mental health – Unspoken Politics

Police ignore own mental health policies in killing of Alfred Olango

The police have released cell phone and surveillance footage of the Alfred Olango shooting by El Cajon, CA police. It’s obviously disturbing, but CNN is hosting it here.

The video also has a very good picture of what Olango was holding- it looks pretty much like what I described in my last post.

Police say their job is very hard and dangerous. It’s not the most dangerous occupation, and these shootings continue to show the very low expectations society and the justice system have for police officers.

If I was telling you that we were going to help someone who’s having some mental health trouble, when we arrived you would be prepared for certain behavior. You might expect that this person may be agitated, not want to be approached, and would not respond well to escalation. You would know that this would not be a typical conversation.

In the death of Alfred Olango, the police were called on a 5150. That’s the same thing as me briefing you in the above scenario. It’s a mental health call. Quoting Christopher Rice-Wilson:

“The PERT Team [Psychiatric Emergency Response Teams] should have been the ones responding to this. The police were aware of his mental illness: this was a 5150 call and they should have dispatched officers trained to deal with this and de-escalate the situation. El Cajon police didn’t do this; they didn’t follow their own policy.” (SD Reader, 9/28, “Police killing of Alfred Olango protested”)

This is the issue with the argument that bodycams would have saved Alfred Olango’s life. El Cajon PD has policies about mental health. They didn’t follow them, barged right into a delicate situation, and an unarmed black man is now dead. If bodycams become policy, just like the PERT Team, why do people expect that they will be used as needed? Going back to low expectations, the police rarely are rebuked for not following their own protocol. Who’s going to force them?

Protestors in El Cajon have been met with force, including bean bag rounds (video of someone hit by one here). From my own vantage point, with privilege, I can’t fully appreciate how it is to be a person of color in America, let alone a protestor of color. But as someone with a mental illness, and with friends who have very serious conditions, the Alfred Olango shooting is proof that rights on paper and in reality can be radically different.

Analysis of police press release about Alfred Olango raises serious questions (updated)

The police in El Cajon have released, and then updated, a press release about the shooting of Alfred Olango.

Police have video of the incident taken from a bystander, which they say backs up their account, but refuse to release the full video. This is the still that we have to go on.

We know that Olango did not have a gun or a Taser. The press release states the exact objects Olango had were a Smok TVF4 MINI attached to a Pioneer4You battery box.

The first item sounds like the one pictured on the left, as it is described as “all silver.”

2015-09-24-10_53_355429

Pioneer boxes look something like this:

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The device in total is 7″ by 2.25″ by 1″. For a comparison, a Glock 17 is about 8″ by 5.5″ by 1.2″. If the Smok was all silver as shown above, it wouldn’t resemble a gun from any distance, let alone the few feet as shown in the picture. Given that vape devices are commonplace, police should be expected to distinguish between smoking equipment, firearms, and Tasers. That’s an expectation that was not met here.

Other notes:

Shooting was at 2:11, with weather in El Cajon being very hot and bright. So no “it was dark to hard to determine” defense like in the Fridoon Nehad case, where a non-weapon was misidentified also. As the still shows, police saw the device from multiple angles.

Releasing the still seems to be a way of forming a narrative without backing it up in full. You would assume that this single frame, taken out of context, makes the police account look most likely. However, you don’t have to defend police conduct as it actually looked in real-time, nor any police methods used prior to the shooting.

The police deflect why there was not a Psychiatric Emergency Response Team (PERT) personnel at this scene at the bottom of the updated press release.

The El Cajon Police Department does have an agreement with Community Research Foundation / PERT which allows certified licensed clinicians to partner with police officers in the field in order to provide direct support for mental health calls. On 9/27/16, during the hours of this incident, there was a PERT clinician with a police officer. At the specific time of this incident, that team was on a different radio call that was also PERT related. They were not immediately available.

(update: the Associated Press reports it took over an hour for police to respond and one minute to kill Olango. If it took that long, the “not immediately available” excuse doesn’t hold up. This was not a rush, in-the-moment job.

Additionally, someone allegedly so dangerous that police had to quickly kill when on the scene managed to not hurt anyone in the hour before. The person Olango was most likely to hurt was himself, given his state and the presence of traffic.)

