tv Democracy Now PBS December 28, 2017 12:00pm-1:01pm PST
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12/28/17 12/28/17 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from pacifica, this is democracy now! >> probably 6 million americans are affected by bipolar disorder, but there are more than 40 million people any given year are experiencing mental illness. ofolar disorder is a part kind of a much larger conversation. one of the reasons i wrote it as a memoir is i think that people really related to some of the symptoms, the way my family had to deal with it, the way i dealt with it -- which was not always good. amy: jaime lowe on her memoir ''mental: lithium, love and
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losing my mind." she will take us on a journey from an adolescent psych ward in los angeles tuesday -- to bolivia, where half of the world's lithium deposits are found. but first, "bussed out: how america moves its homeless." to get to where? >> you can't come back. that put a hurting on me. i felt like that was swindled. they don't tell you anything because they want you out of here. they want all of the homeless out of key west. amy: as temperatures plunge in much of the united states and the homeless population is rising for the first time since the great recession, more cities are giving thousands of homeless people one-way tickets to leave town each year. we'll speak with the guardian's homelessness editor, who oversaw an 18-month investigation that reveals many people who are bussed out become homeless again and return to the city they left.
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by the way, it is -37 degrees fahrenheit in independence, minnesota, smashing a record from almost 100 years ago. all that and more, coming up. a welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. in afghanistan, at least 40 people have been killed and dozens more wounded in a suicide bomb attack in the capital kabul. isis has claimed responsibility for the attack, which targeted a shia cultural center and the afghan voice news agency. afghan journalist safety committee says at least one journalist was killed in the attack and another four were wounded. the blast struck as students were attending a discussion forum at the cultural center marking the 38th anniversary of the soviet invasion of afghanistan. this is an eyewitness to the attack, ali reza. >> i saw many dead in the area.
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i was looking for my cousin, but i could not find his body. i am sure what happened to him. the number of dead people has increased. amy: this comes days after i says clint responsibility for another suicide bombing which killed 10 people. president trump has lied about signing more pieces of legislation than any president in u.s. history, when in fact he's signed fewer pieces of legislation so far than any president since dwight eisenhower, who served from 1953 to 1961. this is trump speaking to this is trump speaking to firefighters in west palm beach, florida, on wednesday. pres. trump: more legislation broke, including -- i that record. amy: that is president trump falsely claiming he has broken previous presidents legislative records. so find he has signed the fewest in a law in more than 60 years. republican roy moore has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the state of alabama from certifying his rival, democrat doug jones, as the winner of the special u.s. senate race two weeks ago
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and alabama. moore lost the highly controversial race to jones by about 20,000 votes after at least nine women accused moore of harassing or assaulting them when they were teenagers, one as young as 14 years old. african american voters were critical in defeating moore, who has a long a history of racism, sexism, homophobia and islamophobia. on wednesday, his lawyers filed lawsuits claiming fraud and the manning and election. the state canvassing board had been slated to officially declare jones the winner at its meeting today. the trump administration has rolled back regulations at nursing homes nationwide, meaning nursing homes that injure residents or place them at grave risk will face fewer and less costly fines. the nursing home industry lobbied for the deregulation. advocates for nursing home residents say the deregulation threatens to roll back years of hard-fought progress in improving care and deterring neglect and mistreatment of elderly residents.
