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In Your Worst Moments, Cling To The Best Times

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necklace

These past few months have been difficult.

I lost my mother in December to a fast acting cancer. She was 94 and died at home. I could not save her.

Her death caused my father’s dementia to become much, much worse. He is 93. It is heartbreaking watching him become more and more confused each day. I cannot save him.

Because of my mother’s age, people told me that she had lived a full life. They were trying to comfort me. Could you also argue that the longer you have someone, the tougher it is to let go?

These incidents have reminded me of my son’s first hospitalization. It happened on my birthday. Because he was ill, I was surprised when he handed me a home-made birthday card when I visited him at the hospital.  I described what happened next in my book,  CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness.

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Arrested For Trespassing: Dies In Hot Cell, Another Senseless Jail Death

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rikers
 

A major focus of my work has been calling attention to individuals with mental illnesses who are locked in our jails and prisons. Jails should not be our new mental asylums and I am outraged that more than two million persons with mental health problems are booked into U.S jails each year. I also find it frustrating that many mental health advocates marginalize this problem. I have been told by advocates that persons with mental illnesses who get arrested deserve it. Yet, as I documented in my book and as this story from the Associated Press clearly shows, many inmates with mental illnesses are NOT criminals. They are persons whose major crime is that they got sick. It was their illness that led to them violating the law, not criminal intent.

 
Since I published my book, there has NOT been a decline in incarceration rates for persons with mental illnesses. That is why we must continue calling for an end to the jailing of people who need treatment and services such as housing, not incarceration and punishment. Otherwise, we will continue to see more stories like this one.
 

NEW YORK (AP) — Jerome Murdough was just looking for a warm place to sleep on a chilly night last month when he curled up in an enclosed stairwell on the roof of a Harlem public housing project where he was arrested for trespassing.

A week later, the mentally ill homeless man was found dead in a Rikers Island jail cell that four city officials say had overheated to at least 100 degrees, apparently because of malfunctioning equipment.

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Forced Commitment: Speak Your Mind

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speak-your-mind

Few issues in mental health are as controversial as involuntary commitment. Everyone has a strong opinion, especially individuals who have been forced into treatment and their families.

My good friend, Baltimore psychiatrist Dr. Dinah Miller, and her colleague, Dr. Anne Hanson, are doing research for a book they plan to publish called: “Committed: The Battle Over Forced Psychiatric Care.” 

Dr. Miller asked me yesterday if I would help her meet individuals who have stories — good or bad– to tell about their experiences with involuntary treatment.

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Polish Trip: Do Europeans Look At Mental Illnesses Differently?

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stalin1

WESTERN SKYSCRAPERS COMPETE WITH STALIN’S “GIFT” 

Do Europeans look at mental illnesses differently from us?

I’m posing this question because last week I was in Warsaw, Poland, delivering a speech to an international group. Its members seemed genuinely surprised when I told them my personal story about how I was turned away from a hospital emergency room when I took my son, who was psychotic,  there for help. The audience appeared even more shocked when I said there were 360,000 persons in the U.S. with severe mental disorders currently incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. When I also mentioned that the largest public mental facility in the U.S. is a jail and that the chances of a individual in the midst of a mental break ending up in a hospital versus a jail are three-to-one in favor of a jail — well, let me just say that I saw lots of jaw dropping.

Before I continue writing about mental health, however, I have to digress.

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Where Are The Best Programs For Mental Health Recovery?

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mentalart

FROM MY FILES FRIDAY: I’m asked all the time to name what cities and communities are doing things right. In this blog from 2011, I  describe programs that make a difference and what I believe is an essential ingredient in helping someone recover.

WHAT HELPS PEOPLE RECOVER?

What’s the most important ingredient to recovery if you have a mental illness?

The Mental Health Coalition in La Crosse asked me during a recent trip to Wisconsin to tell its members about successful programs that I’ve seen while traveling to three foreign countries and 46 states. I don’t mind citing specific examples.

Want to see a top notch Crisis Intervention Team in operation. Go to Houston, Texas. CIT is important because law enforcement officers deal with more persons with mental problems than most psychiatrists do during a day. We need more CIT training.

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Frustrated Mother Describes Her Psychotic Son’s First Day In Prison

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Photo by Jenn Ackerman

Photo by Jenn Ackerman

This email arrived over the weekend.
Dear Pete, 
 I remember my son’s first day of kindergarten like it was yesterday. The angst I felt when dropping him off and watching that timid little boy walk to the front door. Tears from the realization that my “baby” was growing up and would eventually have to face this harsh world without me. Worrying about whether or not he would be treated with kindness by the other children in his morning kindergarten class.

There have been many “first days” through the years, but none like Tuesday.

 
Tuesday was my mentally ill son’s first day in the prison unit he’s been assigned to. What a horrible week this has been. The intensity of this particular angst, the depth of the sorrow in my tears, and the heart-wrenching worry over how he will be treated by the guards and inmates is unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my life.
 
 There is a pain piercing my heart every moment of every day. This is a “first” that no parent should ever have to face – especially the parent of a mentally ill child.