Pete Earley

Pete Earley with George Taylor Sr.

Nineteen year-old George Taylor Sr. returned home in April 1970 from fighting in Vietnam a changed man.  For more than a year, he had cleared jungle and walked point as part of a unit nicknamed “the herd” that engaged in heavy, repeated combat.  He and his comrades were part of the U.S. Army’s 1 battalion 503^rd, a company of the 173^rd Airborne Brigade.

Taylor had joined the Army two years earlier directly from high school. Serving in the military was a family tradition. When Geoge returned home to Florida, his family didn’t recognize him.

George looked like a much older man who had witnessed too much carnage and lived for too long under the threat of death. He was argumentative and began getting into bar fights, drinking heavily, and had trouble finding and keeping jobs. “It got to the point where I couldn’t deal with people, so I went into the woods,” George recalled later.

For six months, George simply disappeared into the rural Florida landscape, living far away from civilization, much as he had when on patrol in the jungles. When he finally emerged from the woods, he hit the road, roaming the country, often drunk, battling the mental nightmares of his past.

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     A California inmate refuses orders that require him to take anti-psychotic medication for his mental disorder. After he smears his own excrement inside his cell, the attending psychiatrist and correctional officers decide to remove him forcibly from his cell and give him an injection. The officers order him to extend his hands through the cell’s food slot so that he can be handcuffed and when he ignores them, officers spray his cell with OC spray, commonly called pepper spray. He still refuses so they shoot additional bursts directly into his face and on his body until he finally submits.

He is finally forced from his cell and knocked to the floor. He is taken to another cell where he is strapped onto a gurney with all of his limbs bound.

This thirty minute record of the incident may be difficult to watch if you have a mental illness or love someone who does. But the procedures that it documents are actually carried out in a much more humane and professional manner than what I observed in the Miami Dade County jail when I did my research for my book.

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In the hotly contested race for Virginia governor, The Washington Post quizzed the candidates about their positions on mental health. This is one of the first times that I have seen a major news organization ask candidates about mental health during a general election and not in the aftermath of a mass shooting. I am happy the media is finally including mental health in its list of  important campaign issues.

Now the bad news.

Backers of the Democratic candidate in the race are broadcasting an especially ugly, stigmatizing television ad.

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Dear Mr. Earley,

Why do you always assume mentally ill people either are homeless or in jail?

That’s insulting.  I have a serious mental illness but hold down a job, have a family and am dong fine. If I break the law, then I deserve to go to jail. If I end up homeless it will be because I’m lazy and don’t work or because I don’t take my meds.  Either way, it will be my fault.

People with mental illnesses should be held accountable and treated no differently from anyone else. To do otherwise is to promote stigma and make all of us look like we are criminals or bums.

Sincerely

Alan M.

Dear Alan M.,

I am thrilled that you are doing so well. When my son was sick, I ached for success stories such as your’s. I wanted hope. I wanted to know that persons with severe mental illnesses could and do recover and live regular lives. Please share your personal story with others, especially those who are struggling, because they need to be inspired.

Sadly, I do not agree with much else that you have written.

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FROM MY FILES FRIDAY:  Regular readers might have noticed that I didn’t post an original blog on Monday this week. That is because I have been in the hospital with my mom who is 94 and is undergoing testing for severe pains in her back. I hope to get back on schedule next week. Thanks for your patience.

Meanwhile, here is a blog that first appeared on May 9, 2011, and unfortunately is still germane. The more that I have traveled, the more convinced that I have become that  providing adequate housing in a community to persons with sereve mental illnesses is crucial to their recovery. Sadly, what they often get is substandard treatment in slum dwellings.

FROM SHODDY HOSPITALS TO SHODDY HOUSING

The main reason why I wrote CRAZY was to expose how thousands of persons with severe mental illnesses are being locked-up in jails and prisons because of inadequate community services and laws that require a person to be dangerous before they can be helped.

To me, the incarceration of persons whose only real crime is that they have become ill is a national scandal.

Of course, not everyone with a severe mental disorder in Miami, where I did my research, ended up in jail. When I did my investigation, there were 4,500 persons with severe mental disorders living in 650 boarding homes, called Assisted Living Facilities.  At one time, most of these folks would have confined in state hospitals. Now they are in the community — which is wonderful.

Wonderful, that is,  until you explore the conditions under which many of them are living today.

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