Fairfax County Needs Peers In Leadership Positions: It Should Restore Funds For Top Peer Job

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peers

(Within hours after posting this blog, I received an email from Community Services Board Executive Director Tisha Deeghan who explained that the CSB board had a member with lived mental health experience serving on it up until April 27th when that appointee retired. She reminded me that it is the Fairfax Board of Supervisors’ responsibility to appoint board members, not the board’s. I also received an email from Board of Supervisor Chair Sharon Bulova’s office assuring me that the board was aware that the CSB currently does not have a self-acknowledged peer serving on its board. I was told that it is actively searching for an appropriate candidate.)

(6-9-16) The Fairfax – Falls Church Community Services Board, which is responsible for delivering mental health services where I live in Northern Virginia, does not have anyone on its 16 member board who is a peer. The board also recently decided to not hire a new Director of Consumer and Family Affairs, a job specifically created to be held by a peer. This means there is no peer in a top leadership position in my county.

In 1968, Virginia decided that mental health services should be administered locally. The state created 39 Community Services or Behavioral Health Boards, commonly called CSBs. While the legislature allowed local jurisdictions to pick board members, it codified the importance of peers and family members. According to Virginia law:

One-third of the appointments to the board shall be individuals who are receiving or who have received services or family members of individuals who are receiving or who have received services, at least one of whom shall be an individual receiving services.

Not having a peer on our local board may or may not violate that statute – I am not a lawyer. But I know that not having a person with lived experience on the board puts it at a disadvantage when it comes to fully understanding how its decisions will be viewed by the Virginia residents most impacted by them.

The CSB also recently decided not to fill the Director of Consumer and Family Affairs position. That post was held by David Mangano, who retired last year.

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Mental Health & Civil Rights’ Advocates Ask Justice Department To Investigate Va. Inmate’s Starvation Death

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(6-6-16) Officials from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mental Health America, the NAACP, the ACLU, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law today called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the death of Jamycheal Mitchell, a 24 year-old African American with a history of mental illness, who died last August in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Virginia.

Mitchell had been arrested for allegedly stealing $5 worth of snacks from a convenience store and was found dead in his feces covered cell 109 days later while waiting for transfer to a state mental hospital for evaluation. A medical examiner said he’d died from a heart attack caused by “wasting syndrome.” He had lost 40 to 50 pounds.

Mira Signer, the executive director of Virginia NAMI chapter, was a driving force behind the letter, which was signed by NAMI National’s CEO Mary Giliberti; Evelyn Steward, president of NAMI Hampton News; Bruce Cruser, executive director of Mental Health America of Virginia; Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, executive director of the ACLU in Virginia; Ira Burnim, legal director of the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, and James P. Boyd, president of the Portsmouth branch of the NAACP.

In an Op Ed published in The Washington Post last month, I asked for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to investigate Mitchell’s death. In that editorial, which drew the ire of the Virginia Attorney General’s office, I complained about probes of Mitchell’s death released by the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDS) and the State Office of Inspector General. Both balked at actually investigating what transpired inside the jail, claiming they didn’t have jurisdiction to look there. So far, Hampton jail officials are the only ones who actually know what took place in the jail. Eight days after Mitchell’s body was found, they conducted an internal investigation and announced their employees had done nothing wrong. They have refused to make that report public. Jail officials also taped over video taken outside Mitchell’s cell that would have shown how often employee’s gave him food or entered his cell.

In their letter to the Justice Department, the authors wrote: “the ultimate question remains unknown: how did Mitchell starve to death before the jail staff’s and medical staff’s eyes?” 

Mitchell was supposed to be checked by a nurse once a day and also eyeballed by correctional staff regularly, yet there is no mention in any jail or nursing reports that have been made public about his alarming loss of weight.

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Jennifer Marshall Talks About Recovery In Front Page Washington Post Story. Bravo!

