(Feb. 3, 2014) Dealing with my son’s mental illness has been difficult and heartbreaking. Over the past 24 years I have intervened many times. But if I hadn't been there to help, Steve would be in jail or dead.

At 40-years old, Steve seems more like a child than an adult. Besides suffering with severe mental illness, he also used drugs and the combination was terrible.  

His anger and behavior were so out of control he was often picked up by the police and carried to the police station or a local hospital. But he was over 18-years old so his father and I were unable to help him as he refused to believe there was anything wrong. Like many people with mental illness, he was unable to recognize his sickness.  

As a result, over the course of his illness he was kicked out of nearly 50 apartments, psychiatric programs and halfway homes. So many people told me to just give up and throw in the towel, to shut Steve out of my life. I never listened to those people and I am thankful that I never lost faith in my son's ability to recover.  

Steve's father and I were finally able to convince the court and medical providers that Steve qualified for Arizona’s assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) program. Now he regularly takes his medication and has some insight into his mental illness.

The difference between him before court-ordered treatment and after is like night and day. Before, getting him to take his medicine was one of our biggest problems. We always knew that when he stopped taking his medicine, trouble with drugs and alcohol and behavioral issues would soon follow.  AOT helped Steve with both of these issues.   

He is smiling again, keeps his anger under control and seems to know that he needs his medicine. We no longer have to convince him to take it.  

I don't know what the future will hold for Steve, but for the first time I feel like he has a chance.

Steve's Mother
ARIZONA

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(Jan. 31, 2014) Determined to end chronic homelessness in Washington, DC, local nonprofits and community leaders have launched The Way Home campaign, an effort to rally community support for people whose homes are the on the street (“Campaign launches to end chronic homelessness in DC by 2017,” Jan. 28).

The campaign advocates for permanent supportive housing using the "housing first" model. In this model, housing is the most important and first step toward recovery, meaning the long-term homeless are housed immediately and then treated for issues like alcoholism or mental illness.

But of the estimated 15,000 DC residents who are currently experiencing homelessness, about one-third suffer from a severe mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Yes, they need a place to sleep, but they need treatment to be stable enough to stay off the streets.  

If we really want to get serious about helping the most vulnerable among the homeless – those who are homeless and mentally ill - we need to recognize many also need psychiatric treatment and make sure they get it.  

Recovery takes many steps. For many with the most serious psychiatric diseases, the road begins with treatment.  

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(Jan. 30, 2014) When Nevada’s psychiatric patients don’t find a bed at Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital, they either wait for one to become available or go to jail, according to Dr. Tracey Green, the state’s health officer (“Grim picture painted of mental health care in Nevada,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jan. 19).

Green’s statement rings true. Nevada jails far more of its citizens and visitors in psychiatric crisis than any other state, according to our 2010 study, “More Mentally Ill Persons are in Jails and Prisons Than Hospitals.” An individual with mental illness was nearly 10 times more likely to land behind bars in Nevada than in a psychiatric hospital bed.

This is not the first time Nevada’s mental illness treatment system has faced scrutiny. Last April the Sacramento Bee reported the state’s psychiatric hospital had transported more than 1500 patients to other states via Greyhound bus.

The state now faces a class-action lawsuit brought by San Francisco’s attorney, Dennis Herrera, on behalf of 24 mentally ill and homeless people who were bused out of Nevada and left on the streets of San Francisco without any support or medication.

The good news for Nevada’s psychiatric patients is that the state became the 45th state to authorize assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) last July.

While AOT won’t solve all the problems with Nevada’s frayed mental health system, court-ordered outpatient treatment provides a community-based safety net proven to help keep at-risk individuals with severe mental illness out of jails, hospitals and emergency rooms. That’s definitely an improvement over the status quo.   

