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November 1, 2009 - News of the WeekDECONSTRUCTING TOXIC STIGMA: SURVIVORS OF FORCED PSYCHIATRIC "TREATMENT" SPEAK OUT
Note: The TWITTER link was forwarded to us by Morgan Brown, a long-time advocate, chronicler of homelessness, and a veteran blogger: http://norsehorseshometurf.blogspot.com For more links to Morgan's work, GOOGLE 'Morgan Brown Norsehorse'
Link: Archived radio program produced and hosted by Anne Barbano with guests Marj Berthold, Nora Jacobson, and Laura Ziegler
Thanks to TWITTER's spreading-ripple effect, the first Vermont weeky radio program concerning autism and disabilities has found a national audience. The show, "The Next Frontier," is produced and hosted by Anne Barbano (abarbanovt@juno.com), a Burlington mother who excels at empathetic listening.
Earlier programs on "The Next Frontier" are archived at "Living the Autism Maze."
This week Barbano introduces a new documentary, "Tremors in the System: the help you want or the help you get,". Her guests are the film's co-directors Nora Jacobson and Marj Berthold, and Laura Ziegler. Beginning gently, the hour-long program soon becomes intensely illuminating and thought-provoking. A colorful background enhances the computer screen.
Enlightening moments occur when least expected, so savor every minute of this moving, stereotype-shattering program.
October 25, 2009 - News of the Week
GLENN CLOSE FAMILY HOPES TO DECONSTRUCT AND ELIMINATE "TOXIC" STIGMA
Bring Change 2 Mind offers encouragement and help: "This is where the misconceptions stop"
Take a beautiful accomplished celebrity, her close family, a topic often shunned; start a camera rolling with Ron Howard in charge. Then hope for good results.
In this case, the result is superb. Last week ABC-TV unveiled a candid public service announcement featuring Glenn Close and her sister Jessie followed by an interview on "Good Morning America," where the actress and her family talked freely about their experiences with serious mental illnesses. Click here to view The open discussion is far more compelling than a script could ever be.
Equally impressive is the Close family's new organization and its website, Bring Change 2 Mind.
This promising project came into being while Glenn Close was working at Fountain House, a 50-year-old "clubhouse" in New York City (the model is used internationally) that promotes recovery of people who have psychiatric disabilites.
Soon, we hope, this unprecedented mental health coalition will include prominent ex-patient/survivor organizations. That's the coalition of our dreams.
October 18, 2009 - News of the Week
GIFTS OF WISDOM FROM JUDI CHAMBERLIN
Two Interviews (source: NYAPRS E-NEWS)
A Talk With Judi Chamberlin;
Facing Death, A Plea For The Dignity Of Psychiatric Patients
By Carey Goldberg
Boston Globe
March 22, 2009
"NOTHING ABOUT US Without Us."
That is the motto of a grass-roots movement that has carried various names over the last generation, but has always revolved around a single principle: self-determination for people diagnosed with mental illness. Call them psychiatric patients or consumers or survivors, they are fighting together to gain more control over their treatment, and more say in the mental health system overall. And they have won some striking successes in recent years, gaining more input into official policy and creating new jobs for people who, 12-step-style, have recovered from the worst of their illness and now want to help others in crisis.
The mother of that movement, many people would say, is Judi Chamberlin of Arlington.
Chamberlin was hospitalized against her will for depression in 1966, and shocked by how she was treated. Her seminal book, "On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System," came out in 1978, and became a manifesto for the movement. Chamberlin's activism for patients' rights spanned the next 31 years, and evolved with the history of mental health treatment in this country.
At first, in a system that relied heavily on state hospitals, she focused largely on protecting inpatients' basic rights. As "deinstitutionalization" took hold and the hospitals emptied, she focused more on outpatients' needs for services and dignity as well. She also joined forces with activists for people with physical disabilities, and extended her reach internationally, helping push a treaty on disability rights that the United Nations passed in 2006.
Now, at 64, Chamberlin is dying. She has entered hospice care for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an incurable lung disease. (It is most commonly caused by cigarettes, but Chamberlin never smoked.) Largely confined to bed, Chamberlin relies on an oxygen mask and works when she feels well enough, including a blog chronicling her experience at judi-lifeasahospicepatient.blogspot.com. Her partner, Marty Federman, figures heroically in the blog, as well as a broad circle of friends, admirers and helpers. True to form, Chamberlin is using her final experience as a patient to argue for reform: The hospice system, she says, with all the autonomy and respect it gives dying people, could serve as a model for psychiatric care.
IDEAS: Psychiatric illnesses can and sometimes do disrupt things like a person's judgment, their perception of reality, their ability to think clearly. So couldn't that possibly, at least sometimes, justify coercion?
CHAMBERLIN: I think the only justification for coercion is where there's actual dangerous, violent or criminal acts. Because we let people do weird, possibly self-destructive things all the time - smoking, drinking, jumping out of airplanes. You go into the mental health system and it sucks you in, and a lot of people who've been in it in the past are willing to suffer rather than go in again.
IDEAS: What was the experience with the mental health system that got you going?
CHAMBERLIN: I originally went voluntarily. I was extremely depressed, and I thought I'd get some help. And after a couple of voluntary hospitalizations, I was sent to state hospital involuntarily and that's when I really realized, "Hey wait a minute, something is very, very wrong here."
