Search Results for: that way madness lies

Struggles Parents/Family Face In Powerful Documentary About Mental Illness Will Be Shown On PBS – But Only If You Call! Do it!

That Way Madness Lies… joins PBS Platform April 5th from Sandra Luckow on Vimeo.

(3-22-21) Imagine calling Oregon State Hospital  because the police told you they took your brother there.

 “I am wanting to get in touch with his case worker.”

A case worker, who doesn’t identify himself, comes on the line.

My brother is in the hospital and I was wondering if I can find out some information about him.”

“Sorry, due to confidentiality laws I can’t tell you whether he is here or not.”

I definitely know he is there because the police just told me that they took him to the hospital. I can at least provide information -“

The case worker cuts you off.

“Yeah, I couldn’t do that without telling you whether he is here or not. But you could do that in a letter form. Of course, you can write a letter to anyone. You can write it to the doctor who is in charge of whoever the person is who might be here.”

He hangs up.

Thus begins Sandra Luckow’s powerful documentary “That Way Madness Lies...

I first wrote about this important documentary in 2017 and now PBS and a division that offers stations programs to customize their schedules has agreed to make it available – but only if each station gets phone calls and emails requesting them to show it. That’s how it works. Otherwise, Sandra must hire a promoter for $10,000 to contact each station to push for showing it – a huge cost for a labor of advocacy. If you belong to a local NAMI or MHA group, you can contact your local station and request a showing.

Also, the film will be available starting April 5th on the PBS streaming service for a short period and then only available free to PBS members.

Please help promote this documentary. It gives readers an unvarnished portrait of what many of us have faced – an adult son who is convinced that he doesn’t need your advice and the bureaucratic hurdles you face navigating a system that is non-responsive.

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Stealing Money From Individuals With Mental Illnesses: 4 Shameful Stories

(8-5-19  It’s August, which means I will be taking a short, but much needed vacation with my family, and also finishing my new novel, entitled SHAKEDOWN. Please enjoy this blog, one from the 1,250 that I’ve posted since 2006. 

You might remember Ted Jackson if you read CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness. Ted was convinced Jesus was returning to earth in 2007.

Ted said God had commanded him to warn people about judgment day by spray painting “Jesus 2007” graffiti everywhere he could. He was arrested several times but he refused to stop.

Why should he? God had told him that he was a modern day John the Baptist.

One night a South Beach Miami police officer broke Ted’s right arm to stop him from spraying graffiti.

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“The Odds Increase The Shooter Will Be My Brother And I Will Be One Of The Victims”

(12-22-17) Sandra Luckow is a documentary maker who teaches film production at Yale University School of Art, Columbia University and Barnard College. In April, I described her powerful film,  “That Way Madness Lies…” as one of the most honest and haunting documentaries about mental illness that I had watched.  It will be released officially in 2018. Meanwhile, you can read about it and watch its trailer here.

Who is to blame for the mass shootings? We are.

Guest Blog By Sandra Luckow 

On this fifth anniversary of the mass shooting in Sandy Hook, in light of all that has not changed as a result of that tragedy, I have made a decision.

If I ever find myself trapped by a gunman, I will let him shoot me.  I don’t want to survive.  I don’t think I’ll even make an attempt to do so.  I’ve spent too many years dodging bullets and crying for help. 

Why is this mass shooting, so remote from me, causing nightmares and snuffing out my hope?  It was, after all, just the first in an unprecedented onslaught of killings.  

In my mind, however, with each subsequent shooting, the odds increase that shooter will be my brother and I will be one of the victims. 

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Would Jordan Neely Be Alive If New York City Had A Care Court? “Coercive Compassion.”

(5-9-23) Would Jordan Neely, a homeless, African American New Yorker with a history of mental illness, who was strangled to death in a subway car by a Marine Corps veteran, be alive today if New York had a so-called Care Court?

Care Courts are California’s latest attempt to reduce homeless, especially among those with mental illnesses, such as Neely. The destitute young street entertainer had been arrested more than 40 times, according to news reports, and was well-known to social workers. CNN reported that he was “on a list of homeless people identified as having dire needs.”

