(1-1-18) My blog yesterday prompted a flurry of comments and private emails sent to me. Among the most thoughtful was this letter from Teresa Pasquini, which I am sharing with her permission.)

Happy New Year!

I read your blog yesterday and feel compelled to outreach and clarify a few things.  First, I assume good intentions of you and believe that you were trying to communicate your feelings fairly. I don’t dispute your selections of who you believe to have had the most impact in 2017.  I was an early supporter of Dr. McCance-Katz and recently outreached to Mary Giliberti on her powerful comments at the recent ISMICC press conference. I found great hope in the leadership she displayed and thanked her publicly on Twitter. I hope to have additional conversations with all local, state and national leaders about how we can build bridges, not walls.

However, in spite of your good intentions and my respect for you and your position, there was a judgmental tone used in your blog that truly mischaracterized the intentions of the petition and the many good people who supported it.  Although the petition was signed and co-signed by a number of advocates, I respectfully ask that you consider a follow up to clarify your intent which I saw posted to the comments of this blog on your Facebook page.

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(12-31-17) Who were the most impactful mental health players during 2017? While many come to mind, my choices are Dr. Elinore F. McCance-Katz and Mary Giliberti.

Both faced considerable challenges and overcame them.

The White House named Dr. McCance-Katz the first-ever Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Mental Health and Substance Abuse in August even though she found herself being publicly opposed by then-Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy, the Republican congressman most responsible for creating that job.

(Ironically, before the end of the year both HHS Secretary Tom Price, who swore her in, and Rep. Murphy, each had become entangled in separate highly publicized scandals that led to them departing Washington.)

Since taking charge Dr. McCance-Katz has overseen publication of the first Congressionally mandated annual report about federal mental health and substance abuse recovery programs and quietly started steering the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in a different direction.  Before taking office, Dr. McCance-Katz had sharply criticized SAMHSA in a Psychiatric Times commentary , writing:

“There is a perceptible hostility toward psychiatric medicine: a resistance to addressing the treatment needs of those with serious mental illness and a questioning by some at SAMHSA as to whether mental disorders even exist—for example, is psychosis just a “different way of thinking for some experiencing stress?”

From what I’m hearing, Dr. McCance-Katz has been building bridges with those deeply entrenched bureaucrats in SAMHSA who were the targets of her comments while working on improving morale at a federal agency that its own employees once had rated near the bottom ranks when it came to being a good place to work.

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(12-24-17)  Patti and I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Joyous New Year from our house to wherever you are, both old friends and new ones!

(12-22-17) Sandra Luckow is a documentary maker who teaches film production at Yale University School of Art, Columbia University and Barnard College. In April, I described her powerful film,  “That Way Madness Lies…” as one of the most honest and haunting documentaries about mental illness that I had watched.  It will be released officially in 2018. Meanwhile, you can read about it and watch its trailer here.

Who is to blame for the mass shootings? We are.

Guest Blog By Sandra Luckow 

On this fifth anniversary of the mass shooting in Sandy Hook, in light of all that has not changed as a result of that tragedy, I have made a decision.

If I ever find myself trapped by a gunman, I will let him shoot me.  I don’t want to survive.  I don’t think I’ll even make an attempt to do so.  I’ve spent too many years dodging bullets and crying for help. 

Why is this mass shooting, so remote from me, causing nightmares and snuffing out my hope?  It was, after all, just the first in an unprecedented onslaught of killings.  

In my mind, however, with each subsequent shooting, the odds increase that shooter will be my brother and I will be one of the victims. 

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(12-18-17) Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, did an excellent job testifying last week about a new law designed to improve our federal mental health care system.

But in the future, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee  should also consider questioning one of the 14 non-federal members of the Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee (ISMICC) when monitoring the effectiveness of federal programs.

Under the 21st Century Cures Act, Dr. McCance-Katz was put in charge of riding herd on the eight federal agencies that oversee more than an hundred mental health programs. To help her, Congress appointed a blue ribbon committee of federal and non-federal appointees. That means the 14 non-federal members, and I am one of them, on the ISMICC committee also need to be held accountable.

One of our tasks is praising agencies that are doing great work and taking others to task when it appears they are dragging their feet. For instance, the Department of Education didn’t bother to show up last week at the second ISMICC meeting.

That’s inexcusable given how important early intervention is in recovering from a mental disorder.

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