I am a consumer of mental health services. I am also a licensed social worker. I am a professional. I’ve done supervisory, engagement services, and also worked as a mental health therapist in diverse settings. I’ve been apart of the peer movement in mental health reform in New […]
As 2020 fast approaches, I can’t help but think its necessary to reflect on what was the most ambitious, self-directed, and awe-inspiring ten years of my life. There wasn’t a moment I would re-live, so much to celebrate, and nothing I’ll ever be able to forget. The decade […]
So, I want to pose a question: is a mental health disorder a disability? I suspect the answer to this question hinges on how disability is contextualized. There are several ways of going about thinking about disability. I want to focus on the purely academic conversation out there […]
“In the future, further work should deconstruct categories of medicine, psychiatry, and social work and encourage strength based approaches that will supplant new-institutionalization and create a new gold standard in treatment” (Maxwell Guttman, Mental Health Diagnosis: Axioms, Continuum, and Future Directions) 2018 “Congratulations, Jacques, on your publication!” Jonas, […]
When my illness first struck in 2003 and then again in 2008 I was extremely bitter and angry.
Planning for the future means knowing what went wrong and why,?
The next step in Contesting Admission seemed rather obvious to me. Pummel the English Department into submission. In the words of President George W. Bush, this will be “shock and awe”. The plan was simple. Bombard the department with paperwork over all kinds. Inundating them with busy work […]
When I first began writing about mental health, and topics concerning my own experience with schizophrenia, I was a bit naive. I thought since I lived through “this”, meaning, the various incidents, challenges, and pitfalls of my disorder people who struggled with similar hazards in their life could […]
My perception was shifting everyday. At first the shift was gradual, eventually dramatically altered. The community appeared different. People seemed to behave differently and have different motives. All I wanted was to connect with the changing world around me in Liberty. This was increasingly difficult to do when […]
Handcuffed in front of my house, with broken glass from my car all over the place, I knew I had entered into a whole new phase of contesting admission. This new phase would not only take all my strength, but new mental powers which seemed to be emerging […]
There is nothing more profound than healing and recovery from extreme perilous circumstances and returning to a more normal life.
Far too many stories and firsthand accounts of recovery are terminal and end with a cure or picturesque life for the consumer of services or “sick” person. This recovery narrative is different. This is a story about struggle, ongoing collateral pushback from friends, and internalized self-doubt. Chronic illness, […]
I am a rhetoric scholar and a person with lived experience with schizophrenia. I am also a prosumer. My identity aside, the status of Disability studies and narratives, memoirs, and stories that aim to reclaim the writers lost authorial voice are in demand. These stories offer catharsis—Upon reflection, […]
There is no question that family participation in a person’s mental health treatment is beneficial and critical to manage the long-standing problems that surface during a person’s recovery from a mental health disorder. This message was communicated to my parents Jane and Frank Guttman when I was an […]
Who we are now, who we were back then, and who we will become one day is a journey marked with fear, etched with courage, driven by strength, and laden with every emotion available in our affective spectrum intersecting with the multiplicity of experiences of what will hopefully […]
Interviewer: Please tell us, Max E., why do you insist on writing about mental health when it continues to be so widely talked about and covered by talented authors in recent years? Mr. Guttman: I write because my message continues to be different than all the other authors […]
My message continues to be different
There is no question people with a severe mental health diagnosis die on average of 15-20 years younger than the general populations. Studies continue to evidence further data suggesting the mortality gap is due to higher co-morbities with psychical diseases on account of unhealthy lifestyle choices. According to […]
Sometimes, school crises erupt on college campus’s unexpectedly. Other times, there is a slow build up of tension before the crescendo. The crescendo can be violence, hate speech, or any number of plausible incidents that can manifest on a college campus. Ten years ago in Binghamton, I was […]
I needed a break from studying, a nightmarish winter session, and not enough sleep. The plan was to meet my friends for a weekend of fun and excitement away from it all in Atlantic City New Jersey. We had all been there before. There was going to nothing […]
My parents have been there during the darkest moments of my recovery and during the most triumphant. From the very beginning, my parents have been present with me in my health and healing, and if my prayers are answered,they will be with me until the very end. My […]
Fully alive means more than just framing the world in more positive terms.
There are a lot of articles out there all over the internet, newspapers, and mental health forums talking about the increasing violence in the community stemming from inadequate mental health awareness, access to treatment, and laws surrounding forced treatment. Even more abundant is writing on people with severe […]
This is the 100th article posted on Mental Health Affairs. All of us at Mental Health Affairs have aimed to bring readers the most critical and rigorous analytical commentary on the status of medicine, psychiatry, social work, psychology, and allied fields intersecting with mental health care today in […]
This paper presents a long-overdue plan and proposal to the office of mental health to close state psychiatric centres and to discharge all remaining patients to the community. From long-term care and extended service units to admissions and adult, children, and adolescent services provided by inpatient treatment wards, […]
Mental Health Affairs 
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