(2-25-22) Leslie Carpenter, a well-known Iowa advocate and reader of this blog, sent me an email about a new book entitled: DIFFICULT: Mothering Challenging Adult Children Through Conflict And Change by Judith R. Smith.

“It is unlike any other book I have read so far,” Leslie wrote, “as it exposes the unreasonable burdens placed on family members…” 

During my travels, I’ve seen how mothers often take on tremendous guilt when a child develops symptoms of a serious mental illness. Often times, it is mothers who assume the role of caregiver, especially if their ill child is a daughter. I contacted the author.

“My book is based on a three-year research project,” Judith Smith writes. “The book brings to life the stories of thirty-five women, each over sixty years old, whose lives were drastically altered by becoming the default safety net for their adult “kids.” … I discovered that mothers perceived their adult children’s behavior as “difficult” when they found themselves, once again, prioritizing their children’s needs over their own and saw no “exit” for themselves or their adult children from their problems.”

She agreed to let me post several paragraphs and a book excerpt.

From DIFFICULT: Mothering Challenging Adult Children Through Conflict And Change  By Judith R. Smith, Phd, LCSW. Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Used with author’s permission.

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(2-22-22) Dr. Tom Insel’s new book, Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, is getting a lot of attention. I posted an excerpt from it  last week. I asked Dr. Insel why he decided to write it. He explained that his book is part of a broader media campaign to educate and motivate the public – a campaign that includes a PBS special Hiding In Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness scheduled for release in June. My son, Kevin, was interviewed for this Ken Burns’ documentary, which will feature some of his artwork.

Dear Pete,

Today marks the release of my book, Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health.  In one sense, this book started fifteen years ago when I watched Al Gore present An Inconvenient Truth.  As I watched him dramatize the data for climate change with the hope of awakening us all to this silent threat, I thought, “Why isn’t someone waking up the nation to our mental health crisis?”

Of course, climate change is an emerging existential threat and mental illness is neither new nor a threat to the planet.  But the mental health crisis can be solved.  It does not take every nation on earth committing to carbon reduction or transforming our energy infrastructure.  It just takes a commitment to solutions that we have in hand.

This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the mental health crisis.  It’s an unforced error.

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(2-17-22) A much anticipated book by Dr. Thomas R. Insel, who directed the National Institutes of Mental Health between 2002 to 2015, will be published February 22nd but is available now for preorder. I am an unabashed fan of Dr. Insel and am happily endorsing:  HEALING: Our Path From Mental Illness To Mental Health.

In addition to being a passionate advocate, Dr. Insel is a compassionate doctor. Several months ago, I told him about a friend whose husband was showing symptoms of a serious mental illness. Even though Dr. Insel was swamped and had little time, he telephoned the family, spent more than an hour talking to the husband and wife, and pulled strings so the husband could get a treatment bed, enabling him to achieve the help that he needed to fully recover.

The Atlantic magazine published an excerpt of the first chapter of his book this week. In that opening chapter, Dr. Insel recalls how he was doing a power point presentation at a mental health convention that showed the progress NIMH funded scientists were achieving studying the brain. Here’s what happened next.

A tall, bearded man in the back of the room wearing a flannel shirt appeared more and more agitated. When the Q&A period began, he jumped to the microphone. “You really don’t get it,” he said. “My 23-year-old son has schizophrenia. He has been hospitalized five times, made three suicide attempts, and now he is homeless. Our house is on fire and you are talking about the chemistry of the paint.” As I stood there somewhat dumbstruck, he asked, “What are you doing to put out this fire?”

In his new book, Dr. Insel describes how we can put out that fire.

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(2-14-22) Justin Brodman, a 40 year-old Austin man who has been hospitalized 70 times, is back on the streets, living under a freeway overpass, with fresh sutures on the head wound that he received when he walked out into traffic on a busy street. Only now, those gruesome cuts are showing signs of infection.

I posted a blog Friday about repeated attempts by his mother, Frances Musgrove, to get him appropriate treatment. 

And yet, he was discharged to the streets because he doesn’t believed he is mentally ill and the police and local mental health officials insist Justin doesn’t meet criteria for involuntary commitment. This update was provided by a family friend.

Dear Pete.

We all said to ourselves ‘Wow, finally Justin is getting the care he needs, how sad that it took a car crash to finally get this man some help.

THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED.

He was released and returned to the underpass where he sleeps.

Austin public officials and mental health authorities are now KNOWINGLY endangering the public. Justin already has caused a car accident, and it will happen again. He is not being treated. Austin drivers are in danger, and residents should be furious. Imagine your teenager behind the wheel. Imagine being the teenage driver who killed a 33 year old woman who walked into traffic in February 2018. Like Justin, she had many hospitalizations at Austin State Hospital (ASH) but was killed after ASH was forced to discharge her (again).

Who dropped the ball?

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WARNING: I’ve attached a photo of Justin’s head cuts at the bottom of this blog. Be warned that the photo is graphic. 

(2-11-22) Frances Musgrove’s adult son, Justin, wandered out onto a highway and was struck by a car. The photo of his head wound is jarring to see. It should disgust those responsible for not helping Justin – and there is a long list who have thrown up their hands and blamed regulations and the law. When Justin was ordered by a judge to be under an Assisted Outpatient Treatment order, Frances thought he would get help. She was wrong. Justin didn’t comply and the law proved meaningless. His mother has waged a one-woman tireless campaign to get her son into a state hospital where he can be stabilized.

Why can’t Austin help this man who has been hospitalized more than 70 times? What if he were your son, your brother, your father, your uncle, your husband?

Frances told me today that Justin will not take a shower because he believes the water is poisoned. “I’m very worried about infection. The ombudsman with human health services is telling me the state hospital will not take him because they don’t know if the psychosis is due to drug abuse or mental illness and they’re not equipped to help with substance abuse.”

I’ve posted the emails of officials, who are supposed to be helping Frances, at the bottom of this blog. Feel free to send this article to them. In January, Frances talked to Alex Stuckey, a reporter with the Houston Chronicle.

Mentally ill man was supposed to get help. Now he is homeless in Austin.

His mother wants to know why.

By Alex Stuckey, Originally published in The Houston Chronicle.

Frances Musgrove bundles against the chill and drives around Austin every few days, searching for her son under highway overpasses and alongside busy thoroughfares.

She doesn’t always find him. There are a few spots he frequents, where he knows he can get meth, but he’s not always there.

It’s often a multi-hour drive, Musgrove holding her breath every time she sees a man of his build; a man with his blanket; a man who seems out of his mind.

She can’t believe it’s come to this.

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(2-9-22) Why do individuals become mental health advocates?  For Geoffrey Melada, it was his father’s suicide. Why are you involved? Please share your stories on my Pete Earley Facebook.

The Biggest Case of My Life

By Geoffrey Melada

I remember the first time I argued before a judge. I was representing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 17 years ago in a preliminary hearing for aggravated assault on a child.

In the long and contentious hearing, I was up against a very experienced criminal defense attorney, and I was a mere law school trainee. But after making my very first objection (“calls for speculation”) and delivering an impassioned summation, I won the hearing and the felony charge was held for trial.

Over the next seven years of my career as a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, I tried more than 200 cases, including 33 jury trials to verdict. But there was one case I never got to argue, the one with the highest personal stakes for me.

I never got to argue for my father’s life. He died by suicide just three days before my 17th birthday.

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