Bestselling Author and Mental Health Advocate
On Tuesday — while appearing before a judge who over the next few weeks will weigh whether to dismiss murder charges against Hoggle in the case — Turner got a chance to speak in court.
“I’ve heard people refer to it as a mystery. There is no mystery. Catherine planned, carried out a plan, and killed my children,” Turner said, his voice choking. “Right now, the person who murdered them, I’m looking at her.”
Photo courtesy of ABC News
(2-17-20) I was surprised late last month by Attorney General William Barr‘s choices for a presidential crime commission created to study how our criminal justice system interacts with Americans who are homelessness and have a mental illness. I only recognized one name on the list. This was BEFORE the recent criticism Barr has faced because of his decision to get involved in the Roger Stone case. I decided to check out the backgrounds of his selections. Here is what I discovered.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order late last month creating the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice after repeatedly calling for a crackdown on homelessness and linking Americans with mental illnesses to violence.
While the President has an opportunity to use the commission to make much needed reforms, none of the 18 officials whom Barr selected work in cities with the largest homeless populations – San Jose, San Diego, Seattle, Los Angeles and New York City. Together those five account for more than 150,000 of the 564,708 homeless Americans. At least forty-five percent are believed to have a mental illness.
Instead, Barr chose police chiefs, sheriffs, and others in law enforcement from smaller jurisdictions with fewer homeless, such as Wichita, Kansas; Pinellas County, Florida; McKinney, Texas; and Shelby County, Alabama. While many of Barr’s choices have impressive law enforcement backgrounds, they come from communities that account for a combined total of less than 23,000 homeless residents. Los Angeles alone has 59,000. South Dakota counted about one thousand homeless residents in the entire state, yet its secretary of public safety was chosen by Barr.
Even more troubling, Barr’s handpicked appointees are overwhelmingly from red states and counties that voted for Trump in 2016, while the snubbed West Coast cities and New York City lean Democratic and have been frequently lambasted as “liberal” by Trump.
(12-30-19)
Marianne Kernan is my choice for the year’s Most Impactful Player in Mental Health.
If you live in North Carolina, you know Marianne Kernan because she has been a tour de force in Moore County for years. I am choosing her for her accomplishments but also because she is representative of hundreds of dedicated advocates who quietly and steadily work to improve the lives of their family members and others with mental illnesses.
Like so many other parents, Marianne joined the National Alliance on Mental Illness after her son, Keith, became ill in 1986. She moved up its ranks in her local chapter, working as a Family-to-Family and Support Group Leader, Fundraising Chair, Treasurer, Vice President and finally President.
After eleven years, she took a risky and dramatic step. Knowing firsthand how difficult it was to find housing for adults with mental illnesses, she founded a non-profit, raised funds, and bought a house that she and her supporters named Linden Lodge.
The Lodge’s 7 bedroom and 3 bath home can house 6 residents and one 24 hour staff member and is located in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Its philosophy is that individuals with serious mental illnesses learn to live life by living it!
Linden Lodge provides its residents with employment opportunities, recreational activities, and physical fitness programs and necessary living skills, such as personal hygiene, grocery shopping, food preparation, housekeeping, budgeting, and time management. It focuses on helping its residents develop friendships and emphasizes the importance of family relations. It is funded exclusively by fundraisers and contributions from local businesses and families.
In the past, I have chosen well-known figures and organizations as my impact choices: 2014 – Rep. Tim Murphy (R.Pa.), Va. State Senator Creigh Deeds, and philanthropist Ted Stanley; 2015 – The Treatment Advocacy Center; 2016 – U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-Tx.) Chris Murphy )(D-Conn.) and Dr. Bill Cassidy (R-La.); 2017 – Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz and Mary Giliberti; 2018 – Dr. McCance-Katz.
Marianne Kernan and those such as her change lives one-at-a-time often without fanfare. I’ve featured others on my blog: Trudy Harsh, Jennifer Marshal, Laura Pogliano; Lin and Ron Wilensky, Kathleen Maloney, Betsy Greer, G. Douglas Bevelacqua, Sandra Luckow, Elena Broslovsky, Dede Ranahan, Jerri Clark…. the list goes on-and-on.
(12-20-19) President Donald J. Trump made an unscheduled appearance yesterday at the White House Summit on Transforming Mental Health Treatment to Combat Homelessness, Violence, and Substance Abuse.
On the day after he was impeached by the House, Trump began his remarks by quipping that there was “Not much going on around the White House – you know, we’re not too busy.” Many in the by-invitation only crowd of about two hundred responded with laughter.
