 Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community, Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include the HOD of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity, and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx, Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW, this is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, WWW.H.com, and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Hi, and welcome to this edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the disability able. I've always been your host, Lauren Seiler, and on this television program today, we talk to OPME Parham, MD, a healing artist, integrative medicine consultant, women's reproductive health specialist, and community activist. Welcome to Ableton on Air. Thank you, I am so happy to be here. Okay, so you're a former doctor. I'm still a doctor, but I'm retired. I'm retired, a doctor, retired MD. Can you explain a little bit about your former work and what you are doing now as a consultant? Yes, I'm very happy to be functioning and working out of downtown Montpelier as a retired person living happily on my social security benefits, so I have a lot of flexibility on how I charge and whether I do gifting or barter, and I am family medicine trained. That means that I did cradle to grave care. I helped women birth their babies. I helped if I had to, because I was in a rural area with the Caesarean Sections if they weren't doing well. I took care of families. I did family counseling, and as you have mentioned, I also did end-of-life care before it was fashionable or had a special name. They call it deaf doula now. Right, I was a family doctor who took care of my own patients, and that meant that when they were dying, I didn't turn them over to anybody else. I took care of them, cradle to grave. You call yourself a healing artist? Yes, I do. So what is that, and can you explain more? I would say I have evolved out of what is a conventional doctor mentality and persona. So I evolved away from conventional medicine. I recognize that there's at least four areas where we don't do well. We don't make environments that are sensually pleasant for people to heal in. Can you explain more about that? Well, just the smells in a hospital, the sounds in a hospital, how busy everything is, that's not the best place to heal. If you have a psychiatric crisis, we talk about a quiet room, but that's often people restrained with padding on the walls and fluorescent lights still coming down on your head. Sensuality. What about nursing? Nursing history, when Florence Nightingale was at the helm, she saw disparities in the healthcare system. Doctors weren't sanitizing equipment. Everything was bloody and nasty, and things have evolved since then. They've evolved and they've devolved, haven't they? Yes, they have. Because we have a gender problem. We have things that were traditionally women's work and things that were traditionally men's work. When it came to putting them together in healthcare, there's been a struggle here in the United States. I took the masculine role and played the doctor role, Doctor Knows Best, Father Knows Best, for 22 years. But I call myself a healing artist because I am an artist healing into the idea that there's a lot that goes into being well, and it's not just a stethoscope on your chest checking. Arlene, you can start asking questions. Do you believe in alternative medicine? Do I believe in alternative medicine? I have a holistic health certification behind me, so not only did I believe in it, but the last three years that I practiced medicine, I was in an office called the Marino Center for Integrative Health. So I was a family doctor, but the guy next door to me was a Chinese immigrant who was a cardiologist in China and practiced traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture. So can you explain, can you define in your own way, or maybe definition, what is alternative medicine? Well, that's the whole question, isn't it? In the United States politically, I'm going to answer you. It's anything that wasn't certified by the big pharma hospital, pharmaceutical, hospital industrial complex right now. So chiropractic becomes alternative and not covered if you want to go there. And seeing a naturopath, which is not an allopath, I'm an MD, an ND is a naturopath, becomes alternative, and so does yoga, and so do body massage, and so does herbalism. So anything that really isn't being reimbursed on your healthcare insurance benefits right now, that's what I would say politically is alternative, which is a shame. And why is it a shame? Because there's so many cheaper ways of caring for ourselves when we get sick than what we're offered right now by a conventional medical model, even in Vermont, which is progressive. Talking about pharmaceuticals and mental health, let's go there. Do you think pharmaceutical companies are so inclined to, you know, give someone medicine? How can I put this? You know, they diagnose people, but does everybody need a conventional pill for medicine? Or can they get it alternatively vice versa? You hit the tender spot in my background because I am very much a mad pride advocate. That means that I see a lot of things that get medicated that really shouldn't be medicated with psychiatric drugs. I also recognize that in 1980 there was a huge flip, and psychiatry went in the direction of being technicians who dispense drugs. It was a big enough issue that the American Psychiatric Association head resigned. He was very upset about this particular change. And in my, not at all, because it felt like the pharmaceutical industry was making a deal with psychiatric doctors who were feeling like they didn't have time to sit and listen to a long narrative from their patients and spend years trying to help them be better, give them a pill. Give them a pill to fix it. And then we had a whole story that went with take this pill. And that story was there's a biochemical imbalance of your brain. Sadly, that was not ever proven. I think there's some data right now that there's just trying to collect what serotonin really does, what all these other chemicals or neurotransmitters do, are told back in the 1980s. Go ahead with some more questions. Take your time. Can you repeat