Pete Earley

The Treatment Advocacy Center is my choice as the organization that had the most impact in mental health during 2015.

Each December, I look back to see what group or person made a difference in mental health matters. In 2014, I chose Rep. Tim Murphy, (R-Pa,) Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds and Philanthropist Ted Stanley as key impact players.

Whether you agree or disagree with TAC’s actions — and it does have its distractors as well as its supporters — you have to acknowledge its national influence. Last Thursday, it released “Overlooked in the Undercounted: The Role of Mental Illness in Fatal Law Enforcement Encounters,” which reported that individuals with untreated mental illness were 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other Americans when dealing with law enforcement. That report was the latest in a series of TAC studies that have called attention to the plight of persons with mental illnesses. Consider these earlier studies:

“The Treatment of Persons with Mental Illness in Prisons and Jails: A State Survey” (April 2014)

“No Room at the Inn: Trends and Consequences of Closing Public Psychiatric Hospitals 2005-2010″ online (July 2012)

More Mentally Ill Persons Are in Jails and Prisons Than Hospitals (May 2010)

Problems Associated With Mentally Ill Individuals in Public Libraries (March/April 2009)

The Shortage of Public Hospital Beds for Mentally Ill Persons (March 2008)

Because TAC focuses on implementing Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) laws,  anti-AOT critics have accused it of releasing studies that buttress its call for greater use of AOT. That might be true, but it’s also true that TAC has consistently and unrelentingly revealed flaws in our system that need repair  – and it’s done it louder and often more effectively than other advocacy organizations. (It’s also done it on a yearly budget of slightly more than $1 million — that’s not much in Washington’s advocacy circles.)

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Here’s a free 14-minute film that examines our failure to help individuals with serious mental illnesses and a sample from a new e-book by an investigative journalist with lived experience.

The film is The Realities of Serious Mental Illness by Dr. David Pickar, an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. The self-published book is entitled Not Just Up and Down: Understanding Mood in Bipolar Disorder by John McManamy.

The Realities of Serious Mental Illness begins with interviews with experts, consumers and families explaining schizophrenia and what it feels like to have a serious mental illness. The focus of Dr. Pickar’s film then shifts to advocacy when he interviews Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) about his Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act and praises Assisted Outpatient Treatment as an important recovery tool.

Because Dr. Pickar’s film endorses Murphy’s bill and AOT, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, have not been promoting it  — even though former NIH Director Tom Insel is interviewed in the film and Dr. Pickar heaps praise on NAMI. But Dr. Pickar felt as a psychiatrist that he needed to speak out frankly about both Murphy’s bill and AOT and he didn’t back down from making his case for supporting both in his informative film.

The Realities of Serious Mental Illness a film by David Pickar from David Pickar, MD on Vimeo.

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Kudos to the National Alliance on Mental Illness for publishing its third annual state survey  that identifies major mental health legislation by state and also reports which legislatures have increased or cut spending for much needed mental health care.

My home state of Virginia got high ratings largely because it implemented a psychiatric inpatient bed registry system that was championed by state Senator  Creigh Deeds  after he was unable to get his son, Gus, into a local hospital. Gus later attacked his father before ending his own life.

Deeds has used that preventable tragedy to become a tour-de-force in Virginia. He’s an inspiring example of the power of one person to bring about major changes! It’s nice to read that Virginia is actually being praised rather than ending up near the bottom of mental health lists.

Please download NAMI’s state-by-state report and check your state. Not only will you learn if your elected leaders upped or cut mental health budgets, you’ll also be able to read about key mental health legislation that has been passed. You can compare how other states have reacted legislatively to issues such as civil commitment and court-ordered treatment, early intervention, Medicaid and Medicaid Expansion, Health Insurance parity, children and youth services, suicide, and your state’s criminal justice system.  Gold stars pinpoint useful bills and red flags are used to spotlight awful bills.

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I want to continue making readers aware of an especially troubling case in Maryland that involves the death of Ji’Aire Simms, a three year-old boy nicknamed “Sumo” because of his chubby cheeks. He died in May this year from hypothermia and dehydration after being pushed in a playground swing for 40 hours straight by his mother, Romechia Simms, age 25, who reportedly had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  She never left his side and continued pushing him during a rain storm and after he already had died. (He’d been dead two days when the police arrived.)

This week, The Washington Post reported that a judge had lowered Simms’ bond so that her mother,Vontasha Simms, could get her troubled daughter out of jail and, hopefully, into treatment before she is brought to court to face charges of manslaughter and first-degree child abuse punishable by 45 years in prison.

What’s upsetting about this news story is not that Simms has been released from jail, but her mother’s claim that Simms did not receive any mental health treatment while incarcerated.

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The Washington Post has been at the forefront of writing about police involved shooting deaths and last week, reporters Cheryl W. Thompson and Mark Berman cast a much needed spotlight on the use of Tasers. At least one person a week dies in the U.S. after being stunned with a Taser and more than half of them had a mental illness or illegal drugs in their system, according to their research.

The Post undertook its investigation after Natasha McKenna, a 37-year old African American woman who’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia, died in Fairfax County, Virginia. She had been shot four times with a Taser by deputies while restrained in jail. This exhaustive news story ends with a quote from me about McKenna’s death: “Having a mental illness shouldn’t be a death sentence, and that’s what this was.”

TASERS — IMPROPER TECHNIQUES, INCREASED RISKS

By Cheryl W. Thompson and Mark Berman, The Washington Post, 11-27-15

Mathew Ajibade had been acting strangely shortly before Savannah, Ga., police officers arrested him on suspicion of hitting his girlfriend outside a convenience store last New Year’s Day.

Officers said he was combative, so after booking the 21-year-old Wells Fargo bank employee into the Chatham County Detention Center, a sheriff’s deputy Tasered Ajibade’s abdominal area after he was handcuffed with his ankles bound. They left him in an isolation cell and didn’t check on him for at least 90 minutes, in violation of department policy. When they did, he was dead.

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