Trump used his appearance to announce an increase of $328 million in new spending for mental health programs, including $19 million for Assisted Outpatient Treatment and $7 million for Assertive Community Treatment programs.
Sticking mostly to a prepared script, Trump noted that “Of the 11 million Americans living with severe mental illness, 4 million receive no mental health service of any kind. Four million people.” He added that the nation needed to “give major consideration to building new institutions” but offered no specifics.
Trump recalled how as a child in Queens, he noticed “massive buildings” that housed persons with mental illnesses. “And all of a sudden, you go and you don’t see them anymore. And you say, ‘What happened to all of those beds? What happened to all of that work? And where are those people?’ And in many cases, those people are living on the streets. It’s much different..but we have to take care of our mentally ill. We have to help people that are having problems…At the same time, we need to keep very dangerous people off our streets. And we want to take care of the mental illness, but we have a lot of very dangerous people on our streets.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, and Presidential Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway all spoke yesterday at the event along with Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, assistant Secretary at the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA.)
While Trump and his senior leadership claimed the center spotlight, a major unheralded star of the summit was an invitee sitting quietly in a front row seat – Dr. E. Fuller Torrey.
(12-13-19) Advocate and Author D. J. Jaffe is pushing an agenda with both the White House and Democrats that calls for creating more hospital beds for the seriously mentally ill, increasing the use of Assisted Outpatient Treatment, and revising HIPAA regulations that often prevent caregivers from obtaining information.
Jaffe’s fingerprints were all over Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris’s mental health policy, which I recently posted. After she dropped out, I learned that her staff had been in the midst of rewriting that policy because of concerns raised by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health law and others, who generally oppose Jaffe’s agenda. A compromise version was in the works but became moot once Sen. Harris ended her campaign. Yesterday, Jaffe posted an Op Ed in The Hill newspaper urging other candidates to adopt the plan that Harris originally released.
Jaffe will be presenting his ideas Dec. 19th at a White House Summit on Transforming Mental Health Treatment to Combat Homelessness, Violence & Substance Abuse. Here is part of a press release about by-invitation-only event.
DJ Jaffe, who has a seriously mentally ill family member, will make the case that due to mission-creep, the mental health system no longer focuses on the most seriously mentally and that explains why homelessness and incarceration are increasing in spite of increased spending. He will describe ideas states, and ideas localities can use to replace politically correct but ineffective programs with ones that will help improve care for the seriously ill. He will describe the need to increase use of Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT), increase the availability of hospital beds and free families of seriously mentally ill from the HIPAA Handcuffs that prevent them from helping mentally ill loved ones.
official campaign photo
(11-29-19) The White House will be hosting a summit on Transforming Mental Health Treatment to Combat Homelessness, Violence and Substance Abuse on December 19th. I will be attending and will report about the Trump Administration’s plan.
Several 2020 presidential candidates are releasing proposals about mental health care. Democratic Senator Kamala Harris (Ca.) posted her goals this week.
D. J. Jaffe, who frequently testifies before Congress and critiques federal policy and agencies in his book, Insane Consequences: How The Mental Health Industry Fails The Mentally Ill, reacted with this email comment:
“Wow! Kamala Harris announces Mental Health Plan with everything we’ve been looking for to help seriously mentally ill: Parity, End IMD Exclusion, more hospital beds, Fund AOT, Fix HIPAA, Focus research on SMI, end solitary, increase workforce, Reclassify schiz, fund clubhouses CIT housing & more! I don’t endorse specific candidates but I sure endorse this plan!”
If you know of another candidate’s plan that you like, please let me know on Facebook. You can react to Candidate Kamala Harris’ plan by commenting on Facebook or Twitter. I’m told both accounts are monitored by her campaign staff.
Our country is in a mental health care crisis. Over 45 million adults—nearly 20% of all U.S. adults—experienced mental illness in 2017. Suicide is on the rise, increasing 30% or higher in 25 states from 1999 to 2016. As natural catastrophes and man-made traumatic events like shootings devastate our communities, post-traumatic reactions in children and adults follow.
Yet even as nearly 60% of Americans seek mental health services for themselves or loved ones, more than half of the adults with mental illness—nearly 27 million—did not receive treatment in 2017.
In 2020, mental health care justice is on the ballot.
We need to act. As president, Kamala will make sure we deliver mental health on demand—that is, she will provide services to all Americans who need it, whenever they need it, and wherever they need it.
Pete Earley is the bestselling author of such books as The Hot House and Crazy. When he is not spending time with his family, he tours the globe advocating for mental health reform.
As a former reporter for The Washington Post, Pete uses his journalistic background to take a fair-minded approach to the story all while weaving an interesting tale for the reader.