This was a 5150 call, in which authorities come to take someone to involuntary psychiatric hold. Given that the call was about mental illness (not a call about crime or a possible criminal), having no special preparation is concerning. Though 5150s can be a good thing in the long run for patient health (I know many people who have had at least one called), this incident makes me less likely to call one in.

As someone who provided information about mental illness to those who came into contact with people with mental health problems, or were otherwise difficult to help, I’m not surprised. The department likely trumpets this local relationship in promotional materials, yet when people’s lives are on the line, they are somehow unavailable. This is a similar issue we’ve seen so far with bodycams- often there, but unavailable or otherwise unaccessible.

The release says this

At this time, the officer with the electronic control device discharged his weapon. Simultaneously, the officer with the firearm discharged his weapon several times, striking the subject.

Why, if the suspect is considered such that one officer has their Taser (rather than pistol) ready, would the two stages not be sequential. Non-lethal methods would not have worked in the death of Alfred Olango, because lethal means were used at the same time. Would Olango have survived if only the Taser been used? Much more likely.

In conclusion, large protests in El Cajon have been held in the aftermath of Olango’s death. Given the official story as presented thus far, I find considerable issue with police conduct before the shooting, the misidentification of the object held by Olango, the use of lethal force before less-lethal means were tried, and the release of a single still image without context, so to prejudice the public.

Mental illness as disability in college

So I was reading a 2012 report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) recently. Over 750 college students were surveyed, with NAMI attempting to determine views of mental illness among young adults, and the quality of campus services. The report is located here (PDF).

Most interesting to me is the data on disability accommodations (pages 12-13). While there is a lot of current data on students and mental health, they usually focus on counseling services. In that area, the rate of students getting help has sharply increased, though college-age adults remain the group least likely to seek help. This isn’t a terribly good survey in terms of research design, but any information is good.

A couple key insights emerge, which I’m fairly confident would hold in a more rigorous study.

There is a substantial difference between how many people with mental health conditions who know about accommodations, and those that actually use them. About 20 points separate the two.
Disability resource centers are orientated to physical disabilities, and aren’t designed with psychological conditions in mind.
Among those that dropped out of college due to mental health issues, getting accomodations may have kept them in school.

The conceptualization of disability in the United States has created these conditions. This gap between physical and mental doesn’t emerge from modern disability law necessarily, where the definitions are broad and inclusive. Rather, society has yet to shift its perspective on mental illness. Some tendencies:

People discount any claimed disability that is not clearly visible to outsiders. When I served on a county disability commission a couple years ago, a long impromptu discussion broke out during a meeting about people being harassed for parking in the special spaces because they didn’t “look like they needed it.”
The stigma against mental illness and disability are different, and a sizable group of people accept their belonging in the former group but not the latter.
The type of assistance given to people with psychological conditions, including more time on exams, exams in a quiet room, and longer deadlines, may seem unearned by those who qualify. Accomodations otherize. If you take your exams in a different room, or have different deadlines than your classmates, there may be resentment.
Faculty treat psychological accomodations as less important than physical accomodations.

The disability office as an institution is caught in the crossfire. It can be a key part of students succeeding in college, but many people have no concept of mental illness as being connected.

Campus mental health (II)

Screen Shot 2016-02-22 at 3.05.01 PM — UC campuses received poor scores on the accessibility, diversity, and outreach of their mental health services

This is part two of a series on UC mental health and the campaign to reform it. A previous post outlining areas of concern is located here.

The UC Students Association (UCSA) has released their evaluation of campus mental health resources, part of a new reform campaign (#HowAreYou) which was adopted last August. Three areas were measured: accessibility of the system, diversity of current staff, and extent and quality of outreach.

Results: not good. UC students would be appalled if their own academic grades were this bad. Campuses scored best on outreach, which is the least important of the three criteria. The core issue is accessibility. Diversity among counselors is only meaningful if students can get appointments within a reasonable amount of time- and are allowed a sufficient number of sessions per term. Outreach is key- it destigmatizes mental illness, and plays a key role in the increasing number of college students looking for treatment in the last fifteen years. But effective outreach magnifies accessibility issues. The more students who seek Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) or an equivalent service, the more meaningful staff to student ratios become. It’s clear that the rise in demand for counseling and psychiatry is outpacing general student growth and funding allocations.

