Shooting Spree Inspires Call For Mental Health Reforms

Mental illness is a medical emergency

By Tim Murphy

Published 3:09 pm, Friday, June 27, 2014

In the nearly year and a half since I have been investigating America's broken mental health system — even with my 30-year background in clinical psychology — I have been shocked to learn just how much our country has failed those with severe mental illness.

Take Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old whose instability was known but went overlooked before he killed six college students and himself in California last month. Or take Gus Deeds, another young man who was in mental health crisis, but was denied extended inpatient care before he killed himself and stabbed his father, a Virginia state senator. There was Adam Lanzain Connecticut, Jared Loughner in Tucson, James Holmes in Aurora, Aaron Alexis at the Washington Navy Yard, and on and on.

Shooting Spree Inspires Call For Mental Health Reforms: Friday's stabbing and shooting spree in Santa Barbara has renewed the debate over how and whether to require people with serious mental illness to get psychiatric care. Many families and advocates for people with serious mental illness say the country needs to reform its standard for civil commitment, which allow people to be hospitalized against their will. Doris Fuller, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, said changing these laws could help provide treatment for people like Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old police say stabbed or shot six people to death near the University of California-Santa Barbara.??

All had untreated or undertreated serious mental illness. All were essentially known to the mental health system, had the benefit of early identification and intervention, and yet all spiraled out of control because the basic tools to help in a crisis were missing.

"The status quo is not just uncompassionate; it is inhumane."

While these are extreme cases, they highlight how our broken system does not respond until after a crisis when we could be doing something to stop it from happening. Even in the face of tragedy, we are too uncomfortable to acknowledge the facts because the last bastion of stigma in mental health concerns those with serious mental illness.

The facts are that mental illness is a brain disease, and, of the 9.6 million adults in this country with a serious mental illness like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major clinical depression, approximately 40 percent won't even receive treatment this year.

We have found it easier to focus both the discussion and public resources on gauzy programs for "behavioral wellness" and "emotional well-being" than to confront the painful reality that those with schizophrenia or severe psychosis are more likely to go without care (4.4 million), be homeless (250,000), be in prison or on parole (1.3 million), or are dead by or attempting suicide (1.38 million) than are in appropriate psychiatric treatment (approximately 4 million).

Read the remainder of the article here: http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Mental-illness-is-a-medical-emergency-5584951.php

Mental Illness 101: Overcoming Harsh and Hateful Comments (Sometimes Our Own Families Just Don't Understand)

A powerful post by my friend Leisl Stoufer – that 'every family member' who has a loved one living with a severe brain disease should read.

Everyone one of us has at least one family member who doesn't get it.  They continue to hurt us and our ill loved ones suffering with a mental illness – and they will, until we become so outraged to do something about the discrimination and injustice. Read Leisl's story here:

Mental Illness 101: Overcoming Harsh and Hateful Comments (Sometimes Our Own Families Just Don't Understand)

For all of history, society has done everything in its power to sweep the issue of mental illness under the rug.  No one wants to be associated with mental illness.  No one wants to admit that mental illness exists.  Certainly no one wants to have a mental illness in their family; and what could be worse than being the one who  actually has a diagnosis?  No one wants to be mentally ill. Nobody wants to be “crazy”.

Finally, someone is listening to the families!

Last week, as I watched Rep Tim Murphy’s latest briefing I cheered with total triumph! For too long families like mine have been ignored. We have watched our loved ones suffering with acute psychotic episodes, deteriorating to the point we're afraid for our safety and the safety of others. 

Instead of systems working together for solutions, people look the other way, ignoring the warnings – yes this happened in Isla Vista, it happened in the Navy Yard, and it will happened again – somewhere in the USA.

And oh my God, what do these very individuals say after the latest preventable tragedy hits the airways?  

“How could we have prevented this unspeakable tragedy? Do we need better gun laws? Where were the parents of these individuals, and why didn't they do something?”

Let me explain what it’s like to be a parent of a brilliant young man who has a 21-year documented history of living with a neurological brain disease. Now as an adult, it has developed into a psychotic disorder and like other diseases will continue to deteriorate without treatment. Currently he lacks capacity, due to anosognosia or an inability to recognize he has symptoms and refuses treatment! 

1.) We have reached out to our family and church – but they alienated our son by turning away, not knowing what to say.   

