The Shrink’s Links: The Human Libary

Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

human library

Go to the Rochester Public Library  on Saturday, September 27, from 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm and you’ll be able to check out a human.

That’s because it will be a human library as well as a library of books.

Started in Denmark in the 1990s as a response to hate crimes, the Human Library is an opportunity for area residents to connect one-on-one with someone who has life experiences, stories and belief systems very different from their own. Just like borrowing a book from the library, participants can ‘check out’ a Human Book for a 30-minute conversation. Human Books are people who are willing to share their experiences, perspectives, values and beliefs in conversation. The human books are open to any kind of question on their chosen topic that is posed in a respectful and non-judgmental way. The Human Library is an innovative method designed to promote dialogue, reduce prejudices and encourage understanding. The Human Library enables groups to break stereotypes by challenging the most common prejudices in a positive and safe environment. It is a concrete, easily transferable and affordable way of promoting tolerance and understanding.

The event will be hosted at three area Monroe County libraries:Central Library, Rundel Memorial Building, Harold Hacker Hall, 115 South Avenue; Henrietta Public Library, 455 Calkins Road (585-359-7092); Penfield Public Library, 1985 Baird Road (585-340-8720).

See all the humans in their catalog. Click here to go to the page.

Of course, if you can’t get to that particular library that day, when the humans are there, you can go to any library any day and check out a book. It’s pretty much the same thing.

The Shrink’s Links: Labor Day at Ludlow

Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

Colorado_nat_guard_arrive_ludlow_strike

On vacation in Colorado a few weeks ago, I noticed a ghost town indicated on my AAA map. I always like a good ghost town, especially if it’s only a mile or so out of my way. Wanting a break from some monotonous driving through the Great Plains, I went to see. What I found was not a ghost town at all, it was a memorial to the victims of the Ludlow Massacre. Never heard of the Ludlow Massacre? Neither had I.

In 1913, coal miners went on strike. They had been digging coal all over southern Colorado, living in company houses in remote company towns, paid in script that could only be used at company stores and charged exorbitant fees for goods at those stores. When they went on strike, they were evicted. They gathered in a tent city near Ludlow, Colorado and held out through a brutal winter.

When the strike continued into the spring, the Colorado National Guard, its wages paid by the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, opened up on the strikers and their families. They set up a Gatling gun that raked fire on the tents. A ten day war ensued. Many died. The nation paid attention, the strikers won their demands, and Congress limited the power of the companies. Rockefeller, to change his image, became a philanthropist.

This is why we have Labor Day: to remember the sacrifices of those who stand up to Power.

Power is getting the advantage again; that’s what Power does. Ludlow and the struggles of the labor movement are forgotten. There was no mention of the site in the AAA book and little about it in the nearby Trinidad, Colorado Visitor’s Center. There is noting at the Massacre site other than a neglected memorial set up by the United Mine Workers. Labor Day is a day of picnics and blowout back-to-school sales.

Today’s shrink’s link is a recent New Yorker article about the Massacre. Click here to read it.

Why is this a shrink’s link? What does this have to do with mental health?

I conceive of every therapy session as a fifty-minute, two-person revolt against the way things are, the way they seem to have to be. Sometimes it takes more than two people, though. Sometimes it takes more people banding together and standing up to Power before changes are made. This is my small acknowledgement to the sacrifices of those miners. They did far more therapy of this broken, exploited world that winter than I ever have done in all my years of sitting with people, talking about change.

Announcement About MagnaCare (and a Little Rant About Other Insurance Companies)

Magnacare

I am now an in-network provider of a new health insurance plan: MagnaCare.

I’m also an in-network provider for MVP, Value Options, Tricare, Military One-Source, Compysch, and EBS-RMSCO.

In case you aren’t up on insurance terminology, in-network means I am able to bill the insurance company directly for you. When I am out-of-network, you have to pay me first and then submit claims for reimbursement. Sometimes they reimburse, sometimes they don’t, depending on your policy.

I have applied to be in-network for every insurance plan I have come across, but most limit the number of providers they will work with so they can control them better. Consequently, many people who need mental health services have a hard time finding providers who “take” their insurance. This is not the provider’s doing, it is the insurance companies that limit access to their networks. Many states have “any willing provider” laws that require insurance companies to work with any licensed provider the consumer chooses. That is not the case in New York, however, where the insurance companies hold all the cards.

It’ll stay that way until people talk to their insurance companies about expanding their provider panels, or talk to their employers about choosing insurance plans with real access to care, or talk with their state legislators about giving consumers the right to chose who they see for therapy.

The Shrink’s Links: Loving My DID Girls

Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

the-three-faces-of-eve-1957
Sam has been married more than 25 years to a woman with multiple personalities, now called dissociative identity disorder.

That might make him a virtual bigamist, but he is loving and accepting of all of them.

This is his blog.

Loving My DID Girls