These issues aren’t new. A 2006 UC Office of the President report (PDF) outlined the same basic problems. Their findings summary stated:

The increased need by students for campus mental health services has resulted in an overtaxed delivery system at UC that falls significantly short of meeting the actual student demand and expectation for services

The cumulative toll of this shortfall in service capacity has had and continues to have a significant negative impact on all campus populations, including other students, faculty and staff; on the affected individual student’s academic performance; and on that student’s overall mental and physical well-being.

Further, it is the Committee’s considered view that this situation will not improve over time, and indeed given general societal trends can only further deteriorate, without aggressive intervention on the part of the institution. This intervention must include a systematic review of policy, enhanced communication mechanisms, and a renewed commitment to campus-wide collaboration along with an infusion of new resources commensurate with both the nature and magnitude of the challenge now facing the University.

As usual, the issue boils down to money. The reason is the corporate-like administrative structure that ties up over a billion dollars more than is needed to run the UC. A low-cost, high revenue structure will always underfund student services like counseling. This combines with the ‘progressive’ state government abdicating its duty to provide quality higher education. Thus we are told that any investment in students will raise tuition, because in 2016 there is increasingly little difference between private and public universities. Remember how K-12 is a right, but once you hit around 18 education becomes a paid-for privilege? Students and faculty are hostages of a mindset we see in corporations all the time, where investment in people makes the system uncompetitive.

With that out of the way, I’d like to talk about the disability services for students, in the context of mental health. There are several names for this office:
Office for Students with Disabilities at UC San Diego and UCLA;
Disabled Students’ Program at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara;
Student Disability Center at UC Davis;
Student Special Services at UC Riverside;
Disability Resource Center at UC Santa Cruz;
Disability Services Center at UC Irvine; and the Disability Services Office at UC Merced.

When #HowAreYou was first presented in a public meeting at UCSD, I had issues with its depiction of a full coalition of groups and university services. I like the focus on collaboration- as improving mental health is not just about psychologists but peer mentors, wellness education, student groups, resource centers, etc. But mental illness as disability was never mentioned. Laws like 5150 involuntary commitment were mentioned, but the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was conspicuous in its absence.

AccessibleIconCrop — Updated design of the International Symbol of Access

Under the ADA, the definition of disability (Section 12102) is broad and non-exhaustive. In public perception, the term “disability” has been strongly tied to physical disability. The International Symbol of Access is the image most closely tied to the concept of disability- part of an inherent bias towards conditions that others can perceive and verify. Part of stigma is how people may not perceive psychological issues as potentially chronic or severe.

So let’s turn the three branches of #HowAreYou– accessibility, diversity, and outreach. All of this is based on my own experience, the experience of many friends and people I come across, and hour-long meetings with a case worker who deals with the largest portion of students seeking help with psychological conditions, dedicated to talking about the mental health system.

Accessibility: There are many different accessibility issues inherent in psychological conditions being the basis of disability accommodations. Here are some that come to mind initially:

Especially in cases of mental health, there are few connections between disabilities office and other parts of the university. Professors rarely, if ever, talk about it or put information on their syllabi. It’s seldom a topic of conversation in student groups.
Documentation is difficult for someone with no prior experience.
The ratio of case workers to students leads to logjams early in each term as everyone is trying to get their accommodations set and given to professors.
Faculty may block accommodation requests, which the student must then solve by going back and forth between the office and faculty.

Diversity: The same issues exist here, as it does when talking about CAPS.

Case workers and staff must be equipped to deal with a very broad spectrum of disabilities (movement, deafness, blindness, learning disabilities, anxiety, depression, mood disorders, PTSD)
Students may lack confidence in a staff member without shared experience (for instance, a deaf person may feel their obstacles can’t be fully experienced, or a depressed student may feel their issues are being devalued because it’s not visible)
Students may come from cultural backgrounds that don’t talk about mental illness, and may stigmatize those who have problems. This is brought up frequently by Asian Pacific Islander (API) students, and is relevant with both CAPS and disability services.

Outreach: Stigma is a big factor here, but I’m very insistent here- the stigma of having mental health problems is very different from the stigma of having a disability. So campaigns launched by #HowAreYou will have limited effect if they are only talking about the direct stigma of mental illness.