that? Yeah, there's a big problem. Did you understand what she meant? Yes, over medication and what we call polypharmacy, where one person has too many drugs where maybe you were feeling depressed and the medicine's not working. So instead of stopping that medicine and starting another one, they keep you on that medicine for a lot of illnesses where that happens, where I feel that is not really careful individual care. Do you think people, in terms of mental health, I'm going to say this word, it's called hypochondria. Do you think people are okay? No. So you wanted to say, are we seeing a lot of hypochondriacs that are taking pills they don't need? I don't believe that's what's happening. There's a culture of people that are called cultural creatives and they're not quite in a belief system like a traditional person who believes in God and family in the American way, nor are they modern in their thinking, like people who live in cities and like cosmopolitan issues in an urban lifestyle. They're a new breed and that new breed tend to be very spiritual people, they're very green in how they think about the planet, how they think about their bodies and food and most importantly, we feel a lot. We feel a lot of things in our bodies and the conventional medical model says there's nothing wrong with you so you go to your doctor and you're having headaches all the time and your doctor does all the tests and says well there's nothing wrong with you. Are you still having headaches? Very carefully. How much are you drinking water every day? You can get headaches from dehydration. How much are you eating and do you get hypoglycemic during the day? Are stresses in your sex life? Not tonight. I have a headache causing you to have symptoms but we often over medicate the symptoms or won't give people medicine. Like I'm in pain and I can't get any opioids. Right, because it's emotional pain. It's not physical pain. It feels like physical pain or it gets relief from the opioids like physical pain so why wouldn't you want more of it and more of it? So, would you say that the now would you say that the pharmaceutical industry I'm assuming is a large money making? First I saw as I became awake as an adult in my 30s. First I saw a lot of my money my personal tax money was going into the military which I didn't agree with the amount of my tax dollar being spent for war. Then I noticed well that's also true for the amount of my tax dollar that's being spent on big corporate drugs and things. So I did research but then the development is coming with my tax dollar like the Moderna vaccine was developed with my tax dollar some of it can be good but a lot of it feels like hey this is another high high CO2 petroleum producing industry it's a fossil fuel industry medicine with all that plastic it's a fossil fuel industry so we all need to wean ourselves and more alternative type of medicine. Here take this root you know weeds can be healing you know I did two years of herbal training after I did conventional medicine to bring some balance back into my work as a healer and a lot of times you can find things that are helpful in your neighborhood walking around because we just lost connection with how much here take this root here drink this tea before we got to drugs drug the word comes from dried from the Dutch when the Dutch were hanging their herbs drugs to dry and then pounding them and mashing them and making them more concentrated. Yeah the cocaine coca leaf is a natural and then later on it became you know it became horrible and we've done that in many many many cases. Valerian is the name of the plant before Valium was a synthesized version of Valerian Valium. Yeah. Okay go ahead one more questions in terms of the side effects of medication. Yeah side effects let's talk side effects. Okay okay let's talk side effects. Let's talk side effects. First of all the book that a doctor will use to look up your side effects is created by the drug companies. The DSM? No. The PDR. The PDR. Physicians desk reference. Okay. What you're talking about is specifically for psychiatric labeling. Okay. But just generally if you have high blood pressure or you have diabetes you look it up in a big book and the effects that are listed and I did not say side the effects that are listed if you are a woman and you live in the United States of America if something happens to your body when you take a drug pay attention because they did not test these drugs on women they did not test these drugs on a lot of different people of different colors and different genetic backgrounds consequently they really only know a little bit about what they do with white healthy men or people in prisons that were used as guinea pigs. And also back in the 70's in institutions I'm going to mention this because we're going to talk about your activism back in the 70's in the Willowbrook Institution in New York they used the hepatitis they tested hepatitis on people with disabilities we have such a terrible history people who are black people who are disabled people who were orphans people who are on the lower end of the socioeconomic status all of us have been guinea pigs for a lot of drugs Puerto Rico, the women were guinea pigs for the dose on the oral contraceptive pill, oops we got it wrong we were giving too much estrogen women were stroking out they figured that out then they brought it to the mainland United States Why is it that also people of color and other groups were used as guinea pigs? Was there a main reason for that? Well I'm going to say institutional racism but I'm going to say we've got institutional racism we've got institutional sexism we've got institutional classism so I am a community activist who believes in healthcare for all and does not believe that any places besides Oregon and Vermont have gotten anywhere close close to the kind of healthcare that we need Explain more about your activism and what you do especially people with special needs and so on Well because of my awareness that medicine was not such a great thing for all patients before I ever went to medical school I took a year after college and did a thesis on black women as patients and how white doctors looked at us and I was like whoa this is a whole bunch of craziness I better take a year and think