IDEAS: And from that experience came . . .
CHAMBERLIN: . . . the fundamental conviction that there's something really wrong here and it needs to be addressed by people who've been through this experience. And of course, this was the '60s - the civil rights movement was underway, the women's movement, the gay liberation movement. And it just seemed to me that we needed that kind of movement for people with our issues.
IDEAS: I'd have to say that women's liberation and gay liberation and civil rights have probably moved a lot farther and are a lot more recognized as legitimate. Why, do you think?
CHAMBERLIN: I think there's still a tremendous amount of social stigma. I think there's a reluctance on the part of people who've had a psychiatric past but have become successful in life to identify themselves publicly because there's no upside to it, there's only a downside, and there are certainly some people who are fairly well known and successful who have, but a lot more who are wanting very much to stay in the closet.
IDEAS: What has been your movement's greatest failure?
CHAMBERLIN: The greatest failure is that we're not seen as an organized group that can speak for ourselves. Lots of times you read an article about disabilities and have someone with cerebral palsy speaking about cerebral palsy or somebody blind talking about being blind, and then you have a family member talking about what it's like to be mentally ill and the interviewer seem to think that's the same thing, but it's not.
IDEAS: What would you highlight as the issue that still most needs to be taken on in our societal life?
CHAMBERLIN: The issue of mental illness and violence. It's so linked together in people's minds and it so distorts what most people with psychiatric disabilities are like. Because while the research shows over and over again that people with psychiatric diagnoses are not more violent than anybody else, that's not what people believe, and it's hammered in all the time with crime shows - that this is what people with psychiatric disabilities are like: They're unpredictably violent in a way that justifies all this forced treatment.
IDEAS: What do you think people need? You've talked in the past about alternative services - mental health services offered noncoercively, often run by people who've been through the experience of psychiatric illness, so they're built on a self-help model.
CHAMBERLIN: When people are in emotional distress and they're asking for help, and a lot of people are - they say "This is awful, I'm in hell" - we want to make sure that help is provided in a way that meets people's self-defined needs. And one thing that's useful is the equivalent of a living will document. "When you see me doing this, try this or don't try this. Because I know from past experience this makes me feel good and this makes me feel horrible."
IDEAS: And you see a parallel between that kind of patient self-determination and hospice care?
CHAMBERLIN: The hospice model puts the patient in the center. What matters is what the patient wants. And then the various people who are the staff - the nurses and social workers and others - are there to support their choices. They're not there to impose their ideas.
IDEAS: I guess the difference may be that hospice amounts to an agreement that the traditional medical system has little left to offer you, whereas in psychiatric treatment, sometimes a clinician might think medicine has a lot to offer while the patient may disagree.
CHAMBERLIN: Right, but again, I think this is the choice part. A lot of people have used psychiatric drugs in ways that have benefited their lives and made the trade-off on some of the side effects because the overall balance is positive. But other people have said, "This drug doesn't work for me." . . . There's a jokey definition of mental illness as doing the same thing 10 times and expecting a different result. I think that can apply to doctors who push the same drug when 10 times it's failed.
Carey Goldberg covers brain science and mental health for the Globe.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/03/22/a_talk_with_judi_chamberlain?mode=PF
Reprinted using Fair Use doctrine
_________________________
INTERVIEW with Judi Chamberlin
Off Our Backs
by Leah Harris
BNET Health Publications
July/August 2003
lh: How did you come to do the work that you do?
jc: It was all based on my own experiences with the mental health system. I saw that something was very wrong and that people needed to do something about it-especially the people that this was currently happening to. Five years after I got out of the hospital, I found one of the [ex-patient] groups in New York. I found out that there were other people who felt the same way! It just seemed so logical to us that locking people up and depriving them of their basic humanity couldn't possibly be good for anybody.
lh: What issues did you focus on when you first organized over thirty years ago?
jc: It's the same stuff we're doing now. Just trying to get the issues across. That this is about rights, it isn't about "better treatment" or about needing people to take care of us. We're human beings, we're citizens. Why don't we have these rights that supposedly the Constitution and the Bill of Rights talk about? Why does it suddenly not apply to us?
lh: Was there an attempt in the beginning to reach out to the feminist movement?
jc: We tried to reach out to everyone. The early 1970s was a time when all these movements were growing. We made some good contacts with the gay rights movement. But I've always felt that the feminist movement just didn't seem to get it. There are an awful lot of therapists in the movement, and when you talk to women who identify as feminists, and you mention that you're involved with mental health issues, they always mention Phyllis Chesler's book Women and Madness. But Phyllis Chesler's a psychologist, and it's a book in which somebody else talks for us. And this comes from a movement that says that women should speak for themselves, but somehow they think it's OK that a psychologist should talk for women who are "mentally ill" and getting locked up. She gets it so wrong in that book, and it really hurts me when that's considered a feminist classic.
lh: How are women uniquely affected by coercive psychiatry?
jc: Well, there's an assumption that if you have a psychiatric diagnosis, you couldn't possibly be a good mother. There's also a distinction made between women who are distressed and women who are "crazy." You see this in the battered women's' shelters and the crisis centers, that if you're battered and subsequently distressed to an "appropriate" level then that's OK, but if you're distressed beyond that, you get packed off to the mental health system. And that's awful. A long time ago, a group of women at one of the psychiatric survivors' conferences said, "we reject the idea that there's an 'appropriate level for our anger' when we're raped or battered."
