 |
Rough draft of the History of Changes, First Year by K.G.: Crisis Hotline
|
|
|
|
Rough draft of the History of Changes, First Year by K. G.: Crisis Hotline
(edited by Kathy McGuire, 2016)
This is a brief history of Changes. It is divided by the quarters of the year as our development corresponds roughly to university quarters.
Spring, 1970: Origins
The idea of Changes was developed in the aftermath of the Cambodia-Kent uprising of 1970. A group of University of Chicago clinical psychology and human development graduate students had worked together in those two weeks organizing, conferencing, leafleting, and had enjoyed working together. Mostly women, we had been friendly with each other before but most of the bonds were between pairs.
After the political fervor died down, we didn't want to give up working together and met with the rest of the two departments who had been working with us to talk about a long-range project. There was some thought of doing a political project, but careful polling of our interests led us to choose something that would combine our political concerns with our clinical interests.
The idea for Changes grew out of two related concerns. Some of us had been involved in a community psychology practicum at the University and had given some thought to models of mental health service and the needs of our geographic community. We felt that our Hyde Park neighborhood had few resources, despite the University, and that people in trouble had no place to turn if they didn't have money, didn't like the University health services, or didn't belong to the university. Others of us were concerned with a broader community of young, hip people who either lived around or drifted through the city.
There were some strong feelings that these were " our people" and we should be there in some sense for them. At the time, it came to our attention that a young woman who had been crashing in Hyde Park had been put on the psychiatric ward at Billings Hospital because she was sort of weird and no-one would take responsibility for her. Our feeling was that, if we could pull ourselves together as a support group, perhaps we could help keep other people out of the hospital. So, with a sense of us (a group of about 12 clinical students) having some resources, time, energy, and seeing needs, we decided to try to put the two together.
Summer, 1970: The Beginning
In the beginning of the summer, people began working in two ways. One group of people continued to visit the girl in Billings. Another group of people went to various people in the community to talk about what the community concerns about mental health were. A rather large plan to talk to all concerned people dwindled to talking to a few ministers, the two newspapers, and a few concerned lay people. There was a real resistance in the group to doing more checking in the community, partly because it was scary, partly because people wanted to do their own thing.
|
|
|
We began to get together on a regular basis to figure out what " our own thing" was. It was clear that we wanted to be a network of people willing to support other people in trouble. There was difficulty in achieving agreement past that point. Polar opposites began to appear immediately. Some people wanted us to not structure ourselves, but simply agree to make up informal " teams" as the need arose. There was nothing we " should" be, we simply would be whatever we were. Others wanted to set up definite teams that would already be organized and used to working with each other before a crisis arose. The " organics" won on that issue, for the time being.
We met a number of times to have " training" sessions on crisis intervention, suicide, and drug effects. We talked a lot about our philosophy of working with people. We were almost categorically against hospitals, feeling that they made people more crazy by their treatment of the person as a sick child. We thought that a lot of craziness was the result of interpersonal rather than intrapsychic problems and, if the person's life situation could be changed, he might feel better.
On the other hand, some of us had read R. D. Laing and were into the idea that craziness might be very much " in" someone and that it was something that you just let him live out. We thought we might be able to intervene in a person's current social situation and help the friends and family not be so scared of illness and see what their part was. Hopefully, with our support, a community system would be able to change its behavior to support a person who was upset.
We spent a lot of the summer talking and working with one man. This was a very heavy experience, and we basically didn't know what we were doing. Being a good listener was simply not enough and, although everyone involved survived the experience, several people quit the group because they had had enough. There were more issues raised than settled.
At that time, we didn't resolve how to define our relationship to someone coming for help nor how we would react if they then decided they wanted to be a helper. How can you be there as a whole person and yet set limits to protect yourself? What do you do when someone is afraid of doing violence but you have defined yourself as not taking over for that person?
We had another reason to end the summer in a shaky way. A couple had crashed another man for a week and not been able to find a team to support them. The guy was so hyped up that he talked constantly and left them totally wiped out. That was the end of the " organic team" idea. We decided that we did need formally organized teams. We made careful plans for a recruitment meeting in the fall when we hoped to attract a large number of psychology, education, and social service administration students. There was a strong feeling of, " in the fall is when we will really get started. "
I had been in an informal leadership position during the summer, doing most of the pushing toward organization. I was starting a clinical psychology internship in the fall so the group was also in the position of having to decide whether that leadership position should be filled by another person.
|
|
|
