Behind the Scenes at Minds on the Edge

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Many of you are already aware and have seen MINDS ON THE EDGE: Facing Mental Illness, an hour long program broadcast on your local PBS television channel. It was released in October and the National Alliance on Mental Illness is pushing each of its chapters to show the film at various times this year.  I want to give you some background about how this show came together.
Not long after CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, was published, I  got a telephone call from Arthur Singer who said that he wanted me to be his guest at a lunch in Manhattan. He had read my book and was concerned about how jails and prisons had become our new mental asylums.  While I appreciated his interest, I couldn’t afford to fly to New York just to have lunch with him, I said. But he was persistent — and he also told me that he would arrange for my flight.
When the taxi dropped me off at one of New York’s most exclusive private clubs, I began to wonder who this guy was.

Life is short

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National Public Radio broadcast a thoughtful obituary this week about Judi Chamberlin the author of On Our Own and founder of the Mad Pride movement. You can listen to it through this link:
Chamberlin was one of the first to use the “psychiatric survivors” tag and while we didn’t agree philosophically about how our mental health system needed to be reformed, I admired her tireless advocacy and believe that her’s was an important voice.
I think Chamberlin’s lasting contribution is her insistence that persons with mental illness have rights and need to be heard, especially when it comes to treatment practices. When Virginia governor Tim Kaine appointed a blue ribbon panel to investigate the shootings at Va. Tech that left 33 dead, I urged him to include a consumer on the panel.
You can read my editorial at:

Similar Disorders?

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Between 1987 and 1989, I spent time inside the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, doing research for my second book: The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Penitentiary.
I was given free reign to come-and-go as I pleased. I could interview any Bureau of Prison (BOP) employee or federal prisoner who was willing to speak to me. As you might imagine spending time inside a maximum security prison, even as a visitor, has a dramatic impact on your life.
I remember seeing two inmates attack each other one day. One had a “shank” – a homemade knife – and he stabbed another inmate several times before a completely unarmed BOP lieutenant drove in and separated the two men. The raw imagine of that bloody violence and the courage of that lieutenant stayed with me for a long time.Click to continue…

Civil Rights Violated!

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As part of its “medical mysteries” series, the Today Show on Friday aired a segment about Susannah Cahalan, a young New York woman who woke up one day with her left side feeling numb. By nightfall, she had become — as her father, Thomas, later put it — “totally psychotic.”

Susannah would begin “crying hysterically” and then “become giddy.” She was taken to the NYU medical center but doctors there didn’t have a clue why she was acting so oddly. Several times, Susannah tried to escape, and her father said she was “hallucinating.”

Susannah stayed in the hospital a month and a specialist finally diagnosed her as suffering from a rare auto-immune problem called ANTI-NMDAR Encephalitis. Here’s a link to the story

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How do we define “Mental Illness?”

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I spent much of yesterday afternoon writing an editorial to submit to USA TODAY about an insulting statement that U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan made Tuesday when she testified before the Supreme Court.

Kagan was testifying in favor of a law that would allow the government to keep inmates locked up even after they had served their time if officials felt they were “sexually dangerous.”

USA TODAY Reporter Joan Biskupic quoted Kagan as saying: ”The federal government has mentally ill, seriously dangerous persons in its custody. It knows that those persons, if released, will commit serious sexual offenses.”

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My mom, the DMV, and the elderly

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The Washington Post published an article Sunday in the OUTLOOK opinion section about the quality of health care that three elderly women received. One lived in the U.S., the other in England and the last in France.  I’ll let you discover which country came in last when it came to providing  humane services. I’ve put a link to the story at the bottom of this post.
My grandmother lived with my parents for more than twenty years. She died in our home. She moved in a few years after my grandfather passed away when I was a teenager. I adored her and never thought it was unusual for a grandparent to live in the house.  Last fall, my parents decided it was time for them to sell their home in Spearfish, South Dakota, and move to Virginia to be with Patti and me. My dad is 89 and my mom is 90. Both are in great health. I’m very fortunate.
Having them here, has opened my eyes to how the elderly are treated. Most times when we go out, people are courteous – with one notable exception. When I took my parents to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to get identification cards, my mom was treated rudely.