lh: Can you talk about the experience of writing On Our Own!
jc: At the time I wrote it, there wasn't anything in print about our experiences. There's a long history of people writing books about their mental health experiences, but certainly not about so-called crazy people getting together and organizing for rights and liberation. I really wanted to get that message out. Over the years, so many people have told me, "that book helped me, it came along and let me know I wasn't alone. I was able to get through what I was going through, and to hook up with other people and get involved." You couldn't ask for more than that as a writer.
lh: It seems that some of the advances made by our movement, however small, are being slowly eroded. Can you speak a little bit more to that?
jc: When I first got involved in the early 70s, the mental health system was very different than it is today. In some ways it was much worse, because you had the long-term institutionalization that exists less today. And in some ways it was much better-because there wasn't this biological determination, this idea that everybody needs to be on drugs forever. And so today you may or may not be in an institution, but you always have to be in "treatment"-engaged with the mental health system in some way. And the mental health system becomes so all-encompassing-providing housing, etc. All the services are provided on the condition of you being "compliant" with the system. And that didn't really exist before.
lh: And I think it gets back to how psychiatry is so all-pervasive in our culture.
jc: Yeah, and how people are so convinced that what we're dealing with here are "brain diseases," and I'm sure if you asked the average person on the street what causes mental illness, they would say that it's a gene, or a chemical imbalance in the brain-all these little slogans that there's no scientific evidence for! The science isn't there to back this up, but the PR certainly is.
lh: Can you tell me a little bit about the Bush administration shutting down the Technical Assistance Centers (TACs) such as the National Empowerment Center?
jc: It's this little tiny federal program-all five TACs-it's all together a $2 million dollar program, which doesn't even compute on a federal level. And here the administration went out of its way to single out this teensy little program. You'd think on a superficial level, we would fit in well with their Republican right-wing agenda-people being self-sufficient and "getting back into society." The initial attempt was to yank our funding right then and there, before the end of fiscal year 2003, and that we fought. And I think the administration saw that we could rally support, and we did rally thousands of phone calls and emails. So we got our funding for the rest of the fiscal year, but with a cut.
lh: Can you say more about what the TACs do?
jc: Three out of five of the TACs are run by consumers and survivors. They provide information, and technical assistance and knowledge, about self-help, about rights, about connecting up with others who have experienced psychiatric abuse. There's so much that you can read about drugs, and institutions, and formal programs. It's much harder to find information about alternatives, information telling you that people can get better, and saying "here we are, people who've been diagnosed with these supposedly lifelong illnesses, who are functioning well." We provide a lot of hope for people that they can do it too. I think it's very important to be out there. There are limits to what TACs can do because they are government-funded. So I think it's important to have the independent groups out there, it's important to have the government-funded groups-it's important to have the whole range.
People need hope. When you get diagnosed with a major mental illness, you're probably also told that you have something wrong with you on a genetic or chemical level, that you have to be on drugs for the rest of your life, that you're probably never really going to get better. That's taking hope away from people. So to provide hope for people-it's just thrilling. All the letters, the phone calls, the emails we get. People didn't know, until they found us, that they can recover, that they can have a good life, that they're not just doomed to being good little mental patients. That's very important.
lh: On the issue of forced psychiatric treatment, what do you say to people who tell of friends or relatives who were forced into treatment and were actually helped by it? The idea that "by criticizing the mental health system, you're discouraging suffering people from seeking help?"
jc: Help is only help if you think it's help. I certainly don't want to take any options away from people. I want to increase people's options. So if somebody has a lot of options, including medication, and they decide that medication's the right one, that's very different from medication being the only option, and it being forced on people. It's a strange kind of reasoning. The one that always gets me is, "if we had been able to get our relative into treatment, she or he wouldn't have killed themselves." That might be a way of soothing your pain, and if you want to soothe your pain that way, OK, but you don't know that.
When I was in the crisis center, I had this real break with reality kind of situation, and after a couple weeks of being in this totally supportive and helpful environment, I was OK. And for years afterwards, I would think, "well, I've had two breakdowns in my life. One was really severe, because it lasted for so long, and one was pretty mild because it was over quickly." Then I realized that if the first time, I had been treated like a human being instead of being hospitalized in this horrible place and treated as less than human, maybe that one would have been over in a couple of weeks too. And again, we are not about trying to take away from people anything that they find helpful, it's about giving people choices and information. Anyone who's opposed to giving people more choices and information. I just don't get it!
lh: What is your vision of an alternative to the mental health system?
jc: There's no single model because different things work for different people. The idea is to give people the space to find what it is that makes them feel better, and to help them get away from what makes them feel worse. And to find ways to enable the things the person wants to happen for her. And ideally there should be multiple settings where that takes place. It could be in your home, if that's the most comfortable place for you, or in someone else's home. I would say probably not in an any kind of institution, because institutions by their nature are very dehumanizing.
lh: What would you say to women who are going through a crisis and don't have access to alternative services?
jc: It's very hard. If someone needs something today, to tell them we're trying to make it possible soon isn't enough. They need to know that so many people have recovered. And that there are so many people who still have symptoms, but they are working, they are going to school, they have a social life, a love life. There's real life out there. That's our biggest unity with the disability movement. Even if you have a disability so severe that you can't move your body, you can still live a full life. And we too may need some extra help or some extra accommodations. But that shouldn't get in the way of living a full life. The idea that you can't have these things unless you're "normal" disenfranchises an awful lot of people. The fact is that people are living their lives and making choices with disabilities of all kinds. As a society, we are so fixated on the idea that there's only one way of doing things. I've learned from my work in the disability movement that people possess an amazing variety of capabilities. The human spirit is what's important.
