A Modest Proposal: Hire Me

After getting several nudges from readers and media types I know, I've decided to devote myself full time to this blog--doing the writing and reporting I already do and doing some additional investigative reporting. There's far more pressing news in the mental health world than I can handle by doing this site on the side in the evening while doing sporadic freelance work to support myself in the day. As most of you know, the major media, as a whole, doesn't do a particularly good job of covering these issues, and it's time for someone to remedy that situation. The Internet is the place to do that. What's more, there are far more readers of this site than I would've ever guessed when I began doing this two years ago. In September, this site recorded almost 13,000 hits, or about 7,500 unique readers. That's beyond humbling and I'd like to ask you all to humble me all over again.

To go full time, I need your help to make this a full time website on mental health issues. $6,000 of your help to fund my work here for three months, to be precise. That's the minimum amount I need to raise in order to make a go of it--less than that and I am going to have to back off doing this blog. I need to make a living and pay the rent and feed my cats and such and advertising is simply not a workable option for a site like this. While I don't want to turn my attention to other work, I will if not enough money comes in. Basically, I want you to hire me.

So for the next 10 days I am asking all of you to go click on the PayPal button on the right and contribute what you can. If you'd prefer to send a check, send me an email and I'll give you a mailing address. According to my site's software, about 3,000 of you are fairly regular readers of this site, so it'd be great if all of you could give in some fashion. For those of you who are still somewhat new to my work, take a look at this to get an idea of my reporting background.

This type of fundraising is done in the political blogging/website world all the time, but I think this is the first time anyone in the mental health world has tried to take a blog full time and asked for readers' support to make it happen. Some of you remember that I did a small, quick fundraiser in early summer in order to buy a new chair and computer (thanks!). I was gratified by readers' responses then, and I hope to be gratified anew.

There's a lot at play in the mental health world right now that I know readers wish to keep track of. The DSM is being rewritten, and the leaders in the psych world are doing what they can to soften definitions of mental illnesses so that many more people are dubbed mentally ill. There's an on-going scandal around the atypical antipsychotics and how they are being used in American culture and the rest of the world. We've even reached the pretty pass where some doctors now think it's wise to dub small children crazy and feed them medications that have no research backing--because apparently that paradigm is working so well for adults that, of course, it should be applied to children. There's much more as you know, and I'd like to bite off as much of it as possible.

I think I have developed a decent track record in the two years I've done this blog. I made the Zyprexa documents available to the public. I began questioning the bipolar child paradigm well ahead of the current wave of media interest in the diagnosis. I began questioning the use of atypicals in our country before others. And, I have repeatedly stood up against attempts by some in the media and mental health advocacy worlds to paint people with mental illnesses as inherently violent, when the evidence argues otherwise. I'm not anti-psychiatry by any means, but I am concerned about the drift I see in the profession. I'm a long way from perfect, of course, but I think I've done pretty well. I've even been asked for help by reporters at other media outlets.

As this fundraiser goes along, I'll do my best to give you a treat each day. In this case, that means I'll roll out little tidbits from the Zyprexa documents that have never seen the light of day. I suppose that's not as much fun as an NPR coffee mug, but it'll have to do.

Thanks to all of you for your support and continued encouragement.