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in honduras, the opposition party, the alliance against the dictatorship, has filed an appeal with election officials demanding incumbent president juan orlando hernandez's re-election be annulled because of fraud in the november 26 election. the organization of american states has also called for a reelection amidst reports of widespread fraud and vote rigging. but the united states, which has backed hernandez, has endorsed his reelection. the contested vote sparked weeks of protests in which at least 22 people have been killed in the ensuing military crackdown against protesters. to see our interview with journalist allan nairn just back from honduras, go to democracynow.org. in west africa, liberia is slated to announce the results today of the run-off presidential election between vice president joseph boakai and the ex-footballer george weah. liberia's current president, ellen johnson sirleaf, was the first woman elected head of state in africa. she's been president since 2006. this year's election will mark
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the first peaceful transfer of power in liberia since 1944. in bolivia, protests by health workers are escalating amid a month-long strike in the capital la paz. the strike and protests are part of rising wave of dissent in bolivia over president evo morales' controversial decision to seek a fourth term in 2019, despite the bolivian constitution permitting presidents to serve only two consecutive terms. this is protester julia maceda aliaga. >> it is a dictatorship. gentleman evo, if he is a gentleman, don't provoke us. the people are angry. amy: in france, hundreds of residents of a small french alpine town marched silently in the pouring rain wednesday to demand answers in the case of the disappearance of a nine-year-old girl. maelys de araujo went missing while attending a family wedding in late august. a fellow guest at the wedding, a
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34-year-old former military dog trainer, is being investigated for kidnapping and murder. the girls dna was found in the man's car, but he denies involvement in the crime. this is nadine, one of the hundreds who marched on wednesday. >> i also have three children and two grandchildren. it is true is quite earth shattering. in a small village like this, we think it will never happen to us. but it does come actually. it happens everywhere. it is especially hard for the parents. i think if people come to support them, it is always a help for the family. amy: in burma, authorities have extended the detention of a pair of reuters journalists, who could face up to 14 years in prison for allegedly violating burma's official secrets act. wa lone and kyaw soe oo had been reporting on military-backed violence against minority rohingya muslims in rakhine state before their arrest on december 12. reuters' editor-in-chief called the arrests a blatant attack on press freedom, and their arrest has sparked international outcry. back in the united states, in
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texas, the immigration lawyer for detained mexican journalist emilio gutierrez soto says the board of immigration appeals has reopened gutierrez's asylum case and vacated his deportation order. this means gutierrez cannot be deported at the moment, and that the board of immigration appeals will now issue a new ruling over whether to grant the journalist asylum. gutierrez first sought asylum in the united states in 2008 after receiving death threats for reporting on alleged corruption in the mexican military. he and his son are currently imprisoned in a u.s. detention center in el paso, texas. this is gutierrez speaking in an exclusive jailhouse interview with democracy now! ,> well, if we are deported that all misleading implies debt. why? theuse ice, under department of homeland security of the united states, by law,
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must give a report to the immigration authorities in mexico and the consulate. in the immigration officials in mexico have no credibility. it is impossible to trust in them. to the contrary, many of those officials, many personnel at the consulate or immigration service are caught up with organized crime. an organized crime is precisely the mexican government. amy: that's mexican journalist emilio gutierrez soto speaking by telephone from detention in texas. his lawyer and press freedom advocates are demanding for his and his son's immediate release. to see our full, exclusive jailhouse interview with gutierrez, go to democracynow.org. a record-smashing cold spell continues to freeze parts of the northeast and midwest united states. in minnesota, the temperature plunged to 37 degrees below zero in international falls, breaking the previous record set almost
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100 years ago in 1924. wind chill advisories have been issued for swathes of the country, with forecasters warning of hypothermia and frostbite from arctic air. and pioneering argentinean filmmaker fernando birri has died. he's considered the father of the new latin american cinema, which challenged hollywood and focused on the lives of the oppressed in latin america. along with gabriel garcia marquez and others, birri founded the international school of film and television in cuba and served as the school's first director. this is the argentinean filmmaker reading a poem in a short film by michael chanan entitled "portrait of fernando birri." >> home in the form of a film poster a carrot in the zoo in berlin i think the new latin american cinema is today a rally but, but, but 25 years ago, it
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was a utopia which is the new utopia? greenparroteen whose name in latin is difficult, but who is surely called -- say my brother or my cousin. i saw him. i saw him. national identity. does the parrot need its national identity? but us, we do, we needed it for national cinema, realist and critical, later we added popular. amy: argentine film maker fernando birri has died at the age of 92 in rome. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. nermeen: and i'm nermeen shaikh. welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world.