about whether I really can stomach medical school can I go into the belly of the beast and be a doctor so I was a volunteer in service to America Vista that predates AmeriCorps and my placement It's not the Peace Corps No you only do one year it's very much the Peace Corps you would only do one year instead of two and I was progressive but not progressive enough to put off medical school for two years so I only did one year and stayed in the United States I went to Colorado and I was placed in the legal center for and this is an incorrect reference now handicapped citizens and it was mainly people who had cognitive impairments people who had mental health traumas and people getting disability benefits and then all of a sudden social security would come in and try to snatch all the money back again so I did about 120 clients in a year I was a paralegal who represented for people in that law firm with administrative law judges for a year how since you know with your advocacy do you how has Vermont how has Vermont been faring in terms of the score card if you will how has Vermont been faring in the disability community from housing to medical care do you think that Vermont can well obviously people can change but do you think Vermont has work to do? Oh my goodness yes yes Vermont has work to do and sadly Vermont is ahead of the 50% mark so if I was going to give Vermont a grade I would say Vermont gets a B it's above average for mental health care I have seen people do well in a crisis unfortunately also know that legally Vermont still has the ability to force a commitment with not an end place on it so you could be committed and have to stay for years and years here in Vermont one step forward which is you get better services one step back is that you personally don't have as much control as you would if you were in Massachusetts or if you were in Washington state I'm going to mention this and I mentioned New York a lot because they you know because that's where you're from yeah so Mayor Eric Adams of New York said within the last week that if you're mentally ill and in the train stations or homelessness they will force you to go into a psychiatric facility to get treatment do you think in terms of your scorecard do you think people should be forced to get treatment if they're mentally challenged or I know they have rights yeah what you're talking about is very complicated I'm still going to say above average for Vermont relative to other states I think it's less likely you're going to get shot dead in Vermont if you call 911 with a mental health emergency in your family that's really brutal to say it but that's what we have to really think about why is that because the police have had better training here than they've had other places they have team to here yeah thank you I have a adult offspring with mental health challenges and I was so grateful one time when I called 911 that a social worker arrived with the police to help get them the next step which was from out of my car to a hospital for treatment no I don't think treatment should be forced but I think there are all kinds of three day holds that get used and again that's what I'm saying about Vermont does not have the happy after three days you go to court and you have to be reassessed Vermont can still hold people too long in my opinion go ahead with more questions take your time has the health care really improved in Vermont yes or no this is really interesting yes and no yes it has improved in that I came to Vermont and could use a naturopath as my primary care physician and have it paid for under my Medicaid it would have been or my a little bit higher Vermont medical health plan however those medical health plans are getting worse so the medical health plans themselves are more corporate and more twist your arm behind your back and make you pay premiums and not get any benefits than they were 10 years ago in my personal anecdotal opinion I haven't done any studies but I personally am eligible now for Medicare and the part D once you get to be 65 means I have to have drug coverage I don't take any prescription drugs I have to pay every month to have coverage and I'm negotiating right now because somehow it looks like they lost the last six months of my Medicaid care part D coverage and I'll owe the government money so I am fighting that kind of thing because that's just silly and a lot of people find themselves ground in circles trying to track the bureaucracy so do you think Obama's the Obamacare it didn't go far enough it did not go far enough Bernie Sanders was all over healthcare is a human right and then when we put together the legislation that would have worked we could not get it funded that's a problem yeah and especially when a lot of people don't have there are some people in this country that still don't have healthcare there's many people who don't have them healthcare and in the disabled community I can't tell you how many people I saw just start to get on their feet like maybe they got money to go to school and they would lose their personal care attendant because they were considered doing something called substantial gainful activity there's nothing wrong with a person with a special need working not at all the problem is that people get penalized for going back to work they get penalized for trying to move forward it's okay if you are needing your benefits while you're also trying to improve your life why snatch the benefits away and leave the person sliding back down so now in terms of the way people with special needs are treated that's a whole entire different show but it can be but words and how they have changed from the word retarded to handicapped to disabled you forgot crippled along the way yep like the N word to colored to negro to african-american descendant of slaves language matters from he pronouns to she pronouns to zee zee zee program and they even had a horrible I'm going to say it you can tell me way back when when you talk about things like the N word and the NAACP and all of that they had a horrible they used to call people Uncle Tom and other derogatory words and they also you know crippled and disabled so how have in your opinion scored cards with that do you think we still need to change well addressing people as