Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Question about severe emotional distburbance/mental illness in cohousing

[Lee Collins (leecol211]

Hi Diana,
I'm new to this...I've just begun to think about communal living, so, I have no 
experience with how to handle this within a community. 
What I have to offer is lots of experience with mental illness. I've worked as 
a psychiatric nurse for quite a while...I've been active in the National 
Alliance for the Mentally Ill for many years...and I have a son who has been 
seriously mentally ill for 16 years.
>From a parents perspective I can tell you how difficult it is to accept that 
>your child is mentally ill. It was difficult for me and I had experience 
>working in the field. Profound denial is the usual initial reaction. 
It's also painful to accept that you child is causing harm...especially to 
people you care about. 
It's easy to blame adolescent rebellion, the reactions of others, anything but 
your child's mental status. 
This is an extremely painful experience for this young man's friends and 
family. Acknowledging their pain might be a good place to start. Mediation 
might help. Angry reactions will only increase their pain. It's normal for 
those who love this young person to want to help and protect him. It's also 
normal for them to need to believe that they can. 
If he is mentally ill...they may not be able to protect him or anyone else from 
the consequences of his behavior. The same applies to addictive behavior. What 
a helpless feeling! Either way the process of accepting this and letting go is 
long and painful. In essence they are losing their son...who is right their in 
front of them...but, he's not the son they used to have. The grief is 
heartbreaking. My heart goes out to this family and all families facing this 
situation...but, I've been in their shoes. 
My son is 32 now and doing somewhat better...but, it's still difficult. My 
mother's heart wants so much to protect him or fix him or something...but, if I 
could fix him he'd have been fixed a long time ago. This much I know...but, 
knowing and accepting are two different things. I still grieve for the son I 
lost...while I still love the son that I have now. 
It's also easy to understand how this sort of behavior must affect the rest of 
the community. It's so disruptive, disconcerting and scary! Believe me...it's 
no less disruptive, disconcerting and scary for the people who love him...it's 
just easier to tolerate.
Mediation with someone who understands both sides seems to be the best solution.
Peace,
Lee 


--- On Fri, 12/12/08, Diana Leafe Christian <diana [at] ic.org> wrote:

> From: Diana Leafe Christian <diana [at] ic.org>
> Subject: [C-L]_ Question about severe emotional distburbance/mental illness 
> in cohousing
> To: "Cohousing L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Date: Friday, December 12, 2008, 1:54 PM
> Question about  severe emotional distburbance/mental illness
> in  
> cohousing,
> 
>       Hello,
>       I'm writing to ask for help and advice.
>       Specifically, I'm seeking descriptions of how various
> cohousing  
> communities, or groups of cohousing residents, may have
> handled the  
> difficult issue of a community member seeming to be quite
> emotionally  
> disturbed or even mentally ill, especially when some
> residents become  
> alarmed that the person may harm the community's
> property, or  
> directly harm residents, their children, or their pets. Or
> perhaps  
> create legal liability for the community.
>       In each case where I've heard of situations like this,
> it seems that  
> the first people to notice the person's behavior and
> want to do  
> something about it are villified by the others who
> don't see the  
> problem. But they later do.
> 
>       My question is, if you know of a situation like this in
> cohousing,  
> how did the group handle it  ( or refuse to handle it)?
> What was the  
> outcome?
> 
>        I ask because some friends in a cohousing community
> called just now  
> to arrange a phone consultation about the painful conflict
> in their  
> community because of a situation like this. There's a
> teenager in the  
> community whom some adults love and feel nurturing and
> protective of  
> and others feel increasingly frightened of. The teenager
> has been  
> described as setting fires, getting drunk and disorderly
> and  
> violent,  damaging physical objects that belong to others,
> being  
> verbally abusive to community adults or children,
> threatening harm to  
> adults or children or pets, harming other children and
> pets.
>       
>       More than 20 adults have met several times to decide how
> to handle  
> this. They finally wrote up a list of the teenager's
> alarming  
> actions, but only those which they've personally
> witnessed or  
> directly experienced. They gave the list to the
> teenager's parents  
> and asked them to  prevent him from doing these things, to
> set  
> boundaries and limitations, to institute consequences for
> him.
> 
>       Now there's a big rift between the parents of the
> teenager and other  
> community members who feel close to the parents and
> protective of the  
> teenager,  and the group of 20+ residents who asked the
> parents to  
> curb the boy's behavior.
>       The parents and their allies have used spiritual, New Age,
> and  
> psychotherapeutic phrases to indicate why the concerned
> group is  
> mistaken, the boy is innocent, and the concerned residents
> are  
> violating good community process. These statements have
> ranged from,  
> "Your observations aren't valid because you are
> not trained mental  
> health professionals" and "You need to look at
> your own shadow issues  
> that you're projecting onto the situation" to
> "You need to have love  
> and compassion and not focus so much on rules and
> agreements" and "We  
> just need to meditate ___ Cohousing Community into 
> healing."
>       Does any of this sound familiar? Have similar things
> happened to  
> cohousers you know?
> 
>       I believe this kind of conflict is fairly common, and is
> only  
> resolved when the person doing the behaviors gets adequate
> help and  
> changes their behavior (if, for example, they take mental
> health  
> medications), or if their behavior escalates to the point
> where  
> someone in the community suffers severe loss or damage
> (their unit  
> set fire to) or is injured . . . in which case everyone
> then can  
> finally acknowledge to themselves is a problem. And then
> limitations  
> or boundaries are set, or, the community asks the person to
> please  
> sell their unit and leave (though I know the person has
> every legal  
> right to stay).
> 
>       At the 2003 cohousing conference a member of Nomad
> Cohousing in  
> Boulder told us in one of the workshops that things became
> so bad  
> there with one member who appeared to be mentally ill that,
> after  
> they'd tried everything else, the community and the
> person ended up  
> in Court. The Judge ruled that the woman had to sell her
> unit leave  
> the community. When some Nomad residents asked him
> afterwards why he  
> ruled that way, he said, "You've suffered
> enough."
> 
>       At the 2006 conference a friend from a community in
> California told  
> me that someone behaved so bizarrely that the community
> asked her to  
> sell her unit and leave. She then then threatened to sue
> them for  
> causing her emotional distress by asking her to leave. They
> were  
> scared of the lawsuit, but they finally realized that they
> couldn't  
> live in fear of what she might do to them, either in the
> community or  
> in a lawcourt, so they said, "OK then, so she'll
> sue us." I don't  
> know how it turned out.
> 
>       I'd be grateful for any anecdotes you feel comfortable
> revealing, or  
> any advice you'd like to give my friends.
> 
>       Thank you very much.
> 
>       Diana Leafe Christian
>       
>       
>       
> 
> >>
> >> Diana [at] ic.org (new address)
> >>
> >> www.DianaLeafeChristian.org
> >>
> >> Author of Finding Community and Creating a Life
> Together
> >>
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