Chattanooga, Austin and Mark Twain

I was speaking to a Virginia state legislator one day about how programs such as Crisis Intervention Teams, jail diversion and mental health courts can save public tax dollars and actually help persons with mental disorders get help rather than sitting untreated in jail cells.

“You aren’t from Virginia are you?” the legislator suddenly asked.  

“I wasn’t born here, but I have lived in Northern Virginia since 1978,” I replied.

He snickered and said, “I thought so. Do you know what Mark Twain said about Virginia,  son?”

“No.”

“Mark Twain said if the world ever ended, he wanted to live in Virginia because things happened in Virginia seventy-five years after the rest of the country.”

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NAMI Changed My Life

When I was a Washington Post reporter, I did not believe in joining groups or organizations. I needed to be independent in order to be objective. Then my son, Mike, got sick and the first thing I did after I finished writing my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, was join the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI.)

Why?

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