Those of us who are working to reform our fractured mental health system need to begin talking to each other.
During my travels, I’ve visited many communities where there is little or no communication. The police don’t talk to local providers who take care of persons with mental disorders and substance abuse issues. These providers don’t talk to parents. And no one talks to the persons who are actually sick. 
Okay, I’m being a bit facetious — but my point is spot on.
Rather than cooperating, each faction does what it always has done and ignores how tax dollars could be saved and how people could be better treated through community collaboration.
Mental Health America asked me to moderate a thought-provoking panel that featured four nationally-known activists during its annual convention in Washington D.C.
Kay Redfield Jamison doesn’t need an introduction. Her memoir, An Unquiet Mind, was the first book I read after my son, Mike, became ill, and it spent five months on the New York Times bestseller list. She is not only brilliant and well-spoken, but also unassuming.
The other three panelists were new to me.
Continue reading ‘A Never Ending Debate’
When I was a Washington Post reporter, I did not believe in joining groups or organizations. I needed to be independent in order to be objective. Then my son, Mike, got sick and the first thing I did after I finished writing my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, was join the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI.)
Why?
Continue reading ‘NAMI Changed My Life’
I had planned to write today about my trip out of the snow-bound Washington D.C. area to Los Angeles where I toured Skid Row and the Twin Towers, which is the nickname for the city jail. As many of you know, the jail is the largest public mental institution in the U.S.
However, I decided to wait until Monday to post that account because of the police shooting here in Fairfax, Va. that put Ian Smith, a person with mental illness, into the hospital in critical condition.
Continue reading ‘What should we do when there is a shooting?’