The disabilities office, like CAPS, is given a very limited slice of time in orientation. With so much information in a day-long event, students are unlikely to follow up with the office if they had heard about it for the first time.
Faculty aren’t trained at all about disability accommodations. Thus they often treat accommodations as guidelines rather than legal rights. If faculty have to go out of their way to meet standards, they will often refuse to honor entitlements.
- Many faculty are new to teaching, or from countries that do not have an equivalent to the ADA. So a large chunk of teachers every year will have no prior experience with the system.
Because mental health is usually placed in a therapy/treatment rather than disability context, anti-stigma campaigns rarely address that there are two stages of stigma of mental illness.
The disabilities office rarely has a robust outreach component. They will table at resource fairs and present at orientation, but there is rarely a push to get staff and student mentors in club meetings, classes, and hold events specifically about disability.
- It should be said that everything here applies more to psychological disabilities than other types. Many people have no idea psychological conditions are legally disabilities.

So this concludes my second post about mental health in the context of the UCs and the #HowAreYou campaign by the UC Students Association. I welcome any information by those that have experience with disability services and mental health, especially outside UCSD.

My next post will be about the structure of how students give accommodations. An exchange with someone at a community college in Northern California shows that there are multiple ways to go through the process, and I think some are superior to others.

First thoughts: campus mental health

This post is to mark the beginning of How Are You at UC San Diego, a student mental health overhaul instigated system-wide by the UC Student Association (UCSA). Mental health for students, from elementary school on through graduate education, is in crisis on a structural level. The toll of mental illness has always been underestimated, and thus few schools have services to match need. Nationwide studies find sharp increases in college students seeking counseling.

Dr. Victor Schwartz in the linked article outlines two potential reasons that campus services are being overwhelmed. Number one, that college students as a population are having more issues than before. Number two, more people with existing issues are seeking treatment, so it’s not the density of the problem but the response rate.

I’m firmly in the camp that thinks reason two is the key issue. In my previous post on student health, “The fantasy of perfection,” I wrote about the crisis that appears when mental illness is viewed as weakness. Society waking to the reality that mental health problems, both acute and chronic, are common features of the human experience is a huge development. So while the present is a challenge on a resource level, it is at the same time an incredible opportunity.

So I’m just going to list nine things that should be considered by the How Are You campaign at the UC schools, and campus mental health campaigns in general.

The introduction of mental health resources to new freshman and transfer students. Existing orientations tend to lump all resources together- first-generation college students, sexual assault counseling, centers for racial and ethnic groups, reporting discrimination, with psychological services and disability services mixed in among them.

Identification of students who may need help. In particular, the training that RAs, graduate assistants, professors, and student leaders have, and the criteria by which they intervene.

Outreach to special groups. This can be split into vulnerable populations at risk of dropping out, and those coming from a culture where mental illness is a taboo subject. This includes having diversity in personnel, as in America counseling often defaults to white women.

Handling of acute crises. Some students need to see someone more or less now. There needs to be slack in the system to deal with an irregular number of special cases.

Handling of chronic cases. Each new person with a chronic need aren’t filling up one slot, but several each term. This leads to:

Referral. At some point, a delay for someone with chronic need becomes excessive, and off-campus help is preferable. The system needs to provide a sufficient variety of options- not only diversity of practitioners but choice easily accessible by students without a car. This includes student health insurance being accepted at most practices, and referrals being timely.

Connections with disability accommodations. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, people with chronic psychological conditions have special rights and can qualify for accommodations to make academics easier. However, the stigma of mental illness is distinct from the stigma of having a disability. Thus additional outreach must be made. The counseling office and disability office need to be well-connected.

Faculty education. In particular, making sure that accommodations students receive for a psychological issue are respected. Professors may resist making changes to their routine, such as letting students take a test at a different time. This needs to be restated as a civil rights issue.

and

Letting peers tell their own stories. Having experience with a speaker’s bureau, I can attest to the power of having people with mental health issues open up. Having the ability to educate is empowering. People dealing with mental illness should be able to self-liberate.

Onwards and upwards.

Stopping stigma early

Mental illness as a topic is something society just has no idea how to handle. I’ve written about how mental illness is misused to score political points (usually by creating the illusion that a mental disorder is a prerequisite for horrendous crimes). Thankfully I stumbled across a compact guide, written by Margarita Tartakovsky, that tackles myths about mental illness and treatment. If you need to educate in a hurray, highly recommended.

