Search Results for: that way madness lies

(5-20-20) How important is it for us to tell our personal stories – to put a human face on mental illness?

Six years ago, Senators Bill Cassidy (R. La) and Chris Murphy (D. Conn.) got Congress to pass a major mental health bill, Now they want to improve their legislation by addressing concerns their first bill didn’t cover. In a recent interview on NPR, which consistently covers mental illness, they spoke about their agenda. They also mentioned how my book helped bring them together.

This is why I believe telling our stories is the only way we can make the public aware of how badly we treat individuals with serious mental illnesses and their families in our country. Speaking out can make a difference and you never know who might be influenced by your words.

Two Senators Are Working Across The Aisle To Address The Mental Health Crisis

8 minute listen

Transcript of NPR broadcast 5-19-20

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Mental health care in the U.S. has long been riddled with the same problems – not enough funding, not enough programs, not enough providers. And the pandemic has only worsened this crisis. Rates of depression and other mental illness have soared.

BILL CASSIDY: Everybody has a personal experience with somebody who has had serious mental illness.

CHANG: That is Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. He and his Democratic colleague, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, are working together to renew a mental health reform bill in Congress.

CHRIS MURPHY: So Bill and I kind of found each other six years ago and developed, you know, what, at the time, was really the most comprehensive piece of mental health reform legislation that Congress had seen in a decade.

CHANG: That bill, which was signed into law in 2016, is set to expire this year. Now the two senators are working across the aisle to get Congress to reauthorize what they say is an improved version of the legislation. And this increasingly rare bipartisan partnership, well, Senator Cassidy says it emerged from a well-worn book.

CASSIDY: I was reading a book by Pete Earley called “Crazy,” a journalist who had written about his son’s travails with mental illness and in the criminal justice system. And, Chris, let me turn the story over to you.

MURPHY: Well, so I was interested in working on mental health but needed a partner. And I ran into an advocate on a bus who told me that I should call Bill Cassidy because he saw Bill Cassidy walking into a hearing the other day with this worn out, dog-eared copy of “Crazy.” And that’s what I did. I read the book first. I reached out to him. He had just gotten to the Senate. We found out that there’s a lot of things that Bill and I disagree on.

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(11-23-21) News Release From Peg’s Foundation. For immediate release.

On November 11, 2021, Peg’s Foundation recognized individuals and organizations bringing remarkable value to the community.

During the awards presentation in Rootstown, Ohio, Rick Kellar, Peg’s Foundation President, stated “Tonight’s recipients are not only our partners, but our family.” He emphasized that the work of these remarkable individuals and organizations is changing lives every day. “It is the power of partnerships advancing the foundation’s mission and vision and creating lasting impact!”

2021 Compass Award winner Pete Earley spent his career dedicated to helping people with serious mental illness and improving the systems that serve them. A former reporter for The Washington Post, he is best-known for his nonfiction book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, and winner of awards from the American Psychiatric Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Mental Health America. Earley said his work promotes, “fixing a system that can be fixed and realizing that it costs more to jail people or institutionalize them, and that it costs more to let people throw their lives away than it does to help them.”

As a journalist he holds people accountable, elevates our national dialogue to what “should be,” and lifts mental illness out of the shadows, creating a vision on how to best support individuals and families impacted by mental illness. Earley stated, “The biggest thing we have to do for someone who has mental illness, I believe, is give them hope.”

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(11-16-21) Jerri Niebaum Clark embodies the famous Margaret Meade quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” 

My Son’s Journey: Part One

A Mom’s Journey Through Mental Illness, Suicide and Advocacy

By Jerri Niebaum Clark

First published in Kansas Alumni Magazine, University of Kansas.

I studied journalism with no idea that the most important story I would ever tell would be the tragedy of my own family.

My son, Calvin, was a happy baby, a solid student, a successful athlete. He grew into a clever, curious, compassionate person. He also developed a serious mental illness in his teen years that devolved into psychotic episodes. A mental health care system in disarray meant that instead of helpful care, our family met heartbreak.

In disbelief, I watched my son’s world tilt away from a bright future punctuated by academic accolades and toward incarcerations, suicide attempts and hospitalizations in locked wards that didn’t make him better. Along the way, the everyday bad news cycle got personal. I’m not at all surprised that homelessness and suicide rates are rapidly rising or that so many police encounters end tragically. These are preventable social ills, but our service systems are not built to prevent them.

Families like mine strive to keep loved ones from hitting rock bottom, discovering that there really is no bottom and that help doesn’t prevent but instead requires a radical free-fall. I watched my son delivered into society’s underbelly by design. He spent months homeless, met law enforcement again and again, and tried multiple times to die. These traumas are part of a tragic inventory of the requirements for public assistance when someone has a serious mental illness. Calvin was 23 when he died from suicide March 18, 2019.