2.) We reached out to the local community mental heath system (CMHC) and they are unable to help unless our son seeks help voluntarily. He doesn’t believe he has symptoms so there is no way he’ll agree to see a doctor.

3.) We reached out to our local and state law enforcement agencies and they said, "It's not our job” or “it's not against the law to be delusional.” 

4.) Out of desperation, we turned to the justice system, criminalizing our son, hoping to have him hospitalized against his will – a horrific ordeal that no family or individual should endure! Yet instead, our son wound up behind bars, punished for the brain disease he was born with.

Yes, only in America!  

Many naysayers report that ‘trauma’ causes brain diseases. The lack of treatment creates more traumas than a person can bear! My point, last year there were over 40,000 suicides and over a million suicide attempts! Additionally, 356,000 individuals with serious brain diseases were in the United States’ de facto institutions: jails and prisons last year. 

The cost of not caring: Nowhere to go: 

THE FINANCIALAND HUMAN TOLL FOR NEGLECTING THE MENTALLY IL 

by Liz Szabo, USA TODAY

5.) We reached out to state advocacy groups asking them to lobby for policy amendments and they said, “Now is not the time – maybe next year.” Or we heard, “We need to be careful what we advocate for – or we might lose our funding from SAMHSA!”

6.) We contacted CEOs of state agencies and they said, “We need to be careful about asking for system changes or the FEDs might close the psychiatric hospital!” (How is that for intimidation when you have joined forces with other exhausted family members to advocate to replace a 200-year-old antiquated hospital?)

7.) We reached out to state leaders such as the Governor, Commissioners and Secretaries of the Cabinet of Health and Family Services, (CHFS). We spent countless hours arranging meetings and their response was: “The system is broken and sorry we have failed your family members.”

8.) Then finally years later, when we are so exhausted we think we can do no more, we generated hundreds of letters and phone calls and attended dozens of strategic planning meetings with state legislators, and they said, “We will sponsor bills to amend the current mental health law, but the CHFS added expensive fiscal notes, stating it would cost too much.”

Year after year, we have watched our son cry out for help in the most inhumane way and no one listens. Due to symptoms of his untreated illness, he has been discriminated against, labeled ‘moderate risk of violence’ , with a file marked ‘CASE CLOSED’ by ‘service agencies’ that receive federal funds, with absolutely no accountability.

Finally, families like mine have a hero in Congress who is listening and his name is Rep. Tim Murphy. 

For over 2 years, Rep. Murphy has worked tirelessly to bring changes to the federal government’s wasteful spending of your tax dollars, by sponsoring a bill that would over-haul a broken and dysfunctional mental health system.

As of today, Rep. Murphy’s bill H.R. 3717, The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act has 89 Cosponsors – Republican [57] Democratic  [32].

H.R. 3717 needs a few additional co-sponsors so it can pass out of committee.  

"Our loved ones need treatment before tragedy!"   

We need the Families in Mental Health Crises ACT, (H.R. 3717) now!

Please help us! Call your US Representative in Congress today and ask them to cosponsor this important bill. 

Click here to contact your US REP: http://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup

Congressional Briefing after Isla Vista -- We need HR 3717 now more than ever

MAY 29, 2014Mental Illness Report

Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, held a briefing on the subcommittee’s report on its investigation of federal programs that address severe mental illness. Topics included a bill to overhaul the current mental health system sponsored by Representative Murphy and a competing bill sponsored by Representative Ron Barber (D-AZ). Representative Murphy, a practicing clinical psychologist, was joined in responding to questions by a forensic psychiatrist, a mental health advocate, and a father whose son suffers from schizophreni

"We've found it easier to focus both the discussion and public resources on gauzy programs for "behavioral wellness" and "emotional well-being" than to confront the painful reality that those with schizophrenia or severe psychosis are more likely to up without care (4.4m), homeless (250,000), in prison or on parole (1.3m), or dead by or attempting suicide (1.38m) than in appropriate psychiatric treatment (approximately 4m)."

http://www.c-span.org/video/?319616-1/house-report-mental-illness-programs

PEOPLE IN THIS VIDEO

• Murphy, Timothy "Tim"U.S. Representative[R] Pennsylvania
• Jaffe, D. J.Founder and Executive DirectorMental Illness Policy Org

• Kelley, EdwardFather
• Welner, Michael M.D.Founder and ChairForensic Panel