The best section deals with the fact that children’s content is stigmatizing in a way that we don’t often consider. It’s not just murder-mystery hour-long dramas on CBS, the process of misrepresentation begins early:

Adult programs aren’t the only ones that portray mental illness negatively and inaccurately. “Children’s programs have a surprising amount of stigmatizing content,” Olson said. For instance, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast attempts to prove that Belle’s father is crazy and should be locked up, she said.

When Wahl and colleagues examined the content of children’s TV programs (Wahl, Hanrahan, Karl, Lasher & Swaye, 2007), they found that many used slang or disparaging language (e.g., “crazy,” “nuts,” “mad”). Characters with mental illness were typically depicted “as aggressive and threatening” and other characters feared, disrespected or avoided them. His earlier research also showed that children view mental illness as less desirable than other health conditions (Wahl, 2002).

What everyone loses in a suicide

Sulome Anderson’s feature last week, “How Patient Suicide Affects Psychiatrists” is a great inversion of a big social problem. Most features on suicide and mental illness (including the great The Cost of Not Caring series by USA Today) tend to focus on the individual who committed suicide and the impact on their family and community. Anderson did quality journalism to create this feature, which helps humanize doctors who naturally become the bad guys in some of these cases.

Personally, last year someone I knew tried to end their life- I had talked to them the a few hours prior to the attempt, having a short conversation about family relations that turned out to be much more important in hindsight (they wanted to know if I had special insight on why I have a good relationship with my parents, and they had the opposite. I wasn’t helpful, though I tried to be). When I visited this person the following day, they were still attempting to die in the confines of the hospital room. Never have I seen desperation more fully realized. It’s profoundly disturbing, and the feature gets across that this sentiment crosses all lines of profession or experience. You don’t become truly adjusted to suicidal people in your life, even if you chose psychiatry as a profession.

Personally, I thought that my history of mental illness would help deal with this experience. I’ve never been particularly suicidal, but my choice to be an activist and socialize within the community has put me into contact with many people who are open about their past with suicide. Turns out that was all (I suppose) wistful thinking. It’s horrible to witness, even in the context I had, where I had some time to mentally prep.

This feature helped develop a three-dimensional picture of the tragedy, which I wish was available with all social problems. Everyone loses someone in a suicide, and we each lose a part of ourselves when someone we know personally attempts or completes it. And yes, as Anderson comes to- sometimes there is nothing that can be done. Zero suicides is an ideal to strive towards, but no free society can ever attain it.

We are all humans with flaws and we are not omnipotent. There is only so much we can do for those we love. All we can do is our best.

One missed paycheck from mental health crisis

A new piece in The Atlantic examines the relationship between mental health and long-term unemployment. As they point out, it is a chicken-and-egg problem- does long-term unemployment cause more mental health problems, or are long periods without work a symptoms of existing illness?

That’s a tough relationship to investigate, but it does relate to issue that people with mental illness can have- a much lower tolerance for stress and loss. Losing a job is hard for everyone, but it can trigger a serious episode for someone living day-to-day with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Even two years of constant stability have not created any kind of illusion. I am still walking on eggshells. A very stressful set of situations, a few days without access to medication, these things can be the difference between being in recovery and being in crisis.

This piece also brings up another component of mental illness- economic hardship impedes growth and recovery. It’s not just those that work losing their job. Millions living with a diagnosis are on disability or otherwise living on a fixed income. The squeeze is bringing plenty of people to the brink, but mental illness just adds a whole set of other complications.

Every stressor that exists has its own extra, sinister side. And in an America that’s in year eight of a recession with no broad recovery for the most vulnerable, the stressors are many, multiplying, and always just a few wrong turns away.

Involuntary commitment: it needs to be on the table

There is a great, blunt editorial by a man named Tom Zoellner published, “Reforms shouldn’t protect ‘Big Mental Health‘“. Though the issue is contentious in the mental health community and among those living with mental illness, Zoellner is absolutely right: involuntary commitment could save lives if it could be used more. This is both in more public situations (mass shooters with obvious symptoms and warning signs), and to save the lives of individuals who will otherwise kill themselves.

