What the world needs now.....

I have read and reread the article below. As a mother with two children with a mental illness diagnosis, my heart weeps and I nod my head in agreement as I read every word. As an American patriot though, I stop and take a deep breath and find my head nodding up and down slowly changing to a shaking to left and right. Yes. Something has to change to help our loved ones who are ill. They need help and they need better care and they need to be safe. Mandatory licenses called laws is not the answer though.

There are a lot of people doing dangerous and unsafe things in this world – that affect themselves and others. We have the smokers (second hand smoke) the drinkers (DUI and accidents), people abusing drugs, both legal and illegal (See drinkers), overeaters (while their health may be at risk, they just seem to irritate the rest of the world, especially people on planes) None of these people are forced into medical facilities for their own good. My own father just entered the hospital where they found he had almost bled out completely due to some colon issues. I have been asking him to get a check up for months. While I worried, nagged and begged, should I really have the right to “MAKE’ him go see a doctor?

First and foremost, my children, both who have been unsafe in the past and have committed illegal acts, are human beings, just like me – just like you. They have dreams, maybe not like ours, but they have their own dreams and desires. Secondly, they have an illness that does affect what they think, what they say and what they do. However, mandatory lock up in a hospital or any other facility is not going to inspire my kids to want to be “normal” It didn’t and it won’t. Let’s compare the cold, hard walls of a sterile, uncaring environment of a hospital to the roller coaster ride of mania, then depression and then back to mania. Hey, the manic roller coaster will win every time. Yes, while they are in the hospital, they get medication that gets them “level”. First off, they don’t want to be level. Level is boring. Secondly, once they are level, they are now in a place mentally to realize that their life is on a downhill slide and they have a lot of work and time before they can ever be at an ‘average” place of daily functioning. On top of that they are expected to try and get a job, find friends who are level and not doing drugs and learn to pay bills and balance a check book. Even if they are able to do this mentally, emotionally this is overwhelming. And I don’t believe that this changes as they get older until they have had a long term period of successful recovery.

The other side of this story is even when in the hospital, they were allowed to stay, not to rest, not to get therapy, but only to get level. Then they were bundled up and sent home. This used to really make me angry. But later, what I realized was, if I could stay healthy, rested and calm, home really was the best environment for my kids. I cared for them. I empathized with them and I did not let them or myself become debilitated by sympathy and sorrow. We pushed through the bad times – together. And the one thing they never got from the system that they really needed was life skills. As I’ve watched my children grow into adults, I see that all they survivor skills that have made a difference in their abilities to be successful, they received at home – from me, their dad, their grandparents.

Mandatory lock up is not what is missing. What is missing is the daily support emotionally that helps our loved ones get through “bad days”. What is missing is an accountability system that holds them responsible for checking their mental temperature and seeking help before the pilot light on their brain explodes, blowing the whole system up. What is lacking is a medical system that treats our loved ones as people with dignity and the right to control their lives and them giving the tools to do so, PREVENTING the melt downs before they do loose control over the quality of their daily lives.

Britney did not get to the place where she is today overnight. This has been coming for YEARS! Where was her family, her friends, her medical treatment plan BEFORE she married her childhood sweetheart for 55 hours? Intervention should have happened then, not years later after a second marriage and divorce and two children had been born.


Other groups that offer support for ill people have stepped up to the plate and put procedures into place that have nothing to do with the law or with medical facilities. Family interventions are common for people with alcoholism. These interventions include family members, friends AND the people involved in the support system of AA.

What would happened if we could gather ten loving, people in our home to set down and talk to our loved one about their behavior and decision making process BEFORE we became so fearful we longed to be able to lock our loved one into a facility?

And that is what is driving us right now – fear. WE want them safe, we want them mentally sound and we want to be able to see that they are alright. And we can’t do that if they are roaming the streets or in jail.

But what if we were driven by Education and Empowerment? And because we were driven by positive traits, we are now able to intercede before it becomes a fearful situation.

We can not improve our medical treatments and what is available to people with mental illness overnight. Educating ourselves and empowering ourselves though is something that we can start right now.

Here is an example of what that can do for you and your family. I had a brother who committed suicide in his mid 20’s. Consequently, I read everything I could about suicide, the warning signs – just everything I could find. When my son was diagnosed with a mental illness at a early age, I did not hesitate to talk to him about his illness, his symptoms and to teach him that it was a requirement for him to help manage his symptoms and to learn to help himself. Part of helping himself was to tell me IF he ever felt the desire to hurt or kill himself. As he got older, this was a discussion that was common in our family. We didn’t run from it, we didn’t hide from it. And I taught my son that because we had discussed it so openly, and he knew what it looked like, and felt like, that it had now become a CHOICE that he had control over. And because of that, I could not take away his choice, but he also had a choice on how he affected me as his mother. And I got a written contract from him that he would call me if at anytime he had decided to take his life to give me the chance to see him and say goodbye. As ludicrous as this sounds, I insisted he write it out and sign it. He was 16 at the time. When he was 21, this contract was put into affect. He made that call. And of course, because I reminded him of his agreement to me, I was able to get him to agree to see me. I lied to him and said I would not interfere. I, of course, whisked him away to the hospital and today, we have a very happy son, working hard on his recovery treatment plan.

This might seem silly. But the point is, we did not wait till he was 20 and suicidal to help him deal with that issue. Dealing with suicide was something the entire family began dealing with when he was 13. So when a “break” happened for him mentally, there was instilled in him a behavior and an attitude to fall back on, even in the depths of his despair.

