JUDGE STEVEN LEIFMAN’S FIVE MINUTE TESTIMONY BEGINS AT 46:45

“When I became a judge nearly two decades ago, I had no idea I would become the gatekeeper to the largest psychiatric facility in the State of Florida. The Miami-Dade County jail  contains nearly half as many beds for inmates with mental illnesses as all state civil and forensic mental health hospitals combined. Of the roughly 100,000 bookings into the jail every year, nearly 20,000 involve people with serious mental illnesses requiring intensive psychiatric treatment while incarcerated. On any given day, the jail houses approximately 1,200 individuals receiving psychotherapeutic medications, and costs taxpayers roughly $65 million annually..”  Judge Steven Leifman

Judge Steven Leifman from Miami is the reason I was able to write my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, and his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee  last week exposed how both tax dollars and human potential are wasted when individuals with serious mental illnesses are incarcerated rather than treated.

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HAKEEM RAHIM’S FIVE MINUTE TESTIMONY BEGINS AT 59:20

“The biggest challenge I faced getting to where I am now was openly acknowledging my mental illness.” — Hakeem Rahim

In his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee last week, Hakeem Rahim described his first psychotic episode in 1998 when he was a freshman at Harvard University and his ultimate journey to recovery.

Over the course of my 16 year journey with mental illness, I have simultaneously embraced my diagnosis and realized that I am more than the label. I have embraced that I am more than medication, therapist appointments and support groups. I have learned that I am not “bipolar,” I am Hakeem Rahim, and not just any one piece of my treatment regimen.

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“I’ve not lost my purpose or sense of urgency!”

An emotional speech by a most welcomed advocate for mental health reform.

Some highlights:

1. He twice involuntarily committed his son before the tragedy that ended with Deeds in the hospital and his son’s suicide.

2. Because his son was an adult, no psychiatrist ever talked to him about his son’s condition which he found frustrating.

3. His son stopped taking his medication before the attack. “My son talked about how the drugs hurt him, physically hurt him.”

4. Deeds was told and believed his son would outgrow his mood disorder.

5. “Never felt afraid.,” Deeds said.  Never felt his son was dangerous.

6. Deeds said because his son’s illness surfaced when he was an adult, his only option was going before a magistrate. “What do you do with someone who refuses to be treated?” Deeds asked.  He said he didn’t have an answer for that.

“My goal is to remake the system….”

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MICHAEL C. BIASOTTI’S BRIEF TESTIMONY BEGINS AT 35:37 and ENDS AT 40:27

“We have to stop pretending that violence is not associated with untreated serious mental illness. We have to stop pretending that everyone is well enough to volunteer for treatment and self-direct their own care. Some clearly are not.’  –Michael C. Biasotti

U.S. Representative Tim Murphy (R-Pa) continued his campaign last week to reform our nation’s failing mental health system by holding what his colleagues described as one of the best hearings in recent memory about serious mental illnesses.

Entitled: “Where Have All the Patients Gone? Examining the Psychiatric Bed Shortage,” the Commerce and Energy Subcommittee heard from a panel of ten experts who not only discussed current barriers to getting treatment but also provided the subcommittee with a primer on why jails and prisons have become our new mental asylums.

Today’s blog post focuses on testimony by Michael C. Biasotti, Chief of Police and Immediate Past President of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, and the parent of a daughter with a serious mental illness who has been involuntarily committed more than twenty times. 

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A top state official whose department was under investigation had contact with the Virginia Inspector General’s office while it was looking into the Creigh Deeds’ tragedy, according to an article published yesterday in The Daily Progress in Charlottesville.

Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources Bill Hazel acknowledged that he called state Inspector General Michael F.A. Morehart to discuss the case while Morehart’s office was conducting its probe. Both men said there was nothing improper about their conversations.

Inspector Generals are independent fact finders and are not supposed to be influenced by state officials, especially when they are conducting probes of their departments.

G. Douglas Bevelacqua, the IG investigator who was conducting the investigation, revealed the two men’s behind-the -scenes conversations. He said  Hazel referred to him as a  “loose cannon” in a call to his boss.

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Accountability matters.

A jet crashes. People die. A whistleblower reveals that airline officials were warned two years earlier about a fatal flaw in the engine that caused the crash but executives ignored those warnings.

How would the public react?

The Virginia Office of Inspector General issued a damning report in 2012 about “streeting” — emergency rooms turning away patients because there were no psychiatric beds available even though the patients were in the midst of a mental crisis.  The author of that report, G. Douglas Bevelacqua, warned the state’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services that Virginia had a bed shortage problem that needed to be fixed.

No one listened.

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