Nathaniel Ayers of Soloist Fame & Forced Medication

by

Nathaniel Ayers

What became of Nathaniel Ayers, the talented musician who was diagnosed with a severe mental illness and ended up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles? You will recall that he was the subject of Steve Lopez’s best selling book, The Soloist as well as the powerful movie based on that book.

Steve tells us in a thought-provoking column printed last night that explores the difficult choices that many of us with loved ones face.

A tough call on medication 

* Nathaniel Ayers has won victories in his battle to function despite schizophrenia. But he lands in a courtroom, and hard decisions await.

By STEVE LOPEZ,

Howard Askins grew up in New York, the son of blue-collar transit authority employees who expected him to go far, and he did. His first stop was Brown University, and then he was off to Harvard, where he earned both medical and law degrees before moving on to psychiatric residency at UCLA.

Nathaniel Ayers, like Askins, grew up working class — in his case, Cleveland was home. His dream was music, not medicine, and his hard work landed him at the prestigious Juilliard School for the Performing Arts in New York City, where he played for a time in the same orchestra as Yo-Yo Ma.

On Monday, the two African American men sat across from each other in a former pickle factory on San Fernando Road that serves as the mental health division of Los Angeles County Superior Court. The two have a deep mutual respect for one another, but a great difference of opinion.

Click to continue…

Strangers Helped Her Parents: Unknowingly She Helped Them

by

My parents believed that the Lord worked in mysterious ways and while I have struggled with my own religious doubts and beliefs, there are stories that sometimes cause me to wonder.

My good friend, Evelyn Stratton, shares one about her life in the YouTube video above. She describes how an anonymous couple played an important role in helping her parents become missionaries and how she unknowingly crossed paths with that family decades later as a Supreme Court justice. Her personal story begins 50 seconds into the video and lasts until 2:36. She then finishes the story at the 12:41 mark. You have to hear it to believe it! Sandwiched between this personal account,  she discusses her mental health advocacy.Click to continue…

Major Editorial Win For Rep. Murphy’s Bill: Controversy Continues In Predictable Ways

by

capital

The editorial board of  The Washington Post has endorsed the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act introduced by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) the only psychologist serving in the U.S. Congress.  In doing so, the newspaper takes a stand in a controversy that has split the mental health community in predictable ways.

The Post editorial writers noted:

 The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act is more comprehensive than other recent efforts to reform the system and perhaps has the brightest prospects in a divided Congress. The bill would reorganize the billions the federal government pours into mental health services, prioritizing initiatives backed by solid evidence and tracking their success . It would change the way Medicaid pays — or, in this case, underpays — for certain mental health treatments. It would fund mental health clinics that meet certain medical standards. And it would push states to adopt policies that allow judges to order some severely mentally ill people to undergo treatment.

Click to continue…

Mom Gets Offensive Bottles About Mental Health Removed

by

I love it when readers take action.

Karen Easter writes a blog   about mental illness and she gets especially irked when she sees or hears things that are stigmatizing. She told me in an email that she has grown particularly tired of jokes on Facebook about mental illness so she was already primed for what happened next.

Rather than having me explain what she did, here’s her account:

How do I adequately explain what I just witnessed in my favorite local pharmacy/grocery store? 

Waiting On The Sidelines To Fix An Obvious Flaw: Welcome To Mental Health In Virginia

by

confused

A family friend spent two days waiting in Fairfax County recently for mental health officials to find a crisis care bed for her adult child.

Two days waiting in one of the wealthiest counties in America because there were no beds!

The former head of the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Service Board said that Fairfax County sends an average of two hundred persons having a mental health crisis to other counties each year because there are not enough crisis beds available in Northern Virginia.

State Sen. Creigh Deeds was refused help when his son was psychotic because there were no beds available to him locally in rural Virginia  and a state worker dropped the ball looking at hospitals further away. A panel of experts testified earlier this month on Capitol Hill that there is a shortage of hospital beds nationally. One of those experts said a state should have 50 beds available for every 100,000 residents. Virginia averages 22 beds.

Yet, Virginia Interim Health Commissioner Dr. Marissa Levine   denied a request recently from a company that wanted to build a 75-bed crisis care treatment facility in Woodbridge, Virginia, just down the road from Fairfax. More than two thousand residents had signed a petition supporting it and Cynthia Dudley, who runs a Woodbridge mental health drop in center, said the hospital beds were “desperately needed.”

Dr. Levine called building a hospital “premature.”

Premature? After everything that has happened in Virginia?

Click to continue…

Don’t Attack A Bill Without Reading It! Rep. Murphy Lectures MHA’s Leader

by

Key testimony begins at 1:38:47 and lasts only five minutes. 

I missed a key congressional hearing last Thursday about Rep. Tim Murphy’s Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, that has become the most significant mental health legislation moving through this session of Congress. Fortunately, several readers sent me emails about an exchange between the Pennsylvania Republican, who is the only member in Congress who has been a practicing psychologist, and David Shern, the interim head of Mental Health America, the oldest organization in the country that was founded by persons with mental illnesses.

You can read Shern’s written testimony here, but the fiery exchange came near the end of the hearing after Donna Christensen, the Virgin Islands’ delegate, tossed Shern several softball questions that allowed him to criticize Murphy’s legislation.

Shern didn’t really care for anything substantial in Murphy’s bill and that attack set the stage for Murphy’s retort. Murphy didn’t mince words, especially after Shern acknowledged that he hadn’t taken time to read Murphy’s bill in its entirety before publicly skewering it.

Deservedly so, Murphy was frosted. A mental health lobbyist told me recently that Murphy is the only legislator “who really gives a damn” about fixing our mental health system. I think there are others, but his determination and passion certainly shows itself in his response to Shern.

(You can read my analysis of Rep. Murphy’s bill by clicking here. Or you can read the entire bill here.)