The National Alliance on Mental Illness bills itself as ” the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness.”  As a lifetime member of NAMI, active supporter of NAMI, and frequent speaker at NAMI groups, I greatly admire and support that goal. But I’m also curious about what that mandate encompasses.

What are NAMI’s priorities when it comes to specific mental disorders?

A recent conversation with Fred Frese and two emails from readers are responsible for my curiosity.

Fred has schizophrenia, is one of the finest speakers I’ve ever heard, and has been a tireless advocate for decades. If memory serves me correct, he has attended every NAMI convention since it was founded in 1979. In recalling NAMI’s history, Fred said that many of the women who helped found NAMI were adamant about challenging the then-commonly held belief that schizophrenia was caused by overbearing mothers.

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FROM MY FILES FRIDAY:  I first published this blog in December 2010, yet the question that it poses  is just as haunting today.

WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THIS DEATH? 

The residents of Morrisville, Pa., got an intimate look this holiday season at our troubled mental health care system. Paulette Wilkie, a homeless woman with a long history of schizophrenia, was found dead from exposure. The 56 year-old woman’s   body was discovered last week behind Ben’s Deli, a sandwich shop that she frequented.

Temperatures the night before had dropped into the mid 20s. But that was not cold enough to trigger the county’s emergency homeless plan. Temperatures must sink to 20 degrees or below for two consecutive days before teams can be dispatched to try to  persuade homeless persons to come indoors.

Reporter Ben Finley, writing in the Bucks County Courier Times, noted that people who knew Wilkie said she likely would not have gone into a shelter anyway. The owner of Ben’s Deli said Wilkie refused help from people concerned about her safety and health.Click to continue…

Information that I have on my webpage  about  Thomas Silverstein, who has been in solitary confinement longer than any other American prisoner, was posted on the front page of the Internet website REDDIT yesterday, resulting in a quarter of a million visits to my page.

Yep, that isn’t a misprint. More than 250,000 readers clicked on the link to read about Silverstein and look at his drawings. The last time I checked, the story had netted 1,200 comments on the Reddit site.

Silverstein, a major character in my book, The Hot House, was put under what unofficially was described as “no human contact” after he murdered correctional officer Merle Clutts in 1983 at what then was the federal government’s most secure prison. When I met him in the basement bowels of Leavenworth penitentiary, the federal Bureau of Prisons kept the lights in his cell on 24 hours a day. It was just one of several ways the BOP punished Silverstein, who today is being held in the government’s Super Max prison in Florence, Colorado.

When I asked him how he slept with the lights on, he replied: “Pete, I close my eyes.”

I was the only and last reporter to inteview  Silverstein face-to-face when I met with him several times between 1987 and 1989. We have kept up our correspondence. Amazingly, it is not unusual for me to get a handwritten letter more than a dozen pages long from Silverstein who sometimes apologizes for taking so long to respond because he is “busy.”

Somehow, after spending thirty years in solitary confinement, he still finds way to keep himself busy.

Zac Pogliano

Dear Pete,

     My 22 year- old son, Zac, has schizophrenia, the paranoid type. Since February, he has phoned emergency services five times to ask for help for problems that he’s imagining. Sometimes it’s a heart attack, sometimes his throat is closing, and yesterday, it was to report a gunshot wound to his head.

    He was certain he had been shot because earlier in the day, he’d heard a leader in his psychiatric rehab program say, “Who wants directions to Zac’s house?”  That comment upset him and by night time, it had translated into him thinking that he’d been shot in the head.

    He phoned 911 to report it.

    I was worried when I found out what he’d done. The police have weapons and there is no shortage of news articles about tragic encounters when police are called to intervene during a psychiatric crisis.

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Love him or hate him, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey continues to be a prolific and powerful voice in mental health.  In an article published yesterday in The National Review, the soon to be seventy-six year old psychiatrist joined with his protege, D. J. Jaffe, in attacking SAMHSA and in questioning the White House’s current campaign to reform our mental health system. 

Even though Torrey has contracted Parkinson disease, he has authored yet another book.  AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System will be published in October, which is not only mental health awareness month, but also marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the federal Community Mental Health Act.

Torrey begins his book by explaining why President John F. Kennedy made mental health a priority.  According to advance publicity for Torrey’s book, the impetus came from within his own family.

 Though he never publicly acknowledged it, the program was a tribute to Kennedy’s sister Rosemary, who was born mildly retarded and developed a schizophrenia-like illness. Terrified she’d become pregnant, Joseph Kennedy arranged for his daughter to receive a lobotomy, which was a disaster and left her severely retarded.

In a blurb for the book,  Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, President Elect, American Psychiatric Association and a controversial figure in his own right, writes: “Torrey is the Dorthea Dix of our time.”
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I received the following email from NBC news about a blog that I wrote chastising Brian Williams for stigmatizing remarks that he made in a recent broadcast when he referred to Ariel Castro, the Cleveland kidnapper/rapist who held three women captive for a decade, as “arguably the face of mental illness.” 

Hi Pete – I work with Brian Williams at NBC News. We wanted to reach out to clarify the situation and offer our apology: 

Brian immediately realized the error of his words, and he updated the broadcast to omit that phrase for later feeds. The corrected video that aired in the rest of the country that night is online here: http://nbcnews.to/15hPKrE. We sincerely apologize for the unintended offense caused by these remarks and hope you can forgive the mistake.

Best,
Erika Masonhall 
NBC News Communications 

I am grateful that NBC has apologized.

Unfortunately, no such apology has been issued by Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil for their blatant stigmatizing remarks despite calls from the National Alliance on Mental Illness and, more recently, a call from Mental Health America for Dr. Phil to apologize. [See below]

Instead, both of them continue to ignore complaints, removing them from their websites as soon as they are posted. It is interesting that a journalist feels obligated to apologize but two men who are health care professionals continue to hide.

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