Pete Earley

WARNING: I’ve attached a photo of Justin’s head cuts at the bottom of this blog. Be warned that the photo is graphic. 

(2-11-22) Frances Musgrove’s adult son, Justin, wandered out onto a highway and was struck by a car. The photo of his head wound is jarring to see. It should disgust those responsible for not helping Justin – and there is a long list who have thrown up their hands and blamed regulations and the law. When Justin was ordered by a judge to be under an Assisted Outpatient Treatment order, Frances thought he would get help. She was wrong. Justin didn’t comply and the law proved meaningless. His mother has waged a one-woman tireless campaign to get her son into a state hospital where he can be stabilized.

Why can’t Austin help this man who has been hospitalized more than 70 times? What if he were your son, your brother, your father, your uncle, your husband?

Frances told me today that Justin will not take a shower because he believes the water is poisoned. “I’m very worried about infection. The ombudsman with human health services is telling me the state hospital will not take him because they don’t know if the psychosis is due to drug abuse or mental illness and they’re not equipped to help with substance abuse.”

I’ve posted the emails of officials, who are supposed to be helping Frances, at the bottom of this blog. Feel free to send this article to them. In January, Frances talked to Alex Stuckey, a reporter with the Houston Chronicle.

Mentally ill man was supposed to get help. Now he is homeless in Austin.

His mother wants to know why.

By Alex Stuckey, Originally published in The Houston Chronicle.

Frances Musgrove bundles against the chill and drives around Austin every few days, searching for her son under highway overpasses and alongside busy thoroughfares.

She doesn’t always find him. There are a few spots he frequents, where he knows he can get meth, but he’s not always there.

It’s often a multi-hour drive, Musgrove holding her breath every time she sees a man of his build; a man with his blanket; a man who seems out of his mind.

She can’t believe it’s come to this.

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(2-9-22) Why do individuals become mental health advocates?  For Geoffrey Melada, it was his father’s suicide. Why are you involved? Please share your stories on my Pete Earley Facebook.

The Biggest Case of My Life

By Geoffrey Melada

I remember the first time I argued before a judge. I was representing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 17 years ago in a preliminary hearing for aggravated assault on a child.

In the long and contentious hearing, I was up against a very experienced criminal defense attorney, and I was a mere law school trainee. But after making my very first objection (“calls for speculation”) and delivering an impassioned summation, I won the hearing and the felony charge was held for trial.

Over the next seven years of my career as a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, I tried more than 200 cases, including 33 jury trials to verdict. But there was one case I never got to argue, the one with the highest personal stakes for me.

I never got to argue for my father’s life. He died by suicide just three days before my 17th birthday.

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(2-2-22) Psychiatric medications were essential to my adult son’s recovery. If someone can control the symptoms without drugs, I am happy for them because medications are powerful and some have awful side effects.  But during my nearly two decades of traveling the country and visiting other nations, I have not encountered a better alternative than medications for those with serious mental illnesses, especially schizophrenia. Recently, Stephen Shenfield, sent me an email explaining why he has fought to keep his daughter, Meili, off psychiatric medications. She does not have a mental illness. She is autistic, but Mr. Shenfield explained that programs for her often demanded that she be given psychiatric medications. I’d not considered how being a parent of an adult with autism might deal with medications so I am sharing a blog that he sent me.  

Keeping Meili Off Psychiatric Drugs

By Stephen Shenfield

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(1-27-22) While I dislike reposting news articles, this frightening Washington Post story by reporter Kyle Swenson should be widely distributed. Many homeless individuals have serious mental illnesses. With the appearances of tent cities in major cities, attitudes have hardened. Many communities have passed laws making homeless encampments illegal. Others have bulldozed them, arresting their occupants for trespassing. There is a reason why homeless Americans tend to congregate together for their own safety. We have to stop marginalizing those living on the streets. 

(Warning: this is disturbing to read.)

Serial Murders, Beatings and Beheadings: violence against the homeless is increasing, advocates say.

By Kyle Swenson, published in The Washington Post.

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(1-24-22) For more than 20 years, Teresa Pasquini has been fighting to get her son, Danny, the housing and treatment that he deserves. She has written extensively about the challenges that they have faced and openly about what worked and hasn’t worked in California. Recently, she and fellow advocate, Lauren Rettagliata, traveled together to inspect 22 different California housing facilities, and issued a white paper called Housing That Heals. 

Crawling Through Glass in Search of Housing That Heals

By Teresa Pasquini

I am the proud mom of an adult son who lives heroically with a serious mental illness. He was diagnosed in his teens and has spent the majority of his adult life in locked psychiatric facilities. Until recently, there had been nothing civil or right about my son’s care.

The past 20 years have been a blur of suicide attempts, over 40 involuntary holds, revolving hospitalizations, homelessness and incarceration. Even though we had resources, insurance and my full-time ability to navigate a maze of services in one of the most integrated healthcare systems in our country.

It was still a nightmare.

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(1-19-22) A new Covid related issue involving patients at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in the District of Columbia has surfaced. The hospital was successfully sued in 2020 after 14 deaths and 100 infections caused by Covid. Federal Judge Randolph Moss noted that “roughly one out of every twenty patients has died and more than one out of every three patients have been infected” and found that there is “an imminent risk to [patients’] health and well-being, and the consequences of contracting the virus are irreparable.”

Now, questions are being raised about whether hospital administrators have gone from not doing enough to doing too much by keeping patients locked on wards for long quarantine periods.

With rising Covid infections, the hospital adopted a color coded system to control Covid spread.

All patients and staff are now tested weekly, although patients can refuse. If a patient tests positive, the unit where that patient is housed is labeled red. If a staff member tests positive, the unit is labelled yellow. In both situations, the unit is put on a full 14-day quarantine.

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