California officials describe Care Courts as “coercive compassion” an initiative that will involuntarily place people into treatment – if they meet certain criteria – rather than waiting for them to pose a danger to themselves or others.

Care Courts will allow a relative, mental health clinician, police officer and others to file a petition in the new civil court system to have the person, willing or not, enter the program. A clinician then will have two weeks to decide if the person, who is afforded legal counsel, qualifies for the program, which will accept those with mental health illnesses such as schizophrenia or other forms of psychosis. Care Court will also be an option if a person is involved in a criminal or civil court case and is determined to be unfit to stand trial.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness and others including: California’s Big City Mayors, California Professional Firefighters, the California Medical Association, and the California Hospital Association support creation of Care Courts.

Obviously, creating a Care Court has outraged disability and civil rights groups, including the state’s Protection and Advocacy organization, while it is being embraced by many parents and others who are frustrated by a neglectful system that allows their loved ones to resist treatment and “die with their rights on.”

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I Use The Release Of My New Book To Focus On Prisoners With Serious Mental Illnesses

(5-1-23)  Literary Hub, a popular and prestigious website about books, asked if I would submit an article about my new book, NO HUMAN CONTACT: Solitary Confinement, Maximum Security, and Two Inmates Who Changed the System. I used this much appreciated opportunity to describe my book and also focus the discussion on how individuals with serious mental illnesses often are locked in solitary confinement and why that is horrible. The Lit Hub editor asked me to name five books about the causes and jailing of individuals with mental illnesses. My thanks to publicist, Ann Pryor, at Kensington for making this happen.

What books would you add to this list?

No Human Contact: On Solitary Confinement’s Origins as a Tool for Handling Mental Illness

Pete Earley Recommends Five Important Books on Incarceration


April 27, 2023

No serious conversations about criminal justice reform can be undertaken without studying the lives of Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain and the role each played in expanding the use of isolation and solitary confinement in America’s prisons.

In October 1983, they separately murdered two correctional officers on the same cellblock in the same prison. Both already had killed other inmates in prison. Both were associated with the Aryan Brotherhood, a savage white supremacy prison gang.

In 1983 there was no federal death penalty, and prison officials argued that convicts such as Silverstein and Fountain had nothing to fear by continuing to kill. To protect other inmates and guards, both men were placed under what was dubbed: NO HUMAN CONTACT. Stripped to their boxer shorts, Silverstein and Fountain were moved into isolation cells the size of king mattresses.

The walls were white, the lights burned 24 hours per day, the cells’ doors were solid steel. No radios, no televisions, no newspapers, nothing was allowed in their cells except a thin mattress and toilet. No mail, either incoming or outgoing. Silverstein and Fountain were sealed off from the outside world—as if they were characters in Edgar Allan Poe’s classic The Cask of Amontillado, in which a victim was entombed behind a brick wall with no escape. Officials privately hoped both men would end their own lives, but neither did. Restrictions were gradually eased—not out of kindness but from necessity. It proved difficult to control a prisoner without having something to take away to guarantee good behavior.

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Washington Post Columnist Salutes PBS Documentary, Features My Son, Kevin Earley

(7-1-22) Stories about the Ken Burn’s documentary, Hiding In Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness, being shown on PBS continue to appear. The Washington Post profiled my son, Kevin, in a Petula Dvorak column. 

Once reluctant, now he uses his full name to talk about mental illness

By 

He was known as “Mike” in his father’s book about mental illness and the hellish journey it was to access care in a dysfunctional system.

“Mike” was wrestled to the ground and Tasered.

“Mike” was receiving encrypted messages from an Oliver Stone movie.

“Mike” broke into someone’s home and took a bath.

“Mike” has “an incurable disease. He will never get better,” a doctor told Mike’s father, best-selling author (and former Washington Post reporter) Pete Earley.

He told the story of the devastating news in the documentary: “It’s unlikely he will ever be able to hold a job, he’ll ever marry, have kids. And there’s a high chance he’ll have an encounter with police, be arrested, may become homeless.”

But at the White House last week and on screens across America, he’s using his full name — Kevin Mike Earley. And he has a graduate degree, a job and a full, artistic life.

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