Charles Krauthammer is wrong about most things (he’s just a more intellectual-sounding Rush Limbaugh), but his experience as a psychiatrist and his work with mania is extensive and undeniable. Thus even in a column where most of his logic is shaky, like this work after Newtown, his point on mental illness is correct. Several social problems persist due to inadequate resources to treat those who suffer from psychosis, major depression, and mania. And if involuntary commitment was a possible option in more states and situations, some prominent shootings would likely not have happened. Jared Loughner and Seung-Hui Cho (the Virginia Tech shooter) had plenty of warning signs that teachers and friends recognized, but this didn’t filter up to the relevant authorities, and even then their hands can be tied by personal rights and privacy.

This is a balancing act, which is par for the course with mental health. People shouldn’t be locked away like in the days of the massive mental facilities, but they shouldn’t be left to rot when they reach the point where they can’t help themselves. People should be entitled to their privacy and autonomy, but there are times when an imminent threat exists, towards self-harm or harm of others. People should be treated with empathy, but should recognize that involuntary commitment can be an expression of that empathy. The heartless thing is to nothing when nothing is not the best option.

The opening point of the oped, that Republicans currently have a better understanding of what needs to be changed than Democrats do, is correct. Though given the Republican interest in reducing healthcare spending, that basic good idea shouldn’t mean they get the keys on overhauling the system. It points to a need to look at American mental health policy and figure out what works and what does not. Zoellner is right that services may have no track record of success. It’s true that services are redundant and mismanaged- I’ve volunteered at the county level and it’s a complete mess. Even experienced people are finding new groups and services year after year they didn’t know about. The uniting factor is that most of these places get government grants and subsidies; transparency about where this money goes and whether it is overlapping is key.

There are two ways to look at mental illness, where neither is full right nor wrong. One is that anyone with a diagnosis is incapable of living independently and needs to be locked up. The other is that someone with a diagnosis should be given full privacy and any suicidal or dangerous statements shouldn’t be communicated to relevant authorities. It’s key to see involuntary commitment as a tool that shouldn’t be used carelessly (like in the past), but it shouldn’t be ruled out entirely. There have been points where I was in a dangerous place, and the last thing I wanted was a culture of silence where nobody felt obligated to get me more direct help.

Crisis: sometimes you gotta hit a brick wall

As I’ve said before on this website, I am a member of Stamp Out Stigma. It’s a speakers’ bureau dedicated to putting a human face on mental illness, and countering negative stereotypes that stigmatize those who deal with their disease.

Today we spoke at a training for a crisis line. The work that these organizations do is incredible; even though I have bipolar disorder, dealing with the pain of others in my community can be overwhelming. Just because I can understand doesn’t mean I can handle other people’s desperation. I am glad there is something I can help them with, because I can’t do what they do. It would be a serious threat to my present stability.

What our conversation eventually led to is how those in crisis can feel trapped when looking for help. What is important to know is that overcoming the fear of stigma and seeking professional help is only the first step in treatment. There is the fear of powerful, sometimes dangerous medication. Therapy is now commonplace, but it can still be a point of alienation. And when you ‘come out’ to family or friends about what you go through, you have to educate each one – because what mental illness is and is not are just not taught or discussed about.

So when someone calls a crisis line, it may not come from a lack of resources. Yes, a person may not know where or how to get help, but they may also fear the help they get. Unmedicated you can end up in crisis, but also after months or years of trying treatment and finding it only partially effective.

A friend of mine was diagnosed as bipolar not that long ago. She was older than me, so she got the news 12 years later in life than I did. She, like me, feared the side-effects and power of the medication. Ultimately it took a crisis to remove that psychological barrier and embrace treatment.

In the end, it’s a series of difficult choices. Mental illness evolves, and people are at different points in the process of understanding, denial, anger, and acceptance. Crisis can be necessary for transition, but not everyone lives through a crisis. That’s why crisis lines and trained staff is so important. The way forward is blocked by a sense of desperation and isolation, both physical and psychological.

Mental illness is a maze, but sometimes you need to bust through some walls to get out. My crisis in 2012 led to me hitting a brick wall – a massive increase in antipsychotic dosage that slowed me down to a crawl. But with that collision the chaos stopped, and a new, better life could be put together from the pieces.

Sometimes you gotta hit a wall. And there need to be people to make sure you get out safe on the other side.