Job discrimination and mental illness

Recently I've applied for a number of library government positions in southern Oregon where I'm fairly sure I met the minimum requirements but was never even asked for an interview. The basic requirements were the following: a high school degree and some experience working in a library.I wonder if there is some way to report discrimination at the level of a job application if it was due to age, mental illness(I admitted a disability) or gaps in employment? I have a recent seven-year gap in employment due to illness of parents and self. My father had heart problems and died in 2011 and my mother has dementia since 2009 due to a stroke. I additionally experienced a psychotic episode in 2010. During that period( 2010 - 2017) I volunteered for two years in a college library, assisted a person with research on a book and have taken care of my mother who has a moderate level of dementia.

Since I have a bachelor's degree in Biochemistry/Psychology, five years experience working in a library(OHSU/ Lewis and Clark) and two years experience supporting systematic type health reviews in the Portland VA, I feel more than qualified for a position that could be filled by some one with lower qualifications. I have also applied for some office assistant positions at a university which I'm sure I met the minimum qualifications but was never even asked for an interview. I think my gaps in employment in addition to age ( which can easily be looked up) prevented an interview. I think when employers see large gaps they sense something is wrong health and or personality wise. I love how people are angry at the unemployed/disabled while at the same time discriminating unjustly against them. An excerpt from a medscape article  and a second article summarizes it best.

Work is a major determinant of mental health and a socially integrating force that is highly valued. No single social activity conveys more of a sense of self-worth and social identity than work. To be excluded from the workforce not only creates material deprivation but also erodes self-confidence, creates a sense of isolation and marginalization and is a key risk factor for mental disability.

“Once they heard that word that’s it. Sometimes I think it’s worse than telling them you’ve been in jail. Once you mention that their face changes and their body language changes and you know you won’t get the job”.
“I applied for a government job and they said the mental state wasn’t quite what they were looking for.”

I believe that discrimination due to mental illness was at play also when I lost my last position with the VA. I overheard conversations toward the end about me which strongly hinted that my health was problematic and that they needed to be cautious about getting rid of me. This came from a medical doctor who should be more enlightened on the topic. In the end, they gave much of my work to an intern who was doing it for free and when I protested my position was eliminated.

Is there any recourse here? Obviously if one reports discrimination he/she will probably not get the position or even if he/she did probably wouldn't want to work there because of potential retaliation. This issue bothers me on principle and also obviously for financial reasons. Reporting employers like this would feel like time well spent but in the long-term might be bad strategy. I think employers know this and this is why this crap persists.

Mentally ill rights tied to women’s rights

I've noticed there is an association between depression and female traits in many people's minds. People with depression are often seen as overly sensitive, weak, indecisive, unstable and perhaps just neurotic. Many of Freud's patients were women who were often seen in a negative light and that still continues today.

Yesterday I came across an article in the Atlantic regarding how women like Hillary are viewed as candidates. Generally strong women like her are viewed in a negative light and when I say strong, I mean being the opposite of clinically depressed. Hillary is a woman with more male characteristics and Trump supporters are attacking her at the moment for being overly male, “Trump that bitch”, and somewhat ironically also for being weak as well when focusing on her health. According to some psychologists the reason might be that some men feel emasculated by a women leader.

To understand this reaction, start with what social psychologists call “precarious manhood” theory. The theory posits that while womanhood is typically viewed as natural and permanent, manhood must be “earned and maintained.” Because it is won, it can also be lost. Scholars at the University of South Florida and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported that when asked how someone might lose his manhood, college students rattled off social failures like “losing a job.” When asked how someone might lose her womanhood, by contrast, they mostly came up with physical examples like “a sex-change operation” or “having a hysterectomy.”

In the end women like Hillary can’t win, if they appear feminine, they are seen as poor leaders and if they display more male characteristics they are out to neuter the male population. How does this tie into mental illness? The mentally ill are seen by a good segment of the population as weak-willed and neurotic much like women. In job interviews they tend to come off poorly, lacking enthusiasm, confidence and motivation. For some reason it is perfectly acceptable to discriminate against a person based on a lack of enthusiasm or confidence. I think this has happened to me quite a few times.

