Search Results for: violence

(11-17-21) This is part two of Advocate Jerri Niebaum Clark’s story about her struggles to help her son, Calvin, and how his death led to her advocacy.

Becoming A Parent Advocate: Part Two

By Jerri Niebaum Clark

First published in Kansas Alumni Magazine. Used by permission.

I remember a time when happiness and health felt normal. I left Lawrence, Kansas, and my position as an assistant editor for Kansas Alumni in 1995, newly married and five months pregnant. My husband, Matthew Clark, settled into a career with Hewlett-Packard. I became mother to baby Calvin and Michelle, 10 years older than he. I taught yoga and children’s ballet, work that blended well with parenting. We loved our Pacific Northwest home in Vancouver, Washington, where through the years we surfed off the Oregon coast and skied down Mount Hood.

Calvin became a state-champion debater and earned a scholarship to Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Midway through his freshman year, he called in a rambling, tearful rant about being abandoned by fellow debaters. The details did not make sense. We brought Calvin home. Well past midnight, on February 16, 2015, I realized my baby boy had lost his mind.

Calvin’s speech was alarmingly disorganized and frantic. He did not sleep and was convinced a bathroom in our house was possessed and should never be entered again. A family doctor prescribed lithium. Calvin was at first relieved to have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, like his paternal grandfather. This explained some of his confusion, so he agreed to take the medication. He got a job at the local farmer’s market selling cookies. He bought a Cookie Monster T-shirt. We were rearranged, but we were a family and happy to be together. There was even a magical day of surfing that spring when we all successfully caught overhead rides.

We came up for air, but the dangerous waves we would try to ride were just setting up. Events in the years to come tossed me around enough to reorder my understanding about what it means to be a parent, a compassionate person and an activist.

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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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(10-4-21) Does the public believe a defendant judged by a court to be criminally insane can ever recover?

A federal judge recently ruled that John Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan four decades ago, can be freed from all remaining restrictions next June if he continues to follow the court’s rules and remains mentally stable.

I clearly remember March 30, 1981 when Hinckley wounded Reagan, police officer Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy. He also critically wounded Press Secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled in the shooting and died from his injuries 33 years later. I was a young reporter at The Washington Post and assigned to write a story about the .22 caliber handgun and ammunition that Hinckley used.

Public furor over his Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity prompted calls to rewrite the standards used for such pleas, and news that Hinckley now will be released after forty years, ignited another fierce debate.

Judge Paul L. Friedman said Hinckley, now 66, has displayed no symptoms of active mental illness, no violent behavior and no interest in weapons since 1983.

“If he hadn’t tried to kill the president, he would have been unconditionally released a long, long, long time ago,” the judge said. “But everybody is comfortable now after all of the studies, all of the analysis and all of the interviews and all of the experience with Mr. Hinckley.”

One individual who is not “comfortable,” is President Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, who wrote an OP in The Washington Post opposing Hinckley’s freedom. She strongly criticizing Hinckley’s attorney, Barry Levine, who she wrote: “worked the system from the beginning and, finding a judge who was sympathetic to them, made this day inevitable.”

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True reform should begin by treating mental illnesses and substance use disorders as illnesses and not crimes.

(7-28-21) Two powerful advocates believe we are at a tipping point. The Biden Administration is directing $2.5 billion in funding for mental health and addiction programs. Calls for reducing reliance on police to handle mental health crisis calls are gaining traction. Will we seize the moment or simply pump more funds into a failed system so that it can continue to fail?

Judge Steven Leifman and frequent television commentator, Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explain today’s problems and solutions in this guest blog.

A UNIQUE TIME: LET’S NOT BLOW IT

At long last, we are seeing changes in how we deal with the interaction of mental illness, substance abuse, police reform and criminal justice reform. Federal bills to provide incentives to local communities to replace police with mental health professionals in crisis calls, sponsored by top lawmakers like Senator Chris Van Hollen (D. Md.) and Representative Katie Porter (D. Ca.), (her bill) are moving in Congress. President Biden’s critical new funding for mental health and substance use treatment as part of the Covid Relief Plan is an extremely welcome, long overdue recognition of the woefully inadequate, antiquated and, in many places, virtually non-existent system for providing care for those struggling with addiction and/or serious mental illnesses.

But money alone will not solve a shameful situation that, for many decades, has festered rather than be faced, at a cost of incalculable human suffering and a massive misallocation of resources.  Without a near-total overhaul of the way things are currently done, we run the risk not only of wasting critical tax dollars, but of wasting a once in a generation opportunity finally to fix our broken behavioral health system.

The good news is we know how to fix it. Even better—by focusing on the interactions between mental illness and substance use, the criminal justice system and policing, we can ameliorate three national crises at once, saving lives and saving money.

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“We reaffirm that we are committed to the mental health and well-being of all individuals, that we are committed to healing and recovery for all those who seek it, and we are committed to inclusion and equity for all people. All those we serve, and all of us,” – incoming MHA president and CEO.

(6-15-21) Schroeder Stribling has been named President and CEO of Mental Health America, the nation’s oldest advocacy group for individuals living with mental illnesses. She replaces Paul Gionfriddo, the parent of an adult son with a mental illness, who has run the organization since 2014.

According to a press release, when she was introduced last Friday at an annual MHA conference, she said her experiences as a gay woman helped form the basis of her commitment to social justice issues.

“While my primary experience as a gay person has been one of acceptance and inclusion, this wasn’t the case for my biological father who himself was gay and who grew up in a very different time and place…his personal journey was difficult, he struggled mightily with depression and substance abuse.

“In my late teens and early twenties, I cared for him—as best I could at the time—while he was dying of AIDS…As you might expect, the experience was also traumatic for me—it overwhelmed my 20-year-old capacity to absorb the impact and led to anxiety and depression of my own. It took me many years afterwards to find the help and healing I needed to unwind the long tentacles of trauma. Three decades later now, my lived experience and that of my father, is the basis of my personal case for hope and my commitment to social justice.”

Mental Health America was founded in 1909 by Clifford W. Beers, who launched the group after being abused in both private and public mental hospitals. Historically, it has been the voice of individuals living with mental illnesses, although the larger National Alliance on Mental Illness, which was started in 1979 by parents, has recently expanded its membership to draw from that same base. A marked difference between the two groups is that MHA has traditionally opposed Assisted Outpatient Treatment while NAMI has endorsed its use as a last resort.

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(6-9-21) This is the second installment of a three part series about Patty as told by Los Angeles’ Skid Row doctor Susan Partovi. You can read part one here.  As with all guest blogs, the opinions are that of the writer.

Marinating

By Susan Partovi, M.D.

I wasn’t going to give up on Patty.

I began putting her in motels paid for by Homeless Health Care LA while waiting for her to get into interim housing. She stayed in one for a month but eventually was kicked out due to damaging the TV and having “inconsiderate” friends.

She tracked me down and I put her back at the original hotel where I’d housed her. I didn’t give her any antipsychotics this time, due to me being too tired and thinking if she wasn’t using, maybe she wouldn’t act out. Five days later I received a call from the manager saying she was “crazy,” but he didn’t speak English very well, and I didn’t take the time to try to understand what he was saying.

The next day he called me again, saying she had to leave. I said that I would get her in the morning. When I arrived, her door was open, her bed and bed frame were on their side, there was trash everywhere, the TV was shattered, the pictures were off the wall and destroyed; it was a disaster zone!

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