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as much of the midwest faces winter snowstorms and the east coast faces freezing temperatures this week, many cities have issued weather emergency alerts that allow them to place people who are homeless into emergency shelters. well, today we look at a new investigation by the guardian that looks at how cities struggle to solve the problem of homelessness throughout the year, and found many have come to rely on an old solution -- a one-way ticket out of town. relocation programs that offer homeless people free bus tickets to move elsewhere have been around for at least three decades. but as the homeless population rises for the first time since the great recession, relocation programs are becoming more common and are expanding to more cities. amy: in its investigation, the guardian closely examined these homeless relocation programs by compiling and analyzing a database of more than 34,000 bus trips or flights taken by
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homeless people out of their cities. they found that the journey provided a route out of homelessness for some, but many eventually returned to the city they had left. this is 27-year-old quinn raber, who traveled nearly 2300 miles over three days from san francisco to indianapolis, only to return. to comen't expecting back to san francisco as soon as i did, but i knew i would end up coming back eventually. the roughest part about being homeless is the wear and tear from the concrete and the constant walking. it is hard to use the restroom because a lot of businesses don't want homeless people in the restrooms and messing them up. it really breaks you down. i don't know if i would ask homeward bound for a ticket again just because i know you're really not supposed ask for more than one. but if they would be willing to help, i would ask them, you know? amy: for more, we're joined in
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san francisco by alastair gee, the homelessness editor for the guardian. the new investigation by the outside in america team, headlined "bussed out: how america moves its homeless." welcome to democracy now! just lay out what you found. >> thank you so much for having me. we made dozens of public records requests. our goal is to understand what affect the bus program's are having on the homeless population in america. cities would say these programs are really a great way to offer people more stability, a way to reconnect people with family or with friends and other locations and perhaps offer them a route from homelessness. we found in some cases that was certainly what happened, for some people it certainly was a way to bring stability. for others, it was not quite that simple. we found cases were people simply became homeless after
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destination. in some instances, they even became homeless again from which the city they had departed. isn't quite asy simple and it really isn't quite as rosy a picture as cities would portray. nermeen: according to a new federal study, the u.s. home us home is population, as we said earlier, rose this year for the first time since the great recession. what do you know about why that is and what the impact of that has been? >> right, that is a really good point. the rice has been german in particular by the trend -- the bye has been in particular the affordability crisis. everywhere from seattle to los angeles to san diego, is ugly is becoming a possible for people earning certainly minimum wage, is even wages above that, it -- it is very difficult to afford a place to live.
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that is really driving the trend. the picture, in the background here, it has been a constant element of the homelessness crisis in the u.s. is a long-term federal underinvestment in affordable housing. something that was really begun with these cuts in the reagan-era. have never been properly redressed since then. amy: this is 62-year-old willie romines who took a bus from key ocala, florida. he told the guardian because he accepted a free bus ticket from the shelter he was living in, he was barred from returning. close the door, we bought your bus ticket, you can't come back. that put a hurting on me. i feel like i was swindled. since i have been banned from the shelter, i have aid on the beach, behind buildings, behind bushes. i have slept next to dumpsters and stuff like that.
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they tell you anything because they want you out of here. they want all of the homeless out of key west. amy: and this is rose thompson, a 58-year-old woman who relocated from florida to west virginia. she told the guardian she went back to key west only three weeks after leaving. and my heartizure stopped at the soup kitchen. so i wanted to go back to west virginia and stay with my daughter. staying in a three-bedroom trailer. little boy slept on the couch where i was sleeping, so they wanted me to go to a homeless shelter. i did not want to stay and homeless shelter in was for jenna because i don't know anybody up there anymore. by the time i left her to the time i get back, it was exactly three weeks. amy: so if you can talk about these people, alastair gee, and talk about, you know, what their circumstances were and how much are taxpayers paying for all of
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that, simply for them to return? was a person one of our reporters met in key west . as you mentioned earlier, the key west thing is an unusual -- of the 15 or so programs from which we received data, key west is the only one that had the stipulation. -- essentially made you sign a contract. if you requested a bus ticket, they would ask you to declare that should you return to key west, you would not avail yourself of homeless services there on the island again. so what this means is you have people like rose, for instance, who are sleeping on beaches, sleeping outdoors because essentially they have taken a ticket. it did not work out where they came from, and they ended up act in key west. in the case of rose, for instance, she wanted to travel back to west virginia where she is from to stay with her daughter. she got back there, and it turns out her daughter was not able to
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offer the kind of support she needed to find her way out of homelessness. rose would be living in an overcrowded trailer. she was sleeping on a couch. eventually, her daughter headed take her to a homeless shelter in west virginia. rose ended up coming back to key west, and that is where she is now. she has nowhere to stay. she, unfortunately, is sleeping outdoors. nine could also -- you remind me of your other question? amy: talking about the cost to taxpayers since what we're talking about now is people who take these journeys, whether bus or airplane, some feeling coerced, and then they end up back in the city they are in? >> right. we have figures from the city of new york, for instance, which budget half $1 million a year to its program. cities around the country, while not -- they don't have programs
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that are white as large as the one in new york, i think we can safely assume that over the course of years, cities are spending millions of dollars on these kinds of things. it is interesting because the efficacy of these programs -- cities would say these are good way to help people get out of homelessness stop there really isn't much long-term research that testified to that. we spoke to a city of san francisco and requested data from them. they provided many, many years data going back to the to thousands. for instance, for five-year period between 2010 and 2015 when the city offered thousands of people bus tickets and thousands of people left the city, the city could only provide us records showing it had been able to follow up with only three of those people to find out if their situation at the other end had improved. that was really -- that was a somewhat situation across the board.