An interesting thing that I’ve noticed about conservatives/libertarians vs. liberals is that conservatives/libertarians,who are more likely male, seem to have more of an internal locus of control than liberals. In other words, they seem to believe that they have more power over a given situation and psychologists say that people with a greater internal locus of control tend to be happier. This can be good because in some situations we do have more control than others and internal locus types are quick to act however there are other situations where we don’t, such when suffering mental illness. I am willing to bet supporters of Trump have doubts about the veracity of mental illness and would have little sympathy for such a feminine illness. Women by the way are at a much greater risk for depressive disorder than men.

What is notable, as well, is the fact that female’s depression often starts around puberty and this is when society starts to control women’s behavior to a greater degree. For some reason fertile women are seen as more dangerous. Perhaps this due to the perception that fertile women have the potential to disrupt family units when they have affairs and consequently destabilize society. Women start to realize at puberty that their value revolves mainly around their looks and reproductive value. This means that they have less control over their lives than men do and that can lead to higher stress levels.

How can female candidates like Hillary change these negative perceptions? Perhaps she should model herself after Sarah Palin a little. Palin was accepted by conservative males and females by emphasizing her role as a mother and a champion of gun rights. She pacified males by looking like a model, acting like their mother and protecting their right to fire arms, She made them feel secure while Hillary does not. A second female whose leadership is accepted is Oprah. She also gives off a strong maternal vibe while also championing women’s rights

When I was younger I remember not really caring whether my behavior feminine or masculine. I remember being reprimanded for being arrogant when quite young. I think it was because I refused to read a children’s bible. I didn’t like how religion constantly made people feel guilty about everything. My father was incredibly upset but it was rather impossible to force someone to read something they don’t want to. Perhaps depressed people should be a little more rebellious and state their beliefs even if it makes them sound arrogant or bitchy. They should additionally embrace their feminine side which might be perceived as a little neurotic. Health,like most things in life, is about maintaining a balance and in the case of depression, it is somewhat of a male/female balance.

Boundaries of mental illness

Isn't everyone a little mentally ill? This seems to be the prevailing idea on my FB feed via memes. One of these memes says, " relax...we're all crazy, its not a competition". When I see this I feel annoyed but at the same time I wonder is there a clear boundary between normal and abnormal? As someone who has experienced psychotic depression, OCD and Dysthymia I'm annoyed because that large of a spectrum invalidates my difficulty to a large degree. I think these people mean well because they are trying to include me as normal but on the other hand  saying that I don't have much to complain about.

The competition part of the meme is particularly interesting since this is the feeling that I get from many people regarding mental illness or any other condition like chronic fatigue which is hard to distinguish from normal. I have long learned not to bring up my problems in anticipation of competitive people. Unfortunately this includes medical doctors who think they are more fatigued than anyone else.

The ability to function well has often been where the line has been drawn between normal and abnormal. This is probably the most practical way to make a distinction however I always wonder function at what level? Are you talking about brushing ones teeth or doing calculus? What complicates this further is that depression often strikes when ones abilities are uncertain, often in college.

People on the antipsychiatry side, such as Moncrieff, are not helping this problem either since they emphasize the lack of objective physical evidence for mental illness. This is good in a way since it will encourage new and innovative thinking regarding mental illness but bad because it reinforces the idea that people with mental disorders some how lack will power.

While it is true that physical evidence is lacking via lab tests this doesn't mean that at some point in the future there won't be some test. I find this obsession with the past and present on the part of antipsychiatry somewhat odd. Jung might say these people tend to prefer sensing because they focus mainly on the past and present while people who prefer intuition focus more on the future.

As someone who prefers intuition I tend to focus on recent research and consequently the future. At present there appears to be some hope regarding research focusing on inflammation, the microbiome, sleep, diet and a variety of genetic studies.

