Dr. McCance-Katz Breezes Through Confirmation Hearing On Her Way To Become New Mental Health/Substance Abuse Czar

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(8-1-17) Dr. Elinore F. McCance-Katz, the Trump Administration’s nominee to become the Department of Health and Human Service‘s first Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Abuse breezed through her confirmation hearing this afternoon.

She appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), one of the final hurdles before she can assume oversight of the 8 federal agencies and 112 federal programs that deal with mental health and substance abuse.

Dr. McCance-Katz said her top priorities would be dealing with the opioid crisis and focusing on serious mental illnesses.

As expected, most of the questions from the HELP committee centered on the opioid crisis, but Sens. Bill Cassidy (R.-La.) and Chris Murphy (D.-Conn.) zeroed in on mental illness. This was not surprising because they were responsible for introducing the Senate version of Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Tim Murphy’s Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, which created the Assistant Secretary position. A much altered version of the original House bill became law in December during the waning days of the Obama administration.

Both senators told Dr. McCance-Katz that they expected her to use the “tools” and “powers” that the new law gives her to break down silos and force federal agencies to begin cooperating and coordinating their efforts.

Sen. Cassidy, who also is a medical doctor, specifically criticized SAMHSA (the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) calling it “dysfunctional.”

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Unable To Find Help For His Son, New Yorker Creates Alternative To Prison For The Seriously Ill And Drug Offenders

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First of its kind program in nation scheduled to open next year. 

(7-31-17) Morgan first began acting out when he was two years old. His behavior only got worse as he aged. His parents were given a number of conflicting diagnoses. None good.

At one point, his parents hired a live-in young counselor, who Morgan liked, to help them deal with their son’s outbursts. Next came a Connecticut boarding school for students with a wide range of disruptive issues from anxiety to Asperger’s to bipolar disorder. Despite that school’s stellar reputation, Morgan stole a car at age fourteen and went on a joy ride. By the time he was sixteen, he had been kicked out of four schools. Desperate, his parents sent him to a residential treatment center in Utah for “troubled teens.”

That helped, but not for long.

Pressured by a friend at age sixteen, he attempted to rob a taxi driver in Manhattan. A year later, paranoid and delusional, he called the police and reported that he was being followed. When they ignored him, he gathered all of the trash where he was living, put it on his stove and started a fire, believing firefighters would come and rescue him.

He was arrested for arson. A judge sentenced Morgan to five years in a New York prison.

Morgan’s father, Francis J. Greenburger, pleaded with a prosecutor. With Morgan’s ten inch thick medical file in hand, Greenburger persuaded the prosecutor to give Morgan a break. He would be sent to a mental health treatment facility instead of Riker’s Island if his father could find a locked, treatment facility where he could serve his sentence.

Morgan’s father wasn’t some ordinary Joe. A high school drop out at age fifteen, Francis Greenburger was a self-made, multi-millionaire who oversaw more than 25-million-square-feet of prime real estate in Manhattan, nationally and internationally. He also owned one of New York’s most respected literary agencies. (An agent associated with his firm represented my first three books.) With his wealth, his social influence, his grit and his loving determination to help his son, Greenburger began his search.

Greenburger later told me, the prosecutor had “sent me on a fool’s errand. None existed.”

Despite Morgan’s well documented history of mental illness, Greenburger watched his son taken away in handcuffs and leg shackles bound for Riker’s Island, a notorious facility where few with mental illnesses emerge in better condition from when they entered.

For a loving dad such as Greenburger that was unacceptable. If he couldn’t help his son, he would help others. If there was no alternative to prison, he would build one.

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A Breath of Fresh Air: Two Nonpartisan Politicians Working To Improve Mental Health Care

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Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds

(7-28-17) At a time when it’s easy for all of us to feel disappointment in our political system, we have an example of the best in our democracy here in Virginia.

I’m talking about the cooperation and determination of state Sen. Creigh Deeds (D.) and representative Rob Bell (R.) in working together to improve mental health and substance abuse care in the state.

An example of Deeds’ statesmanship came late yesterday when his attorney announced the state senator had chosen to drop the Virginia Department of Behavior Health and Developmental Services from a $6 million wrongful death lawsuit that he had filed last year in response to the preventible death of Gus, his 24 year-old son.

In return, the department has pledged to partner with him in helping overhaul Virginia’s fractured mental health and substance abuse system.  The exact details about what the state actually will do haven’t been formalized. However, according to a Richmond Times Dispatch story by K. Burnell Evans, the department has agreed to hold an annual symposium “that will provide a forum for discussion of mental health topics and issues of significance in Virginia and of interest across the country.”

In announcing Deeds’ decision to let the department off-the-hook, his attorney said, “It has always been Senator Deeds’ goal to reach a point of constructive change that can serve to prevent any other family from experiencing the tragedy his family experienced.”

Simply put, it never has been about the money. It has been about forcing the state to improve services – something it has historically failed to do.

