Why do some communities have better mental health services than others? In a recent Op Ed published in The Washington Post,   I took my home state of Virginia to task because our outgoing governor appointed yet another task force to study mental health — the 16th in recent years. In that opinion piece, I describe the four “secrets” to success that I have found during my travels.

How does your community fare when it comes to these four earmarks?

Va. doesn’t need another mental health task

By Pete Earley, The Washington Post

Virginians should be embarrassed and angry that a newly appointed state mental health task force convened Tuesday in Richmond. It is the 16th task force asked to investigate the state’s mental health system.

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Like Deeds Family, Others Still At Risk

Why is testimony that criticized Virginia’s state mental health department noticably missing from a website that the department created to keep the public informed about a newly appointed mental health task force?

Outgoing Governor Robert McDonnell appointed a task force shortly before leaving office to investigate if the state had sufficient psychiatric  hospital beds for Virginians in the midst of a mental breakdown. The governor took action after Austin “Gus” Deeds, the son of state Senator Creigh Deeds, attacked his father with a knife last November before fatally shooting himself. A mental health worker said after the incident that the younger Deeds had been sent home without treatment because there were no beds available in local hospital psychiatric units.

At the task force’s first meeting held January 7th, one of the final witnesses of the day warned that nothing had changed since the Deeds incident to make beds more accessible. In fact, G. Douglas Bevelacqua, the state’s inspector general for behavioral health, warned that people were still being turned away daily in the state — just as the Deeds family was.

Yet his testimony alone seems to be missing from the recorded remarks that everyone else gave.

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Mental illnesses don’t pay attention to anyone’s race, sex or nationality but those factors  often do play a role in whether or not an individual receives meaningful treatment. Today our nation is honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so I asked Keris Jän Myrick to write a guest blog for me and she graciously agreed.

Myrick is President and CEO of Project Return Peer Support Network and the current Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Thank you Keris for your willingness to share your personal story,  thoughts, insights and for your leadership.

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr -Dare to Dream

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said that “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”

For those of us diagnosed with mental illnesses and our families and loved ones, we know all to well the effects of these inequalities from personal and first hand experiences. For those of us like me, we also know of the extreme health and mental health disparities that exist within our communities of color. Within communities of color, the first introduction to mental health care is usually involuntary commitment to hospitals and/or incarceration in jails both resulting in trauma, humiliation and reducing the likelihood of voluntarily seeking services when needed.

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This is the final segment of my interview with Mary Giliberti, the new executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. As explained in parts one and two, I submitted my questions in writing and she replied in emails because of a personal scheduling problem that prevented me from meeting with her during her first week in office. I want to publicly thank Director Giliberti for taking time to answer  my questions and I want to wish her the best, as a NAMI member, as she leads our organization forward.

Question: What do you see as the most important issue facing NAMI today?

Giliberti: We currently have systems that fail people with mental illness in healthcare, mental healthcare, education, housing, employment and criminal justice. We have too many people that are experiencing terrible outcomes and no one is held accountable. In fact, the incentives are often completely the opposite of what they should be.  

Within our community, we have to come together to make progress towards our broader, shared mission. We must work together to fight the real battle—a society that by-and-large does not understand mental illness and has neglected to identify it as the priority it should be. We have to be strong to be able to change this and make mental illness a priority. There is much more that unites us than divides us.

In the short run, I will strive to help NAMI move forward with a clearly articulated vision and a strategic plan with specific goals to guide our work. As part of that process, I will engage with NAMI members, our state and local NAMI Affiliate leaders, our national staff, thought leaders in the area of serious mental illness, major supporters and others touched by mental illness with the goal of introducing myself, learning from them and developing a common understanding of the path ahead.

In the longer term, I will know that we have been successful when NAMI becomes identified not just as an organization, but also as a movement.

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