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Kudos To Mother of Aurora Shooter for Speaking Out During Mental Health Awareness Month

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Exclusive interview: Aurora movie theater shooter James Holmes’ mother speaks

Kimberly Hunt, Stacy Haynes
KGTV in San Diego 

When San Diegan James Holmes opened fire in a Colorado movie theater in 2012, killing 12 people and injuring 70 others, the mass murder struck a punch to the collective heart of our nation.

It rocked our sense of security and went down in the history books as the largest number of casualties in a shooting in our nation’s history.

Holmes is now serving 12 consecutive life sentences without parole, plus 3,318 years in prison.

Four years later, his mother, Arlene Holmes is speaking out for the first time exclusively to 10News anchor Kimberly Hunt.

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Washington Post Publishes My Call For A Justice Department Investigation Into Inmate’s Horrific Death

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(5-14-16) In an Op Ed piece published Sunday in The Washington Post, I called on the Justice Department to investigate the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, a 24 year-old African American with schizophrenia, who died in a Virginia jail from a heart attack caused by starvation.

I also called on Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) to publicly censure state mental health officials, who delayed a report about Mitchell’s death until after the state assembly had adjourned, and the attorney general’s staff who told court officials not to talk directly to investigators.

I further urged Virginia legislators to strip the inspector general’s office of its responsibility for investigating mental-health care based on its pusillanimous reporting and prior incidents of alleged kowtowing to appease state officials.

My editorial came after a flurry of news stories about the Mitchell case. Earlier this month, an attorney for Mitchell’s family filed a $60 million civil suit alleging that Mitchell was beaten, starved, and treated “like a circus animal” during the 101 days that he was held in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail waiting to be transferred to a state hospital.

Even though the state Office of Inspector General and the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services dropped the ball when it came to actually investigating what happened inside the jail, the Virginia news media has been relentless, most notably the Richmond Times Dispatch. Reporter Sarah Kleiner revealed that jail officials had taped over video recorded outside Mitchell’s cell. Those videos would have shown if he had been given a food tray each day and whether guards and nurses actually checked on him. That revelation led to the Newport Daily News calling for a federal investigation.

The failure of our local and state officials is so complete — and typical of a state where officials are so contemptuous of the public’s right to know what their government does — that we believe an investigation by federal civil rights officials is in order.

Gary A. Harki and Patrick Wilson, two reporters at the Virginian-Pilot, also have been digging into this story, as has Deanna LeBlanc at WAVY.

Holding those responsible for Mitchell’s death is only the first step. Virginia needs to censure those who were responsible for investigating his death but shirked their responsibility. (Angry about this preventable death: urge McAuliffe to take action by sending him a copy of this blog.)

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Miami Goes From Snakepit To Example For Others: I Return To See How The City Is Decriminalizing Mental Illness

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(5-13-16)

The air in C wing stinks. It is a putrefied scent, a blending of urine, expectorant, perspiration, excrement, blood, flatulence, and dried and discarded jailhouse food. When the jail’s antiquated air conditioning breaks down during the summer, which it often does, some officers claim C wing’s pink walls actually sweat. It’s decades of filth and grime bubbling up, rising through coats of paint.

Those few lines are from my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness. They describe the barbaric conditions that I observed when I spent ten months inside the Miami Dade Pre-Trial Detention Center  (downtown jail) where inmates with serious mental illnesses were beaten, neglected, abused and treated little better than animals.

I observed the horrific conditions in the jail and troubling events during 2004/2005 and for the first time since then, I returned earlier this week to Miami to see what has transpired since my book was published.

What I observed was nothing short of a miracle. In the twelve years that have passed since I first walked into the jail, Miami has been transformed from being one of the worst examples of how prisoners with mental illnesses were treated into a model system that the rest of the nation should follow.

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Time For Setting An Achievable Goal: Let’s Reduce Incarceration of Prisoners With Mental Illnesses by 25% by 2020

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(5-10-16) How many more horror stories need to be told?

It’s time for us to stop the inappropriate jailing and imprisonment of persons with mental illnesses.

