Dignity and Health

1. Dignity Violation: A Universe of Human Suffering

21 Chapter 1 Dignity Violation A Universe of Human Suffering An exploration of the meanings of dignity and the forms of its violation . . . may help uncover a new universe of human suffering. —Jonathan Mann (1997) He was a strongly built man whose face and hands showed the scars of rough living. He walked awkwardly, with a limp that seemed to throw him off balance. In telling me about his life he described himself as “a traveler,” the son who “seems to stray,” and the “black sheep, per se.” As a younger man, he “felt that society had just ripped a hole in my heart and I just, I gave up for a while.” Time had passed “in an alcoholic haze.” He had crisscrossed the country from the Maritimes to the Mountain West, sometimes working, sometimes spending time in jail. He had quit drinking eight or nine years before and now found dignity in being neat and clean and punctual, and in equal regard, “being treated like one of the others.” We met in a narrow coffee shop in a shabby part of downtown Toronto, near the men’s shelter where he was staying. The shelter was a place where, he told me, “a part of my dignity is being torn away,” because he had been accused of selling the pain­ killers prescribed for him: One of the times when you don’t feel like you’re having dignity is like for example right now, like I’m being targeted because with my medication at [the shelter], they’ve taken me from getting it once 22 Dignity and Health a day to three times a day, because they said I was selling it. Now if I was seen selling it, how come it wasn’t acted upon at that point in time? The next morning I wake up and all of a sudden there’s these accusations and then they target me and say, “OK. You’re only allowed to have your medication once every three times a day.” . . . I’ve got to keep going up the stairs and go to staffing and ask for it and, you know, I just find that’s not right. I asked him how “being targeted” affected his dignity: For me, that makes me look like something that I’m not and that bothers me. It, it’s the key: if it goes around to all the staff, then all the staff are going to look at me in only one way. . . . Even when they’re, they’re interacting with me, they’re still going to be saying in the back of their minds, Can I believe [him] or can I not? He’s a drug dealer. . . . Now it goes from staff, and staff interact with a lot of clients and, you know, people just talk naturally and, and then you start getting all the guys around you saying, “That’s a drug dealer, man.” I mean, like, “Stay away from him,” right? I just don’t think it’s right, and it, it bothers me every day. It emerged that the new arrangements for getting his medication were resulting in further injuries to his dignity: And these guys, they’re making it, they’re making it worse. Like having me go up the stairs [which was physically very difficult because of his disability] or they say, “Well, you can get a staff [member] and you can go up in the elevator.” Well, by the time that would transact, maybe half an hour to an hour is going to go by. Now if I had plans to do anything else, they’re going to be disrupted just because I have to wait, wait, wait. The loss of his reputation among staff members was making it more difficult for him to access the resources he needed: I have to go an extra two steps than everyone else . . . say, for getting something. Like bus tickets to get my methadone or go Dignity Violation 23 to the doctor or whatever. It’s like I have to go see the worker and then the worker’s got to fool around for a little while on the computer and talk to you. Meanwhile, they do this every day, so they know you need it and you have to have it, but instead they’ve got to hold you there and talk to you about it, and it’s...