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(Jan. 29, 2014) "In the 1960s, during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the federal government passed a series of laws designed to liberate the mentally ill from the acknowledged horrors of mental hospitals, where they were often confined for decades. The idea was that with the introduction of powerful new antipsychotic drugs, people with schizophrenia could live outside a mental hospital — and that hospital stays would be much shorter. The federal government gave money to communities to set up local mental health centers as well as housing for the mentally ill.

"In 1975, this trend was affirmed by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the mentally ill had a right 'to live in the least restrictive setting necessary for their well-being.' 

"On the one hand, many mentally ill people were able to lead fuller, richer lives thanks to the deinstitutionalization movement. But...there were also many people for whom the drugs did not have a pronounced effect — or who stopped taking the drugs as soon as they left the hospital. Yet there were no longer enough hospital beds for them, hence the need for hospitals to drug them up and move them out.

"E. Fuller Torrey, perhaps the most vocal critic of the current mental health system, says that before deinstitutionalization there were 312 public psychiatric beds for every 100,000 people. That was clearly too many. But today there are a paltry 14 beds for every 100,000. Torrey estimates that we need at least 50 beds per 100,000.

"Meanwhile, what happened to patients once they left the hospital was often horrendous. State mental hospitals would release patients with little idea where they were going. They often ended up on the streets, or in prison, which have become today’s de facto mental hospitals."

Read the entire piece by columnist Joe Nocera in the New York Times.

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(Jan. 28, 2014) “The system failed my son,” Senator Creigh Deeds told 60 Minutes in his first TV interview since the suicide of his son, Gus, two months ago (“Nowhere to go: Mentally ill youth in crisis,” Jan. 26, CBS).

Gus Deeds was 24 years old and had been struggling with mental illness for years when he was released from emergency hospitalization in November because no available psychiatric beds were found during the four hours of a psychiatric hold in Virginia. Following his release, he stabbed his father, Senator Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) in the head and torso before fatally shooting himself.

Scars from the attack still visible on his face, Deeds spoke about his son’s mental illness, suicide and his own new mission to change Virginia’s mental health laws.

Like many other family members with a loved one who suffers from severe mental illness, Deeds told 60 Minutes producer Scott Pelley that he faults the broken mental illness treatment system. “For too long we've been shoving ... problems with respect to the mentally ill under the table,” he said. “We need to take a good long look at fundamental changes in our system of care."

Deeds’ has introduced several bills that might have made a difference for his son, including one that would create a real-time psych bed registry and another that would increase the duration of emergency psychiatric holds from four hours – currently the shortest in the nation – to 24.  

“Gus was a great kid, a perfect son,” Deeds told Pelley. “I want people to remember the brilliant friendly, loving kid that was Gus Deeds.”

Watch the full interview.

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(Jan. 24, 2014) Kelly Thomas was given a death sentence because he was “mentally ill, disheveled and unmedicated in public,” says Treatment Advocacy Center board member Carla Jacobs.

“The reality is that our mental health system is complicit in Kelly’s death,” she told columnist Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times about the acquittal of the police officers charged with Kelly’s beating death (“Law could be Kelly Thomas’ legacy,” Jan. 21). “It is not geared to protect those with the most serious illnesses.”

Jacobs said she hopes the legacy of Thomas – a homeless man with untreated schizophrenia – at a Fullerton, California, transit station will motivate Orange County at last to implement Laura’s Law, the state’s assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) law.

Thomas’s father, Ron Thomas, described as “distraught” by the verdict, told Lopez he would welcome the implementation of AOT in California –and more. “There should be mandatory mental health training for all peace officers.”  

We agree. If more California counties implement Laura’s Law and provide training for police officers on how to respond to a psychiatric crisis, it may save those who could otherwise face a fate similar to Thomas.

“In Kelly Thomas’ memory, we owe them a better turn,” columnist Lopez concluded.

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(Jan. 23, 2014) Since its first publication in 1983, Surviving Schizophrenia has been the bible for patients and families living with and suffering from the consequences of severe mental illness.

