I need your help.

I’ve written before about Trudy Harsh, an inspirational local advocate who began buying houses in Fairfax County, Virginia  for persons with brain disorders after her daughter died.  Trudy’s non-profit group, The Brain Foundation, buys the houses and the county’s mental health agency provides tenant services. It’s a win-win combination in a county where a person with a mental illness can wait 18 years before an apartment becomes available.  

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is demanding that Trudy pay $14,413 in property taxes on four of her houses.  The Brain Foundation’s other three houses are located in Fairfax City — but officials there have agreed to “forgive” $10,883 in annual property taxes because they recognize the homes are being used for a charitable cause that is worthy of public support. 

The Fairfax Supervisors are worried that if they grant a wavier to the Brain Foundation, they could be “opening the floodgates” to other charitable housing groups.

Floodgates? Really? With an 18 year wait — is this a valid concern? If we can help provide more low income and transitional housing by following Trudy’s lead, then I say, bust that damn wide open.

I am certain the county has some sharp witted attorney on its staff who can write a tax exemption that will apply only to the Brain Foundation if the Supervisors are truly worried.

The Brain Foundation houses currently houses 28 people, including three tenants who were homeless, including one who came from a country run shelter. Housing those three tenants has saved the county more than the $14,000 in taxes that it is trying to squeeze out of Trudy’s shoe string group.

This should be a no-brainer for the supervisors.

So how can you help?

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If you are attending the National Alliance on Mental Illness convention June 27th to the 30th in San Antonio and would like to write a blog about your experience please contact me. I am interested in publishing at least three blogs, each between 500 to 800 words, about events at the convention that would be of interest to my readers. You will be paid, but not much. Contact me through my webpage. I am especially interested in hearing from someone who will be attending Robert Whitaker’s talk.

Thank you!

I received word that the U.S. Department of Justice has reached an agreement with Miami Dade County that will end many of the abuses in Miami’s downtown pre-trial detention center chronicled in my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness.

As part of the agreement, the county must build a mental health treatment facility for inmates, estimated to cost between $12 million to $16 million, and make other changes in how it treats prisoners who have mental illnesses.

Miami Judge Steven Liefman got me into the jail more than six years ago where I observed prisoners with mental illnesses being held in overcrowded, unsanitary, abusive and dangerous conditions. After my book was published, he got Michele Gillen, an investigative reporter with the local CBS television affiliate, into the jail where she filmed what I had observed. Our joint efforts helped spark the Justice Department probe.

While I am happy that conditions in the jail are going to be improved,  I am reticent about the Justice Department’s actions.

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I generally post a blog from my files each Friday but today I am making an exception to share two stories and a website with you that are well worth your time.

Schzophrenic. Killer. My Cousin by Mac McClelland is a riveting story published by Mother Jones Magazine that combines the author’s investigation into a murder inside her family with a study of how we’ve gutted our mental health care system. The sub-title of the story reads:

It’s insanity to kill your father with a kitchen knife. It’s also insanity to close hospitals, fire therapists, and leave families to face mental illness on their own.

Collectively, states have cut $4.35 billion in public mental health care spending since 2009, the author notes. Meanwhile, between 1998 and 2006, the number of mentally ill people incarcerated in federal, state and local prisons and jails has more than quadrupled.

The Problem With How We Treat Bipolar Disorder by Linda Logan published in the New York Times Magazine presents an interesting viewpoint about the loss of self and identity when you are diagnosed with a mental disorder.

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For Immediate Release:

Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, announced today that it will publish RESILIENCE, a memoir written by Jessie Close about her struggles and triumphant recovery from a severe mental illness.  Jessie is the younger sister of the acclaimed actress, Glenn Close, who will also contribute to the book by writing three  vignettes about her relationship with Jessie and by writing the book’s epilogue.  RESILIENCE is scheduled to be published January 1, 2015.  Hachette Audio will also release an audio edition read by Glenn Close.

Bestselling author, Pete Earley, whose own memoir about his son’s mental illness, CRAZY, was one of two finalists for a Pulitzer in 2007, will collaborate with Jessie in the telling of her intimate story. 

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“Dear Pete”  — the letter begins — “let me tell you about my son, John, and his struggles with mental illness.”

John began to first manifest his mental illness twenty years ago when he was only fifteen. The diagnosis bounced from depression to schizophrenia to schizo-affective disorder and everything in between.

John had been going to a mental health center but when mental health was cut by more than half during the Bush era, services dried up.  He was left with no where to go. I was working as a physical education teacher and I began bringing John to school each day. He slept on a mat in my office. Gradually, his Clozapine began to bring about change and he stopped sleeping, and became a much loved full time volunteer at my school.

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