“I’ve not lost my purpose or sense of urgency!”

An emotional speech by a most welcomed advocate for mental health reform.

Some highlights:

1. He twice involuntarily committed his son before the tragedy that ended with Deeds in the hospital and his son’s suicide.

2. Because his son was an adult, no psychiatrist ever talked to him about his son’s condition which he found frustrating.

3. His son stopped taking his medication before the attack. “My son talked about how the drugs hurt him, physically hurt him.”

4. Deeds was told and believed his son would outgrow his mood disorder.

5. “Never felt afraid.,” Deeds said.  Never felt his son was dangerous.

6. Deeds said because his son’s illness surfaced when he was an adult, his only option was going before a magistrate. “What do you do with someone who refuses to be treated?” Deeds asked.  He said he didn’t have an answer for that.

“My goal is to remake the system….”

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MICHAEL C. BIASOTTI’S BRIEF TESTIMONY BEGINS AT 35:37 and ENDS AT 40:27

“We have to stop pretending that violence is not associated with untreated serious mental illness. We have to stop pretending that everyone is well enough to volunteer for treatment and self-direct their own care. Some clearly are not.’  –Michael C. Biasotti

U.S. Representative Tim Murphy (R-Pa) continued his campaign last week to reform our nation’s failing mental health system by holding what his colleagues described as one of the best hearings in recent memory about serious mental illnesses.

Entitled: “Where Have All the Patients Gone? Examining the Psychiatric Bed Shortage,” the Commerce and Energy Subcommittee heard from a panel of ten experts who not only discussed current barriers to getting treatment but also provided the subcommittee with a primer on why jails and prisons have become our new mental asylums.

Today’s blog post focuses on testimony by Michael C. Biasotti, Chief of Police and Immediate Past President of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, and the parent of a daughter with a serious mental illness who has been involuntarily committed more than twenty times. 

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A top state official whose department was under investigation had contact with the Virginia Inspector General’s office while it was looking into the Creigh Deeds’ tragedy, according to an article published yesterday in The Daily Progress in Charlottesville.

Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources Bill Hazel acknowledged that he called state Inspector General Michael F.A. Morehart to discuss the case while Morehart’s office was conducting its probe. Both men said there was nothing improper about their conversations.

Inspector Generals are independent fact finders and are not supposed to be influenced by state officials, especially when they are conducting probes of their departments.

G. Douglas Bevelacqua, the IG investigator who was conducting the investigation, revealed the two men’s behind-the -scenes conversations. He said  Hazel referred to him as a  “loose cannon” in a call to his boss.

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Accountability matters.

A jet crashes. People die. A whistleblower reveals that airline officials were warned two years earlier about a fatal flaw in the engine that caused the crash but executives ignored those warnings.

How would the public react?

The Virginia Office of Inspector General issued a damning report in 2012 about “streeting” — emergency rooms turning away patients because there were no psychiatric beds available even though the patients were in the midst of a mental crisis.  The author of that report, G. Douglas Bevelacqua, warned the state’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services that Virginia had a bed shortage problem that needed to be fixed.

No one listened.

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I’ve just obtained a copy of the Virginia Inspector General Report investigating the Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds’ tragedy. You might recall that Inspector General Douglas Bevelacqua resigned after claiming that this investigative report was being watered down by his bosses. You can read the report by clicking here.

 

 

Representative Tim Murphy, the only psychologist in the U.S. Congress, is continuing to keep pressure on the federal government to improve our mental health care system. This Wednesday, March 26th, the subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Energy and Commerce committee, that Rep. Murphy co-chairs will hold an investigative hearing about the nation’s lack of psychiatric hospital beds.

Beginning at 10 a.m. in Room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, the hearing is entitled: “Where have all the patients gone? Examining the Psychiatric Bed Shortage.”

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