Bestselling Author and Mental Health Advocate
This month, my son, Evan, graduated from Virginia Tech and is now pursuing a career in film. He already has worked on the camera side of six independent movies.
And my daughter, Kathy, earned her law degree from the University of Maryland in Baltimore. The speaker at Kathy’s graduation read this poem. I’d not heard it before and want to share it with you.
“Why don’t you reporters simply tell the truth?” a frustrated public official once asked me.
Whenever I hear a question like that, I think about an incident that happened when I was a young reporter at The Tulsa Tribune in Oklahoma and a woman called and told me that she needed my help. 
She said her husband was in prison and that she was being sexually harassed by a high -ranking prison official. She claimed this man had threatened to have her husband beaten unless she did what the official wanted sexually.
The first time Mike became psychotic, I drove him to a hospital emergency room. We didn’t know any psychiatrists and Mike needed immediate help. Taking him there turned out to be a mistake.
Emergency rooms are where everyone goes nowadays whenever they have any kind of health-related crisis, but many are poorly equipped to deal with psychiatric patients in the midst of a mental break. 
Some patients are turned away, as Mike and I were, without getting help. Or a patient might be held down and given a shot of Haldol or another strong anti-psychotic that will help stabilize him but also can turn him into a walking zombie for days.
Think of a book that had an impact on you.
Pete Earley is the bestselling author of such books as The Hot House and Crazy. When he is not spending time with his family, he tours the globe advocating for mental health reform.
As a former reporter for The Washington Post, Pete uses his journalistic background to take a fair-minded approach to the story all while weaving an interesting tale for the reader.