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Wise Words Worth Hearing –and Spreading!

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Jessie, Mattie, Sander and Calen

“My mom was not a constant in our youth. Some days I would bask in her comfort and loving support only to find her distant and cold the next…At age 18, my older brother Calen suffered a severe mental breakdown that lead to a role reversal. My role model was gone and in his place was a frantic, scared and fragile boy rambling about aliens, surveillance cameras and notions about everyone being able to hear his thoughts. There was nowhere for him to escape.

    “It is difficult to describe what you witness when someone is in the throes of a psychotic breakdown.  There is a distinct characteristic about someone’s eyes. It is a stare that pierces your soul. . It is scary but it is even scarier when it is someone you love and you can feel and see the hell that they are in and there is nothing you can do.”

“I’ve always thought that the more sensitive a person is, the more susceptible they are to mental illnesses. A sick joke in our universe is that the more it allows a person to see its beauty and deep connectivity, the more difficult it becomes for that person to maintain good mental health.

     “In our culture, we tend to treat this tradeoff with a fierce double standard. As long as they are sharing with us beautiful insights into humanity, we will love and cherish them as heroes, but if they fall into substance abuse, depression or any other form of mental illness, we tend to say, ‘It’s not our problem.’

     “Classically, these are artists, musicians, writers, etc., but, of course, they come in all sorts, unsung or not. These people tend to add value and meaning to our lives. At their best, they are the types who make us laugh and cry, to learn and to take risks and to love. They are brave and it angers me that as a society, we abandon them when their skies darken.”

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

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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!

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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

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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

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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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Punishing a Pilot for Being Mentally Ill

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Case One: A pilot flying a commercial airliner has a heart attack that prevents him from being able to fly the plane. His co-pilot takes charge and safely lands the aircraft. The pilot is rushed to a hospital and the passengers are grateful for the co-pilot’s skill.

Case Two: A pilot flying a commercial airliner has a mental breakdown and becomes disoriented. He announces that the flight is doomed, mutters comments about Jesus and flees the cockpit.  His co-pilot takes control and passengers wrestle down the confused pilot. When the plane lands safely, the pilot is arrested, charged with one count for interfering with a flight crew, and taken to a locked facility. Angry passengers file civil lawsuits against the airline for employing someone who has a mental disorder.

A judge in Amarillo, Texas, ruled last week that the pilot in Case Two was not guilty of interfering with a flight crew because he suffered from a “severe mental disease” and “was not guilty by reason of insanity.”  The pilot will now be sent to a federal mental health facility for further examination until another hearing on or before Aug. 6th. The judge will decide then whether he can be released from custody or should be committed indefinitely to a locked mental facility.

I am grateful for the judge’s ruling, but I also have a question: Why was the pilot arrested and prosecuted?

No one doubts that a heart attack is a medical emergency. No one suggested that the pilot in Case One be arrested even though he might have contributed to his heart’s weak condition by smoking, being overweight or not exercising.

The judge who reviewed the evidence in Case Two concluded that the pilot had a “severe mental disease” and was not responsible for his actions because his disorder made him legally insane.

Logic tells us that neither pilot wanted a medical emergency to ground their careers. So why were they treated so differently?

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