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while a few smaller cities did have some long-term follow-up data, mostly they did not. this it is really had no idea what happened to the people who had taken tickets out of their city. nermeen: what did you find out about the percentage of people who opt to leave the cities they are living in, the homeless people who opt to leave, and those who are, in some sense, worse or forced to leave? >> that is a really good question. should mention from the outset, the majority of the people who are homeless are from that city. they often do surveys and they found this trend is replicated across the board so it is a myth that somebody is drawn there for the services or for the weather. most people are actually from that city. and for the percentage, the small percentage that are not, these programs can be a good choice.
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in terms of coercion, it wasn't something that we found very often. these programs generally are voluntary. the way it works, someone would take themselves too a ticket office and make a request for a ticket. in the case of one family in new york, the ortiz family, we did find they felt they had been given no other choice than to take a ticket. hosea ot's told us he gone to the city's homelessness department in the summer this year. his family had been homeless in the city of new york and he requested some help just in time, really, to help him get his family back on its feet. he said the city determined that because he had, and their words, better housing option on the island of puerto rico, he was not eligible for homeless services in the city of new york. in his terms, as it was laid out to him, he was given only one choice, which was to take the
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plane ticket out of town. amy: can you talk about what is happening in san francisco right now, which is experiencing a homeless crisis? looking at the impact the number bussed out of the city have? and here in new york city, if you can talk about one of the first places to adopt the so-called relocation program? >> yes. to deal with the second point first, new york him as first we could tell, was the first major city to launch a program. its program came about around in 1987. it hasn't continued without pause since then. it was relaunched in its current form under mayor bloomberg. but it certainly has a lot of history. the program in san francisco 2005.bout later, around officials in san francisco told me the police commander told me, they were looking to seek counsel is the city of council -- sick the council of the city
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and said, why can't we have something like that? the effect of been quite dramatic. homeless count in san francisco over many years and we try to calculate what the population in the city, the homeless population would have been had this program not existed. we did a very rough back of the envelope calculation. from san francisco's homeward bound program. the homeless population is around 7000 8000 people. our calculation is not taken in account people who might have coming to san francisco to other bus programs, which we don't have data, or people who have homelessecome while living in san francisco. but it roughly could've been 18,000 homeless people on anyone not have this program not existed. that is more than double the current population of around evan thousand to 8000.
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amy: let's go to key west florida. you spoke to a former shelter official there in key west who defended the policy of banning people who have been relocated from returning. this is mike tolbert. don't want a revolving door travel agency. you let them come back, they're going to one another ticket. then you get those people, everybody wanting a ticket, everybody wanting to come back and that is just not going to work. folks who take the bus ticket and complain about it -- we gave you all we can give you. there's nothing else we can give you. i'm good with it. nermeen: that is mike tolbert. can you say how representative is example is of other homeless people in florida and even elsewhere? program, theyt were certainly the most, i was a, forthright about that kind of thing. the key west program, in some
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sense, is to be an outlier, i would say, because other programs emphasize more that this was more of a humanitarian .ffort to assist people key west came down quite squarely -- i suppose they would say it was both a humanitarian thing, but they're also doing a good thing by reducing the population and giving these people one-way ticket out of town. i would not say that attitude is extremely representative, but it is a very unusual. that is why we sent some reporters there to meet people like willie and rose and hear more about their stories. amy: the story of the person who was flown from new york to puerto rico. explain that -- particularly now after hurricane maria. >> right. well, the ortiz family, as i mentioned, they took a plane to get back in august. they felt it was under duress
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and really did not want to go. it was a man, his wife, their two young children. a reporter noticed the appearance were doing their best to put on a brave face when they were a jfk. the kids were happy to be going on an airplane. the parents were trying to mask their feelings. they traveled back to puerto rico in august. we were able to stay in touch with them a little bit over facebook when hosea ortiz return to puerto rico, messaged us to say he had a job interview as a security guard so he was being optimistic about that. but once the hurricane had been through, it became hard for us to get in touch with him. despite our efforts, we have not been able to get back in touch with them since then. so we don't know now how their family is doing, four samples of amy: taxes. that is the news of the christmas and holiday weekends as president trump has just signed this and said his of spore and working people.