Leak Harris interviewed Judi Chamberlin, who is a psychiatric survivor and an activist since 1971 in the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement. She has been a member of the Mental Patients' Liberation Front (MPLF), one of the earliest ex-patient groups, since 1975. MPLF operates the Ruby Rogers Advocacy and Drop-In Center in Somerville, Massachusetts, a self-help center which she helped to found in 1985, and which is run by and for people who have received psychiatric services. Chamberlin is the author of On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System and has also written numerous articles about the movement, self-help, and patients' rights.
Chamberlin is affiliated with the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University, where she directed studies of people who use ex-patient run self-help groups, and on personal assistance services for people with psychiatric disabilities. She is also a co-founder and associate at the National Empowerment Center, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a federally-funded technical assistance center which serves the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3693/is_200307/ai_n9241237/?tag=content;col1
Reprinted using Fair Use doctrine
September 20, 2009 - News of the Week
CUTTING-EDGE CONFERENCE WILL EXPLORE "FIRST BREAK" OPTIONS
Rethinking Psychiatric Crisis: Alternative Responses to "First Breaks" Save this date: November 23 at New York University's Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South in Manhattan
Present-day treatments for psychiatric crises too often traumatize the patient and prolong suffering. The successful use of alternative methods -- mostly outside the U.S. -- has provided a strong catalyst for change.
These advances will be addressed by a distingished group of practitioners, researchers, and users of such alternatives on November 23, 2009, at New York University's Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South, in Manhattan.
The sponsors of the daylong conference are: The International Network Toward Alternatives and Recovery (INTAR), joined by The Center to Study Recovery in Social Contexts, and Community Access Inc. Supporters include The Empowerment Center, Mental Disability Rights International, and SUNY Downstate Medical Center.
Don't miss this unique opportunity to learn about treatment alternatives from the field's top experts.
September 6, 2009 - News of the Week
COMICS TACKLE PREJUDICE
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/8236577.stm
Not funny peculiar
by Patrick Jackson
BBC News
These Canadian comedians mean to make you laugh but they are also throwing punchlines at a wall of prejudice.
They all have mental health problems, and all want to rise above them through laughter.
David Granirer, who takes medication for depression himself, has been teaching them a course called Stand Up For Mental Health since 2004.
He now runs classes in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa, as well as performing himself.
Graduates include Alex Winstanley, 23, who mines for jokes the schizophrenia with which he was diagnosed three years ago.
The two men talked to the BBC World Service about passing the microphone to the mentally ill.
A life of material
"The more screwed-up and dysfunctional you are, the better your act is going to be" is what David tells his students.
"Your life is your act."
Alex, who believes he will probably never stop "hearing voices" but says he has learnt how to deal with it, feels "more alive on stage than in real life".
"I'd find that after a show, I'd feel so exhilarated I actually wouldn't hear voices for a few days or, if I did, they would be positive," he adds.
David tells of one woman with schizophrenia who came into class one day wearing a striped blouse.
"She said 'The voices haven't let me wear stripes for eight years but now that I'm doing comedy, I'm not so afraid of the voices, so I'm wearing stripes*."
Succeed in stand-up "and you feel like you can do anything", says the teacher.
Shedding shame
Alex's Favourite Joke
"Having schizophrenia, I spend a lot of time being jealous of so-called normal people my age.
I've always wanted to have a dead-end job and a divorce.
Sometimes I imagine a so-called normal person being jealous of me: 'Alex, you have, like, a natural gift for, like, hallucinating. I have to drop two hits of acid to get anywhere close. And I'm so, like, lonely, I wish I had voices to keep me company.' "
David likes to joke that healthy people are more dangerous because, undiagnosed, they arouse less suspicion and, free of medication, are better placed to do damage.
"Being diagnosed with mental illness is like receiving a black mark on your forehead," he says.
"It changes the way the whole world sees you and reacts to you.
"You feel that all of a sudden everyone is watching you, is afraid of you and is wanting to do you harm."
He speaks from personal experience having first suffered depression in his late teens, before being diagnosed in his mid-30s.
"I've been in psych wards, had therapy, the whole nine yards," he says.
Alex likens the stigma to "another illness to deal with at the same time".
"As people with mental illness, we carry a lot of shame and that shame thrives in the darkness, in secrecy," says his teacher.
"Then all of a sudden we take these incidents, these things we are really ashamed of and turn them into comedy.
"We tell a roomful of people, they laugh and applaud, and all of a sudden the shame starts to dissipate, and you think ' I'm not such a bad person after all'."
Despite the subject matter, the jokes are not all gallows humour, David adds.
