(5-22-20) The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a rise in mental health problems. Long-time advocate, D. J. Jaffe worries this growing public awaking will divert us from serious mental illnesses.

A Pop-Psychology Pandemic

Mental-health advocates are more focused on the normal stress and anxiety caused by the coronavirus than with improving care for those who need it most.

“Three months into the coronavirus pandemic,” the Washington Post’s William Van writes, “America is on the verge of another health crisis, with daily doses of death, isolation and fear generating widespread psychological trauma.” The virus and resulting lockdown have doubtless unnerved most people, but stress, anxiety, and even feeling episodically depressed don’t constitute mental illness. They’re normal reactions to a crisis of this enormity.

But pop psychology catastrophizes normality, positions it as a “crisis,” rebrands it as “psychological trauma,” and lends it gravitas that it doesn’t deserve. This response diverts our attention—and mental-health dollars—from the real crisis: the abandonment of people with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, who are forced to sleep on streets, in jails, and in the few remaining psychiatric institutions. Leaving these people untreated only worsens the spread of Covid-19.

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Illustration from The Sosial.

(5-19-20) One of the most common comments I hear when I travel is “You have told my story!” It’s a reference to my book,  CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, which describes my son’s arrest in the midst of a psychotic break after we were turned away from an emergency room where we’d gone to seek help. After I spoke in Western Pennsylvania, Heather Fox talked to me about her struggle and I’ve asked her to share it. 

Dear Pete,

Three years ago, I was a mom who was rapid cycling and having a mixed episode of agitation, anxiety, and depression while taking the wrong medication for my diagnosis. I called my doctor but was dismissed. I still have a recording of our phone conversation where he told me to continue on my medication and simply blew off my concerns.

I was angry, got upset and felt no one could help me. My downhill spiral continued and I ended up fleeing one night. It was too much. I live in rural western Pennsylvania and I found a remote cabin in the woods. I helped myself to a bunch of random items, rearranged furniture, drank from their liquor bar and then attempted suicide by crashing my car.

I was taken to an emergency room where they cleaned me up, got me calmed down and called my husband. The doctors sent me two hours away to a mental health facility.

I am a pre-school teacher with a Master’s Degree who works with troubled kids. I never imagined I would end up in a small cell of a room with a ripped mattress and a ripped sheet. The building was dirty and very scary. I mostly slept in my bed and kept to myself. It was a frightening experience.

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(5-15-20) FROM MY FILES FRIDAY: Unfortunately, Hollywood marketers always believe that sex sells so when the movie  Lars and the Real Girl was released in 2007, they packaged it as a comedy about a man who orders a life-size sex doll which he believes is real. This titillation harms what is a charming story written by Nancy Oliver and directed by Craig Gillespie about mental illness and community acceptance. Now that you have watched Tiger King during stay at home orders, watch this movie. Those seeking a cheap sexual buzz will be disappointed but viewers who want to see what happens when someone with a mental illness is embraced by those around them will find it well worth their time.

Lars and the Real Girl (blog first posted in March 2010)

Actor Ryan Gosling plays Lars Lindstrom, a likable but withdrawn young man who has trouble making friends. One night he buys a life-size sex doll on the Internet and falls in love with it. He names her Bianca and explains that she is a Brazilian missionary so she doesn’t believe in pre-marital sex. He treats her as if she were a real person.

Now here’s where this movie turns from — as a reviewer in The Wall Street Journal put it – “a five minute sketch on tv” into an “achievement that borders on the miraculous.”

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Nancy West photo: “Therapy booths” that look like human cages are used for group therapy at the Secure Psychiatric Unit at New Hampshire State Prison for Men. Courtesy of IndeptNH.

(5-12-20) Answer me this:

When does the clock start ticking on a 72 hour involuntary commitment hold? Does the countdown begin after a police officer drives someone to a hospital emergency room or when that private hospital sends the patient to a state psychiatric hospital?

Question two: Should a person with a mental illness currently being held in a maximum security prison be released if they have not been convicted of a crime?

Judges in New Hampshire are being asked to answer both questions in separate lawsuits.  Both are tied to a lack of psychiatric treatment beds in the state.

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(5-6-20) A common theory about the Vietnam conflict was there were no large protests until the killing began ending the lives of young men from the middle class and some from the upper class.

If true, I wonder if the COVID-19 pandemic will wake up Americans previously unaffected by mental problems to our underfunded and overburdened system as large numbers of them seek help coping with anxiety and PTSD.

Will our leaders insist on real parity that demands insurance companies and employers treat those with mental problems the same as they do those with physical ones or will much needed dollars and personnel simply be shifted away from those with the most serious mental disorders, such as schizophrenia?

I don’t like to simply repost news articles, but this story in The Washington Post about the coming wave of mental health issues sounds an alarm.

Is anyone listening?

The coronavirus pandemic is pushing America into a mental-health crisis

Anxiety and depression are rising. The U.S. is ill-prepared, with some clinics already on the brink of collapse.

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(5-4-20) Five years ago, the police department and sheriff’s office in Fairfax County, Virginia, came under fire because of two separate deaths: an alleged coverup of a police shooting outside a home and the death of Natasha McKenna, a woman with mental illness, inside the jail.

Because of the public outcry, the county’s governing body (the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors) created an Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission to review what had happened and recommend reforms to reduce future police shootings and inmate deaths. I served on that commission and among its myriad of recommendations in its final report were 24 specifically about mental health.

It’s not uncommon for a blue ribbon panel to publish a report, only to have those recommendations sit on a shelf gathering dust. To insure this didn’t happen, the county periodically listed on its website a progress report.

Unfortunately, the last update posted on the website was on June 2018 – nearly two years ago. That’s not a good sign.

One possible explanation for the lapse is that the two elected officials most responsible for pushing reforms – former Board Supervisor Sharon Bulova and Supervisor John Cook – are no longer in office.

Regardless, the public is entitled to know which of the commission’s recommendations still haven’t been implemented and why.

I’m curious too if your community adopted any of these mental health reforms.

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