I think through our love, we often are misguided and we misjudge just how much our loved ones with mental illness are capable of and how much they should be held accountable of. We are so busy trying to protect them and keep them safe, we forget that we are still dealing with a human with a soul. They have the same rights as we do, even if their mental processes work differently. If given better tools and more choices, wouldn’t it seem right that even when their brains are chaotic, it would still be more likely for them to make better choices if they knew how?

I look back on my family history and the stories told about many of my ancestors. My son wasn’t the first person in my family to have bipolar disorder. He was just the first to have a diagnosis and receive treatment.

What I ponder often though, is for the most part, my family is made up of people who held jobs, had families and were considered successful and well thought of in the community. WE have some wild, and I do mean wild stories about their activities from time to time. But overall, they had productive lives. And I’ve asked a few of them that are still alive if they are happy. And all of them had said the same. They have been content with their lives, but it’s the Wild Stories that made living fun.

But what helped them AFTER the wild story events was the support and help of the families to keep them on level ground and get them back on track. It was the families that were there by their side and gave them the strength to go on and it was the families that gave them the most peace.

I want more than a successful recovery for my children. I want a cure. But the one thing I know I can give them is support. And sometimes that support means they will do dumb things. That means sometimes they will be ill, and that sometimes they will need help getting better. And until the medical profession and the system can give them something better, I am the best thing that they have.

Educate yourself. Empower yourself. Have an accountability system for your entire family. Teach this to everyone you know. Then things will be not just different – they will be better.








Between 'crazy' and 'committed'
The idea of a Britney's Law struck a nerve with families in similar situations.
Patt Morrison

February 14, 2008

It's Valentine's Day, and one family is showing its love by showing up in court. Britney Spears' parents plan to ask a judge to keep her under their care and supervision. Try finding a hearts-and-flowers card for that -- "To our daughter, we love you, please go back into the hospital."

Last month, I used Spears' very public mental torment to illustrate how a 40-year-old California law created to give mental patients dignity and legal protection has backfired. The bar is now so high for mandatory treatment that it's almost impossible to order mental patients to get care unless they physically endanger themselves or others, or cross the line from irrational to illegal so that jail becomes their mental hospital. The 1969 law was "the Magna Carta of mental healthcare," but in later years, even its coauthor worried that the pendulum had swung too far.

Give us a Britney's Law to remedy that, I wrote. The responses startled me for their volume and passion. Today, on a day dedicated to love, here are stories from loving, despairing families that echo what the Spearses said: "As parents of an adult child in the throes of a mental health crisis, we were extremely disappointed to learn that, over the recommendation of her treating psychiatrist, our daughter Britney was released from the hospital. ... We are deeply concerned about our daughter's safety and vulnerability, and we believe her life is [currently] at risk."

My in-box was chockablock with e-mails from mental health nurses, patients, social workers -- but mostly desperate and fearful families.

A former colleague's relative went off the rails, but the family could do nothing because the man didn't believe there was anything wrong with him. Nancy, in Georgia, whose son is bipolar, told me, "There is no more frustrating situation than watching while one's child refuses all help and treatment because they do not have the insight to realize they have a mental illness."

Two stories moved me especially. Jennifer e-mailed from Florida, where she takes care of her four children and her ailing mother. Her homeless, depressed 31-year-old brother, Kevin, hanged himself in El Cajon a week before Christmas. He had already tried to commit suicide twice, with dozens of pills, in a single week. The first time, a friend found Kevin unconscious. After the second time, he checked himself into the hospital and was put on a 72-hour involuntary "hold." It was horrible, he told his sister; he didn't want to stay. Jennifer tried to learn more about his condition and was told that she wasn't legally entitled. He hanged himself two weeks and change after he left the hospital, on Dec. 18.

"I was so upset that they didn't keep him longer," Jennifer told me. "He needed help and, had he gotten it, he would be here today. He should have been evaluated longer."

Then there's the Central Valley man we'll call Charles. His wife developed psychotic depression. Medication made her "a responsible individual," he told me. But then she stopped taking her meds and stopped seeing her psychiatrist.

Charles' seven-page e-mail chronicled a decade of anguish. "I soon found out that the mentally ill have more rights ... than the average citizen." When Charles' wife was hospitalized last year in bad mental and physical shape, the emergency room doctor said "he understood my frustration, but his hands were tied." She seemed lucid enough; she wanted out.

Charles raised a lump in my throat with this: "Mental illness has stolen the vibrant spirit and personality of a daughter, wife and mother. ... Even though my wife is no longer the woman I married, I still love her [but] the stress is overwhelming." Why, he asked, haven't lawmakers fixed this?

One man who's made mental healthcare his concern is Democrat Darrell Steinberg, the next state Senate president pro tem. He led the charge for Proposition 63, which raised over a billion bucks for community mental health, taxing millionaires like Britney Spears to help people who may share her mental state but not her bank balance.

Forty years ago, when the state made it harder to commit people against their will, it pledged to create more local outpatient mental services. Because it didn't make good on its pledge, there's never been much available in the way of care between "crazy" and "commitment." It's the missing link in mental health, and Steinberg thinks Proposition 63 can fill it. But "it's going to take time," he told me. "You don't make up for 40 years of neglect in one or two or three years."

But even a year sounds like a lifetime for Charles and families like his, who love and suffer in equal measure.