"There is a certain amount, yes, but a lot of it is just really about everyday life because we people with mental illness have lives, go to school, have jobs, have families."
His students present an "amazing mix".
"We have every possible diagnosis, age group, socio-economic status," he says.
Comedy plus medication
Having taught comedy at a Vancouver college for 10 years, David was inspired to launch the mental health course after occasionally witnessing students make "amazing therapeutic breakthroughs".
While comedy is not for everyone, with or without mental problems, those who really want to do it, will get something out of it, he believes.
David says his programme is supported by mental health organisations and he stresses that it does not conflict with psychiatrists' work.
"We would never say 'This is a replacement for your medication, don't take your medication'," he says.
He cannot yet offer any empirical evidence of the benefits of stand-up.
However a study due to take place in a few months' time may lend his form of therapy more weight.
Alex, meanwhile, is happily hooked on humour.
"It's my permanent medicine!" he laughs.
Published: 2009/09/05 00:03:53 GMT © BBC MMIX
Reprinted using Fair Use doctrine
September 2, 2009 - News of the Week
PEERS ENCOURAGE WELLNESS WITH SUPPORT
ARTICLE forwarded by NYAPRS E-News:
Peer Wellness Coach - A New Role for Peers
by Peggy Swarbrick. Peer Connection
Sept. 2009, MHA in NewJersey
There is significant concern that people living with mental illness die too young and/or live a poorer quality of life due to significant medical conditions. The Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) has issued the "10 in 10 Campaign" seeking to lengthen life expectancy by 10 years in a decade.
In response, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ-School of Health Related Professions (UMDNJ-SHRP) Department of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Counseling Professions and the Collaborative Support Programs of New Jersey (CSP-NJ) Institute for Wellness and Recovery Initiatives partnered to design a peer wellness coach certificate to address health and wellness needs from a self-management perspective. This training curriculum educates peer wellness coaches.
These individuals become competent to proactively support peers to promote wellness through addressing high risk behaviors and health risk factors such as smoking, poor illness self-management, nutrition, and infrequent exercise.
This summer, 18 peers in the New Jersey mental health workforce completed the peer wellness coach coursework at the UMDNJ-SHRP in the Department of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Counseling Professions. This collaborative academic experience included instruction from faculty in the Department of Psychiatric Rehabilitation, Nutritional Sciences, Allied Dental Education, Rehabilitation, and Movement Sciences along staff from CSP-NJ. The coursework was intense, but the students bonded through the shared experience of learning many new skills that could empower them to empower others in pursuit of wellness.
The following are some student responses:
Louis Blicharz, CPRP, CSP-NJ:
"I am proud to have taken the Peer Wellness Certification Course with so many dedicated people. It was an intense 8 weeks, but everyone really bonded and supported each other. I believe that this is an indication of the caliber of the Wellness Coaches who will be going forth to serve the people in the community. I personally have battled with mental illness for most of my life. I hope to use my personal experience, combined with the knowledge I have gained from this training, to help promote better health combined with increased longevity and a better quality of life for my peers".
Robin Weiss, CPRP
"I think that for the consumers/clients who take advantage of this new service, they will find coaching to be a fun and effective way to accomplish wellness goals that they couldn't previously achieve on their own. The excitement and enthusiasm we have about the coaching method/technique is sure to communicate hope and enthusiasm".
Lori J. Bell, Certified W.R.A.P. Facilitator and Trainer:
"I feel this training directed me to go from a peer 'counselor' approach, which is a more medical model, to a 'coaching' approach, which leaves accountability up to the individual themselves".
What is a Peer Wellness Coach?
A peer wellness coach is someone who can help a peer to set and achieve a wellness or health goal by offering support and encouragement and asking questions to see what would be most helpful. A coach does not provide a prescription, wisdom, or advice, but rather helps a person seeking coaching to define what is important and set a plan to accomplish a personally valued goal.
What is coaching?
Coaching is not counseling or therapy; therefore a coach is not a therapist, counselor or mentor. Coaching does not require that you explore your past experiences or gain insight into the problem or challenge you encounter. Coaching is a positive supportive relationship between the coach and the person who wants to make the change. This positive supportive connection empowers the person seeking change to draw upon their own abilities and potentials so they can achieve lasting lifestyle changes. A critical aspect of coaching is self-responsibility. A person seeking coaching should accept responsibility for where they are in their own life, including their health. Through coaching, a person can determine what they are responsible for and become empowered to take the action to improve their wellness status, in terms of the many dimensions of wellness: spiritual, emotional, physical, occupational, financial, environmental, intellectual, and social.
Why Peers?
We believe that there are many possibilities for peers to contribute to the health and well being of people living with mental illness who are seeking support in pursuit of recovery. Wellness Coaching is a new opportunity for people in recovery seeking a career in the helping professions to explore….
NYAPRS Note: At the September NYAPRS conference, Peggy Swarbrick will be joined by NYAPRS' Elizabeth Stone and our own new peer wellness coaches Erin Kennedy and Coleen Mimnagh, who'll be providing details of our work with Optum Health in Queens.
See this featured presentation at this month's NYAPRS Annual Conference to be held September 16-8 at the Hudson Valley Resort in Kerhonkson, NY.