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what are your concerns about taxes and homelessness? >> well, all of the advocates that i spoke to were hoping maybe that tax reform might be a boon for affordable housing, for the construction of homes that really the most impoverished americans could afford. there was particular a fork us just focus on the mortgage, which was this tax break you can take essentially, goes to the wealthiest americans who use this to help them buy more expensive homes. even though it is intended as a kind of middle-class tax break. experts were hoping this would be reformed and the revenues from that would be channeled into affordable housing construction. as it stands, the government spends twice as much on their tax break for the wealthiest americans than it does on rental assistance, section and programs for the poorest americans.
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in the reconciled version of the tax bill, as it appears now, there has been a little bit of reform of deduction, but it does not seem that money -- at least it willt seemed, that be channeled into affordable housing production, which is what we would really like. there's a broad sense of disappointment there was an opportunity here to transform the landscape, and that doesn't seem to be the case at all. amy: in the freezing weather? >> the freezing weather is -- extreme elements are the vein of a homeless person's life. we reported back in the summer of burning temperatures in arizona during the heat wave was externally difficult for homeless people who could not even walk on the asphalt because it was burning. it is the same with the cold weather today. unfortunately, it is very, very hard to make it on the streets if your trunk is simply stay alive because of the elements. i am sure in washington, d.c., as is always the case and has
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been for decades, we will see people trying to warm themselves on grates. for many people, that is the only source of heat there is. i know there are advocates across the west in particular are looking out for that and watching for snowfall and trying to out people as best they can. amy: absolutely astounding whether from international falls, minnesota, 37 degrees below zero. , pennsylvania, over five feet of snow has fallen there and expect more. alastair gee, thank you for being with us homelessness , editor for the guardian. his team's latest article is based on an 18 month investigation headlined, "bussed out: how america moves its homeless." we will link to it at democracynow.org. when we come back, we will be speaking with a journalist about her own memoir called, "mental: lithium, love and losing my mind." stay with us.
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amy: "you are the problem here" by first aid kit. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. nermeen: "everyone has a brain, which plays a major role in mental illness. i think everyone is -- temporarily or not -- a little mentally ill." that's what our next guest is told by a leading psychiatrist whom she meets in rome in a quest that takes her from a psychiatric ward in los angeles to italy and bolivia, as she tries to come to grips with the effects of lithium, the drug she is prescribed when she is diagnosed at the age of 16 with bipolar disorder. according to the american psychiatric association, bipolar disorders are "brain disorders that cause changes in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function." bipolar disorder used to be called manic-depression. amy: well, every year some 44
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million americans experience mental illness, of which almost 6 million are diagnosed as bipolar. in her remarkable memoir titled "mental: lithium, love and losing my mind," jaime lowe shares and investigates her experience with mental illness and the drugs used to combat it. she was on lithium for two decades, but was forced to go off it when she experienced serious kidney problems as a result of the medication. she points to statistics published by the centers for disease control and prevention that show the use of prescription medication for anti-depressants among all ages increased nearly 400% over the last two decades. to talk more about her experience with an illness that is still associated with social stigma despite affecting tens of millions of americans, author and journalist jaime lowe joins us now. welcome to democracy now!