people and human addressing people as people and asking people what they want to be called and how they want to be addressed and not making assumptions and we were talking about how I got involved with all of this curb cuts were the first thing that I noticed us being crazy about curb cuts the idea of a person in a wheelchair being able to get up on a cement path I just was back in the day so appalled as the Americans with Disabilities Act went through at the resistance that was being offered is like haven't you ever imagined that you're going to be with a baby stroller and want to get up or down or maybe you're going to be in a wheelchair for a week or two temporarily how can you be opposing this so I recognize that it is big business I'm sad but it's people who do not want to share the wealth are hanging on to too much of the wealth and Vermont is doing better than average but we still have too many people hanging on to too much of the wealth even here in Vermont what do you mean by hanging on to too much of the wealth well looking at our medical because that's what I'm talking about that we could be much more generous at the Medicaid level at the state level in the kind of benefits that people get and I want us to continue to go forward and model for the nation okay let's talk about housing and the problems there there we start with the elevators and the ramps and the call buttons and the how do you connect to 911 if you're a person with any kind of special needs that's where we start and then we go immediately as I a community activist would say we need to know that it takes a village not just to raise a child but to care for every member of the village it takes a village I want a nut house in every neighborhood I want that needs a nut house let's really get politically offensive the idea of what we used to call the places where we institutionalized people who were having psychiatric crisis I want a nice little three bedroom house that is staffed by people who have experience with mental health crises have had personal mental health crises or have children or relatives with mental health crises I want us to take turns and that's the place you go for weeks rest or three days rest they call it respite and it's too short too much of the time and people who are in crisis need the respite the people who are the caregivers need a respite from the people they care for now there's an old acronym or is still used not in my back yard you got that right okay yes so talking about some other states community boards or boards would say okay you can't have this group home or you can't have this facility here because people with disabilities or people with special needs will cause problems etc etc etc etc your take on that I worked for eight years in western massachusetts in a three bedroom psychiatric alternative and nobody wanted it in the neighborhood you're absolutely right and then people realized huh we wouldn't even know it was here most of the time I think over the eight years I worked there there may have been two times where we needed to have help with either an ambulance or the police coming but that's true in almost any neighborhood you're going to be if you look at ten years of living in communities somebody's going to have a heart attack and be taken away by the ambulance right so again sharing the wealth also means sharing the responsibility when we have crisis so I really am a firm believer in smaller is better dis dis dispersing people into group homes rather than a big institution or or a state hospital has worked better here in vermont specifically do you also think that I hate using this term but sweeping things under rug or sweeping situations under the rug or looking the other way we have a culture that does that United States culture because we are just coming to terms with how poorly we are parenting how much stress there is if you're a nuclear family or less explain what a nuclear family is that would be two parents with two point five kids the point five is usually described as a dog or a pet you got one boy one girl and it's the perfect little family except you always need in my in my story you always need one more adult than child wherever you are so that somebody can lock themselves in the bathroom and cry for half an hour because child rearing is hard and that it takes a village to raise a child it especially takes a village when they get to be teenagers they don't need less care they need more it takes a village to get them between the ages of 18 and 25 when a lot of people have psychiatric crisis and why are they having psychiatric crisis because we don't know what else to call this maybe it's a spiritual emerge and see maybe it's a spiritual emergency I don't know what it is but things are happening to our youth between the ages of 18 and 25 that's what you mentioned for a brief minute let's talk about the opiate crisis the the suicidal drugs that people use your take on that and how has the media been doing a job or scored card with the mental health community oh goodness so remember I said four things conventional medicine doesn't do well we don't put people in healing spaces we also don't let them talk about their sex lives for good, bad and the ugly of it a lot of us have been abused as children we also don't talk about spirituality meaning when you're in crisis what do you lean on what is it that gets you through who is it that gets you through and that last one is suicidality it's so angry, so frustrated that we act out in ways that aren't good for us or other people like suicide is the worst snap judgment decision anyone can make Ali you lost her Ali hold on I gotta get her back hold that thought hold on a second sorry about that sorry about that we're going to backtrack off that question how has the media been treating people with mental health or physical challenges when it comes to things like suicide and other situations like that I really have to search to find good quality media in these areas I'm very disappointed in sort of like how low we've gone in both the soap operas we do and the dramas we share and how a real crime is more interesting if you're a voyeurist and looking at this stuff than helping your neighbor who might need something next door you're busy watching a show about