Bestselling Author and Mental Health Advocate
8-25-2014
Your voices have been heard!
Risdon Slate, a fellow mental health advocate, told me in April about an offensive mascot called The Maniac that a Christian college in Lakeland Florida had created. I wrote a blog about how that mascot appeared to marginalize and stigmatize individuals with mental illnesses. Several of you agreed and voiced your concerns in emails to the college’s president.
This weekend, Risdon sent me this follow-up.
FROM MY FILES FRIDAY
8-22-14 (The Hilton Foundation, http://hiltonfoundation.org, announced last month that Fountain House/Clubhouse International was chosen to receive the 2014 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize. At $1.5 million, the Prize is the world’s largest and most prestigious humanitarian award. It is presented to a non-profit judged to be doing extraordinary work to alleviate human suffering. This is the first time the Hilton Prize has been awarded to a mental health organization. In 2010, I wrote about the importance of clubhouses. Congratulations to Fountain House and to the many Clubhouses that it has helped launch.)
Clubhouses Change Lives
I am always touched when I hear recovery stories, especially those told by young people. Jourdan Miller, a beautiful girl in her early twenties, described how important the HOPE Clubhouse in Ft. Myers was to her recovery. As with so many of our young people, Jourdan had excelled as a teenager and had gone to college with big plans – only to become sick. She was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder and not long after that she became so ill that she had to drop out. At one point, she was suicidal. When she called the local police during a manic episode, rather than getting help, she ended up getting arrested and jailed — “to be taught a lesson.” That experience – at the hands of unsympathetic and poorly trained sheriff’s deputies — resulted in her developing PTSD.
Jourdan spoke eloquently at a recent luncheon about how she was in such anguish that she simply wanted to give up — until her parents got her to visit the HOPE CLUBHOUSE.
“The HOPE CLUBHOUSE,” she said. “Saved my life.”
(8-18-2014) Robin Williams’ suicide touched a wide swath and judging from the number of emails that I received, those of us who deal with mental illnesses felt especially compelled to comment. But while Williams’ death saddened me, it was a less noticed news item last week that alarmed me.
Federal prosecutors announced they were considering filing new charges against would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr. after a Virginia medical examiner ruled that former White House press Secretary James Brady’s recent death was a homicide.
Hinckley shot Brady while trying to kill President Ronald Reagan in 1981 outside a Washington D.C. hotel. However, Brady didn’t die until earlier this month while living in a Virginia retirement home. He was 73 years old.
8-15-2014 From My Files Friday : Your words matter!
I just want to tell you how, I believe, that you helped to get my son into treatment that he has steadfastly resisted for these many years. I think I told you of the difficult time I have had to get him to cooperate and to take his medicine correctly for his bi-polar. After he became diabetic too, he was just as much in denial and un-cooperative. I was paying for his apartment and knew he was not taking care of himself. However, he would refuse all of my offers to help him wash his clothes, clean his apartment or any other assistance. His siblings were, also, turned down. He withdrew from all of us.
John with his grandmother before his death
Oasis
By Bruce Hanson
Bipolar disorder results in 9.2 years reduction in expected life span, and as many as one in five patients with bipolar disorder completes suicide. (National Institute of Mental Health)
Pete Earley is the bestselling author of such books as The Hot House and Crazy. When he is not spending time with his family, he tours the globe advocating for mental health reform.
As a former reporter for The Washington Post, Pete uses his journalistic background to take a fair-minded approach to the story all while weaving an interesting tale for the reader.