August 24, 2009 - News of the Week
CALIFORNIA DOUGHNUT SHOP AND MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATES REACH A TRUCE
For over four months, the Psycho Donuts shop in Campbell CA has amused its customers by pretending to be a 'fun-filled mental institution.' Advocates who protested the shop's 'fun' at their expense were not taken seriously. But now that's over. The owner is reported to be moving toward a music theme and presumably all psychiatric references will soon be replaced.
The informative article below from Mercury News in San Jose CA was forwarded by Sarah Triano, an extraordinary advocate who is the director of the Silicon Valley Independence Living Center and a founding member of CAUSE (Community Alliance United to Seek Equality).
Emailed August 24, 2009
Dear CAUSE members (formerly FUSE),
I am sending you an article from today's Mercury News covering our success with Psycho Donuts. This is the result of a lot of time, effort, hard work, skilled organizing, and persistence by you and the leaders within CAUSE (Community Alliance United to Seek Equality), the coalition formed as a result of Psycho Donuts. The biggest success of this, in my mind, is the coalition we've formed - a united, cross-disability coalition that is ready to take on stigma and discrimination against people with disabilities in other areas now!
As the CAUSE t-shirts at our August protest/community rally said, "Disabilities are nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all."
Best,
Sarah
Sarah Triano
Executive Director
Silicon Valley Independent Living Center
2306 Zanker Road
San Jose, CA 95131
saraht@svilc.org
408-894-9041 (v)
408-894-9012 (tty)
408-894-9050 (fax)
www.svilc.org
Article Source: Mercury News, San Jose CA
DOUGHNUT SENSIBILITY
By PATTY FISHER
pfisher@mercurynews.com
Posted: 08/23/2009 Updated: 08/24/2009
It appears that sanity has come at last to Psycho Donuts. The place still has a crazy feel. The Bates Motel sign still welcomes visitors, and the doughnuts have names like "manic malt" and "coco kooks."
But the "bipolar" and "severe head trauma" doughnuts are off the menu. The décor no longer includes straitjackets and a padded cell. Something else is missing: protesters.
For the first time since the Campbell doughnut shop opened in March, mental health advocates aren't waving signs in the parking lot, complaining that Psycho Donuts' brand of zany humor was an insult to the mentally ill.
All it took was one meeting, one face-to-face conversation, to bring peace to the corner of Campbell Avenue and Winchester Boulevard. The question is, why did that take so long?
When I first visited Psycho Donuts in April, it was obvious that the owners didn't understand how offensive their mental-hospital theme was. It's one thing to make jokes about a Hitchcock film, but people who have been through shock therapy or spent time in a real padded cell wouldn't find the shop very appetizing. Making light of serious mental illness only contributes to the stigma, which makes it difficult for people to admit they need help and seek treatment.
Hey, it's all in fun
Yet when I tried to broach the subject with Kip Berdiansky, one of the original owners, he just kept saying it was all in fun. He refused to meet with local mental health groups to hear their concerns. While he insisted to me that he didn't want to offend anyone, he obviously was offending people and didn't seem particularly bothered by it.
Perhaps he knew just what he was doing. The protests turned into a publicity gold mine for Psycho Donuts. All the local papers carried stories about the shop and the protests. They even made national TV. An op-ed piece criticizing Psycho Donuts appeared in USA Today. And while a lot of other businesses that started during the recession were struggling, lines were out the door at Psycho Donuts.
Then, over the summer, Berdiansky sold his share of Psycho Donuts to his partner, Jordan Zweigoron. The first thing Zweigoron did was set up a meeting with the coalition of mental health groups. "The meeting started out pretty angry," he said, "but within an hour it went from contentious to a brainstorming session."
A sign of good faith
Coalition member Sarah Triano, who runs the Silicon Valley Independent Living Center, was relieved to finally have a chance to express her concerns. She called off the pickets. "We told him we would have a cooling-off period," she said. "Several of our members went down and bought doughnuts as a sign of good faith."
Zweigoron wanted to get past the protests, which he said were a distraction. And he wanted to make Psycho Donuts reflect his own passion: music. The padded cell is now a mini music studio. There's a "mellow submarine" doughnut on the menu. And "massive head trauma," a tasty creation with a totally tasteless name, has become the "head banger," a nod to heavy metal fans.
Zweigoron plans to keep talking with the advocates. "In the past few days everything has jelled and I couldn't be happier," he said. "The key point is: If you can keep a place fun and edgy without offending people, why in the world wouldn't you do that?"
Makes sense to me. Then again, without all that free publicity, where would Psycho Donuts be today?
Reprinted using Fair Use Doctrine
July 26, 2009 - News of the Week
WHY NOT CHANGE "PSYCHO DONUTS" TO "AMPUTEE DONUTS"?
Kip Berdiansky, co-owner of Psycho Donuts in Silicon Valley CA, relies on a marketing strategy that mental health advocates find unacceptable. The shop attracts and amuses customers by poking fun at mental illnesses. Berdiansky sees his "lighthearted fun-filled insane asylum" as a fresh and creative way to sell doughnuts. My friend Tom disagrees. He suggests that to be more relevant and truly innovative, Kip should set up his doughnut shop as a hospital ward for treating people disabled by diabetes. Get rid of the shop's padded cell and straitjackets and change its name to something like Amputee Donuts. What could be more relevant than doughnuts and diabetes?
