(2-3-20) An email from a mother raises two important issues. What happens when you need medications to remain stable but those same medications are hurting your overall health? How do aging parents protect the future of an adult child with a serious mental illness and intellectual disabilities?

Dear Pete,

Our son lives with us, and always has. In his early teens, he was finally diagnosed as having Bipolar-1 disorder although we are fairly certain he had been struggling with its onset as early as 2nd grade.

His condition became progressively worse with age. By his late 20’s, after several very traumatic and severe manic episodes, he spent a week in a local hospital’s behavioral health unit in Virginia.  I spent weeks looking for a community support system and searching for a psychiatrist after he was discharged. My search was difficult because of HIPAA. I was told our son was over 18 years old and, therefore, it was up to him, not us.

Desperate, I finally convinced a sweet, compassionate, Office Manager named Chris to plead my case with Dr. James Dee, who was not accepting new patients. I’m sure Pete that you recognize that name because he is the same psychiatrist who treated your son, Kevin. He was the best psych-pharmacologist we’ve encountered and we were devastated when he died recently. Dr. Dee got our son into our local Virginia Psych Rehab Services Day Treatment Program, which he attended for seven years. Dr. Dee helped our son come to terms with his mental illness and learn essential coping skills – especially anger management and the importance of getting therapy and taking meds.

Early on, we met with a lawyer to inquire about legal guardianship to protect our son when he experienced a manic state and was unable to make appropriate treatment decisions.

What happened?

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(1-31-20) Among the several dozen emails I received this week, there are two I wish to share. One is from Dennie Brooks, who shared a personal story about CBS reporter Mike Wallace after I posted a blog describing how Wallace had helped my son. The second email comes from long-time advocate Dr. Gary Mihelish, president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter in Helena, Montana, and a former NAMI board member, who wrote about our nation’s conflicting handling of individuals with serious mental illnesses who are accused of crimes.

Dear Pete,

A fellow I met recently told me that when he was a teenager,  his mother found him just about to put a noose around his neck.  The mother was terribly upset and had no idea what to do.  Mike Wallace had just gone public with his struggles with depression so this mother sent a letter to Mike Wallace’s mother seeking advice.  Mike Wallace’s mother send a note of encouragement back and also told her son. Mike Wallace then wrote a wonderful letter to the mother’s son.

Now an adult, the man told me that he still has that letter. He said Mike’s kindness helped save him.  Mike Wallace was one very special guy.

Best, Dennie.

(Dennie Brooks is the daughter of the late Dr. Dean Brooks, a nationally recognized psychiatrist/advocate featured in the movie, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.)

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(1-23-20) FROM MY FILES FRIDAY:  Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes  fame quietly helped my son, Kevin, when he suffered a major psychotic break. Wallace understood mental illness because he suffered from depression and had contemplated ending his own life. After Wallace died in 2012, I revealed how he had intervened at my request to help my family – a fact that Wallace had asked me to downplay in my book because he felt CBS might not react favorably to his action.)

Mike Wallace Helped Me When I Needed Him Most  

Mike Wallace and I didn’t start off as friends.

The great CBS newsman, who died Saturday at age 93, telephoned me when I was writing my first book, Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Jr. Spy Ring.  It was 1986 and Wallace had learned that I was the only reporter who had gotten John Walker Jr. to talk to me.

At the time, Walker hated the media and didn’t want to talk to anyone about the 18 years that he had spent spying for the Soviets or how he had recruited his son, Michael; his brother, Arthur; and his best friend, Jerry Whitworth, as traitors.

For those of you who haven’t read my book or might not remember the case, John Walker Jr.’s arrest in 1985 was the biggest spy scandal in the U.S. history since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted and executed in 1953.

Walker’s treachery stunned the nation and Mike Wallace was eager to get the first television interview with him.

I was flattered that someone as important in broadcast journalism as Mike Wallace would call me. I immediately went to work to help him. I got Walker to agree to give Wallace an exclusive for 60 Minutes. At one point when Wallace was interviewing Walker, they took a break in filming and Wallace called me from the federal prison in Marion, Illinois, to check some facts.

Wallace’s interview with John Walker Jr. was mesmerizing. It was Wallace at his best as an interrogator. In one memorable scene, Wallace eviscerated Walker by asking him how he could be so cruel as to groom his only son to be a traitor. It was such an incredible interview that Wallace was rewarded with an Emmy, one of some 20 Emmys that he won.

And what of my book and me?

Wallace never mentioned either. He and 60 Minutes basked in the limelight.

I felt duped and hurt.

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Photo courtesy of Slate. 

(1-20-20) “I know he’s innocent,” Bryan Stevenson, the author of Just Mercy and real life star behind the movie by the same name, assured me when we first talked in 1991.

This was before Stevenson was famous – when he was in the midst of trying to prove that Walter “Johnny D.” McMillian, an African American death row inmate in Alabama was innocent of murdering a white teenager in Monroeville, the town that Harper Lee used as her inspiration for the classic, To Kill A Mockingbird.

My good friend, Walt Harrington, had urged me to call Stevenson after I mentioned my interest in writing a book about the death penalty. Harrington was among the first journalists to “discover” Stevenson, years before he began receiving international attention (appearing on Oprah and Ellen) for his tireless efforts to save children and adults sentenced to death. [Read Harrington’s story about Stevenson here.]

I warned Stevenson that if I investigated Johnny D.’s case and felt he was guilty, I’d write that. Without hesitation, Stevenson invited me to Alabama.

During the next three years, I interviewed eye-witnesses, followed Stevenson’s legal fight and did my best to discover the truth about who had murdered Ronda Morrison, a white teen found dead in a main street laundry on a busy Saturday morning.

My account, Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town, published in 1995, won a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award  and an Edgar for Best Fact Crime Book. 

So let me share my thoughts about Just Mercy, the movie, and additional information you might find interesting after watching it.

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(1-15-2020) Long-time mental health worker and advocate Virgil Stucker recently interviewed me for his Mental Horizons Podcast.  Virgil is best-known as the former founding executive director of the CooperRiis Healing Community, “retiring” after a forty-year career working in therapeutic communities. He now runs Virgil Stucker Associates, a private firm that “empowers mental health decision making for families and individuals… advocating for integrative, holistic solutions to the challenges of mental illnesses.”

In this episode, I talk about my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, what helped my son, and the challenges and successes we face as parents and advocates.

From his website:

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