Mahatma Ghandi said, "The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats it's most vulnerable members." We generally think that that means that a leader has a responsibility to see that his vulnerable citizens are treated with compassion. What happens when the leader becomes one of the most vulnerable members? Are the citizens responsible for making sure that he gets treated with compassion?
It was 10 PM on May 16, 2025 when I collapsed on the sofa after counseling nine people, almost back to back. I was completely exhausted and thought I would be asleep within minutes. The Abby Phillip Show was on during which a group was scrutinizing videos of Joe Biden having trouble with dates and not directly answering questions. Concern was expressed about whether there was a cover up in the While House. Anger erupted like a volcano within me and adrenaline began to surge through my nervous system. I sat up, fully energized and very upset. It was difficult to see someone who had such a successful career, who had helped so many people, and who I loved and admired so much, being mocked, deemed useless and cast aside like a piece of trash. "You stupid people!" I thought. "Don't you realize that someday that could be you?"
I thought it strange to be hearing this conversation in the middle of Mental Health Awareness Month. The Mental Health Awareness movement had come such a long way with eliminating stigma related to mental health issues. In Psychology 101, we were taught to stop using the word "normal". Whether a behavior was a problem was not based on whether it was statistically unusual, but whether it causes problems for the person in question or others. More and more people have been publicly sharing their experiences with things like mental illness, addiction, eating disorders and autism. It became commonplace, if not "hip", to enter therapy. Recently, the beautiful slogan emerged, "It's OK to not be OK". However, that didn't seem to apply in this situation. For the first time in a long time, a mental impairment was being shrouded in secrecy and shame. When it was exposed people responded to it with shock and disdain. Is there still a stigma attached to age related decline? What a pity, considering that the only difference between Biden and many of the rest of us is about twenty or thirty years.
This situation raised so many questions for me. Where is the line between what is okay and what is a problem, and who is to say? Do different people have different perspectives on this, and why? Do some problems get magnified because they are happening to an older person, and overlooked when they happen to the young? A few years before my mother died, my aunt tried to convince me that my mother was mentally declining. She told me, "Yesterday she said that there was something she needed to do but she couldn't remember what it was." And...........? Somehow that just didn't seem all that unusual to me. I had said things like that to myself on more than one occasion. I always thought that it was normal to occasionally get tough-tied, lose your train of thought or do something that makes you look like a complete idiot. I once walked into the waiting room of one of the agencies I worked for. I approached a new client and said, "Nice to meet you. I'm Dorothy." The client replied, "I know. We met for a session last week."
Republicans want to criminalize the people who allegedly "covered up" Biden's decline. However, even Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson admit that sometimes decline happens so slowly that the people who spend the most time with you don't recognize it. If they did recognize it, who can blame them for wanting to deal with it quietly and behind closed doors? The political climate was and still is, like an ocean full of hungry sharks. The opposing party was looking for any reason they could find to knock the president (and his entire party) down like a bowling pin. If he wasn't showing signs of decline, they would have looked for another problem. Has anyone considered that the hostile political environment, along with our stereotyping and stigmatizing, was part of the problem? Has anyone considered that the opposing party, and maybe society as a whole, also contributed to the "original sin" that was written about? If you want people to talk, you have to make it safe for them to do so.
We used to be a society that tried to understand things. We used to consult with experts to get information about a problem and use it to find a solution. Now we just jump to whatever conclusions we want to believe. Information is manipulated and used as a weapon to wipe out anyone who disagrees with us. None of the people expressing opinions about Biden are doctors, psychiatrists, neurologists or geriatric specialists. Yet, no one said anything about why he was not professionally evaluated for the issues that were so much of a concern. We immediately diagnosed him with age-related decline. How can we be sure that that's what it was? How do we know that it wasn't another condition - one that could have been treated? Come on, people, we're not in the dark ages anymore! It's 2025!
Some of us don't have much on Biden in spite of being a lot younger. I have been struggling for a lifetime with all the symptoms of ADHD. My train of thought is always on a run-away track. I am constantly asking myself "Why did I come into this room?", "What am I doing?", and "Where did I put that thing?" A task that would take the average person an hour sometimes takes me one and a half to two hours. That resulted in an eight-hour work day turning into ten or eleven hours, day after day, year after year. I was evaluated at a younger age and they said it seemed like I had ADHD, but when the stimulant medications they gave me made me hyper instead of calming me down, they weren't so sure. So they started throwing other types of medications at me which only made things worse. I went back to doing the best that I could without medication. I had to choose my priorities and put a lot of things on the back burner. My place became a mess when other things trumped housework. The best word that I could come up with for how I feel is "compromised".
I think we need to expand the concept of "mental health awareness" to include all the different things that can cause a person's functioning to be compromised. Psychologists and therapists are told to rule out medical things before assessing someone as having a mental or emotional problem. In addition to all kinds of medical issues that can affect mental processing, there are; anxiety, depression and a truckload of other mental illnesses. There are chemical and behavioral addictions, brain injuries, sleep disorders, PTSD and other effects of trauma, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and a full spectrum of autistic disorders. Finally, there are issues related to age.
As a society, there is a lot that we need to research and seek to better understand. We need to replace criticism and stigma with understanding and compassion. As individuals, we need to understand that we are God's children and He loves us deeply and completely, regardless of how much or in what ways we may be compromised. He doesn't care how many brain cells we have or how soon we lose them. He only cares about what we did with the ones we had. He doesn't care about the weakness of our minds and bodies. He only cares about the strength of our character. We will not be judged on the basis of what we cannot control, but on whether we were honest and fair, and on how much we loved God and our neighbor. He needs all of us to do His work, and some of it can only be done by someone with the unique perspective that comes from having been compromised in some way.
We cannot let what we cannot do interfere with what we can. We have to be as familiar with our strengths as our weaknesses. I am intelligent, insightful and creative. The quality of my work is good, it just takes me longer to do it. A director of a mental health program once spoke to me and a group of co-workers about dealing with limited financial resources as an administrator. "You do the best that you can with what you have" she said. I think that applies to all limited resources - even the ones within us.
Biden made a speech last week honoring people who died for the country. For someone in his eighties who is being treated for stage four cancer, I think he did pretty good. I am also convinced that on his worst day he did a better job as president than the ruthless, constitution-defying dictator who holds the office now.
"They leave you with nothing, and nowhere to go, just put you in the corner like an old banjo!
Your strings are breaking, but you can't say no, you're running with the devil, it's touch and go!"
Lyrics from "Touch and Go" by Emerson, Lake and Powell (1986).
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