(FROM MY FILES FRIDAY) With Halloween approaching, I thought it appropriate to revisit a 2015 fight that mental health groups waged about an especially insensitive Modern Family episode. A year earlier, I’d called attention to the episode only to catch ABC airing it again. After publishing this blog, I reached out to former Sen. Gordon Smith who promised to get involved in fighting stigmatizing programs on TV. Will this holiday be different?

ABC Thumbs Its Nose At Mental Health Groups, Airs Modern Family Episode. We Lost, Right? 

First published Oct. 29, 2015

Paul Lee, the head of ABC Entertainment Group, which oversees the television network ABC and its production arm ABC Studios, ignored requests by the nation’s six largest mental health groups to deep six a Halloween episode of Modern Family last night that belittled Americans with mental illnesses.. He thumbed his nose at the tweets, the blogs, and the complaints asking him to not show the episode.

For a fun-filled half hour, viewers got to belly laugh at “nut jobs,” “deranged mental patients,” a “sadistic nurse” and a “demented doctor.” The screenwriters didn’t miss a trick — there were chains on hospital beds, straight jackets and a husband who calmed his “looney bin” wife by giving her a “box of Cap’n Crunch and letting her stare at a fish tank.” 

The National Alliance on Mental Illness, which led the campaign to sideline the program, came under criticism. So did I and others who joined NAMI in protesting. “Who appointed you the morality police?” one emailer asked. “C’mon, lighten up. This is comedy.”  Another wrote, “We shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously.” 

Those comments sounded familiar to me. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, racist jokes, anti-Semitic jokes, and gay bashing jokes were common. So were racial slurs, anti-Semitic slurs, and anti-gay slurs. My father was a minister and he told me that those hateful words and jokes dehumanized, stigmatized and belittled people. As a youngster, I refused to utter them and didn’t laugh when I heard them. When I was old enough to speak out, I did. It wasn’t always easy, but I believed it was the right thing to do.

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Dear Pete,

I want to tell you about my son and how the Veterans Administration failed to treat him, contributed to him having a mental breakdown, and then refused to help him.

As you know, as many as twenty veterans a day choose to end their own lives. In our son’s case, we believe the VA’s failure to help our son caused him to attempt “suicide by cop” with tragic results.

My son was the third of five children. He grew up in a happy home, was intelligent and friendly, independent, and enjoyed finding the exception to the rule. He worked construction jobs while a teen, which provided a good income and enabled him to buy a car before his older siblings.

At 17, he joined the National Guard and tested in the 90% range. They wanted him to go into military intelligence, but he chose to be a regular soldier. His unit was sent to Iraq. He later volunteered to go to Afghanistan with another unit.

While deployed, he was involved in multiple violent conflicts. Our son was always able to remain calm, and he saved lives due to his training and ability to provide medical first aid. He was awarded an ARCOM – an Army Commendation Medal for heroism.

We were proud of him and his service to our nation.

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(Amanda Wilcox’s recent congressional testimony.)

(10-18-19) FROM MY FILES FRIDAY – Arguments about guns, the death penalty and mental health continue eight years after I wrote this blog about the death of Laura Wilcox and her parents’ reaction.

A Different View of Executing the ‘Insane’

Nick and Amanda Wilcox’s daughter, Laura, was nineteen, beautiful and talented. She was a sophomore at Haverford College, a Quaker school in Pennsylvania, and in the midst of a campaign for the student body presidency when she came home for Christmas Break in 2000.

Laura had worked during the summer as a receptionist at the Behavior Health Department in her hometown of Nevada City, California, which lies between  Sacramento and Reno. When her boss called and asked if she could fill-in for a few days over the holiday season, she immediately agreed.

Her mother, Amanda, would describe her daughter to me this way when we first met last summer.

“Laura had extraordinary capabilities, kindness and spirit. She was an outstanding student, graduating as high school valedictorian and was attending a highly regarded college. She was extremely organized, disciplined and motivated; she had boundless energy. She lived life fully as she danced through her days, easily juggling academics, service work, clubs and student council, piano, ballet, and exercise. Laura touched and inspired everyone she met, she had a big circle of close friends; her teachers adored her. My daughter was beautiful, but her inner beauty was even greater. Her strong sense of compassion, respect, justice, and truth were beyond her years. All of that changed when she crossed paths with Scott Thorpe.”

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(10-11-19) FROM MY FILES FRIDAY: One of my objectives, after I was appointed as the parent member on the Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee (ISMICC), was to shine a spotlight on the federal Bureau Of Prison’s treatment of prisoners with mental illnesses.

ISMICC was created by Congress as an advisory committee to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) which is responsible for encouraging federal agencies to cooperate and coordinate mental health funding and programs. One of ISMICC’s recommendations, which I helped draft in our report: The Way Forward: Federal Action for a System That Works For All People Living with SMI [Serious Mental Illnesses] and SED [Serious Emotional Disturbances] and Their Families and Caregivers, calls for the government to “strictly limit or eliminate the use of solitary confinement.”

It took more than a year, but my fellow ISMICC members and I were finally able to get the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin participating in our discussions. I am looking forward to hearing from that BOP representative at our next meeting about what steps the bureau is taking to better handle prisoners with serious mental illnesses.

As you can read from this blog that I posted in October 2017, the bureau has much to do.

Prisoners With Serious Mental Illnesses Held In Isolation For Up To Six Years. Where? In Federal Prisons.

(10-16-17) Public outrage about how Americans with mental illnesses were treated inside state mental hospitals helped spark de-institutionalization.

So where is that anger and fury now when it comes to abuses of Americans with mental illnesses currently being warehoused in our jails and prisons?

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(10-7-19) The neighbor asked the judge for a restraining order against the man who lived next door.

He was video taping everyone. Each time he stepped outside, he had a camera and recorded whoever crossed his path, including children. He became fixated on her. If she left her house, he appeared with his camera. She couldn’t go on a walk without being followed. Couldn’t visit the grocery store.

It got to be too much.  She suspected he was mentally ill. The judge did too. He issued a restraining order for one year.

The judge asked: How could this matter have been handled better?

Mark Gale, Criminal Justice Chair for the NAMI Los Angeles County Council, and I struggled to answer.

We were speaking at a judge’s conference in Palm Springs, California, arranged by San Bernardino Presiding Judge John P. Vander Feer. We were taking questions after telling the judges about jail diversion, Crisis Intervention Team training, and problem solving courts. Mark has a son with a serious mental illness who has been entangled in the criminal justice system but now is doing well. Mark is also one of the smartest and most knowledgeable criminal justice advocates I’ve met.

Other civil court judges in the audience quickly joined their fellow jurist in recounting their experiences in civil courts with individuals who were showing symptoms of a mental illness. (Usually, someone was seeking a restraining order against the ill person.)

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