A Daughter With Bipolar Disorder is Frustrated With Her Father With Bipolar Disorder

I  receive dozens of emails a week from family members who are frustrated by our failed mental health system. All of them are poignant. Here is a recent one that I found especially compelling.

Hi Pete Earley,

…I came across your book while looking for a source of comfort during my own family’s time of need. Two months ago, my dad was finally forced into treatment for his undiagnosed severe bipolar disorder and coexisting extreme alcoholism. My mother and I (I am an only child) have been trying unsuccessfully for years to get him help.

In order for him to finally be involuntary subjected to treatment, he had to have a major traumatic psychotic episode. He had a previous psychotic episode earlier this year that landed him in a mental health facility for one week. But the latest one proved even more traumatic to all of us.

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SLY FOX Selling Briskly — A Great Beach Read!

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I mentioned that I’d collaborated with FOX Television’s Judge Jeanine Pirro on a new fiction book entitled SLY FOX: A Dani Fox Novel.

Inspired by criminal cases that Jeanine prosecuted early in her legal career, the book introduces readers to Dani Fox, a young, feisty, female prosecutor in New York during the late 1970s who goes after abusive  husbands and murderers.

Jeanine has been busy promoting SLY FOX this month and reviewers have described it as a great beach read. It is much different from the serious nonfiction topics that interest me and was fun to work on.  I’m about to leave on a much needed beach vacation with my family.

Hopefully, I will see some sun bathers turning the book’s pages during my morning and evening walks in the sand!

 

My Son’s First Gallery Art Show: RESILIENT – Paintings Overcoming Pain

Daniel in Lion’s Den

I’m proud to announce that my son — identified as MIKE in my book and known by his friends as Kevin — will be showing a collection of his original paintings at the Jo Ann Rose Gallery in Reston,  1609-A Washington Plaza, Reston, VA 20190, during the month of August with an opening reception from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on August 5th, a Sunday.

If you are in the area and would like to meet my son and see his artwork, please attend the reception!

A 2005 graduate of Pratt Institute, where he earned a BFA in fine art with a concentration in painting, Kevin has titled his show, “Resilient.”

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The Colorado Shootings and Mental Illness: As a Nation we still don’t get it!

 

We don’t know enough about the mind of the alleged Colorado shooter,  James Holmes,  to determine if he has a severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, or if he was driven by some narcissistic, anti-social desire to hurt others and become infamous.

But as the father of an adult son with bipolar disorder, who has been arrested and who once fixated on a movie during a psychotic break, I’ve watched the public reaction to the horrific shootings in Aurora — and earlier ones in Tuscon and on the Virginia Tech University campus — with trepidation. As a nation, we are stumped by mental illnesses.

Some observations.

* These awful tragedies should turn attention on our nation’s woefully inadequate mental health care system. Instead, the spotlight always focuses on gun control. A possible reason is because people are afraid of being sympathetic or being viewed as excusing the acts of the gunman if they discuss mental illness. But how can we prevent future shootings if we don’t question why Seung-Hui Cho fell through the cracks in Virginia after he was declared “a danger to himself and others” or why Jared Lee Loughner’s schizophrenia went untreated? We ignore the elephant in the room — our nation’s failed mental health care system — at our own peril.

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Two Inmates Aren’t Ill, the BOP Claims – Even Though One Ate His Own Finger

First a note about Colorado

 I was on the west coast Friday doing research for a new nonfiction book when I received a seven a.m. telephone call from CNN asking if I wanted to comment about a shooting in Aurora. Was this incident similar to the  Virginia Tech massacre or the rampage in Tuscon? I felt a sickening sense of dread as soon as I heard that question. But I really couldn’t comment. I was still in bed and hadn’t yet turned on the hotel television or my computer. I really didn’t know anything about the mass murders. As I write this, we still haven’t been told enough about the mental state of the gunman to speculate. All I can say is that my heart goes out to all of the victims in this horrific tragedy.

 

I wrote last week about a recent lawsuit that alleges the federal Bureau of Prisons is mistreating inmates with mental disorders being held in its so-called Supermax, ADX penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. I believe this suit is so shocking that it merits another blog post.  The lead attorney in the class action suit, Ed Aro, told me via email that the director of the BOP,  Charles E. Samuels Jr.,  in sworn testimony before a congressional committee, testified that there were no inmates with serious mental illnesses being held in the high security ADX.  He made this statement the day after the lawsuit was filed.

Aro’s reacted with one stunned word: “Incredible!”

That’s putting it mildly if the accusations in the lawsuit are factual.

The BOP’s attorneys have yet to respond. But the director’s testimony certainly doesn’t jive with what is described in the lawsuit. Let’s review just two inmates whose backgrounds are recounted in the court document.

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Virginia Lt. Gov. Bolling Should Apologize For Stupid Comment

Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling should publicly apologize for a  prejudicial remark that he made recently.

The chairman of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s state campaign in Virginia recently told newspaper reporters that if people think Obama has done a good job over the past three years, they should vote for him — then “check themselves into a mental hospital.”

Bolling’s comment was meant to belittle Obama supporters by suggesting that they needed psychiatric treatment. This is the sort of mocking comment that increases stigma against persons with severe mental illnesses and also makes them reluctant to seek help. If you doubt this, substitute “cancer ward” for “mental hospital.” It doesn’t work, does it?

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