FRESH EYES: People with mental health issues — including those who are unhoused — deserve dignity

Fresh Eyes is TCB’s equivalent to a Letter to the Editor. Got a piece you’d like us to publish? Send it to [email protected]

I started yesterday with a run.

I parked somewhere within downtown’s maze of buildings, parks and parking lots  and promptly put on my playlist of “Sussudio” and the Flashdance soundtrack, and took off down the double sidewalk of the Greenway,  and pausing my stopwatch at every crosswalk, stretching and kicking my legs when I stood, looking up and down before crossing the streets, passing gardens and breweries, landscapers blowing grass clippings and recreationists walking their dogs as I moved along the Greenway until I came to the barrier of orange cones and construction and the thinning of the trail.

With a sigh, I turned around. As I ran back uphill, I eventually came upon a crossroads — an intersection. A sign gave me various directions: Fisher Park this way, Greenway continues straight ahead, and the heart of Downtown is over here. I paused longer than I should have, examining my options; but, eventually the businesses of downtown’s heart and their refrigerators full of cool water were too enticing to resist. I began my run again, this time into the thrum of the city.

As Phil Collins sang of love through my earphones, I chugged up the sidewalk, hearing faintly the occasional car pass — it was early morning after all, not many people were out — as well as the conversations of the businesspeople that crossed my path. I ran and ran and heard and heard “Su-su-ssudio!”

Then I heard, “Hey!”

I turned my head to look across the street.

“…Sip of…?”

There was a man, seemingly unhoused, sitting on the sidewalk with his feet stretched out in front of him and a backpack beside himself.

“What?” I called back.

“Something to drink?” He gestured with his hand the action of drinking from a cup. Clearly, he wanted something to drink.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have any water.” And I continued on my run until the top of the block when guilt struck me and I turned back, stopping in a coffee shop to pick up two water bottles– one for him and one for myself. I turned off my music and approached him, looking up at me with glee.

I handed him the water bottle, with a good-natured smile. 

“This one’s for you, and this one’s for me,” I said.

“Thank you, God bless you. Could you get me a sandwich?”

“I’m not sure anything’s open right now.” It was barely 9 a.m.

“Just over at that Italian place over there.”

“Let me go check if they’re open.”

I had every intent of standing with him, enjoying some conversation, making him feel a sense of something — care, perhap s —as I finished my own water. But as I returned from rattling on the door of the closed sandwich shop, I was struck with fear.

“They’re closed!” I called to him as he dug in his bag.

He dug in his bag and I thought, with no evidence or basis, This man is pulling out a gun to kill me and rob me.He said something, but I was deaf in my fear, repeating, “They’re closed, I’m sorry. You have a good one!” Now I was walking away from him in terror. Behind my silent earphones, I could hear his voice, but make out no words.

I looked back once more as I hurried away only to watch him pull an empty water bottle from his backpack and toss it into the wind.

I turned my music off for the rest of the walk back to my car, listening to the bleak sounds of the city, overwhelmed with shame for the fear I had felt. What if someone had felt such a way about me?

There is an overwhelming narrative in Greensboro — whether it’s true or not — that the unhoused crisis here can be credited to the mental health crisis. I am someone who has been in-patient at Triad psychiatric hospitals three times in my adult life: twice at Cone Health. As someone who has gone through these emergency systems and lived through crises, I can confidently say that this system does not set up patients for success. It is only because I have been lucky enough to have familial and financial support that I have found care after my emergencies.

This is not to discredit Cone Health completely: They are phenomenal in the case of an emergency. Mental health crises are almost always traumatic for those experiencing them, and their loved ones too. While you are in the care of Cone Health, they do their job: they get you as stable as possible, facilitate an aftercare plan and ensure your safety. But that is as far as they can reach.

The last time I stayed at Cone Behavioral Health Hospital, I was discharged to the same psychiatrist whose poor attention to my needs landed me in the hospital in the first place. When it was clear that nothing was going to change in terms of practice, I had to make the decision to find help elsewhere. But where is there help in Greensboro? For my condition, schizoaffective disorder, I am limited in options. Now, I drive an hour to Carrboro in order to visit doctors at the UNC-Chapel Hill STEP Clinic.

Unfortunately for those without my means, they are left with the limits. Their families are left figuring it out on their own. My own family can attest to this, as they relied on my sister’s Psychology degree from UNC Chapel Hill to help me as well as infrequent NAMI meetings.

When people look at the stigma surrounding mental health, they often think this applies to simply changing the way we talk about things. In fact, it also applies to changing the way we do things. In other words, why should there be no follow-up visits for patients of psychiatric hospitals to ensure they are on track? Mental health patients should be afforded the same courtesies as patients of every other medical condition.

But this, like I insinuated, takes more than just talking about it. Greensboro residents need to devote time and attention and care to those with mental illness before they become unhoused and after. They are human — just as human as the person writing this article right now, just as human as the person reading it. Mental illness does not condemn someone to be feared or confined or barred from our park benches or our downtowns; it doesn’t change them at all. They are now, and always will be, persons worthy of dignity.

 We need to hold our local leaders accountable on the ballot when they do not treat the unhoused with the respect everyone is due. We need to ask our leaders to pay attention to their needs because, ultimately, their needs are our needs — we are one Greensboro.

Emma Marie Smith is a student at UNCG and a Greensboro native.