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Virginia Gov. McAuliffe Chastised By Former Prosecutor and Defense Attorney For Executing Seriously Mentally Ill Inmate

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(7-26-17) A grinning Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe was able to bluff his way through a recent appearance held in Washington D.C. when questioned about his decision to execute an inmate with a serious mental illness. While claiming, once again, that he personally opposed the death penalty, he rationalized the execution by assuming the role of a modern day Pontius Pilate and repeating damaging testimony offered by a psychiatrist at William Morva’s first trial while dismissing testimony later by an independent psychiatrist and new evidence about Morva’s mental health history. I’m thrilled that a former prosecutor and defense attorney rebuffed McAuliffe in this Washington Post opinion piece posted Sunday, July 23rd.)  

Photo by Roanoke Times

Photo by Roanoke Times

Gov. McAuliffe made an irreversible mistake

By Gene Rossi and Edward J. Ungvarsky. first published in The Washington Post.

William Charles Morva was put to death because our legal system failed him. When Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) denied Morva clemency on July 6, he apparently misunderstood the facts about Morva’s mental illness and squandered an opportunity for compassion.

When the governor refused to intervene, he missed a chance to exercise a solemn constitutional duty to save Morva’s life. In a case that cried out for mercy, McAuliffe disregarded that the sentencing jurors never heard the compelling evidence of Morva’s long-standing, debilitating mental illness. Although Morva’s death is an irreversible mistake, he should not die in vain.

Death should be an extraordinary, rare punishment. U.S. and Virginia laws reflect the centuries-old bedrock principles that a death sentence is exceptional and that mercy alone is always reason enough to avoid the death penalty.

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Guest Blog: Having A Mental Illness Or Being A Care-Giver Doesn’t Necessarily Make You A Good NAMI Board Member

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(7-24-17) Turmoil over this year’s NAMI election and its “big tent” vs “small tent” debate are still reverberating and have caused a former board member to offer his thoughts about how the nation’s largest, grassroots mental health organization should be run.)

NAMI Leadership – A Thought Going Forward

by  Graham L. Champion (Board member 2009-2010)  

NAMI has just concluded its national convention in Washington, DC, during which, five new members of the 16-member board of directors were elected. The run up to this year’s election was one of the most divisive and contentious in recent memory. A tenant of NAMI Board elections is that the candidates refrain from active campaigning both directly and also through the use of surrogates.

That tenant went out the window this year.

A spirited debate is normally a very good thing when members of NAMI are considering who will lead the organization. However, the debate should focus on issues and philosophy and not become personal. Personal attacks have a way of carrying forward and taint the important work the Board should be focusing on.

Having served on NAMI’s National Board several years ago (albeit for a short time), I want to offer some perspective and suggestions for the consideration of NAMI’s Membership and more specifically for NAMI’s Board of Directors. NAMI should in my humble opinion consider the following changes.

NAMI’s Board should be a policy Board and not a management Board.

NAMI is a national organization with a large membership and a relatively large budget. Part-time, volunteer Board Members need to let the professional staff do the jobs they were hired to do without day-to-day interference. Micromanagement does not serve the organization well. The Board needs to set policy and not be involved in the day-to-day execution and management of the organization. If the staff is not getting the job done – that the Board expects – in a timely and professional manner, then it should replace the ineffective staff. If the Board (or an individual Board Member) wants to be involved in the day-to-day process they should resign from the Board and apply for a job. No manager can do an effective job if he/she is constantly being second guessed by a committee (Board).Click to continue…

Poor Choice Inviting Governor McAuliffe To Speak About ‘Solutions’ Two Weeks After He Okayed Execution of Seriously Ill Prisoner

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(7-17-17) The National Council on Behavioral Health and Janssen Pharmaceuticals have made an unfortunate choice in featuring Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe as a speaker at a State of Mental Health Care: Challenges and Solutions forum being held tomorrow (Tuesday – the 18th) at The Newseum in Washington D.C..

Less than two weeks ago, Gov. McAuliffe refused to stop the execution of a 35 year-old man diagnosed with a serious mental illness. He could have spared William Morva’s life by commuting his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Instead, McAuliffe served up a twisted version of a Nuremberg defense.

A cynic might accuse the governor of not wanting to irk one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the state, the Virginia Sheriff’s Association (Morva murdered a sheriff’s deputy) or suggest McAuliffe didn’t want to possibly jeopardize his future chances as a potential Democratic presidential candidate by appearing soft on crime.

(Let’s not forget that former President Bill Clinton interrupted his 1992 presidential campaign bid to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a brain damaged prisoner who asked his Arkansas prison guards not to remove his food tray from his cell – while being led into the death chamber – because he’d left a piece of pie there that he would finish later.)

If the National Council and Janssen had wanted to invite a governor who is a true mental health reformer, they should have asked Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Instead, they got a governor of a state that was listed last year by Mental Health America as being among the ten worst in the entire nation at providing mental health care.

Since McAullife assumed office in January 2014, the number of women with serious mental illnesses being held in Virginia jails has jumped from 16.13 percent at the end of 2013 to a whopping 25.79 percent. The number of incarcerated men with mental illnesses has increased from 12.64 percent to 14.35 percent. Yet, there are fewer than nine mental health courts or speciality dockets in the entire state, jail pre-release programs are virtually non-existent, Housing First and Act teams are rare, there are long waiting lists to see community therapists and half of those who show up at community mental health centers have no health coverage.

But it is McAuliffe’s actions in two recent horrific Virginia cases that should shame him from showing his face at tomorrow’s forum.

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