Video Shows Dallas Cop Shooting Man With Mental Illness

by

http://youtu.be/4U1GOTzvBLQ

I have received dozens of emails from readers who are outraged by this video and news story. Most are asking if the public will feel the officer was justified simply because he shot someone with a mental illness even though this individual did not make any threatening moves toward the police. 

This shooting terrifies those of us who love someone with a mental illness or have a mental illness. I’ve been asked to help this video go viral so that the public will recognize the need for better police training. Please do your part and send it out.

You can also read the AP story that I have added to this blog

Click to continue…

Bazelon Protests 60 Minutes, Attacks Fuller Torrey, While Dr. Sederer Offers His View on Forced Commitments

by

 60minutes

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health law  has launched a letter writing campaign  in an attempt to get 60 Minutes to do another segment about mental illness to balance what it claims was the biased viewpoint  presented in a segment called: “Untreated Mental Illness: An Imminent Danger?”   That program aired September 29th, shortly after the Navy Yard shootings, and focused  on schizophrenia and violence. Much of the broadcast was devoted to an interview between Correspondent Steve Kroft and Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who founded the Treatment Advocacy Center. The show ended with Dr. Torrey saying:

We have a grand experiment: what happens when you don’t treat people. But then you’re going to have to accept 10 percent of homicides being killed by untreated, mentally ill people. You’re going to have to accept Tucson and Aurora. You’re going to have to accept Cho at Virginia Tech. These are the consequences, when we allow people who need to be treated to go untreated. And, if you are willing to do that, then that’s fine. But I’m not willing to do that. 

In its letter of complaint,  which was signed by some 36 other groups, Bazelon wrote:

“Imminent Danger” portrays individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia as people with
hopeless futures whose primary life options are hospitalization, homelessness, or incarceration.
The segment provides no indication that individuals with schizophrenia can and do live fulfilling
lives, start their own families, work, live independently, and participate fully in their
communities. Instead, such individuals are painted as consigned to a life of misery and as
ticking time bombs with the potential to become violent at any time. 

 The segment perpetuates false assumptions that there is a significant link between mental
health conditions and violence. Indeed, the point of the segment seems to be that mass shootings
would be preventable if it were easier to hospitalize individuals with psychiatric disabilities.

Click to continue…

Speaking In Three Cities in Four Days: Sadness, Hope and Inspiration

by

 

Treat a disease, you win, you lose. Treat a person…..

Last week found me in East Lansing, Michigan, at the invitation of  NAMI Lansing, whose leadership did a terrific job setting up a public forum. I was especially delighted that a high school teacher had brought about a dozen students to hear me.  They’d read my book in his psychology class.

After I speak, I always spend time talking to audience members and the most common comment that I hear is: “You’ve written my story.” 

I was approached by a woman in East Lansing whose brother was in jail charged with a minor crime linked to his mental illness.

“Please, can you help me?” she pleaded. “He’s never been in trouble before and now he’s sick and we can’t get him help! What can we do!”

Click to continue…

60 Minutes Did Do A Segment About SuperMax, But Didn’t Get Inside It

by

 

Several individuals who work for the federal Bureau of Prisons contacted me privately this week because they were unhappy about the blog that I posted Monday that described allegations about mentally ill prisoners being abused and neglected inside the BOP’s SuperMax prison.

These were employees who either knew me personally or had read my book, The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison, which is based on a year that I spent off-and-on inside what then was a BOP maximum security Kansas prison between 1987 to 1989.

 They called to remind me about what sort of inmate gets housed at the SuperMax and to complain because I stated that reporters have not been allowed to see inside our nation’s most secure prison. I was told that some reporters have been taken on a limited tour inside it and I also was told that 60 Minutes had done a story about the SuperMax.

Click to continue…

World Mental Health Day, Free Movie Screening, and Oh, My Anniversary

by
Fifteen years ago when we became a blended family

Fifteen years ago when we became a blended family

My friend, Bob Carolla, at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, asked me to make you aware of World Mental Health Day, which is today – October 10th.  That also happens to be my wedding anniversary!  I’m happy  to promote World Mental Health Day and even happier to be celebrating another year with my fabulous partner, Patti, who is as concerned about improving our mental health care system as I am. I’m spending our anniversary this year in Ann Arbor, Michigan, speaking to a NAMI group, but I will be home soon to celebrate. 

Taking on the World: Free Global  Movie Screening

 

On World Mental Health Day, NAMI will participate in the Global Web Screening of Hidden Pictures, and award-winning new film about global mental health. Tune in any time on Oct. 10 at http://bit.ly/hidpics to watch Hidden Pictures and join a global dialogue about mental health issues.

By Bob Carolla, NAMI Director of Media Relations

“Think globally, act locally.”

The slogan has long been associated with the environmental movement, but also applies to efforts to improve the lives of people living with mental illness. Common issues exist among nations and peoples, as well as differences.

In observance of World Mental Health Day, Thurs., Oct. 10, a free online Global Screening Event will be held for Hidden Pictures: A Personal Journey into Global Mental Health by Seattle filmmaker, physician and mental health advocate. Delaney Ruston, M.D.

Click to continue…

Inmates With Mental Illnesses Neglected Inside Toughest U.S. Prison

by

supermax cell

More horror stories are surfacing about prisoners with mental illnesses allegedly being abused and neglected inside the federal government’s most secretive maximum security penitentiary.

Consider the case of prisoner Richie Hill who became convinced diamond rings were hidden under his skin. Hill, who has been diagnosed with a severe mental illness, began scratching holes into his own flesh with his fingernails to remove the diamonds. Those open wounds soon became infected because he smeared feces on himself. At one point, a worm was spotted living in one of his open wounds. When Hill was finally taken to the federal Bureau of Prison’s hospital in Springfield, Missouri, the doctors initially considered amputating his legs because of a severe staph infection.

It’s against BOP’s own rules to house anyone with a severe mental illness at its Super Max penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, yet the federal government is doing exactly that, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed in Denver.

Prison officials claimed Hill was faking mental illness.

Click to continue…