When it comes to sharing the truth on how it really is in America, Mr. Earley writes the truth with exceptional skill!
Personally, I can only judge what is happening across Kentucky with the 'untreated and seriously mentally ill', based on our own nightmares and what I hear from other families. (I hear more than my share of stories, that I'm not allowed to write about due to fear of our family members losing services -- fear of discrimination they may lose opportunities or jobs -- or worse due to pending criminal hearings.)
In my humble opinion, Kentucky like many other states, could adopt, fund and provide the best medical services/Medicaid expansion possible, the best supportive housing/employment programs imaginable, the best Assertive Community Treatment Teams and Mental Health Courts -- yet, 'without a Judge's order for a realistic Assisted Outpatient Treatment program', there will still be a large percentage who will fall through the cracks, end up in jail or homeless. Kentucky will still waste state dollars and sadly, these individuals, (often very young adults) will not receive medical attention for their condition due to their own civil rights and the laws in place!
This is insane, but more so inhumane.
Currently, SAMHSA dollars provide funding to several Kentucky agencies. I am most familiar with how the Kentucky Dept of Behavioral Health Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities
provides block grants that help support the NAMI affiliates.
These funds are used to support NAMI's siguature programs such as
the NAMI Family to Family classes,
conferences, peer centers and training. These classes and
workshops help many families and individuals dealing with a mental
illness, learn how to cope with one of the most challenging health
conditions on the planet. We can only be thankful for appropriate use of these dollars, but baffled by the evidence of miss use of other funds across America. (Please watch video of hearings for more detail.)
Thank you USA Today, Mr. Earley and other national advocates for reporting these hearings while the national medial focuses their attention elsewhere.
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Obama deserves praise for focus on mental health, but failed to invite right experts.
President Obama deserves credit for hosting a White House summit on mental health
on Monday, but the White House forgot to invite the people who arguably
deal daily with more mentally ill persons than anyone else.No police officers, sheriff's deputies, correctional officers, probation officers or judges spoke at the summit. No high ranking Justice Department official attended. Nor was there any detailed mention by the president or his hand-picked speakers about the recent mass murders in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and Tucson or on the Virginia Tech campus committed by young men with diagnosed mental disorders.
Given that the summit was prompted by last December's Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, the aversion by the White House to actually discuss that shooting is disheartening.
By the federal government's own admission, more than 360,000 individuals with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are currently incarcerated in American jails and prisons. More than a half million are on probation. More than a million go through our criminal justice system each year. The largest public mental facility in our nation is -- not a treatment center -- it is reputably the Los Angeles County jail.
How could the White House ignore these troubling statistics at a mental health summit or the frightening reality that our jails and prisons are today's de facto mental asylums? How could law enforcement and criminal justice officials be excluded from conversations about how to reform our mental health care system? How could a presidential summit be held without anyone talking in detail about the mass killings that made it necessary?
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