On April 17, CBS 60 Minutes broadcast a segment that showed how prisoners with mental illnesses were being neglected and abused at Rikers Island in New York.

On May 2, The New Yorker published MADNESS by Eyal Press, which tells how mentally ill prisoners in Florida have been tortured, driven to suicide and killed by correctional officers.

The nurses said that Rainey had been locked in a stall whose water supply was delivered through a hose controlled by the guards. The water was a hundred and eighty degrees, hot enough to brew a cup of tea—or, as it soon occurred to Krzykowski, to cook a bowl of ramen noodles. (Someone had apparently tampered with the T.C.U.’s water heater.) It was later revealed that Rainey had burns on more than ninety per cent of his body, and that his skin fell off at the touch.

There is a promising national effort underway.  Stepping UP: A National Initiative to Reduce the Number of People with Mental Illnesses in Jails was launched last year by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, the National Association of Counties, and the American Psychiatric Association Foundation.  It is a great effort.

But I believe we need to set an achievable goal. In February, I asked Washington area management consultant Steven Kussmann to suggest ways the mental health community could be more effective. His number one recommendation was defining an actionable goal.

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Sen. John Cornyn Urges Colleagues To Seize “Magic Moment” While NFL Star With Borderline Personality Disorder Describes Life As Living Hell

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john cornyn at cpac

(5-6-16) “How does a family member get the cooperation of a loved one who happens to be mentally ill?”

Senator John Cornyn (R. Texas) posed that question during a recent U.S. Senate Committee on Finance hearing entitled Mental Health In America: Where Are We Now?

He raised it after explaining that he had read my book, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, and had been intrigued by how difficult it was for my family to get help for my son because he didn’t think he was sick and didn’t want to take medication that had helped him. I had no idea that Senator Cornyn, who invited me to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, would mention my book or our struggle. It was very kind of him.

While other senators talked about how difficult it was for families to access help, Sen. Cornyn added that compliance also is an issue that must be addressed. He mentioned the effectiveness of Assisted Outpatient Treatment and he specifically talked about how jails and prisons have become our new mental asylums.

Cornyn reminded his colleagues that Congress is currently considering several bills, including his — the Mental Health Safe Communities Act of 2015, which calls for expansion of Crisis Intervention Team training, jail diversion and mental health dockets. He urged his fellow senators to take advantage of what he described as a “magic moment” in Congress by taking their different bills out of their individual committee “silos” and working together to get a consensus bill passed.

As Senator Majority Whip, Cornyn wields tremendous clout and having watched him several times at hearings and listened to him speak, I am impressed by his commitment to getting legislation passed this session, his call for non-partisanship,  and his sincerity in wanting to stop the use of jails and prisons as de facto mental facilities. Sadly, partisan bickering and game-playing continues to threaten a consensus, especially during an election year. Here is a link to the committee hearing. Senator Cornyn’s comments begin at 1:46:49.

At that same hearing, Linda Rosenberg told the committee that “we know what to do” to help most people with mental illnesses and substance abuse problems.  We just aren’t doing it. Linda is president and CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health and a former colleague of mine on the Corporation for Supportive Housing board. She also is also one of our nation’s leading experts on the financing and delivery of mental health care in America. In her testimony and during questioning, she eloquently gave no-nonsense practical advice.

I also was delighted that the committee heard from someone with lived experience. Former NFL Receiver Brandon Marshall described how borderline personality disorder made his life and career “a living hell” until he got help. Here’s an except of his impassioned testimony.

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Stevenson Place Helps Those Who Need Extra Care, But It’s Not Being Replicated

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(5-2-16) The Justice Department, many mental health advocates and federally funded protection and advocacy groups are opposed to group homes and housing that resembles an institutional setting. The goal is for everyone to live independently in their own apartment.

But is it realistic to believe that everyone can live on their own if they have a severe mental illness and other debilitating challenges?

My good friend Trudy Harsh, the driving force behind the non-profit Brain Foundation, believes that some individuals need services that are best delivered in a group setting or multi-person facility. That’s currently  a politically unpopular point of view, but Trudy is speaking from her experiences not only as a housing  activist but also as a mother.

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