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this is a profound book. why don't you start off where you first learned, or you first were diagnosed, and talk about your experience at the age of 16 the los angeles psych ward. >> it started a little before that because i was cycling, so i was pretty much -- nermeen: what does that mean? >> i was on a manic high, which meant i was hallucinating, thought i could talk michael jackson, thought i knew secret tunnels to neverland, like imagining muppets. some of it was very -- some parts of mental illness are kind of funny. many parts are horrible. i had accused my dad of being physically abusive. he had never been physically abusive. at this point, i was running away from him. my parents are divorced. i have like a million parents. but they all had sort of seen disarray, mental
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disarray, i guess. they had figured out the adolescent ward at ucla was the best is for treatment and had taken me to the er so that is where i ended up. i had to take a lot of antipsychotics. i had to go through a lot before dr. d'antonio, the head of adolescent care there, diagnosed me. he identified it immediately because the symptoms are so bizarre, but all similar. nermeen: how long did you stay in a psychiatric ward? >> about three weeks. the first three weeks of my senior year. nermeen: what was your experience there? >> it was terrible. it was also fantastic because i got better. so the beginning of it, i was very resistant to medications. still you know,
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hallucinating. i was still delusional. wasought an apocalypse happening. i thought it was going to be going to war in nicaragua full.s there were these enormous heights outside the hospital that were just a generator for the hot all, but i had this idea they were poison gas it was one to be like another holocaust and we were going to die. that was the bad part. the good part was when i kind of came to the realization that i needed to take the medication. amy: and the medication was lithium? >> yes. amy: what did it mean to you that your illness was named? and what did they take the time that you were suffering from? >> that is a really good question. they tell me was in a depressive, which is what it was called when i was diagnosed. that was in 1993. it is now called bipolar disorder. to me, it doesn't make a difference. i am what i am, like popeye.
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the label is just a category. it helps to sort of identify with other people, to know that you are not alone in experiencing everything that is going on. because the symptoms and what is happening is so bizarre, i mean, there are so many things that are just beyond imaginable. so it is nice to know that those things exist in other people's worlds as well. like, one thing is extreme religiosity. i'm not religious at all. but when i was in the hot will, i was saying the prayers, the rabbis were visiting me. i was really, really into being jewish and judaism and superduper -- like celebrating shabbat. my family is completely not -- we are not on that trip will step in the hospital, i was
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extremely religious. so that is something that many people bipolar experience. that is one of the few things in the book where i was really trying to find a reason for that because the symptoms are so bizarre, but that was sort of are just thehey symptoms that they are. nermeen: while you're in the sticky after court, you are kept for your time -- second record, your cap for a time in isolation. just by what people may think of that, it actually helped you. explain why. >> i think that was my breaking point. in the same way -- and this sounds horrible, but the same way you break a worse, i think i was just so far gone and i have been tackled by nurses to take medication at that weight. i had been whispering all of these conspiracy theories come the different patients. i was a menace to everyone on the ward. and they kind of just put me in this box. even though it sounds terrible,
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i just let go of everything and kind of collapsed. and realized that i needed to reevaluate, and that was a glimpse of that will stop i don't think those completely better. moment, but ih ha felt calmer. i have a distinct memory of a little taste of calm. amy: because you are journalist and have deeply researched this now and you are so deeply informed by your own experience, talk about what the definition of bipolar disorder is and then ono describe how you changed lithium, what kind of effects it had on you and your research and interviews with so many other people who have experienced this, what it meant to them. >> sure. the definition is, as i
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understand of her bipolar disorder, would be that there is followedof manic highs by a cycle of depression, and it can either be long depression mania,e long mania or depression, mania, depression. the thing about mental illness is it is so individual. everybody sort of has their own -- as the symptoms are very similar, but each person really -- it is the hardest thing to treat because it is just your own experience. it is slightly different from the person next to you. which is why it is really hard to tackle as a national issue. medication -- amy: explain what lithium is and explain how -- what effect it had on you and why you eventually, after decades, had to give it up. >> lithium is the third element
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on the periodic table. amazingnd of this miracle salt. it is also a metal. it is present everywhere on earth, and the galaxy, in our bodies -- for everyone. , for me, when i took it, i did not actually feel that many side effects. a lot of people feel side effects. a lot of people he doesn't work for. for me, it was kind of seamless. i think part of the reason it was seamless is a cousin had to be. i have been next dancing just so many to mold in my life that to have something that kind of evened everything out was good. i was in my senior year and i kind of just let go of everything else and was like, ok, this is what is going to
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work for me and this is what i have to do. going forwards -- i'm going to have to take. that year was really hard because i was kind of -- i gave up on high school and friends in everything, but then when i went to college, everything was great also i did not really think about it. lithium was kind of in my back pocket. it worked. it worked so well, actually, that i, with my psychiatrist once i moved to new york after college, we decided that i could taper down, try life without lithium. amy: for how long? >> i was 25, so it was about -- amy: nine years after you started it. >> so that was not a good idea. although, i mean -- who was to know? it could have been an isolated incident. amy: so many people describe wanting to experience highs and
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lows of life, which is why they go off of it. so what did it mean to "taper down" in your life? >> i still experienced the highs and lows in life in a pretty does even with lithium. i still get really anxious when there's too much work on my plate. i still am really, really excited about random things that i can't identify, but when happiness comes it is great. when i'm not on the medication, the highs and lows are unmanageable. wearing as that are head to toe glitter and 18 belts, 30 necklaces and this crazy -- i can see it when i'm on the subway sometimes. i will see someone and i'm like, "oh, i recognize that outfit.
