(8-22-16) Since 2010, I have posted 842 blogs on my author’s website, nearly all about mental health. This blog was first published on March 12, 2010, yet it remains my most often read post, which speaks volumes about how mystifying it is for many parents and others to understand why someone refuses to take anti-psychotic medication.  

Naturally, as soon as I published this, I received emails from readers who adamantly oppose all medication as well as others who explained that medication had helped them reclaim their lives. What those emails re-affirmed to me is that there is no one-size fits-all solution when it comes to mental health. What works for some, fails others. None of us should shame someone who has found a way to manage or cope with an illness. 

Why Won’t You Take Your Medication?

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(8-22-16) I’m taking a week off but I want to share this important story with you. God bless the Shoener family for their courage in speaking out about their daughter’s illness and death.

Inspired Life
She ‘loved life:’ A grieving father wrote openly about suicide and mental illness in daughter’s obituary
By Colby Itkowitz in The Washington Post

Reprinted courtesy of The Washington Post.

Only hours after he learned his only daughter was dead, Ed Shoener sat down to write her obituary. It felt like one way he could still take care of his little girl.

He and his wife, Ruth, had been steeling themselves for this day since Katie’s first hospitalization more than 11 years ago. He knew immediately why the police were at his doorstep the night of Aug. 3. Yet nothing prepares a parent for the moment they learn the details about how their child ended her life.

But if Shoener, a deacon at his Catholic church, learned anything watching his daughter’s long struggle with mental illness, it’s that the disease that plagued her is tragically misunderstood. The last thing he could do for his daughter was try to help others understand.

So, with stunning candor, he began her obituary like this:

Kathleen ‘Katie’ Marie Shoener, 29, fought bipolar disorder since 2005, but she finally lost the battle on Wednesday to suicide in Lewis Center, Ohio.

Then, overwhelmed by the fatherly pull to protect her, he wrote this:

So often people who have a mental illness are known as their illness. People say that “she is bipolar” or “he is schizophrenic.” Over the coming days as you talk to people about this, please do not use that phrase. People who have cancer are not cancer, those with diabetes are not diabetes. Katie was not bipolar — she had an illness called bipolar disorder — Katie herself was a beautiful child of God.

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(8-19-16) One year ago today, Jamycheal Mitchell was found dead in a Virginia jail cell. Here is an Op Ed that I wrote for the USA Today newspaper this week about the state’s failure to explain what happened to him.)

How an ill man starved to death in jail: USA TODAY

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(8-17-16) INOVA Fairfax Hospital needs to stop hiding behind federal privacy laws and explain why it had security guards escort a 29 year-old man, who police said was in the throes of a mental health crisis, to a bus stop rather than helping him.

That still unidentified man was fatally shot on the hospital grounds Monday night after he began swinging a metal signpost over his head and charged at a sheriff’s deputy.

The deputy involved was immediately put on administrative leave pending an investigation. The local police chief immediately disclosed the shooting at a news conference and promised to make public a video from a hospital security camera that possibly recorded footage of the shooting.

Everyone promised transparency – except for one critical player: INOVA Fairfax Hospital.

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(8- 15-16) As a former newspaper reporter, I care deeply about the future of daily papers. I was fortunate enough to work at The Washington Post in the early 1980s under legendary editor Ben Bradlee when newspapers will still cash cows and reporters only had to write stories for the morning print edition, not file tweets, blog, and constantly update electronic versions on unprofitable news websites. John Oliver has taken a humorous yet frightening look at the status of newspapers today. His comments have caused considerable talk within journalism circles and inside the Washington beltway. I wanted to share it with you.

 

(8-11-16) If you live in Virginia, you might wish to attend a forum about mental illness and the death penalty being held August 15th, Monday, in Richmond. The Virginia chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Due Process Review Project is hosting it. I’ve been told there are a few seats still available.

NAMI VA. Executive Director Mira Signer is urging family members and persons with lived experience to  learn how they can support legislation that NAMI hopes to have introduced during the 2017 session that would exclude persons with severe mental illnesses from being put to death if their thinking was so impaired that they didn’t understand the consequences of their actions.

Dr. Richard Bonnie from the University of Virginia School of Law will be one of the speaker’s. Dr. Bonnie has been instrumental for more than two decades in helping Virginia’s elected leaders better understand mental illnesses. He has been pivotal in launching statewide reforms.

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