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(5-3-16) I am so grateful to Jennifer Marshall for continuing to combat stigma by speaking out about her mental illness and recovery! The co-founder of This Is My Brave was featured yesterday in a major front page story in The Washington Post about individuals with mental disorders who have talked openly about their illnesses and recovery. Bravo to all of them and to The Washington Post for publishing such an important story of hope on its front page.

Unwell and unashamed

The stigma of mental illness is under attack by sufferers, who are coming out publicly and defiantly

Story by Colby Itkowitz, photos by Amanda Coisard, The Washington Post.

For several years, she wrote about her bipolar disorder under a pseudonym. She described how she’d been hospitalized four times, twice since her first child was born. She explained how she went off her medication during both of her pregnancies and how each time — once as the mother of a newborn and then again weeks into her second pregnancy — she was escorted from her home in police handcuffs, defiant.

She blogged to connect and reach other mothers grappling with mental illness. Ultimately, however, she decided that hiding her identity was actually perpetuating the shame long associated with mental disorders.

So even as her parents urged her not to, Jennifer Marshall in 2013 typed her real name on a blog post, hit publish and waited for the reaction.

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“Not all illness can be cured with sunshine and fresh air,” Blogger says.

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(6-2-16) Jenni Chiu, who writes a blog at Mommy Nani Booboo, recently spotted an Internet post that stated sunshine and fresh air were the best treatment for mental illnesses and that medication was SH**. She posted her 3:19 minute response on Youtube. Reaffirming that there is no one size fits all solution for depression and other severe mental disorders. Thank you Jenni.)

 

Telling My Family’s Story At The Famed City Club Of Cleveland

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(5-31-16) Thank you to the City Club of Cleveland for allowing me to speak during Mental Health Awareness Month about how we need to stop the jailing of persons with mental illnesses. For more than a hundred years, the club has featured some of the most famous and controversial speakers in our country, including U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Presidents, astronauts, advocates such as Russell Means and Sister Helen Prejean, and my good friend, Bryan Stevenson. Many of you already are familiar with my family’s story and have read my book, but I continue to share it with others who often are shocked to learn that Americans who are clearly sick often end up incarcerated for minor crimes because of their illness. In this speech, I mentioned the starvation death of Jamycheal Mitchell in Portsmouth, Va. who was jailed for 101 days after allegedly taking $5 worth of snacks from a convenience store while psychotic.

Here is what NAMI Cleveland posted after my speech.

A CULTURAL SHADOW LIKE NO OTHER: THE WAREHOUSING OF THE MENTALLY ILL

NAMI Greater Cleveland

May 20, 2016

Jails and prisons have become de facto psychiatric “hospitals” (institutions) which warehouse the seriously mentally ill.  We know that 20 percent of inmates in jails and 15 percent of inmates in state prisons have a serious mental illness (356,000), more than 10 times the number of those that remain at state psychiatric hospitals. Seventy percent of adolescents in juvenile correctional facilities have a mental health condition, and 40 percent of individuals with serious mental illnesses have been in jail or prison at some time in their lives.

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Va. Senator Creigh Deeds’ Eloquent Words Capture Parents’ Frustration With System: Speaks at Capitol Summit

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(5-30-16) If you wish to know why parents of adult children with mental illnesses are frustrated by today’s failing mental health system, listen to Virginia state Senator Creigh Deeds’ powerful and eloquent keynote speech that begins at 3:05:05 on the video posted above. (Don’t worry, it is only a few minutes long.)

Senator Deeds’ observations about the problems he encountered because of federal HIPAA laws, mirror comments that I receive each week from bewildered parents.

Deeds was the featured speaker at a U.S. Senate Summit on Mental Health held by Senators Bill Cassidy (R. La.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) last week to whip up support for their bipartisan bill, the Mental Health Reform Act, which is making its way through the Senate. Both are hopeful that some version of it could be sent to the White House this summer to be signed into law.

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