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it looks like something i would have loved when i was not on my meds." nermeen: one of the things you when out, a part of the reason this memoir is so remarkable, is that there is still a lot of stigma attached to mental illness. it took a lot of courage for you to write as you did. and similarly, it is often difficult for people to accept that they need medication for mental illness. you did not have those problems. >> that's true. i can see the stigma and i understand it, and i see it with other people. -- i thinkome from i've just never really had a filter. the courage for didn't really even occur to me because i have always talked a lot about being bipolar. and maybe that is because i was diagnosed when i was 16 and it has always kind of been a part of who i am.
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describing it is not something for i feel bad about myself . there are moments, though, when i'm like, please, i don't want to think about medication anymore. like, i don't want to do this to rest my life. i don't want to have to. i think that is a totally natural reaction that everyone who suffers from mental illness sort of has to deal with. amy: i don't think you describe the point where you tapered off and what it meant in terms of what happened to you. and then when you ultimately had to go off of it, which is more recent, because of kidney trouble. >> right. the tapering off was in 2001, january 2001. actually, it was earlier than that most of the manic episode that followed was that winter. i just started acting really weird. i was actually living only a few
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blocks from her studio, which is really funny because i just walked by my old apartment. i quit my job. i was freelancing. i was getting -- i had a job offer. was like, i don't to work anymore. i'm going to barter for things. i'm just going to buy brussels sprouts and squash and i was sending like $700 worth of squash to neighbors. one of the things that you are the really, really bad parts of the episode is when i was on one of the job interviews that i went on for i think it was blender magazine, which is a music magazine published by maxim, my apartment burned down. it was horrifying. and this thing that made everything a billion times worse. it just triggered this really, really intense -- it was probably a good six months were
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i was back and forth between new york and l.a. because i would not date and l.a. where my parents were trying to help me get better. they did not want to put me into an adult psychiatric care because the circumstances of that are way beyond getting better even. in l.a. forded up three months with my family, and then came back here and was pretty depressed for six months. it was really, really hard. amy: resell for where? since you are working with the doctor, you knew you were tapering down. did you understand you're in a full manic phase, that this was the effect? >> no. no, i did not want to know i was in a manic phase. i was basically like, i'm fine, this is amazing. everything that is happening is the way it should be and you guys are all crazy. amy: we're going to go to break
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amy: performing here in our democracy now! studio. to see her full performances and interview, go to democracynow.org. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. , authort is jaime lowe of "mental: lithium, love and losing my mind." it is a memoir. nermeen: before we go to your trip to bolivia, which is where most -- half of the world's lithium is found, i wanted to talk about the fact that in your book, you raised the question of
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the two different traumas you experienced what you say triggered your bipolar disorder. there is a lot of debate within the psychiatric community about to what extent this disorder, which used to be known as manic depression, is caused by a chemical imbalance in what is caused by environmental factors. can you say what role you think trauma plays in this? >> that is a really good question because it is controversial and totally unknowable in some ways. i think it is a factor of both environment and genetics. i think my family definitely has a history of mental illness will stop my grandfather on my mom's side comes from a family that has the mental illness in it will stuff he was sort of them as an elder person, he's sort of had a bout of depression. it was pretty serious.