When I first told Tom about Psycho's jelly-oozing donut named "Massive Head Trauma," he wept, then got angry. (Kip Berdiansky calls people like Tom humorless and over-sensitive.) Tom, a caring person, is in extreme pain. His wife had a near-fatal brain hemorrhage in April and she struggles hourly to regain her life. Although he may be partly right about Tom's sensitivity, Kip is just plain wrong when he claims he created a "fresh approach" to sell doughnuts. Doesn't he know that for decades, marketers of all kinds of commercial ventures have exploited psychiatric conditions? The huge success of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" in 1960 spawned the Hollywood psycho-trough, a prolific source of absurd distortions of psychiatric conditions. The task of uprooting distorted images and replacing them with fair and accurate ones has fallen on the impoverished mental health community.
Rampant stigmatization caused 20,000 stigmabusters to join the Internet-based stigma-fighting network of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). While some progress has been made over the last 30 years to get rid of cultural prejudice against psychiatric disorders, Kip Berdiansky is a reminder of how much work remains to be done. Does he not know or just not care that the word "psycho" triggers an immediate association with violence? Against this backdrop, doughnut names like Massive Head Trauma, Malted Madness, Cereal Killer, and Bipolar take on ominous overtones. Posing straitjacketed children in a padded cell for a "fun" photo reveals a clueless mentality. A Harvard study in 1998 found that institutionalized children in straitjackets accounted for 25% of restraint-induced deaths. That study brought calls for nationwide reform.
While Kip cashes in, people with psychiatric diagnoses suffer the pain of his marketing strategy. Would any other discriminated-against minority stand for it? No way.
San Jose Mercury News, Campbell's Psycho Donuts Owner To Take On Head of Mental Health Organization..." July 21, 2009
United Advocates for Children and Families, Sacramento CA, July 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Mental Health Advocates Call for Psycho Donuts to Do the Right Thing
CNS News, Political Correctness Watch: Mental Health Advocates Blast 'Psycho Donuts' Shop, July 24, 2009
June 11, 2009 - News of the Week
PSYCHO DONUTS SPREADS STIGMATIZING MESSAGE TO COLLEGE CAMPUS
Does a so-called fun doughnut named 'massive brain injury', decorated with oozing red jelly and a battered face really exist? Unbelievably, yes, in the small Silicon Valley town of Campbell CA.
Since mid-March, the owners of Psycho Donuts have claimed their right to continue their sales gimmick of poking fun at psychiatric disabilities. The tiny shop is set up to be a 'fun-filled mental institution'. Children are especially welcome and are encouraged to pose for photos encased in a straitjacket in a padded cell. [Straitjacket games at home can be fatal.] Anyone who thinks this isn't 'fun' is labeled humorless. Critics of the shop, who from long experience know a demeaning message from a benign one (such as Patsy Kline's signature song "Crazy") are ridiculed. Those who suggest a choice of alternate themes are accused of aiming to destroy the shop's business.
Recently the doughnut makers broadened the range of their stigmatizing message by taking it to a nearby college campus. Students have been recruited to peddle donuts they buy at wholesale. The implied message: ridicule of psychiatric vulnerabilities is socially acceptable at DeAnza College.
Would any stigmatized minority quietly accept such harrassment? Kim Hing, a film student who has autism, has voiced her objections to the college administration and to public officials. So far the college has not dismissed her legitimate concern outright, but it is unclear whether she has been taken seriously. Explaining her objection to the doughnut's 'fun' diagnoses and decorations, Kim likened them to a doughnut covered with licorice and named 'nigger'. It's an apt illustration.
I am an Aspie, that's a nickname for someone who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. It means I am on the autistic spectrum. I also have Major Depression, Anxiety, and ADD. I want to bring the following incident to your attention.
I am taking a film class at DeAnza College in Cupertino, CA. The DeAnza Academy of Independent Filmmakers club on campus held an event recently which I attended. Marc Buckland was the featured speaker. He gave a great presentation with insights on directing and producing for TV. Following his presentation, the owner of a new local shop called "Psycho Donuts" took the stage. Apparently the club invited him.
This man and his donut shop have stirred up huge controversy in Santa Clara County. This owner decided he wanted to make a "fun, themed restaurant where parents can take their children and not pay a lot."
The theme is a mental institution. You can eat your donuts in the "Group Therapy Room" and have your children photographed in a real straightjacket in the shop's padded cell. The donuts have strange toppings, such as cereal and candy. Order your favorite - Bi-Polar, Massive Head Trauma, or any of the DSM IV psychiatritic diagnoses.
Seriously, the owner thinks it is funny to name the donuts after mental illnesses. So why was this man on DeAnza College's campus? (DeAnza is a local community college.) He came to encourage students to send him short films with donuts in them that he will play on monitors at Psycho
Donuts. He apparently has a channel on YouTube, as well. Also, he offered to help the students with fundraising by providing them Psycho Donuts at wholesale prices to sell on campus. He will even send over some "crazy doctors and nurses to help." (His employees wear doctor and nurses uniforms and lab coats.)
Nice way of marketing, isn't it? Get the students to sell your donuts and you don't have to pay a dime. Never mind the effect it will have on students who have diagnoses. When I protested that it wasn't funny, I was told by an officer of the club to "stop disrupting the meeting." She also told me, "you're taking this too seriously." And when I persisted, she told me to "take it outside."
