How One Friend Helped Gabe Howard: From Suicidal Thoughts To Paying It Forward

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(7-12-17) Sometimes I believe we underestimate the power of one person to change another person’s life. Gabe Howard was once depressed, untreated, and suicidal. He was spared that awful fate because of one person intervening in his life. One person made a difference!

Today, he tells his story in his writings, podcasts, and speeches. “Society often sees people living with mental illness at their worst,” Gabe says. “I want to balance that out by living openly with mental illness.”

I am swamped completing my new novel this week, so I asked Gabe to write a guest blog for me. He chose the topic of the importance of caregivers taking care of themselves.

But first, here’s more of his personal story.

 

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One Tent, Not Two: NAMI’s Future Role In Our Lives

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(6-5-17) The president of the board at the National Alliance on Mental Illness sent out an email last week about “small tent” and “big tent” thinking.

Members inside small tents were described as those who want to focus exclusively on serious mental illnesses, defined as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe and persistent depression (SMIs). Big tent members were described as wanting to expand NAMI beyond SMIs to include autism, ADHD, and eating disorders as listed on the NAMI website.

This argument has been painful for me because I care deeply about NAMI. Because I do, I reject the “small tent” and the “big tent” thinking.

There should be “one tent” with enough seats inside it for different points of view.

Being pragmatic, I realize strongly-held opinions can divide us. But I also believe NAMI can work through whatever dissension exists by accepting five  Cs — civility, compromise, consensus, communication and cause. While we may not agree on every issue, our joint “cause” must be working together to help individuals with mental illnesses.  There should be no “us” vs. “them.” There should be “we.”

What is NAMI?

To me, the soul of NAMI is not its board or its national staff. They are reflections of NAMI. To me, NAMI is its people.

I have had the privilege of visiting NAMI chapters in every state except Hawaii and Mississippi.

Every local chapter I have visited is concerned about severe mental illnesses, especially individuals who are homeless.

Every local chapter I have visited endorses Crisis Intervention Team training and wants to end the inappropriate arrest and incarceration of individuals with severe mental illnesses.

Every local chapter I have visited wants to end emergency room psychiatric boarding, wants more crisis care beds, and more meaningful community services for the sickest of the sick.

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NAMI Board President’s Email Sparks Controversy. Called ‘Unconscionable’ By “Focus on Serious Mental Illness” Candidate

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(-6-1-2017) The President of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Board of Directors sent an email yesterday to the organization’s state and local leaders about NAMI’s upcoming board elections that one candidate is calling “fairly unconscionable.”

Without mentioning any candidates by name,  President Steve Pitman (shown in NAMI photo) wrote that the selection of five new board members will determine NAMI’s future for the next three years:

At issue will be whether we continue to build broad coalitions that allow for discussions of subjects like serious mental illness (SMI), hopefulness, recovery, stigma, etc.  This is the “big tent” approach that embraces “all”  in the conversation.  In the alternative,  NAMI would narrow its focus to that of serious mental illness in a much “smaller tent.”

The issue is one of strategy.  How does NAMI best build support for the issues surrounding SMI?  If one looks at the history of NAMI, this movement to a big tent approach has been slow and steady.  Through the years, the duly-elected boards of NAMI, with many different members, have supported this broadened focus.  The question now before our affiliates and state organizations is whether this big tent approach has helped to make the needed changes affecting those living with SMI and their families?  Going forward, what is the more effective strategy: big tent or small tent? Steve-Pitman-2015-thumb

The email, which I have included in its entirety at the bottom of this post, was read by candidates, who are campaigning on a “Focus on Serious Mental Illness” platform, as an attempt to sway the election against them. Four candidates have said that NAMI needs to focus more on SMIs, which include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe and persistent depression, rather than expanding its reach into other diagnoses.

One of the candidates on the SMI platform, D. J. Jaffe, sent me an email complaining about Pitman’s action.

     The NAMI board president, in spite of an obligation to remain neutral sent an email to all affiliates and state organizations couching the election as being for or against the Focus in Serious Mental Illness ticket versus for or against say , stigma, which others are campaigning on.  This is fairly unconscionable.  This went out at same time ballots went out to affiliates and state orgs.  

In an email, I asked President Pitman if he wanted to explain his reason for sending his email. He said that he had nothing more to add to his originial email. It was  distributed nationally by NAMI’s headquarters and Pitman wrote it as board president, which would suggest that NAMI’s current 16 member board and NAMI’s executive director, Mary Giliberti, agreed with Pittman’s statement.

