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Maybe the general public (and especially the U.S. government) isn’t as wigged out by mental illness as I thought. Surely a letter to the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County stating that I had been hospitalized within the year for a psychiatric condition and was currently taking two antidepressants and a mood stabilizer for my bipolar disorder should have earned me a dispensation from serving jury duty. Instead, I got a phone call from a pleasant bureaucrat asking me for a note from my doctor.
Dang! I can’t do that. She and I both know that if I am capable of writing this blog, I can sit in a courtroom for a day or a week or a month and decide whether some poor sucker gets jail time or freedom. My doctor actually respects me. She may even like me. She wouldn’t guess I’m the type of person to play the mentally ill card to get out of jury duty.
So I guess I have to show up and play the stay-at-home mother card instead. (Hello…who’s going to watch the kids? I’m the nanny!) I’ll keep you posted. Worst case, there still might be some good blog material there.
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Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet and is a regular contributor to the award-winning blog, World of Psychology, on Psych Central. Therese is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit. Subscribe to Beyond Blue, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.
Meet others on the journey in
Therese’s community group
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Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet and is a regular contributor to the award-winning blog, World of Psychology, on Psych Central. Therese is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit. Subscribe to Beyond Blue, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.
posted February 6, 2007 at 8:07 pm
…certainly among fellow jurors-to-be… you can’t say you are too depressed to call your doctor?
posted February 6, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I just had to share my one jury experience that was almost ten years ago. The entire defense argument was that the mugging victim, a postal worker, did not take his lithium that day in order to go to a bar with friends that evening. Therefore the entire crime or at least his ability to identify the mugger must have been a hallucination. The jury, though none of us had any professional degrees, felt that a bipolar disorder or lack of one day’s medication would cause such hallucinations. Sorry Therese, you’ll have to come up with a better excuse. The county needs you.