Pete Earley

It didn’t make headlines, but a recent incident shows that positive steps are underway in Fairfax County, Virginia, to divert prisoners with mental illnesses away from the criminal justice system into community care and treatment.

A woman with mental problems was recently arrested for a minor crime and sent to a Virginia state hospital after a judge decided that she was too sick to be put on trial. When she was deemed mentally competent, she was delivered back to the Fairfax Detention Center to await a court appearance.

In the past, this defendant probably would have been found guilty, served time in jail and been released in considerably worse mental shape than when she was arrested. That’s pretty much what happens, not only where I live, but nationally in many  jurisdictions.

Consider the results of a five year study by the University of South Florida’s mental health institute. It’s researchers followed 97 individuals with severe mental illnesses who’d been arrested for petty crimes to see what happened to them. Those 97 individuals were arrested 2,200 times and spent 27,000 days in jail with absolutely no reduction in recidivism or recovery.

Thankfully this revolving door didn’t happen in this woman’s case here in Fairfax.

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We lost, right?

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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The above graphic prepared by the National Alliance on Mental Illness contains quotes from Modern Family’s Halloween episode that belittles Americans with mental illnesses. And those are just a sample. Words such as “nut job, Looney Bin, cuckoo” are sprinkled throughout the episode’s dialogue. If the network aired a program that contained racial slurs or anti-Semitic remarks, its executives would be reprimanded, but the three men who have the authority to stop tonight’s broadcast have chosen to thumb their noses at NAMI and its supporters.

Those executives are Bob Iger, the chairman and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company; Ben Sherwood, co-chairman of Disney Media Networks, and President, Disney-ABC Television Group, and Paul Lee, head of ABC Entertainment Group, which oversees the television network ABC and its production arm ABC Studios.

Five other major mental health groups joined NAMI yesterday in calling for ABC to drop the episode, increasing pressure on the network. But my guess is that corporate greed will be more important to these three executives than personal ethics.

Here’s the latest news from NAMI National, which is encouraging its members to register their disgust at #unmodernfamily and filing a complaint at http://abc.go.com/feedback

Six Leading Mental Health Organizations Call on ABC-TV to Drop Halloween Episode; Stigma Violates TV Network’s Own Anti-Bullying Campaign

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2015  Six of the nation’s leading mental health organizations have joined in calling on ABC-TV to drop its Wednesday night broadcast of a “Modern Family” Halloween episode that mocks and stigmatizes people with mental health conditions.

A copy of the letter is below, signed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the Bazelon Center on Mental Health Law, the  Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), Mental Health America (MHA), the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS), Inc.

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The Disney Media Networks and ABC Television plan to re-air an episode of Modern Family on Wednesday night that is a distasteful example of blatant prejudice against Americans with mental illnesses.

I first wrote about Modern Family:Halloween 3: AwesomeLand the day after it aired last year and thousands of you and The National Alliance on Mental Illness joined me in expressing outrage at the show’s stigmatizing characterization of persons with mental illnesses.

This morning, NAMI’s Executive Director Mary Mary Giliberti issued a strongly worded press release calling the network “Callous” for refusing NAMI’s request that it not show the episode again on Wednesday. NAMI is asking its members to participate in a Twitter conversation at  #unmodernfamily 

In the episode, Claire Dunphy decides to create the most frightening house in her neighborhood by transforming her front yard into a “scary insane asylum” complete with “deranged mental patients,” a “sadistic nurse” and “demented doctor.” The episode features daughter Alex chained to a hospital bed and Luke wearing a straight jacket – images that are intended to make viewers chuckle. Words such as “nut job, Looney Bin, cuckoo” are sprinkled throughout the dialogue — less viewers forget that nothing is more frightening than someone with a mental disorder.

Three men have the authority to stop the showing of this episode and two of them should know better than to air such hurtful garbage.

The trio are Bob Iger, the chairman and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company; Ben Sherwood, co-chairman of Disney Media Networks, and President, Disney-ABC Television Group, and Paul Lee, head of ABC Entertainment Group, which oversees the television network ABC and its production arm ABC Studios.

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When the Utah state chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness invited me to speak at a public meeting and talk to state legislators in January, my tour guide was Francisca Blanc, NAMI Utah’s development director. She knew every state legislator, was an effective lobbyist and a whiz at getting me on Salt Lake City television and radio programs.

At one point, she told me that she had been struggling with her own mental illness, including bouts of depression, for more than two decades.

What she didn’t tell me during our jam-packed day together was that she was self-medicating with booze during my visit. Lots of booze. I had no idea because she hid it so well. But shortly after my visit, Francisca crashed and ended up in a emergency room.

Last week, I returned to Utah to speak at a Housing Matters Conference held by the Utah Housing Coalition in Park City and I was thrilled to see Francisca waiting there to introduce me. She had quite a story to share.

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