I find myself more than ever questioning my values as a person. In recent years, I've taken a position as a mental health caseworker. Lately, I've been beginning to wonder about the validity of my job.
I see these people everyday, sometimes more than once a day, and my job is to convince them that what they are is 'abnormal,' so that I can push pills on them and ram psychotherapy down their throats to make them 'normal.'
What am I doing though? Taking their experience and proving to them that it is less real than anyone else's...showing them that socially acceptable is the only way to be. How do I know that what I'm making them is not, in fact, 'abnormal?'
I work with a woman. She is probably one of the most sane people I have ever met, but at times she hears voices, not bad voices, but voices nonetheless. She has stopped taking her medication because it makes her feel distant and removed from everything. It makes her numb. I asked her, "Is the trade off worth it?" She told me she didn't have a choice because her only income is disability after she lost her job for being 'unstable.' She will lose her only income if she does not succumb to treatment.
Who are we as human beings to decide who is and is not 'normal?' It's like the third grade playground when everyone gathers around to pick on the fat kid, the one with glasses, or the one who stutters. When will we learn, and when will it be enough?
I want to appreciate the diversity in these people, and I went to school and majored in psychology because what these people are fascinated me, and it still does. I don't want to wipe them off the face of the Earth with tiny sherbert colored pills.
What they are is not dangerous, freakish, or any other maladjustment. They are people, and more and more I'm reminded about how I need a new job.