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PBS Documentary Difficult But Important To Watch. Part Two Tonight. So Proud Of My Son For Participating

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Kevin discusses his illness and recovery on PBS documentary last night. Tonight, part two.

(6-28-22) I’d watched snippets of Ken Burn’s PBS documentary, Hiding In Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness, but last night was the first time that I’d seen part one of the completed film.

Listening to youngsters talking about suicide, abuse, trauma, delusions, depression and peer pressure brought on by cruelty via social media was heartbreaking and, at time, brutal to watch.

But it is so important for us to listen to these young persons’ courageous voices, hear their cries for help, and get a glimpse into their worlds. We must not turn our heads or switch channels.

Tonight is the second part of this amazing documentary, airing on PBS, 9 pm EST. Last night, Kevin and I both were featured describing our experiences with his mental illness: bipolar disorder.

Patti and I will be watching tonight.  I hope you will too.

Ken Burn’s Documentary: Hiding In Plain Sight – Youth Mental Illness Premiers Tonight On PBS

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(6-27-22) Ken Burn’s Hiding In Plain Sight documentary about youth and mental illness premiers tonight on your local PBS station. 9 pm. EST and 8 CST.

Ken Burns Documentary: A Grade Schooler Describes Suicidal Thoughts, Others Addiction/Bipolar, All Brutally Honest & Ultimately Inspirational At White House Screening

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(6-23-22) Kevin and I were invited to the White House yesterday for an advance screening of the Ken Burn’s PBS documentary, Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness.

The four hour documentary will be shown in two segments and will premiere on June 27 and 28 on PBS. Check your local listings.  Both of us were interviewed for the film, which follows the mental health journeys of more than 20 young Americans, and features interviews with their parents, teachers, friends, health care providers, and mental health experts.

Dr. Jill Biden called the young people interviewed in the documentary “courageous.”

It’s been two years since film makers Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers, along with producer Julie Coffman, showed up at my office to interview us. At the time, the brothers were still deciding what direction a film about such a vast subject as mental illness would take. What could they do that hadn’t already been done? It wasn’t long before they zeroed in on the plight of young people. (Even though Kevin is older than most of the other participants, his first mental break happened when he was in his twenties.)

It proved to be the right choice.Click to continue…

Dementia, A Father, A Son, And The Long Goodbye

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(6-19-22)

A FATHER’S DAY GOODBYE

Published in THE WASHINGTON POST  on Sunday, June 22, 2014

 By Pete Earley    

Father’s Day found me with a man who often doesn’t remember who I am, although we have spent much of his 93 years together. My father has dementia.

Five years ago, I persuaded my parents to move from Spearfish, S.D., into a second house that my wife and I own that doubles as my office. Leaving a community where they were well-established was difficult. But they enjoyed seeing grandchildren, spent Saturdays at garage sales and played Upwords with me at lunch time. It was good.

I first noticed little things. Forgetfulness, confusing names. It’s part of aging, I thought.

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I Care For My Blind & Seriously Mentally Ill Brother On The Streets: Not The Pretend Mental Health Care System

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This is James Mark Rippee. He has lived on the streets of Vacaville, California, for fifteen years. He has schizophrenia. Thirty-five years ago, Mark Rippee suffered a motorcycle accident that left him blind, with head trauma, brain loss, and a shattered right leg that is kept in place with a metal rod. He has endured more than sixty surgeries. He is beaten and robbed regularly. (Photo courtesy of Author Ron Powers)

(6-13-22) Guest post today by Linda Rippee Privatte.

WHAT DO YOU CALL ME?

I have been a caregiver on the streets of my hometown of Vacaville, California, to my brother, Mark, who is disabled, blind and has a serious brain disorder with anosognosia (lack of insight). He has been left untreated by the system and homeless for 14 years now.

Lately I have been wondering what title I would be given. That is if our U.S. mental health system even acknowledged and valued the family members who go to the streets to care for their homeless untreated seriously mentally ill (SMI/SBD) loved ones?

