Pete Earley

10-6-14   I’ve always wanted one of my books to make it onto the big screen in a major motion picture and this weekend that happened — only not exactly as I had planned.

Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town can be seen briefly in Gone Girl, the psychological thriller based on the best-selling book by Gillian Flynn.

I don’t want to spoil the movie so  I’ll simply say that the camera pans slowly over several nonfiction crime books, the last being mine, while a killer is plotting a murder. Yep, my book  is a prop.

Ironically, the same week that Circumstantial Evidence appeared in Gone Girl, I received an advance copy of Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, which will go on sale October 21st, and already has been nominated for several awards.

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10-3-14  FROM MY FILES FRIDAY — I can’t always answer the mail that I receive, but I do read every email that is sent and this letter from a mother that I published in January 2010 was especially poignant. It raises a common frustration that I continue to hear nearly five years later.  

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Is the Justice Department setting the stage for another deinstitutionalization debacle  — this time by forcing group homes to close? Or will the Justice Department’s actions finally give us what we need: meaningful community based treatment, including housing?

I’ve been asking myself this question ever since I heard an inspiring story.

It was about a young man with intellectual disabilities who was able to move out of a group home into his own apartment where he didn’t have to share a bedroom or bathroom with random roommates for the first time in decades. He was able to do this because the state where he lived was forced to accommodate him by the Justice Department and what’s commonly called the Olmstead decision.

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FROM MY FILES FRIDAY:  When my son became ill, I thought about who I knew with clout who could help us.  Legendary newsman Mike Wallace, who struggled with his own mental illness, immediately responded.

 HOW NEWS ICON MIKE WALLACE HELPED MY SON  4/11/2012 USA TODAY

CBS newsman Mike Wallace might be remembered by most as a bare-knuckles broadcast journalist renowned for his tough interviews with the powerful, famous and rich, and a pioneer of the surprise “ambush” interview. But it is an incredible act of kindness to my family that I will always recall.

We didn’t start off as friends.

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9-22-14 Earlier this month, I asked: What makes a good psychiatrist?

Many of you responded with insightful comments and poignant stories. I asked my daughter, Traci, who earned a Masters Degree in mental health counseling this year, to help me review the emails and prepare today’s blog.  Here is her analysis.

Being a psychiatrist is a challenging job.

As one reader put it, psychiatry is “not an exact science.” Psychiatrists cannot rely on tests or physical exams when trying to treat an illness. Their skill at prescribing a treatment for an illness hinges on their ability to assess symptoms reported by their patients. Psychiatrists then must manage both a patient’s symptoms and possible side effects, while working to find the medication, or medications, that work for each individual patient.

What works for one, may not work for the other.

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9-19-14 FROM MY FILES FRIDAY: In February 2011, I wrote a blog that described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a common thief. His recent foray into Ukraine is a testament that Putin is much more — he is a dangerous and pompous threat to freedom loving people. 

The World’s Biggest Thief 

Advocating for better mental health care is a top priority to me, but it’s not my only interest. I took time last week to have lunch with a friend of mine who works for a U.S. intelligence agency and our conversation quickly turned to Russia.

I have been fascinated with the Kremlin and Moscow much of my life.  Perhaps, it started when I was a youngster living in Pueblo, Colorado when my mother began storing food items in the bathroom closet in 1962. The bathroom was the only room in our small house that didn’t have windows, which was why it was chosen as our family’s emergency bomb shelter if the Soviet Union attacked.

For those too young to remember, 1962 was when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened and at the elementary school that I attended, we did drills where we either hurried into hallways or ducked under our desks. That was supposed to help us if  bombs fell.

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