Betsy Greer, second from left in brown pants and vest, celebrating with Northern Va. NAMI friends before her illness.

(11-8-19) Activist Betsy Greer is being remembered as a dogged advocate. She died Sunday after battling cancer for more than a year.

When we first met in 2006 after my book was published, she described herself as a ‘troublemaker.” That was how she viewed her role. She was relentless in pushing elected leaders, government agencies, mental health providers and advocacy groups to do more to help persons with mental illnesses. When others said, “It can’t be done,” Betsy demanded to know why before setting out to prove them wrong.

Much of her ‘troublemaking” was done through the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Along with her late husband, Richard, she co-founded the NAMI chapter in Arlington. Together, they worked tirelessly to help put NAMI on a strong footing in the Washington D.C. area.

Richard and Betsy were journalists, and she often used a her investigative reporter’s skills to cut through fluff and tackle problems locally and nationally.

Fellow Arlington advocate and friend, Naomi Verdugo, in an email described how Betsy helped her.

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EVERY NAMI AND MHA GROUP IN OUR COUNTRY SHOULD CUSTOMIZE THE MEDICAL FORM MENTIONED IN THIS BLOG AND BEGIN USING IT! LOCAL CHAPTERS SHOULD ALSO PRODUCE A MANUAL THAT GUIDES PARENTS AND OTHERS ABOUT WHAT TO DO IF SOMEONE THEY LOVE WITH A MENTAL ILLNESS IS ARRESTED IN THEIR LOCAL JURISDICTION. 

(11-4-19) Mark Gale became alarmed when his son was arrested and jailed in Los Angeles’ Twin Towers.  He wanted the correctional officers to know that his son had a serious mental illness and what medications helped him.

But there was no obvious way for him to communicate his son’s diagnosis or his background to those who were guarding him.

Although Mark was on vacation, he began calling the jail. For five straight days he called. He either was put on hold or was passed from one person to the next for five hours each of those days. Finally, he  reached someone.

Mark wondered if other families would have the determination to do what he had done or know how, so he decided to create a family friendly form that could be faxed to the jail staff and also write a handbook that contained helpful information that families needed to know whenever someone they loved was arrested.

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Fred and I often appeared together on national broadcasts

(11-1-19) FROM MY FILES FRIDAY: My final speech of this year took me to Akron, Ohio, where I spoke at an Akron Roundtable luncheon on Thursday (Halloween.)  The Peg’s Foundation and Community Support Services of Akron sponsored my appearance. My thanks to Michael Gaffney, Victoria Romanda, Thom Craig, Jocelyn Dougherty, Bill McGraw and Rick Kellar for making my appearance possible. I was especially happy to see Penny Frese, a Pegs’s Foundation board member. Her husband, Fred, was a tireless mental health champion and good friend, and it was gratifying to see her still being a strong voice for our cause.  He is missed.

Mental Health Advocate Fred Frese Passes: Major Loss For Those Fighting For Reforms

(7-18-18) Mental health advocate Frederick J. Frese III has died. 

He was a mentor, a tireless activist, and a good personal friend. He also had schizophrenia.

Fred and I appeared side-by-side on national television programs several times, but we were together the most, along with his loving wife, Penny, when giving speeches at mental health events. He was an incredibly engaging speaker. I remember having to follow him in California after he had spoken extemporaneously for two hours! No one in the audience had wanted him to stop. He received a standing ovation.

He talked openly and bravely about his illness early on when others were reluctant to even say the word schizophrenia, quietly demonstrating by his actions that individuals with arguably the most debilitating psychiatric disorder can live extraordinary lives.

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“CBS This Morning”: Stop the Stigma

In an effort to help break down stigmas surrounding mental health, “CBS This Morning” broadcast a special live audience event, “Stop the Stigma: A Conversation About Mental Health.” Guests included  “Queer Eye” star Karamo, a former social worker, mental health advocate and relationship expert who will discuss his experience with depression, and Cynthia Germanotta, who founded Born This Way Foundation with daughter Lady Gaga, about how mental illnesses affect a family.

(10-30-19) Dear Pete,

More importantly, I can’t remember the last time a national news network focused so much on public education and stigma-busting about mental illness. The program broadcast gets an average of about 3 million viewers.

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(10-28-19) Jennifer Marshall, co-founder of This Is My Brave and one of my favorite advocates, delivered the keynote address at Washingtonian Magazine’s recent luncheon honoring DC’s Most Powerful Women.

I’ve cited Jennifer before as an example of how one determined individual can help change the lives of others and have a positive impact on society. I call it the Power of One!

I first met Jennifer when she and my son, Kevin, were in group therapy together. Jennifer was writing a blog about her experiences as a young mother who’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Later, she happened to meet Anne Marie Ames, a kindred spirit, at a neighborhood party and together, they decided to take on the challenge of staging a broadway quality show called THIS IS MY BRAVE in our area. The cast would be individuals with mental illnesses and addictions sharing their stories through personal readings, songs, and poetry.

Their first show in 2013 sold out and marked the beginning of what has become a thriving non-profit organization that now hosts shows across the U.S. and in foreign countries. The sudden death of Anne Marie in 2017 only made Jennifer more determined to build on their earlier successes.

In her keynote to many of Washington’s elite power brokers, Jennifer said:

“Compassion means entering the suffering of another in order to lead the way out. Looking back on my story, the bloggers who shared their stories so vulnerably online were leading me to the way out: the knowledge that I could have a future despite this condition. We’re all going to experience painful events in our lives: from losing a loved one, to divorce, to mental illness and addiction. When we’re able to open up and share our stories, we can connect on a deeper level with others and guide each other through life’s struggles.”

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(FROM MY FILES FRIDAY) With Halloween approaching, I thought it appropriate to revisit a 2015 fight that mental health groups waged about an especially insensitive Modern Family episode. A year earlier, I’d called attention to the episode only to catch ABC airing it again. After publishing this blog, I reached out to former Sen. Gordon Smith who promised to get involved in fighting stigmatizing programs on TV. Will this holiday be different?

ABC Thumbs Its Nose At Mental Health Groups, Airs Modern Family Episode. We Lost, Right? 

First published Oct. 29, 2015

Paul Lee, the head of ABC Entertainment Group, which oversees the television network ABC and its production arm ABC Studios, ignored requests by the nation’s six largest mental health groups to deep six a Halloween episode of Modern Family last night that belittled Americans with mental illnesses.. He thumbed his nose at the tweets, the blogs, and the complaints asking him to not show the episode.

For a fun-filled half hour, viewers got to belly laugh at “nut jobs,” “deranged mental patients,” a “sadistic nurse” and a “demented doctor.” The screenwriters didn’t miss a trick — there were chains on hospital beds, straight jackets and a husband who calmed his “looney bin” wife by giving her a “box of Cap’n Crunch and letting her stare at a fish tank.” 

The National Alliance on Mental Illness, which led the campaign to sideline the program, came under criticism. So did I and others who joined NAMI in protesting. “Who appointed you the morality police?” one emailer asked. “C’mon, lighten up. This is comedy.”  Another wrote, “We shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously.” 

Those comments sounded familiar to me. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, racist jokes, anti-Semitic jokes, and gay bashing jokes were common. So were racial slurs, anti-Semitic slurs, and anti-gay slurs. My father was a minister and he told me that those hateful words and jokes dehumanized, stigmatized and belittled people. As a youngster, I refused to utter them and didn’t laugh when I heard them. When I was old enough to speak out, I did. It wasn’t always easy, but I believed it was the right thing to do.

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