalization and improve life quality with good effect.
Then came the “war on drugs”/“war on crime”. The police were forced into other roles they did not want and the battle lines were being drawn against the wishes of virtually everyone in the city. The War on Poverty had been helping out but it came to an end. Increasingly the inner city residents were left without assistance or meaningful support. The young men were being arrested and put in jail for long sentences. We are just now seeing videos of the kinds of things that happened to young black men then but these videos are now. When they came out of jail they had no education or job skills.
Finally the money for mental health began to disappear. The local centers were closed, hiring of residents came to an end and mental health again became hospital based but in centralized units in the city because the mental hospitals were also being closed. Homelessness increased as the mentally ill joined the destitute.
And, yes, the same resentment that fueled rage and frustration in 1968 grew and metastasized. Naturally riots help nothing. But what we have seen is the anger and despair we as a people have created. The inner city people did not want this and the police did not want the relationship they ended up with.
It is very much time for us to own what we have done and to begin engagement with the people of Baltimore and other cities to end the abuse and fruitless policies so we can work together toward constructive policies and solutions.
Carol Voyles says
Thank you, Roger.