Now, Harper Perennial has issued the go-to book in a newly revised and updated 6th edition. The new edition includes the latest research on the causes of and the newest treatments for schizophrenia  and answers the most frequently asked questions about the psychiatric disease by families, consumers and providers.

“E. Fuller Torrey is a brilliant writer. There is no one writing on psychology today who I would rather read,” the Los Angeles Times has said in a review.

“A comprehensive, realistic and compassionate approach….Should be of tremendous value to anyone who must confront these questions,” according to Psychology Times.

Purchase the new edition here. Dr. Torrey has assigned all royalties from the sale of the book to the Treatment Advocacy Center.

(Jan. 22, 2014) If anyone else needs to be convinced that the United States is failing people with severe mental illness, a riveting new piece takes a close look inside Cook County Jail in Illinois where almost one-third of the inmates suffer from mental illness (“Mentally ill are often locked up in jails that can’t help,” NPR, Jan. 20).

“To walk in and feel like every other person I’m interviewing is mentally ill on any given day, I can’t wrap my brain around it, says Elli Montgomery, deputy director of mental health policy for the jail.

“You see people who are so profoundly ill that you understand this isn’t the place for them,” Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia, head of mental health, tells NPR.

Often, inmates cycle in and out of jail because of they lack support and access to medication on the outside.

"Here you have a population clearly identified as mentally ill, and you're releasing them to the street with nothing," says Sheriff Dart, who oversees Cook County Jail. “What do you think is going to happen?”

"I just find the irony so sick that that society finds it OK to put the same people in jails and prisons," Dart continues on the result of deinstitutionalization which he blames for the high number of inmates with mental illness who currently occupy his jail.

These statements highlight the sad fact that there are few places where deinstitutionalization is more evident than in our criminal justice system, where jails and prisons have replaced hospitals as the institutions housing the most psychiatric patients.

By ensuring access to treatment and recovery, individuals with mental illness will be less likely to have such a presence in our correctional systems. At the Treatment Advocacy Center we are working to make that a reality.

Listen to the entire story.

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(Jan. 17, 2014) My son was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at the age of 24. He also suffered from anosognosia and often refused treatment, which ultimately sent him through the revolving door of involuntary commitments. But he was always released before he was actually stable so that he could make room for others.

In 2004, in the midst of a psychotic episode, my son called 911. When the police arrived, my son shot and killed two officers because he believed they were aliens. He spent the following three and half years in jail awaiting trial. His first 13 months were spent in semi-isolation on suicide watch.

In the final weeks of his life in prison, he was given psychotropic meds that had heat warnings. While on the medications he was placed in a cell with no air movement and a temperature above 100 degrees. He died less than two weeks after being placed in these conditions. The autopsy also indicated major bruising, most likely from a beating.

In the wake of my son’s death, our county established a 24/7 mental health officer to help respond to people like my son.

My son had had dreams and ambitions, but his mental illness robbed him of both.

MARY
ALABAMA

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(Jan. 16, 2014) The police officers who beat Kelly Thomas to death – a homeless man with untreated schizophrenia – were found not guilty Monday on all charges related to Thomas’s 2011 death (“Ex-officers found not guilty in beating death of Kelly Thomas,” CBS News, Jan. 14).

Among the lessons of this tragedy is its reminder that victims of violent episodes stemming from untreated severe mental illness are very often the victims of illness themselves.

Yet, Thomas’s death is just one of the many deadly encounters that have happened with people with untreated severe mental illness come into contact with law enforcement. Our Preventable Tragedies Database currently contains 900 reports of individuals with mental illness who were killed or injured by police officers.  

If Kelly Thomas had received the treatment he needed for his schizophrenia, he may not have encountered law enforcement officers in the first place. But Orange County is among those in California who have not yet implemented Laura’s Law, the state’s assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) law, which would allow for mandatory outpatient treatment for people like Thomas.

Orange County - and the rest of the country - needs better mental health laws and policies if deadly encounters between law enforcement and people with severe mental illness are going to stop.

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