Michael Wise
Consumer Advocate and Former Consumer
Editor of Voices at Bay

Michael Wise was hospitalized several times during his 20s for mental illness. For nearly two decades now, he has been a consumer advocate, helping with consumer-run organizations like San Francisco Spirit Menders, a drop-in center for homeless and mental health clients. Wise is also founder and editor of Voices at Bay, a quarterly journal for mental health clients that is distributed free at San Francisco day treatment and residential care programs, hotels and drop-in centers.

I was born in 1949. The 1970s, the decade when I was in my 20s, that was a dark decade for me. I was immersed in acute illness, and I was hospitalized a couple of times. I wound up being relocated to Marin County because I had a doctor up there in one of the hospitals. Little by little he got me involved in the day care program, and then a residential program.

I've been diagnosed schizophrenic, paranoid schizophrenic--I said once, at this award ceremony where I was given a plaque, "At one point I was upgraded to paranoid schizophrenia," and that got a few laughs--I don't know when actually the division was between schizophrenia and paranoid schizophrenia. Then I found out something that was written about me, I looked over and read it, now I'm apparently schizoaffective. I don't keep up with my diagnosis. Just like a person with a physical illness who isn't labeled or called by their disease, I think the same thing should go for people with mental illness. The person should come first. But having had a mental illness and as a self-described consumer, I am not ashamed to tell people that. I'm totally out of the closet, if you will, and I've used my experience to go after a career.

I thought of that title, Voices at Bay, [for the journal] because it works on a couple of levels. Obviously, the Bay Area. But also we hear voices with schizophrenia, and I experienced it myself, hearing voices. And hopefully my voices, and our voices that we have, are at bay. But also, most important, so often mental health clients are kept at bay or at a distance.

Voices at Bay is not an attack-oriented journal. People can have problems with the system and they are free to write about it, but we're not about naming names. I want to elevate the conversation. We are a listening post for people to be up on events and on state bills as they proceed through the legislature. It's important to know all along the way what consumers can do and what part they play in actually advancing and advocating their own cause in mental health. It's rewarding creating something that wasn't there before, and I feel like this is a vehicle for empowerment, that I'm helping to do that in my own way.

Those of us who have emerged out of the rabbit hole, I think we are trying to help those who are still struggling--and we are trying to say, "Hey, we are not anything special, if we can do it, so can you." And sometimes that is what a person needs when they are in the depth of mental illness, to know that it can be done. Recovery is not suddenly you are sick, now suddenly you are recovered. It's a long process, and you can make progress everyday.

For more information about Voices at Bay or to contribute a submission write to:
Michael Wise, Editor, Voices at Bay
c/o Spirit Menders
2940 16th St., #Ste. B-2
San Francisco, CA 94103

or send him an e-mail at voicesatbay@yahoo.com.

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