What Makes A Place A Home?

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A recent speaking engagement in Denver reminded me of three things.

The first is how we define home.  I spent most of my childhood in Colorado and my sister is buried there. Because of that, I feel a strong attachment to the state even though I haven’t lived in  Colorado  since 1970. For nearly forty years, I’ve been a resident of  Northern Virginia. This is where I’ve worked and reared my family. Just the same, I don’t think of myself as being an “Easterner” or, for that matter, a “Virginian.” I remember hearing Vance Packard speak once about our mobile society and how difficult it was to chose a burial plot for a family member.  The idea of a family plot in a local cemetery was out-dated because generations no longer spent their lives in one location.  During his speech, he asked: “How do we define home?”

The second thought that came to me during my trip was about the importance of jobs in helping persons with severe mental disorders recover. This seems so obvious that writing about it shouldn’t be necessary. But during the past several years that I have spent traveling across our country, I’ve  noticed that securing employment for persons who have been diagnosed with mental disorders is rarely a priority.

This is a huge MISTAKE!

It is especially wrong to tell family members or persons with disorders that mental illnesses make it  impossible for a person to work. Click to continue…

Father and Son: Telling Our Stories Together for the First Time

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I am excited this week because my son, known to most of you as Mike, and I will speak for the first time together about his mental illness, our family’s struggle, and his recovery.

We will be appearing this Thursday, May 24th,  at the Loudon County Public Library’s Cascades branch at 7 p.m.

I will offer my perspective as a father,  discuss how his breakdown impacted my relationship with him, and how his illness led to me writing my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness. I’ve also been asked to describe successful recovery programs that I have seen as a journalist who has visited and spoken in every state except Hawaii, Mississippi and Arkansas, and has visited mental health services in Brazil, Portugal and Iceland.

Mike will speak about what it is like to have the symptoms of a mental illness, the many challenges that he faced and  how he eventually came to grips with his disorder.  He will talk about what did and didn’t help him — including things that I did that backfired!

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Happy Graduate and Proud Father

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My youngest daughter, Traci, graduated from Virginia Tech University this weekend with a Bachelor’s Degree in psychology. She maintained a perfect 4.0 grade point average her entire college career, was awarded Summa Cum Laude in her class of more than 5,000 graduates, and spent countless hours working on a suicide hotline as a volunteer. She plans to obtain a Master’s Degree in clinical mental health counseling.

My son’s diagnosis and breakdown changed our entire family. I became an advocate for mental health reform. My son works now as a peer to peer specialist for a county diversion program that helps persons, who have mental disorders and are arrested, by getting them into treatment programs rather than having them languish in jail. And now Traci has chosen a career in the mental health field.

Along with her siblings, Patti and I are tremendously proud of her achievements.

New Anosognosia Video Raises Questions About Lack of Insight

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People who are in the midst of a psychotic break often do not think anything is wrong with them. In recent years, this lack of insight has been described as anosognosia (a word that does not roll off the tongue easily.)  It means that a person isn’t aware that he/she is sick.

Two years ago, there was a push to add anosognosia to the the APA’s  DSM which is currently being revised. I wrote about that campaign on my blog and it attracted a number of divergent comments.

The Treatment Advocacy Center, which lobbies for passage of Assisted Outpatient Treatment laws, has released a video this week about anosognosia.  Dr. E. Fuller Torrey argues that anosognosia is a key reason why it’s important for family members and mental health professionals to be able to intervene when someone — who has a history of going off their medications or a history of violence — begins showing signs of psychosis. 

Critics argue that anosognosia isn’t a real medial condition and that most people are capable of making their own decisions without intervention even if they have a mental illness and may be in the midst of a breakdown. 

What do you think of anosognosia and this new video? I’m especially interested in personal stories.

Thank you for sharing your experiences and thoughts.

 

ABBOTT Board Should Be Forced To Publicly Apologize, Write Ethics Essay

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Failure of Leadership at Abbott Breaks Its Promise

Yesterday’s announcement that the global pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories had agreed to pay $1.6 billion to state and federal agencies in criminal and civil fines made me furious. This is not the first time that a large drug manufacturer has been caught illegally promoting unapproved uses for one of its medicines.  But the Abbott case is especially egregious because it executives  exploited two vulnerable groups: persons with mental illnesses and the elderly.

The settlement ends a four-year investigation into a wide number of calculated moves by the Illinois-based company to push sales of its neurological drug Depakote into so called “off label” markets where it didn’t belong.  One of the more scandalous admissions was that executives created a special sales force to promote Depakote in nursing homes.  The sales force was told to push Depakote as a substitute for proper staffing since one of its side effects was turning grandma and grandpa into compliant zombies thus reducing the need to hire employees and provide decent care.  “Abbott essentially preyed on…the most helpless patient populations,” one attorney noted.

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The Better Side of Columnist George Will

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I can’t remember now if the tip came in first to Howie Kurtz  or to me when we were both reporters at The Washington Post. But one of us heard that members of the Reagan Administration were taking part in a nifty little boondoggle that Charles Z. Wick had approved at the United States Information Agency.  Here was the scam. If a high-ranking government employee was willing to drop by the U.S. Embassy when he and his family jetted off to London, Paris, or some other exotic city on vacation, the government would pick up the cost of his airfare. All he had to do was give an hour long “briefing” to embassy employees to qualify for the taxpayer paid ticket.

Wick was furious when we confronted him and during our exchange he blurted out that Reagan staffers were not the only Washingtonians who were getting free airfare courtesy of Uncle Sam.

Journalists were too.

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