The four candidates running on a Focus on Serious Mental Illness platform are:

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Happy Memorial Day: Remembering Those Who Fought For Our Freedom To Be Different

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My sister-in-law, Dana Davis, was deaf but she never let her lack of hearing slow her down. When she was a teenager, the local swimming pool said she couldn’t be a lifeguard. My wife, Patti, who was two years older than her sister, and Dana demanded an audience with the pool’s board of directors and convinced its members to give Dana a shot.

She got the job and did great at it.

Dana and her husband, Donnie, had one child, Matthew. He was born with Absent Radius Syndrome and  foreshortened arms. When the radius bone is missing the thumb does not form and the wrist is not supported, therefore Matt’s hands are curved.  My son, Tony, who was little when Matt was born, said that God must have known what He was doing when He picked a family for Matt because Dana would know what it was like to be different. She didn’t lower her expectations when it came to Matt.

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Feuding Continues Over Trump’s Pick For Mental Health Czar, Reports New York Times

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(5-26-17) While it certainly is not unusual for a president’s nominee for a cabinet position to raise a ruckus, most assistant secretary choices sail through.

It appears that will not be the case with President Donald Trump’s nomination for the newly created job of mental health czar. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) continues to express his displeasure  with the White House’s choice and has not been shy about saying so.

The bickering caught the attention of The New York Times this week.

Trump’s Pick for Mental Health ‘Czar’ Highlights Rift  -The New York Times

By BENEDICT CAREY and SHERI FINK

Caption: Elinore McCance-Katz has been tapped by President Trump to fill the position of assistant secretary for mental health and substance use. The “czar” position was created to overhaul the mental health care system and bridge more than 100 related federal agencies. Steven Senne/Associated Press

For decades, therapists, patient advocates and countless families have worked to elevate mental health care in the political conversation. Their cause recently received a big boost when a new law created a federal mental health “czar” to help overhaul the system and bridge more than 100 federal agencies concerned with mental health.

But the White House’s choice for the first person to fill that position has already been divisive, exposing longstanding rifts within the field that may be difficult to mend.

President Trump has announced his intention to nominate Elinore F. McCance-Katz for the new position, assistant secretary for mental health and substance use. Dr. McCance-Katz is a psychiatrist whose long career has been focused on treating drug addiction, in particular opioid abuse. She has the support of several prominent groups, including the American Psychiatric Association and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, but others, including the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, are skeptical.

A central tension in the debate is between the medical model of psychiatry, which emphasizes drug and hospital treatment and which Dr. McCance-Katz has promoted, and the so-called psychosocial, which puts more emphasis on community care and support from family and peers.

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The Daughter Of The Man Who Helped Keep The Cold War From Becoming Hot Talks

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(5-25-17) Ever wonder what it is like to be the daughter of a CIA officer – and not just any ordinary operative but one who actually helped keep the Cold War from turning hot?

Eva Dillon has written an exceptional book called  Spies in the Family: An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, And the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War.

Before I started focusing almost exclusively on mental illness and my novels, I published nonfiction books about American traitors. One was CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, who plays a critical role in Dillon’s book so I was especially eager to read her account.

Dillon’s story focuses on two men. Soviet Major General Dmitri Polyakov was the most important Russian “asset” who worked for us during the Cold War, and Dillon’s father, Paul Leo Dillon, was his CIA handler.

To understand why her new book is both an excellent read and important, you must understand what Gen. Polyakov did for our nation. He was the United States’  highest-ranking, longest-serving Soviet double agent during the Cold War. James Woolsey, Director of CIA under President Clinton, called him the “jewel in the crown”who “kept the Cold War from becoming hot.”

My CIA contacts have told me that Polyakov’s disclosures alone filled an entire room full of file cabinets.

The second thing you must realize is Dillon has written a true insider book describing the mental toll it took on her father handling such a valuable “asset” who was in constant danger.

Dillon interviewed me for her book because Aldrich Ames was responsible for Polyakov’s arrest by the Soviet KGB. While the Kremlin had its suspicions for years, it was Ames who confirmed that the general had spied for us – a fact Ames told them even though Polyakov had retired from the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) and was an older man. Ames knew in disclosing Polyakov’s past, the general would be executed. Yet, Ames offered up Polyakov’s name simply to line his pockets and impress his new Kremlin “friends.” (In case you are wondering, Polyakov betrayed the Soviet empire for philosophical reasons not cash.)

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