Social Accountability Plank
Issue
The consumers and survivors (‘clients’) movement is
gradually transitioning from its habituation to a
bitter struggle for empowerment, towards sensitization
to issues of respect for a person’s way of being. We
must pay more and more attention to issues of
accountability to client values, to nurturing and
maturing the insight that represents the creative
side of our involvement with madness.
 Action
Plan
- Incorporate social accountability as a topic in
training workshops.
- Support and strengthen the role of the client
values in the client culture.
Issue
The clients movement has an endemic difficulty with
strained human relations and the problems of personal
interaction associated with irrationality. We must
work with people who connect with our values, to
address trauma directly: We can work for new social
relations around madness, towards a society truly
free of abuse, discrimination, hypocrisy, and
ignorance.
Action
Plan
- Construct reasonable ways to distinguish
controversial activity
from dissing (disrespectful
activity).
- Educate society about the nature of madness.
Background
One participant wrote that he was spiritually moved by
the concept of ‘social accountability’ for the clients.
He said, “We will try to carry this message to
consumer/survivors, and try to practice the principles
of Social Accountability in all our affairs.”
The clients movement has a tradition of developing its
voice by bringing forward the testimony of the
individual clients. Since the area of social
accountability is just becoming familiar to the clients
movement, it was felt that ‘many voices’ was
appropriate here. In this spirit, the background for
the Social Accountability Plank is presented in the
form of individual testimony by participants in the
National Summit workshop on accountability.
Testimony
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- In my way of seeing things, even with every
person’s best intentions to be courteous, sensitive
and civil, still a higher power created humans as
whole people with a basic nature containing many evil
impulses along with the good. If our ‘shadow,’ or the
‘darker side of our lives,’ remains totally undealt
with and left in the ‘repressed unconscious’, it will
overpower us into responding and acting in ways which
can be disastrous. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his novel
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, has one of the most respected
people in the community develop a potion to isolate
the evil in himself in the hopes of eliminating that
part of his being — with the worst possible consequences
of murder and his personal death. Part of social
accountability demands that as consumers and survivors
on the fringes of society already we learn how
to incorporate in a healthy manner our own evil
side effectively. And, that at the same time, we
know how to put on a polite ‘mask’, when necessary, to
avoid hurting the honor of someone else who may
need that honor more than we do.
- You should say what you mean and mean what you
say. Thus:
- You are accountable to self and others to gather
all the information possible to make a decision
whether or not to volunteer for some task or job.
- You are responsible to complete what you say you
will do, and “do it.”
- You should mean what you say and be accountable
for it.
- I said to my doctor, “I don’t want to be the kind
of person whom people don’t want to be around. Because
then, all I would talk about is negativity and what is
wrong. I want to be the kind of person people do want
to be around. So people will want to be my friend, to
have fun, to do fun things with me!” Please, treat me
as the real quality person I am.
- [From an e-mail message.] This is jelling up
to be an issue of responsibility and accountability.
Remember in solving one’s accountability one has
to be willing to look internally to resolve one’s
issues on becoming human.
- I feel that, with all the forces that are at work
to splinter us, we not only need to make an effort to
treat one another with respect and kindness, but that
we need to cherish one another’s sensitivity and
uniqueness, so that we may not only survive, but be as
alive and fulfilled as we possibly can.
- ‘Bedlam’ is a metaphor for the intense and angry
interactions alleged to be characteristic of
assemblies of mad people. The way clients handle
bedlam is the test of the maturity of our movement.
Social accountability of clients is not an absolute
thing, it is the product of work. Our task is to get
better and better at handling the energies of bedlam
in constructive manners.
- Friendship: We all can think of ourselves as
friends, because we are all on the same ship, as
mental health ‘consumers’, or whatever. And any ship
travels. We can’t forget the ones that have oars,
paddles, no motor, or whatever. Let’s all remember
that we are all on the ship of fellowship.
- I believe we all deserve to be treated with dignity
and respect, as full and equal human beings. I want to
hold myself responsible and accountable for treating
others in this way, and for gently confronting
disrespect whenever I encounter it. I know this is an
ideal and that I may never reach it perfectly. I have
moments when I fall short of how I would really like
to be and moments when I am afraid to express myself.
I know this same thing happens for others. I accept
that creating a world of mutual respect is a process
that will best succeed if I am gentle with myself and
others. As the song says, “Let peace begin with me,
let this be the moment, now.” I hope this will
encourage others to do the same!
- What touches me about this approach to advocacy
(that we call social accountability) was the gentle
message to take stock of who we are and where we’ve
been, to adopt a shift in critical thinking, to design
an ethical path toward building community by the
recognition and affirmation of each person’s
creativity, skills, and personal power. Our strength
is our madness experience coupled with the awareness
of the lessons of our awkwardness.
- You are accountable to be sensitive to the
following issues: (1) Don’t interject something when
someone is speaking; and (2) When the chairperson
or moderator asks you to end your statement as
soon as possible you should oblige them. The issue
is not usually one of exclusion and/or the value of
your subject but goes to the matter of moving the
agenda, because of time constraints. [A possible
solution would be to move it to the next agenda.]
- We feel it is vital for any national consumer
platform which comes from this conference that codes
of conduct for our behavior of interaction between
ourselves must incorporate the ideals of inclusion,
civility, sensitivity, empathy and most importantly
mutual respect. These ideals must become our second
nature as much as our breathing reflex. It will be
essential for the national consumer movement to
succeed and move forward that these principles and
ideals be adopted into any public document which is
accepted and approved by this process. The twelfth
plank committee feels we must never leave any consumer
behind or not listen and value each consumer’s
opinions and contribution. We also feel that this
body must find ways of implementing these ideals into
our movement so that we can become accountable to
ourselves, to the movement and so that we can be true
to our cause of helping to improve the lives of
consumers throughout our nation.
- How I deal with an unpleasant person: I try to
figure out some way to communicate with that person.
A sense of humor. Without a sense of humor I probably
wouldn’t be here. As I got to know more about myself
and my ‘disease’, I began to get out of myself more,
understand myself better, talk more. I make up how
this person looks in a certain place — maybe ship
them off to the moon and put them in a witch’s costume
or plan an imaginary trip.
- I have to be accountable to myself first. I have
learned that if you expect less than other people,
you get less than them. Expecting more comes from
valuing ourselves because we are accountable to
ourselves. When there is a general attitude of
accountability among the clients, the client culture
will become like many voices speaking in many ways,
and we will be heard more. If we want people to
listen when we participate in committees, we must be
accountable persons. That insight will be what
makes it possible for us to expect meaningful
participation.
- For the segment on social accountability we are
talking about our involvement with each other, but
going beyond single involvement to the quality of
involvement beyond the ego. This humanistic approach
embraces the values of respect and responsibility.
These values of social accountability are critically
important elements for all the planks in our
consumer/survivor platform — if you will, the nails
that hold the planks together. In each of these
planks, in both the context of those planks and in the
processes the groups used to describe their planks,
the values of respect and responsibilities identify a
sense of ethics for our mutual work. When we look
internally and look at what led us to the successes we
described, we can see what behaviors and what values
guide our work together. From these, it’s easy to see
the benefits to all parties involved when we relate to
each other in this manner. We can remind ourselves to
be guided by these values for social accountability.
For me personally, I wish for each of us that we live
in good health, in safety, in peace, in love.
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