Here is an excerpt from one article discussing research on inflammation and it's relationship to glutamate. The idea that glutamate plays a major role in mental illness is not new but it's relationship to inflammation and depression is new and exciting to me.

"Our results suggest that inflammation markers can guide us to which depressed patients respond best to glutamate blockers," says lead author Ebrahim Haroon, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine and Winship Cancer Institute. "This could be an important step toward personalizing treatment for depression."
"Still, we think that one of the ways that inflammation may harm the brain and cause depression is by increasing levels of glutamate in sensitive regions of the brain, possibly through effects on glia," he says.
We focused on the basal ganglia because we had previously seen that a treatment for hepatitis C virus that arouses inflammation and can trigger depressive symptoms could also increase glutamate levels there," Haroon says.

Most recently a gene that is involved in synaptic pruning has been recently implicated in schizophrenia. So, there is still some hope and reason to believe eventually there will be a physical basis for mental disorders. Perhaps the boundaries of pathology will have to change as well since there is still much that we don't know about the nervous system.

Mental illness and mass shootings

Recently a well known psychiatrist, Dr. Gail Saltz, and Obama stated that most mass shooters aren't mentally ill. I'm a little perplexed about this since the most recent shooter, Chris Harper Mercer, and many others have at least a personality issues if not an actual personality disorder. A personality disorder is considered a mental disorder and according to Wikipedia mental illness and mental disorder are used interchangeably.

Most mass shooters are angry loners, not mentally ill. Mentally ill more likely to be victims #givestigmatheboot

According to Saltz they tend to be loners with anger issues. Seems fairly obvious but I'm guessing there is more. They tend to often have a preoccupation with becoming famous and getting some kind of revenge against an unfair world. This could indicate some issues with narcissism and antisocial behavior. Additionally, there seems to be some depression however not the clinical variety. All of these mass shooters know they will not survive so the act is essentially suicide.

One solution to this problem could be to somehow screen students using psychological tests such as the MMPI when they are matriculated into college. After that ones that showed a tendency towards that behavior could be monitored closely. I'm sure at this point psychologists have a profile of this type of person.Many would claim an invasion of privacy but so is getting shot at. The rights of the individual have to be balanced against the rights of the group. At the moment they are too much in favor of the individual.

According to DSM-IV, a mental disorder is a psychological syndrome or pattern, which occurs in an individual, and causes distress via a painful symptom or disability, or increases the risk of death, pain, or disability; however it excludes normal responses such as grief from loss of a loved one, and also excludes deviant behavior for political, religious, or societal reasons not arising from a dysfunction in the individual.^[

It's interesting, looking at this DSM-V definition of what a mental disorder/ mental illness is, how it has to cause distress to the individual. What about relatives and society? Perhaps if these mass shooters don't fit any definition the DSM-V needs to add a label just for them.

edit:

Here are a few articles I've read since writing this post that discuss the same topic. It appears one could profile these mass shooters but the description could apply to a lot of people. Mental health is part of the picture but not necessarily the most beneficial thing to focus on. A history of violence appears to be a better predictor.

What We Actually Know About the Connections Between mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and Gun Violence

Mass Murders Fit Profile, as Do Many Others who don't Fit Profile

How to Stop Violence

Anti-Psychiatry is simple minded

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P6_FwpVo_s&w=560&h=315]

According to this man in the video no known pathology exists in the mentally ill and consequently mental illness doesn't exist. What annoys me is that anti-psychiatrists believe that pathology or abnormality can only exist as either a lesion or something measured in the blood. I submit that they have an overly narrow view of pathology. Given the complexity of the human body numerous things could function abnormally. Migraine, for example, is a well accepted neurological disorder however neurologists aren't sure why migraines, much like mental illness, occur.

Another specific example of abnormality/pathology is the lack of circadian phase alignment between the sleep wake cycle and the melatonin cycle that exists in many depressed individuals. In SAD individuals the melatonin cycle is often delayed relative to the sleep wake cycle. This can be corrected by the use of bright light or melatonin supplements.  One particular study found a connection between the degree of depression and the lack of alignment between the two cycles.