somebody who's having trauma in their life rather than helping or listening to your neighbor or your friend who might have the same level of trauma so I don't find the media terribly helpful but you can be discerning and you can find your way through to good things there is an Australian channel and I can't remember the name at the moment but it does lots of really positive videos on differently able people of all kinds little people I watched one somebody who's got locked in syndrome somebody who has no limbs because they had sepsis when they were a baby and they had gangrene of all four no not not sob stories not voyeuristic but really inspirational stories I think it's called I'll send it to you so you can put a little note on the screen but I have had to work to find that and once you find those things then you can raise children with positive attitudes they see an example an example from last night Disney Plus has a nutcracker that is all about hip hop it's a hip hop Christmas story the hip hop nutcracker on Disney Plus I was surprised and delighted to see that a featured dancer has a missing left leg he was the king of the rats or the mice and he did this amazing hip hop routine and he's working with less than you or I have and it looked wonderful and it was exciting and it wasn't even like what's going on there it was just exciting so any more questions ok what are your future goals as an activist healing artist and what you do and then the last question to that how can we improve as a society when helping those less fortunate and those that are differently able to heard and appreciated and one of the reasons I call myself a healing artist and an artist healing is because I'm moving into different areas of how I can help so I'm not going anywhere I retired to Vermont I am a Vermonter by choice that means you'll see me around town a lot that means when you see me or get over this COVID situation where we have to wear mask I want a hug give me a hug offer a hug the biggest the biggest tool on the planet that's used when people are sick is sound we pray over people we shake rattles over people we sing to people when they're ill right so I want to start where people are and say we also have two ears and one self so we should be listening to each other's stories the more we listen to each other's stories like now like here the better we can be at empathizing with each other's crises and problems your take on what is the definition I know there are definitions so people can understand this is kind of the last question what is the difference between empathy good question empathy is when you really are feeling you're walking in the other person's shoes alright and sympathy is when you're watching that person over there walk in their too tight shoes that are hurting their feet and you go oh that's so sad okay empathy is when you can feel yourself walking in their shoes sympathy is when you're watching them over there and saying oh and you're having pity for them empathy is difficult we don't want to have pity for people we want to help them but in order to help them it helps to feel what they're feeling and we don't like feeling bad feelings in this culture back to the opioid crisis we do not like pain not physical pain not emotional pain not spiritual pain except when we're voyeuristic and we're doing it for other reasons we can get better at this and my song is all we need is love it sounds like a platitude but it's true if we really did connect with other people I do believe we would do a better job with all layers of our social strata so would you say that all of the globe has kind of lost connection with people COVID showed us more than anything else if we could not even share the wealth of a coveted vaccine with the whole world how do we ever expect to have universal healthcare here in Vermont if we can't have universal healthcare in Vermont or Oregon I'm sorry the two whitest states in the country you think we're going to get one of the top three as is Oregon right and those are the places right now that have the best chance of getting universal healthcare the correct word is Caucasian European descent settlers who arrived here and took over the lands of the unseeded Abenaki those people well with that said we thank you for joining us I am so happy to have been here and you'll see me around town and I like to sing and I'm really excited about the young people and making them enthusiastic and not making them feel like we've totally squandered their future so thank you for having me we would like to thank you for joining us on this edition and I would like to come back of Abel Denane so for more information on OPME's work you can go to her website at p-e-y-e-m-i-p-a-r-h-a-m dot com that's opme-par-hem dot com and also for those that want to find out more about what you've seen on this program today and other programs of Abel Denane you can go to www.orgamedia dot net that's c-a-m-e-d-i-a dot net I'm Lauren Seiler I'm Lauren Seiler thank you to all sponsors Washington County Mental Health and Green Mountain Support Services and many others I'm Lauren Seiler see you next time on the next exciting edition of Abel Denane see you next time major sponsors for Abel Denane are all with disabilities to live home in the community Washington County Mental Health where hope and support come together media sponsors for Abel Denane include Park Chester Times Muslim Community Report www this is the Bronx dot info Associated Press media editors New York Power U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International Anchor FM and Spotify Partners for Abel Denane include Yechad of New York and New England where everyone belongs the Orthodox Union the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired Center for Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx Roosevelt Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx Abel Denane has been seen in the following publications Park Chester Times www this is the Bronx dot com New York Power Online Newspaper Muslim Community Report www dot h dot com and the Montpelier Bridge Abel Denane is part of the following organizations the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Boston, New England Chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists