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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Listening to a Peer

     When my sister-in-law Joanne was diagnosed with cancer, my wife, Patti, immediately began searching the Internet for information and one of the most useful websites that she found was a blog being written by a woman undergoing cancer treatment. Patti became a faithful reader and found this woman’s writings helpful and inspiring. Up until Joanne’s death last year, Patti felt that she, Joanne, and the blogger were in the same foxhole. 

     No one thinks it’s odd to ask for direction from someone who has gone through a life-altering illness  — except when it comes to mental disorders. Too often, persons with mental illnesses are ignored even after they have recovered from all symptoms of their illnesses. Part of the reason for this is stigma and the deeply held belief that persons who are “mentally ill” can’t be trusted to take charge of their own lives.  

 Let me be clear here because this is an emotional subject, especially among parents, of which, I am one. When Mike became psychotic, I did not listen to his ranting. I stepped-in and did what I believed any decent human being would do when someone they love becomes so obviously mentally unstable that they need an intervention.

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Crisis Care Centers vs ERs

The first time Mike became psychotic, I drove him to a hospital emergency room. We didn’t know any psychiatrists and Mike needed immediate help. Taking him there turned out to be a mistake.

Emergency rooms are where everyone goes nowadays whenever they have any kind of health-related crisis, but many are poorly equipped to deal with psychiatric patients in the midst of  a mental break.  

Some patients are turned away, as Mike and I were, without getting help. Or a patient might be held down and given a shot of Haldol or another strong anti-psychotic  that will help stabilize him but also can turn him into a walking zombie for days.

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Psychiatric Advance Directives Make Sense!

If you have read my book, this blog, or heard me speak, then you know that the first time my son, Mike, became psychotic, I raced him to a hospital emergency room seeking help. Mike was delusional, but he didn’t believe anything was wrong with him, and he was convinced that all “pills were poison” so he refused treatment. The emergency room doctor told me that he could not intervene until Mike became an “imminent danger” either to himself or others. That was the law. Mike had a right to be “crazy.”  Forty-eight hours later, Mike was arrested after he broke into an unoccupied house to take a bubble bath.
The second time Mike became psychotic, I waited until he became dangerous and what happened?
Our local mobile crisis team refused to come help me, the police were called, and Mike was shot with a Taser.
As a father, those two situations frustrated and enraged me.
What I didn’t know at the time was there was an alternative that could have helped Mike and possibly  prevented what had happened to us. 
It’s called a Psychiatric Advance Directive and this week, I received a wonderful email from my state National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter telling me about how PADs, as they are known, are becoming more common in my home state of Virginia.
A PAD is a legal document that is filled-out by a person with a mental illness while he/she is  well. (One of the biggest myths about persons with mental disorders is that they are always psychotic and, therefore, incapable of rational thought.)
PADs are generally divided into two sections.

When do we release Andrea Yates and John Hinckley?

An editorial published in The Wall Street Journal recently by D.J. Jaffe, one of the founders of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), caught my interest. You can read the article here.

I write about TAC and assisted outpatient treatment laws, commonly called AOT laws, in my book.  Put simply, AOT laws require a person with a history of mental illness to take their medication regardless of whether or not they want to take it.   

D. J. Jaffe

Most states that have passed AOT laws have very stringent criteria about when a person can be ordered by a judge to take medication. First, there has to be evidence that medication actually helps control a person’s symptoms. In addition, the person also has to have a history of either going off their medication several times or of violence.

AOT laws, such as Kendra’s Law, in New York, have proven to be highly effective at helping persons who have chronic illnesses and often end up in our jails, prisons or are homeless.  

Of course, ordering a person to take medication when they don’t want to take it is controversial and if you want to start a heated discussion in mental health circles — just mention AOT.  Both sides feel passionately about the issue.

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What I’d do differently!

Since the publication of my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, I have been fortunate enough to speak in 45 states (Yes, I still am waiting for invitations from groups in Oklahoma, Nevada, Mississippi, Alaska and Hawaii, hint, hint) and I have toured dozens of successful treatment programs. Sometimes readers ask me what I would do differently if I were given a chance to rewrite my book. It is an interesting question because I have learned so much and met so many fascinating people during the past several years.

The first thing I would do is change the title.

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