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Dr. E. Fuller Torrey: Sounding An Alarm or Being an Alarmist?

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For the past several weeks, I have had an interesting and troubling email exchange with Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, perhaps the most controversial psychiatrist in America. He’s also one of the most influential.

Today, Dr. Torrey is best known for his campaign to get Assisted Outpatient Treatment laws passed. An example is Kendra’s law. There’s plenty on the Internet — pro and con — about AOT. 

It would be a mistake, however, to believe that Dr. Torrey’s impact has only been in promoting AOT legislation. He has been sounding alarm bells and criticizing our mental health system for decades.  Among other things, he has founded two organizations. The Stanley Medical Research Institute is a nonprofit organization that supports research looking for the causes and treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. According to its webpage, it has given away more than $300 million since 1989 for research, mostly outside the U.S. The second group is the Treatment Advocacy Center which describes it’s purpose as “eliminating barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental illness.” TAC’s main focus is pushing for passage of AOT laws.

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Friends and Inspiration at NAMI Convention

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Rather than giving a traditional talk at the opening session of the National Alliance on Mental Illnesses’ national convention in Chicago last week, NAMI Executive Director Mike Fitzpatrick asked me to join him in a “conversation” about the state of mental health.   

I was worried because it was supposed to be for thirty-minutes. What could we possibly discuss during a half hour on stage that the more than 2,300 people in the audience would want to hear? Ironically, I only got to my fifth question when we ran out of time.

We began by talking about the shootings in Tuscon and Virginia Tech. How should NAMI members and advocates react when someone with an untreated mental illness causes such havoc? I immediately brought-up the ongoing criminalization of persons with mental disorders. Much of our discussion was about money, especially NAMI’s disturbing report, State  Mental Health Cuts: A National Crisis. Mike’s grim warnings about potential cuts to Medicaid and having the states take responsibility for federal funds allocated for persons with mental disorders were insightful and alarming.

Other topics included NAMI Standards of Excellence, welcoming diversity, making sure that consumers and parents had seats at the NAMI table, and the many positive changes that have come about because of NAMI. Mike rightfully bragged about Family to Family courses, In Our Own Voice, CIT training in juvenile facilities, and NAMI Walks which raise millions each year.

He ended by asking an important question: IF NOT NAMI — THEN WHO?  NAMI is the largest, grassroots mental health advocacy group in the U.S. Who will fight for those of us with mental disorders or family members with them?

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Advocates, Fired Cop, Unnecessary Death and AOT Controversy

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When the 14 year-old old boy came home from school and found his mother on the floor badly beaten and unconscious, he decided to do something. He took a pistol from a drawer, marched into his mother’s bedroom where his drunken step-father had passed out on the bed, and fired point blank into the man’s skull killing him. Arrested and charged as an adult, the youth was taken to an adult  jail to await trial.

The boy had been there only three days when defense attorney Bryan Stevenson met him. He was so traumatized that he could not answer any of the lawyer’s questions. He’d been repeatedly sexually assaulted — so many times in that three day period in jail that he’d lost count of how many men had abused him. All the boy did for two hours was sob as Stevenson held him.  

This tragic story was one of several that Bryan Stevenson described in an impassioned speech that he gave last week during an Advanced Judiciary Academy conference at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. I’ve written about Bryan before on my blog. He’s an inspirational advocate.

Bryan and I were invited to speak to the Illinois judges about how wealth and poverty influence our criminal justice system. We’d been invited to lecture because of my book, CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE: Death, Life and Justice in a Southern Town.  For those of you who might not have read it, CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE  is a true story about the murder of a popular, white teenager in the Alabama town that inspired the novel, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.  A poor, uneducated,  black man named Walter “Johnny D.” McMillian was convicted of the killing which happened inside a dry cleaners on a busy Saturday morning. McMillian was sentenced to death after two witnesses testified that they’d seen his truck parked outside the cleaners at the time of the murder and another witness claimed he actually see McMillian standing over the dead girl during a robbery.  It seemed as if McMillian had been caught red handed.

But after Stevenson began investigating the case, a different picture emerged. Both witnesses who’d claimed to have seen the truck recanted their stories. Both had received reward money in return for testifying. The eyewitness who swore that McMillian had murdered the girl was proven to be a liar. Even worse, Stevenson discovered that the prosecution had hidden crucial evidence that proved McMillian was innocent. During the murder, he had been at his home miles away helping host a fish fry. Two law enforcement officers had stopped there that day but had failed to come forward to substantiate his alibi. Put simply, McMillian had been framed.

Although Bryan proved McMillian was innocent, Alabama officials refused to free him. It took a 60 Minutes segment about the case to shame local and state officials into releasing an innocent black man from death row.

I spoke first at last week’s conference and described the murder and investigation. Bryan spoke after me about the case but quickly moved to such broader issues as the number of persons with mental illnesses now being incarcerated and his latest campaign to stop pre-teens and teenagers under age fifteen from being charged as adults when they commit crimes. Many of these children are sentenced to life in prison. His work as the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative prompted the judges in the audience to do something that Judge Susan Hutchinson, who helped organize the academy, said she’d never witnessed  before.

They gave him a standing ovation.

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