Guest Blog: Justice and Discrimination

Guest Blog
Written by Angela Vickers, author of Brain Bondage- The Delay in Mental Illness Recovery

When I first faced injustice due to my mental illness diagnosis, I thought that all I needed was a good lawyer who understood bipolar recovery. I assumed there was justice, even for those with a mental illness diagnosis. The more I asked for legal help, the more I learned about prejudice and how little lawyers knew about mental illnesses. I understood the problem, as I knew nothing about psychiatric illness when I experienced my manic episode at age 36. Like me, I learned that few people knew even the most basic facts about bipolar and the other mental illnesses.

Discrimination was and is pervasive.

As with other national battles for civil rights, a victory for those with mental illness will require an educated media, an informed legal community, the support of the faith community, and educators willing to teach new truths to the generations to follow.

Angela D. Vickers’ book Brain Bondage is available through her website:www.angelavickers.net

The opinions expressed by guest bloggers are their own and not necessarily that of the Treatment Advocacy Center.Want to be a guest blogger? Tell us why at info@treatmentadvocacycenter.org.

Guest Blog: Pennsylvania’s Advocacy Effort to Change Treatment Laws

GUEST BLOG:
Written by Jeanette Castello, Co-Chair of the Pennsylvania Treatment Law Steering Committee

According to Pennsylvania’s treatment laws the crisis worker who told Marjorie Miller that she was not able to take Kenneth Miller to be admitted to a hospital was just following the law.

Members of an advocacy effort to change our treatments laws are currently working to see Pennsylvania Senate Bill 226 passed so individuals with severe mental illness and a history of hospitalizations, homelessness, and/or time spent in jail or prison will be able to receive the timely, compassionate treatment they need. SB 226 is modeled after the proven successful Kendra’s Law. This law helps the small minority of people - who are often non-compliant with prescribed medications - to remain in treatment and possibly avoid the tragedies of violence and victimization that too often occur.

Although violent incidents are the ones the media often report on, my personal involvement with this advocacy effort is due to the unbearably heartbreaking time when my daughter suffered from lack of insight into her illness, also know as anosognosia. During this period of time, my daughter was hospitalized 15 times, each time meant a wait for her to reach the “clear and present danger to self or others” required by law. My concern during those sleepless, stress-filled days and nights was the worry that she would be hurt while wandering, sometimes in the middle of the night, following the voices that told her to leave the house.

Opponents of changing our treatment laws say we’re trying to infringe on their rights. Which makes more sense to you? 1) allowing our loved ones to put themselves or others in dangerous situations such as happened to the Miller family or 2) requiring compassionate and timely outpatient treatment for six months (the initial period of time stated in Kendra’s Law and SB 226). As a society, we need to decide what makes the most sense.

- Jeanette M. Castello
Co-Chair, PA Treatment Law Steering Committee
send comments to Jeanette through info@treatmentadvocacycenter.org

The opinions expressed by guest bloggers are their own and not necessarily that of the Treatment Advocacy Center.

Want to be a guest blogger? Tell us why at info@treatmentadvocacycenter.org.

New book: Crazy in America

GUEST BLOG:

Written by Mary Beth Pfeiffer, author of “Crazy in America: The Hidden Tragedy of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill”.

"Children wait in emergency rooms for psychiatric beds, sometimes for days."
--- June 1, 2007, Hartford Courant editorial.

We all know that America had better than a half-million psychiatric hospital beds 50 years ago, beds that were whittled down in a great, silent wave of untethered humanity called deinstitutionalization. But few realize that deinstitutionalization is continuing, and so is the failure of community care to pick up the slack.

The children referred to in the quotation above, who suffer while waiting for psychiatric beds in Connecticut, are just one group of victims. Add to them the homeless, the incarcerated, the two-thirds of Americans with mental illness who go untreated.

From 1990 to 2000, long after deinstitutionalization was believed over, the nation lost an additional 57,000 psychiatric beds, bringing the total to 86,000. But the bloodletting didn’t stop there: Harrisburg State Hospital closed in Pennsylvania last year and with it 260 beds. In Florida, 36 private psychiatric hospitals have closed in since 1992 – taking 4,400 beds. In Iowa, 600 general-hospital psychiatric beds were shuttered from 1998 to 2002 -- nearly half the state’s total. Connecticut had three sprawling public mental hospitals in the 1950s, serving 9,000; with additional cuts in recent years it is down to about 600.

America’s system of mental health care is broken. Emergency rooms, which saw psychiatric cases rise by 56 percent from 1992 to 2003, take the brunt in this severely strained system. And jails and prisons act as de facto mental institutions where there is always a bed – and where at least 330,000 mentally ill people now reside.

America needs leadership on mental health care. We need leaders who are willing to equate the needs of people with mental illness with those who suffer from cancer and heart disease. We need legislators willing to provide funding for housing, clinics and subsidized insurance. We need a media willing to explore the ills of a forgotten and under-funded system.

This isn’t too much to ask.
---Mary Beth Pfeiffer

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Visit Mary Beth Pfeiffer’s web site at www.crazyinamerica.com to see photographs of her profile subjects and get other information. To buy the book, go to http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-America-Tragedy-Criminalized-Mentally/dp/0786717459/ref=pd_nr_b_8/103-2156816-0667067?ie=UTF8&s=books.

The opinions expressed by guest bloggers are their own and not necessarily that of the Treatment Advocacy Center.

Want to be a guest blogger? Tell us why at info@treatmentadvocacycenter.org.