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wasi was molested when i 13. -- i think that a lot of there was this copper is of study of research from the past thatars the basically said sexual assault victims are associated with mental illness. it doesn't necessarily mean it triggers it or that it causes it, but that there is this link between the two things. i think there is almost, you know, when i think about my episodes, sometimes they revolve around those types of, like, that trauma is involved in some of my hallucinations and involved in some of the things that were kind of the outlandish parts of the way i was behaving. were like manifestations of having been -- nermeen: in what sense would you
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say that is the case? >> identifying male figures in my life like my dad and he had abused me and that abuse was excellent coming from somewhere else. like, he has never abused me. he has been a loving father my entire life and very supportive in trying to understand what all of this is -- as all of my parents have tried to do. because it is not easy. when somebody loses their mind and loses who they are and can't function the way that you know them to function on a daily basis, it is really hard to understand that is not who they are. -- so i think the sexual assault actually is part of it. i think that within each episode is also a trauma in itself because they are really, really intense, really sort of shift the way your life moves.
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it is like a different narrative, as if there was a parallel one, what would've happened? i have no idea. this is who i am. this is the way my life laid out. but i think each time something happens, there is like a little part of you kind of shifts with it. amy: can you talk about what happened after 20 years when your kidneys were affected and yet to completely go off of lithium? your fears at the time and what you went on to? that is what basically brought on this book is that i had realized that i had this almost love affair with lithium. like this relationship with lithium that it really helped me function for two decades in a way that i never would have had. and the minute i had this physical reminder that it wasn't actually 100% good for me or that it was eating away at my kidneys -- which is not a had toal term -- that i
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know more about it. i did not know anything about it other than it was a medication. i did not know much about it and its place in the world. the minute i started investigating, it was like this miracle drug. nobody really still knows how it works. it has been used for millennia. how it felt for me personally was, like, nothing but distraught and complete fear that i would end up manic again because another medication would not work. amy: what did they give you? >> the first time i tried depakota, the side effects were really intense and i was crying all the time and i was a mess. this was the kind of thing i had not experienced with lithium when i was first prescribed it. a lot of people don't react well
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to medications. it is why mental illness is really hard to treat also. it is why it is hard to get mentally ill people to stay on medications because the side effects can be really severe. i was on depakote. it was really hard. i got off of it because i just could not deal with it. i ended up taking another medication which it turned out was toxic for my liver. which was sort of a random thing that i general practitioner found at a routine physical -- thank goodness. whatever. i was sort of out of the really good medications for mania. the rest of the medications are more for depression, and i suffer more from mania. my psychiatrist and i decided i would try depakote again. i tried it and it was actually way better. it worked out way better.
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i was feeling fine. it was ok. all of the side effects i had felt initially were there, but way less. so i just sort of assumed they were psychosomatic. amy: before we go, we wanted to talk about bolivia just for a moment. can you talk about the journey you took to the place, the land of lithium, where lithium is found? >> yes. it is a magical place for me. i think for anyone who is there because it has this kind of moonscape. it feels like you're in a different universe where everything is this krista lean green and you can kind of feel the salt calling up your body and immersing yourself in your pores. it was like i wanted to just roll around in it and kind of pay homage to this thing that had helped me for so long.
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they have these little salt hotels. you can stay in the middle. they're not really hotels. stay like a cot where you near springs were you can soak in and the water is really late and with lithium and you could just sit there with the steam rising. it is a really magical place, i guess. nermeen: one of the things you say and terms of the extent to which lithium is prescribed is that it is not a patented drugs. what does that mean in terms of people's access to lithium? >> so it is really cheap. people -- psychiatrists don't prescribe it as much because it is not as marketed by pharmaceutical companies. but lithium -- the problem is, there are not more test done on lithium for other applications because there isn't a market for it.
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studies that i've said it is good for parkinson's, good for als, that it is good in a lot of different ways for brain function besides just reading bipolar disorder. amy: we have 20 seconds. with the millions of people expected to fall off health care, are you concerned about the mentally ill in this country? i am always concerned about the mentally ill in this country because the health care doesn't even cover enough mental illness coverage. like, there are, you know, 30% of people in homeless shelters are mentally ill. 24% of people in state prisons are mentally ill. is a lot of -- there are a lot of people to be concerned about. amy: we want to thank you for being with us, jamie, and writing the book "mental: lithium, love and losing my mind." that does it for today show. for a copy, you can go to democracynow.org. democracy now! is now accepting applications for our paid year-long news production fellowship. details at democracynow.org.
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