As I try to reconcile what happened to my son and our family, I have been compelled to dust off my journalism skills to write and holler my way into public view.

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(5-11-21) The American Psychiatric Association awarded its 2021 Distinguished Service Award to the Treatment Advocacy Center, founded by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey.

What’s interesting about the APA award is that it shows that Dr. Torrey’s 1998 creation is no longer, as one advocate put it, “a scrappy underdog”  hoping for a seat at the table.

The award and TAC’s recent actions cement its role as a power player. This is especially true when it comes to calling for criminal justice reform. More than mainline organizations such as Mental Health America and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, TAC has arguably been the most aggressive critic of the inappropriate incarceration of Americans with mental illnesses.

Calling TAC a “David to the Goliath” of a mental health care system that fails to meet the needs of individuals with serious mental illnesses, Dr. Jeffrey Geller, president of the APA, said in announcing the award:

“Not afraid to go out front with issues that could fundamentally improve the lives of persons with SMI but were not initially seen favorably, Treatment Advocacy Center has led the way to the availability of Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) in almost every state.

“It has and is doing so by nurturing the concept, educating all stakeholders, developing model legislation, lobbying for statutory changes, and assisting in implementation. Treatment Advocacy Center continues in these efforts, focused on expanding the utilization of AOT statutes nationwide.”

The APA Distinguish Service Award honors “exceptional meritorious service to the field of psychiatry.” APA describes itself as the “leading psychiatric organization in the world” with some 40,000 members in a hundred different countries, all engaged in psychiatry.

TAC’s agenda has not made it universally loved. Mental Health America, the Bazelon Center For Mental Health Law, and groups such as Mad In America, strongly oppose AOT. Critics also have accused TAC of releasing reports that bend facts to push its platform.

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(5-7-21) From My Files Friday: Summer days cause me to remember Sam Ormes, one of the most creative, goofy, and caring individuals I’ve ever met inside a jail. It was a hot day in 2004 and I was doing research inside the Miami Dade Detention Center for my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, when I heard about a cantankerous employee who had created a television station inside the old jail that was giving inmates hope and purpose. Sadly, jail officials eventually shut down Sam and his station but not before his creation made national news and helped dozens of inmates, including those with mental illnesses. Sam died nearly five years ago without much fanfare, but he was a light in a dark place.  

 A  Story of Zany Antics, Creativity, and Redemption Inside A Dismal Jail

I found him in a tiny cubicle crammed with electronic gizmos inside the Miami Dade jail.  Sam Ormes looked like a hoarder. Nearly every inch of the space was filled with television equipment, cameras, video tapes and stage props, including a rubber chicken hanging on a rope from the ceiling near his desk chair.

Sporting a bow tie, a 1960s style beatnik goatee and reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose, Sam explained that he was the originator and driving force behind Inmate Corrections Television, better known as ICTV.

An inmate televisions station in a jail? How did that happen? I asked. He told me to sit down and listen.

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A modern asylum: the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital

Dear Pete,

Why not bring back a state hospital system where clients have a safe place to live, can progress, work, and receive compensation? Involve patients rights groups, and THROW AWAY the “our pill can cure everyone” lie bought by Congress and even the Surgeon General. Big Pharma sure sold us the Brooklyn Bridge and we have paid way too much for it. Our loved ones still are paying for it.

“There used to be state hospitals. some better than others. I can only cite the old Napa State Hospital in California. It used to be where individuals could stabilize in locked units (for their safety and other’s). As they became more stable, they moved to less restrictive units where they could gain employment or move into the community. As they continued on their recovery path, they could get housing in the community. At one point, the hospital had a working farm where individuals could work, including a dairy, garden, etc. This community had their own coin laundry, canteen, salon, a lake you could walk to and sit by, tennis courts….and a general post office, all on grounds.

“I worked there, long after it ceased to be a working and partially self-sustaining entity. By then the ‘patients’ had nothing to look forward to, nothing to increase their self-esteem, nothing but the same daily routine every day. If they did improve and work, they had to be paid minimum wage but many were not reliable, not fire-able, in short, everyone lost.”

Sincerely, Vickie Williams, wife, mother, daughter, Psychiatric Tech, BSN/RN retired.

Why does talk about bringing back state hospitals make me nervous?

I suggested in my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, that we needed to reconsider shuttering state hospitals.

I am in favor of repealing the IMD Exclusion that prevents most psychiatric facilities from getting Medicaid if they have more than 16 beds. We are in the midst of a national psychiatric bed shortage. As was pointed out last week in a Manhattan Institute analysis, it’s obvious that many individuals with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, are not getting treatment in community settings because they need longer term care. Plus, a lack of long-term beds contributes to jails and prisons housing individuals whose only real crime is that they got sick.

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