I have thought long and hard about the many things I try to be to my brother. Treatment will never be in his reach while the sickness in his brain tells him to say “no” to all offers of help. Lack of insight further complicates care given out on the streets.

I take him water, food and clothing, and each time he has nothing with him again. I show him love and human kindness. I remind him about family memories and make him laugh. I hold him when he is sobbing with delusions. I try to calm him when he is raging in psychosis. I am his substitute for an In-Home Supportive Services Caregiver, nurse, therapist, and social worker.

My responsibility goes even further as I am also expected to answer to my community about their expectations of removing my brother from their streets all the while I am out on those streets caring for him.

Rather than reform HIPAA, LPS, and mental health laws, mental health professionals do not want to acknowledge that they intentionally send the SMI/SBD to U.S. streets. We have advocated for my brother, Mark, unsuccessfully for 34 years due to California legal blockades. He has not had mental health treatment or services in more than 3 decades. The sad truth is that there is no true mental health system in the United States for those with serious brain disorders.

Rather than acknowledge this, mental health professionals and legislators will blame and shame the families.

Through HIPAA, they will blindfold, silence, and handcuff our hands, and still expect us to do the heavy lifting for them. Our family has been my brother’s mental health care system. I am his lifeline. If a loved one of yours develops a serious brain disorder you will become their lifeline too. If the title has not yet been claimed… I will boldly do so now.

I am an American Curbside Caregiver, and I am not the only one!

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Two Experts Explain How To Stop Jailing Americans Whose Only Real Crime Is They Got Sick

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Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

(5-31-22) Norman Ornstein lost his son to mental illness. Judge Steven Leifman, a hero in my book CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Illness, has become a leading, national expert on how to stop the inappropriate incarceration of Americans with serious mental illnesses. 

Locking People Up Is No Way to Treat Mental Illness

If we stopped using prisons to warehouse psychiatric patients, we could heal people and save tax dollars.

By Norm Ornstein and Steve Leifman
Published in The Atlantic Magazine

Mental illness has touched nearly every family in America in one way or another. Recent reports suggest that the coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated this situation, particularly for young people and children, as well as for health-care workers. Despite the ubiquity of mental illness, our ability to help those who have behavioral disorders recoup lives interrupted by them is deeply inadequate.

One of us has encountered the broken system firsthand, through the experience of following a son who had a psychotic episode at age 24 through a 10-year struggle with his brain disease, which was intensified by anosognosia, hampering his insight into his illness. The other, a Miami-Dade County judge, has worked for more than two decades to transform the criminal-justice system and how it deals with those with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Together, we documented this effort in the film The Definition of Insanity, which showcased reforms that have saved both lives and money. Our experience proved to us that even a broken system can be mended.

President Joe Biden’s recent announcement of a new package of measures building on last year’s American Rescue Plan and aimed at tackling the country’s crises of mental health and substance use is extremely welcome, if overdue. The provision of services and treatments for and care of these conditions is antiquated, dysfunctional, and, in places, nonexistent. But throwing money at the situation won’t alone solve it. Without a comprehensive overhaul of the system, we run the risk of wasting not only valuable tax dollars but a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix it.

The failures in services for people with mental illness and behavioral disorders associated with substance use have resulted in mass incarceration becoming the country’s de facto mental-health-care system. People with mental illnesses in the United States are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than they are to be hospitalized. Those who don’t end up in prison are likely to cycle repeatedly through patchy psychiatric care, spells of homelessness, and emergency rooms. And every year, about 2 million arrests are made of people with serious mental illnesses.

As a result, the makeup of our prison population tells its own tale: More than 70 percent of people in American jails and prisons have at least one diagnosed mental illness or substance-use disorder, or both. Up to a third of those incarcerated have serious mental illnesses, a much higher rate than is found at large. On any given day, approximately 380,000 people with mental illnesses are in jail or prison across the United States, and another 574,000 are under some form of correctional supervision.

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