Advocacy Unlimited, Inc. Newsletter

Are You Crazy? I Am – But I Didn't Vote For Bush In 2004!

By Robert Kalman, one of the Few, The Proud, The Insane at CVH

Dear Treasured Friend – It's 2007…can you believe it?
This past year has been a great year for us at CVH, and we hope it was for you as well. Did you know that in Rolling Stone, December 28, 2006 - January 11, 2007, there is some troubling news if you are a Connecticut resident with psychiatric disabilities. It reads:

You Voted For Bush? Are You Crazy?
New Haven, Conn. – A new study has found a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush. According to a review of psychiatric outpatients in Connecticut, the more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote Bush in 2004. "Our study shows that psychotic patients prefer an authoritative leader," says researcher Christopher Lohse. "If your world is very mixed up, there's something very comforting about someone telling you, 'This is how it's going to be.'"

Many of you reading this disagree with Dr. Lohse. I am neither a researcher nor a doctor – parts of the study may be based on years of research. The best thing we can do at this point in time – we must look back to the last centuries and we deduce that:

"After all," said a psychiatrist who had devoted a long life to work among the insane, both as an assistant physician and later as superintendent at various private and public hospitals, "what the insane most need is a friend!" ~ Clifford Beers, A Mind That Found Itself p.248-251.

It is easy for many of us to judge a group of people or a generation that we don't understand. I would have never expected that in New Haven, Connecticut, a research scientist would blame outpatient "psychotic patients" for the 2004 reelection of President Bush. At any rate, the following is for Dr. Lohse:

If there is any secret in the management of the insane, it is this: Respect them and they will respect themselves; treat them as reasonable beings, and they will take every possible pain to show you that they are such; give them your confidence, and they will rightly appreciate it, and rarely abuse it. ~ Samuel Woodward.

The obvious question is – when will researchers discover the link between Connecticut's psychiatric outpatient population and President Bush's war in Iraq?