Playlist: Grant Buhr's Portfolio
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Helen Morley: A Blessed Nuisance
From Grant Buhr | 06:20
Helen Morley was an unsung hero in a relatively unknown battle – the grassroots fight for mental health care in Chicago. Her deficits were often her strengths, and she brought both agitation and inspiration to those around her. This is a glimpse of her story.
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- Helen Morley: A Blessed Nuisance
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- Grant Buhr
It’s been nearly a year since both Helen Morley, and the Beverly Morgan Park mental health clinic she attended on the southside of Chicago, met their makers. Helen, like her sister and both their parents, struggled with a history of severe mental illness. After their parents died, Helen struggled alone to care for her sister, whose mental health needs were greater. According to Helen, it was the treatment she received at her clinics of 25 years that kept her going. When the city of Chicago, led by then-mayor Richard M. Daley, threatened to close the BMP clinic and three others like it in 2009, it was demonstrations by Helen and her fellow mental health consumers that helped to keep the clinic doors open. At such demonstrations, Morley frequently and unabashedly proclaimed that if her clinic was shut down and her care was disrupted, she would die. In June of 2012, less than five weeks after the BMP clinic was closed by new Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, she did. She was fifty-five years old.
How much is a life worth?
From Grant Buhr | 21:19
Through the voices of mental health care consumers/activists, this story briefly explores some of the impacts of, and responses to, the closing of 6 public mental health clinics in Chicago, in April 2012.
- Playing
- How much is a life worth?
- From
- Grant Buhr
Through the voices of mental health care consumers/activists, this story briefly explores some of the impacts of, and responses to, the closing of 6 public mental health clinics in Chicago, in April 2012. The piece is organized thematically; touching on violence and loss, racism, stigma towards mental health illness and activism, and the power of solidarity. Deeply personal narratives shared in the piece give human face/voice to a broad and often abstract issue.