Pete Earley

Father and Son at graduation in happier days. From Mother Jones Magazine, courtesy of the family.

I generally post a blog from my files each Friday but today I am making an exception to share two stories and a website with you that are well worth your time.

Schzophrenic. Killer. My Cousin by Mac McClelland is a riveting story published by Mother Jones Magazine that combines the author’s investigation into a murder inside her family with a study of how we’ve gutted our mental health care system. The sub-title of the story reads:

It’s insanity to kill your father with a kitchen knife. It’s also insanity to close hospitals, fire therapists, and leave families to face mental illness on their own.

Collectively, states have cut $4.35 billion in public mental health care spending since 2009, the author notes. Meanwhile, between 1998 and 2006, the number of mentally ill people incarcerated in federal, state and local prisons and jails has more than quadrupled.

The Problem With How We Treat Bipolar Disorder by Linda Logan published in the New York Times Magazine presents an interesting viewpoint about the loss of self and identity when you are diagnosed with a mental disorder.

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Glenn, Jessie and Snitz

For Immediate Release:

Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, announced today that it will publish RESILIENCE, a memoir written by Jessie Close about her struggles and triumphant recovery from a severe mental illness.  Jessie is the younger sister of the acclaimed actress, Glenn Close, who will also contribute to the book by writing three  vignettes about her relationship with Jessie and by writing the book’s epilogue.  RESILIENCE is scheduled to be published January 1, 2015.  Hachette Audio will also release an audio edition read by Glenn Close.

Bestselling author, Pete Earley, whose own memoir about his son’s mental illness, CRAZY, was one of two finalists for a Pulitzer in 2007, will collaborate with Jessie in the telling of her intimate story. 

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John and his Grandmother at Ft. Logan Hospital

“Dear Pete”  — the letter begins — “let me tell you about my son, John, and his struggles with mental illness.”

John began to first manifest his mental illness twenty years ago when he was only fifteen. The diagnosis bounced from depression to schizophrenia to schizo-affective disorder and everything in between.

John had been going to a mental health center but when mental health was cut by more than half during the Bush era, services dried up.  He was left with no where to go. I was working as a physical education teacher and I began bringing John to school each day. He slept on a mat in my office. Gradually, his Clozapine began to bring about change and he stopped sleeping, and became a much loved full time volunteer at my school.

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FROM MY FILES FRIDAY – I originally posted this blog in August 2010 when a distraught friend asked me for advice. I hope you will take a moment to tell everyone what advice you would give to a friend who discovered that someone he/she loves has been diagnosed with mental illness.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE A FRIEND

A family friend stopped by unexpectedly and began to cry the moment she entered our house. She explained that her son had been diagnosed with a serious mental illness.

She asked me for advice.

It’s easy for those of us who have been dealing with mental disorders for many years to forget how we felt the first time we learned that someone we loved had a brain disorder. But seeing my friend in distress instantly reminded me of how confused, angry and hopeless I had felt when Mike first became ill.

If a schoolchild overturns a desk during an epileptic seizure and it hits a classmate and breaks that student’s foot, no one demands that the child with epilepsy be put into juvenile detention and punished. However, if that schoolchild has a mental illness and accidentally overturns a desk, injuring someone, that child is sent before a juvenile court judge for punishment because of  his/her actions.

This observation came from Summit County Juvenile Court Judge Linda Tucci Teodosio who spoke last Friday during a Mental Health and Criminal Justice Symposium held in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. I gave the symposium’s keynote address.

Judge Teodosio’s point was that our society views mental illnesses differently from other physical illnesses and frequently holds persons with severe mental illnesses responsible for getting sick.

On the same afternoon that Judge Teodosio was speaking, police officers in Montgomery County, Maryland, responded to a nuisance call in Gaithersburg, a suburb of Washington D.C.. A  51 year old man was standing in the bed of a truck yelling profanities and hitting the vehicle with rocks. When he did not obey the officer’s commands, the police sprayed him with pepper gas and then shot him with Tasers. The man stopped breathing and was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

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The bombings in Boston have prompted me to select this blog, initially posted on August 20, 2012, for my ‘From My Files Friday’ post.  Take a moment to watch the video and to read Matt’s story.

My sister-in-law, Dana Davis, was deaf but she never let her lack of hearing slow her down. When she was a teenager, the local swimming pool said she couldn’t be a lifeguard. My wife, Patti, who was two years older than her sister, and Dana demanded an audience with the pool’s board of directors and convinced its members to give Dana a shot.

She got the job and did great at it.

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