Annals of Bureaucracy & Malpractice

Let's review. (Item directly below.) Caught up? OK. It occurs to us that a deliberate refusal to provide medical assistance (the refilling of a prescription) as a result of the childish "We won't respond to 'threatening' messages" (& the refusal even to communicate anything along the lines of "we won't talk to you because we're scared, stop 'threatening' us") rationale offered for not responding to us for two wks. might just qualify as malpractice. Of course, for all we know we had to sign away all of our rights in order to get the alleged treatment we've rec'd. from whichever bureaucracy we're referring to. (No one reads all that crap, & one has no choice anyway, if one wishes to receive what passes for help. So it's all signed under duress, if you ask us.) So the response to this "threatening" e-mail:

I took my last Lexapros today, can you refill my prescription, & advise me by e-mail, so I don't have to go on more wild goose chases, as your colleagues at the DMH are so fond of sending me on?

was not to respond at all, but leave us hanging w/o the medication. Which, we've recently noticed, is not just to treat depression but anxiety as well. In other words, to keep you doped up to "treat" your anxiety – a fear of living in this society of clueless herd animals dominated by evil & cunningly intelligent predators – & prevent you from expressing your righteous & justified anger at those who are responsible for it. Sounds like malpractice to us. We'd be horrified if there are any legal eagles in the readership here, but if there is anyone who knows anything about this sort of thing, advice is gladly taken. (We realize that it will be worth just what it costs us, & thanks.) Although we don't have an exact memory of whatever alleged threats we made via e-mail or voicemail (if they'd answer their fucking 'phones once in a while instead of wasting their time in meetings kissing each others' asses, maybe people wouldn't be quite so angry, hint hint) we think we still have enough common sense left (Though it's going fast, people!!) not to have made any obvious, overt physical threats, partly because we still had some hope that some of these people would get out of their meetings & get some clue as to how to do the jobs for which they are paid, & actually help us, & partly because we'd just as soon not be in jail or another mental hospital. (Although the more often one is hospitalized, apparently the better one's chance of getting Social Security benefits w/in half a decade of applying. And hey, maybe being drugged into submission, surrounded by paranoid schizophrenics in a "facility" w/ three institutional meals per day & an actual bed or at least a cot wouldn't be any worse than being surrounded w/ stupid, normal, morbidly obese, in debt up to their third chin Americans, eating processed food until the food stamps run out while sleeping in a park. But what do we know?) So if the above e-mail was "threatening," we can only suppose that legal action & filing a grievance against these people is much the same as pointing a loaded gun at them. (AN ANALOGY, NOT A THREAT, LITERAL-MINDED FOOLS!!) Though oddly enough (here we take a clue from regular correspondent Mr. Peabody, The Dog That Walks Like a Man, in the comments section of the previous item):

No wonder that they have armed guards search you at the door of the DMH in Hollywood...

They do indeed, & as we left the office of the person who was so outraged that we were calling him on the general incompetence displayed, we noted one of said armed guards stationed just outside the office door. Never seen that before. Must've put the fear of something in them. Just rec'd. a further e-mail in response to one I sent to the DMH asking what was so "threatening" in the e-mail blockquoted above. The half-answer: "One of the inherent problems with email is that even small nuances in tone can result in a message being misconstrued." We wonder what could be "misconstrued" in the note we mentioned above. We are also told not to send any more e-mails, that all communication in the future should be in person or by 'phone, & that if we must go to the clinic, we'll get bus tokens. Sure. Thanks for the tokens we were provided yesterday. (NOT!! We were too fucking angry to beg for them, & of course they weren't offered, because these people drive around polluting the atmosphere & can't even conceive of someone not having a car, & a "nice car," at that.) Will the county be paying for the innumerable 50¢ 'phone calls we'll have to make, as well as the 25¢/minute surcharge before we are able to make contact w/ anything besides the voice mails to which they never respond? Not to mention the difficulty of hearing back from them when we don't have a mobile 'phone, & their message-leaving skills are about as good as all their other abilities. Bear in mind (we've wasted over an hour of our rapidly diminishing life span on this, sorry to any one still reading) that all of this started when, after informing our shrink that we weren't in very good shape, it was decided that we should be put into a program where "all the money was going," where attention beyond dosage incrementation is devoted to the "client." We then met w/ our perpetually incompetent case worker, who almost threw herself on the fainting couch w/ all her worry that soon we'd have pneumonia, & we'd be "groggy" when we woke up (No, we don't really know what that means, unless she was worried that thugs [police or gang members, very little difference] would be the ones waking us up.) so she makes the effort to call someone at a different Mental Health Center to see if we can get a bed in a facility in their area. And this airhead, using what was obviously an old listing (When we first used her "services" she gave us several hand-outs for where to obtain free lunches, shelter, & the like in the Hollywood area, most of them – this was in 2007, mind you – were "as of" some time in 2000!!) called the number given, received a voice mail w/ another name than the one on the list, & then simply left a message. She made no attempt to call the main number & find the person on the list, or see who was doing the "gatekeeper" job now, if the person named on the list wasn't. When the editorial "we" questioned her about this (knowing full well that the housing referral process involves faxing paperwork to the shelter, & giving the person referred paperwork to take to the shelter) her reaction was to call the same # & leave essentially the same useless message on the same wrong person's voice-mail. Nonetheless, we suppose because we're "mentally ill" & still trusted people, we made the long trek downtown, to find (of course) that the shelter in question had never heard of us. This, by the way, is what the shrink refers to as "doing our best to help you." We realize that not everything is going to work out perfectly the first time, but if the person in charge has no idea what's going on, the chances are pretty low that it will ever work out. Pretty fucking sad when the nutcase has a better idea of how to do the job than the L. C. P. W. who's paid for it does. But of course there's something wrong w/ us for being mad about this. We should also note that neither the shrink (whose idea it was in the first place) the case worker, nor the actual worker from the more intensive program were aware that as we hadn't been homeless for four months yet, WE DIDN'T FUCKING QUALIFY FOR THE PROGRAM!!) Again, this is "doing their best." "Best," my ass!! If you're not aware of the simplest options & requirements how can you even pretend that you're doing your "best?"

There's also something wrong when a person (us) who has been driven mad by a society of liars, cheaters, murderers & thieves is considered "mentally ill," but the people who do their "best" (sort of) to perpetuate that society & force conformity to it are not considered nuts. Think about it. Remember when dissidents in the Soviet Union were slapped in psychiatric institutions? Coming soon to a nation near you.