Pete Earley

9-15-14  My former CIA friend and fellow author Robert Stephan sent me a fascinating article from The New York Review of Books entitled The Dying Russians. Over a period of time, Masha Gessen  noted that a large number of her Russian friends were dying.

The deaths kept piling up. People—men and women—were falling, or perhaps jumping, off trains and out of windows; asphyxiating in country houses with faulty wood stoves or in apartments with jammed front-door locks; getting hit by cars that sped through quiet courtyards or plowed down groups of people on a sidewalk; drowning as a result of diving drunk into a lake or ignoring sea-storm warnings or for no apparent reason; poisoning themselves with too much alcohol, counterfeit alcohol, alcohol substitutes, or drugs; and, finally, dropping dead at absurdly early ages from heart attacks and strokes.

Gessen decided to learn why and with a keen eye examined possible scientific explanations, studying and comparing fatality rates caused by smoking, heart attacks, cancer and other typical illnesses before she eventually reached an unexpected conclusion.

Russians were dying at much higher rates because of a lack of hope.

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9-12-14 FROM MY FILES FRIDAY:  In a blog that I originally published on March 12, 2010, I tried to explain why my son resisted taking medication for several years after his first break.  “Why won’t my son/daughter take their pills?’ is still the question that I am asked the most. Much of what I wrote remains germane. 

“Why won’t you just take your medication? I take pills for my cholesterol every night and its no big deal.”

“Every psychiatrist we’ve seen has said you have a mental illness. Why won’t you accept it? Why would the doctors tell you that you’re sick, if it weren’t true?”

“Let’s look at when you were doing well and when you have gotten into trouble. What was the difference? Medication. It was the difference. When you were on your meds, you were fine. And when you weren’t, you got into trouble. Can’t you see that?”

These quotes may sound familiar to you if you are a parent and have a a son or daughter with a severe mental illness. I’ve said everyone of them to my son, Mike. Click to continue…

9-9-2014

Finding a good psychiatrist can be difficult.

Three of my son’s doctors have been compassionate, talented and skilled psychiatrists who have helped my son and our family. For them I will always be grateful.

Three other psychiatrists who dealt with him didn’t bothered to learn anything about him except for his diagnosis so they could write a prescription, send him out the door to social workers, collect their pay and move on to their next patient.

And two were really awful.

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This is the second half of CNN’s story about Joe Bruce and his son, Will, and their lives after Will murdered his mother in 2006 during a psychotic break.

I’VE JUST BEEN TOLD THAT SOME READERS ARE HAVING TROUBLE READING THIS BLOG BECAUSE OF PROBLEMS WITH THE MARGINS. WHILE I TRY TO FIX THIS ISSUE, I’D SUGGEST THAT YOU GO TO THE CNN SITE BY CLICKING HERE TO READ THE STORY.  THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE 

9-5-2014

The only way to honor Amy, Joe decided, was to follow the guidance from her undelivered letter — to not give up on Will. Joe wanted to make sure his son was forced into treatment this time. But to do so, he would have to become Will’s guardian.

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“It Shouldn’t Take Killing Your Mom To Get Proper Treatment” — Joe Bruce

9-4-2014

“You have to meet Joe Bruce,” a friend told me. “You need to hear his story.”

I met Joe about a year after his adult son, Will, murdered his mother, Amy, in 2006.  That was the same year that I published my book about how my son was arrested for breaking into an unoccupied house after we were turned away from a hospital because he was not considered a danger to himself or others.

The Bruce’s story was clearly much, much worse than our’s.

When I met Joe at a National Alliance on Mental Illness national convention, I was immediately struck by his quiet determination to change our broken mental health care system and by the incredible love that he felt for Amy and his son. Since that meeting, the Bruce family’s story has been told by the Wall Street Journal and other publications, and Joe has testified before Congress.

However, little has been written about Will Bruce and what happened after he was found not guilty because he was legally insane at the time of his mother’s murder. CNN recently broadcast a followup about Will and Joe, that I want to share it with you.

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