I wrote the college's newspaper and my letter was published in it. My letter is starting to make the circuit to various organizations (by way of people forwarding it) such as NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and Silicon Valley Independent Living Center. I also wrote the San Jose Mercury News and my letter was published May 9.
The local NAMI president e-mailed me the press-release that NAMI sent out on 4/28/09 about the impact this shop is having on the mental health community. He said I could e-mail it to anyone at the college. I e-mailed it to the film club members. The officer who told me to "take it outside" responded by asking if I also would have protested Jack Nicholson for his portrayal in a mental hospital. She wrote that she has visited mental hospital 3 times and was in special education. Her mother has bi-polar. She sees nothing wrong with the donut shop owner's "creativity" and says "this is a free country."
Clearly there is a difference between "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" which dramatized the deplorable treatment of patients in mental hospitals of that era and the ridiculing of those with mental illnesses in the guise of "humorously" naming strange looking donuts after psychiatric illnesses and encouraging students to sell them on campus regardless of how students with diagnoses might feel.
There is a federal law, ADA, that protects those with disabilities from discrimination at school. DeAnza College is funded by the State of California. I do not expect to be publicly humiliated and to have my disability ridiculed at a school sponsered event. While this is a free country, not everything that is creative is allowed at school.
I am certain that if the owner covered a donut with black licorice and named it "Nigger", he would never have been allowed on campus.
I do not feel I should be subjected to this at school.
-Kim Hing
Film Student
__________________________
April 26, 2009 - News of the Week
LANGUAGE MATTERS: WHAT DOES "TREATMENT" MEAN?
Dr. Sally Satel asserted this week in a New York Times opinion piece that "treatment" for mental illnesses is the best way to fight the stigmas that plague the field. But how does she define treatment?
Satel's article makes clear what the word "treatment" means to her. She applauds a current trend in treatment promotion by noting that "psychiatric medications are now routinely advertised on television." She is pleased that the military is taking steps to standardize "treatment" for combat stress disorders. Is she referring to a medicated approach which many veterans say does not work for them?
Most mental health advocates consider housing and a network of community support services to be crucial to the successful treatment of psychiatic disorders. To our knowledge, Dr. Satel has never used her impressive public relations skills to advocate for programs such as the successful "housing first" program in New York and much needed veterans' counseling programs. Why?
The pharmaceutical industry must love her.
Link: Mental Health Needs are Stressing Out Veterans Administration by Lou Michel, Buffalo News, November 7, 2008
Link: To Fight Stigmas, Start With Treatment by Sally Satel, M.D., New York Times, April 21, 2009
April 19, 2009 - News of the WeekWHEN DOES FREE SPEECH BECOME HATE SPEECH ?
A few years ago, a lighthearted attempt at humor by a small group of firemen in Long Island NY caused public outrage. In a parade, the men tied an effigy of a black man to the back of their engine. When accused of racial bias, they claimed the protection of their right to freedom of speech.
Will public outrage sensitize the lighthearted marketers of a jelly-filled doughnut they named 'massive head trauma' and decorated with a battered face and dripping red jam? Or has such crude exploitation become socially acceptable?
Please read and circulate the eloquent letter below.
April 16, 2009
I am a disabled veteran from the 'Cold War' era. I was medically retired from the US Army after a training accident left me with a severe and permanent brain injury. I am speaking to the customers of "Psycho Donuts" in Campbell. Not only are these entepreneurs capitalizing on the backs of my fellow disabled veterans, but at the expense of all decent people who are sensitive to basic human rights and dignity.
Imagine yourself as a lower-class citizen in England during the Middle Ages. Now see yourself as the court jester in the town square or a monkey on the shoulder of a clown meant to amuse the King. You feel the indignity of the spit, smirks and jeers, all day, every day. Switch to current day and substitute the jester and the monkey for brave veteran troops returning from Iraq ...with a severe brain injury from a roadside bomb or a rocket-propelled grenade.
Twenty miles north from the Campbell donut shop, soldiers at the Palo Alto PolyTrauma Rehabilitation Center are struggling with a new, strange version of themselves, struggling with a brain that interprets colors, sounds, touch, voices and pictures in weird ways...and nobody can understand this new perspective...the only thing they know is they're alone and these changes will last forever. When they joined the military they didn't sign up for ridcule and the butt of public humor. They didn't expect a greeting like they are recieving from this seemingly harmless donut shop. But they did have a "Massive Head Trauma."
Let's protect the dignity of our veterans ... let's not trivialize brain injury. It's so devastating, so permanent. One of their pastries is called "Massive Head Trauma" -- this is the kind of scorn that can send our wounded warriors and their families into a downward spiral of depression. We feel like outsiders as it is. All survivors of head trauma are embarrassed by this display. Veterans of all wars are disgusted. "Support our troops" is the vogue catch-phrase of our age...let's be true to our convictions.... Tell Mayor Kennedy and the Campbell City Council that language is a reflection of intelligence, and Campbell is developing a reputation of callous ignorance.
Hardy Stone
US Army Airborne Infantry
USMA 1980
Frederick, Maryland
April 15, 2009 - News of the Week
'PSYCHO DONUTS' TURNS BACK THE CLOCKTwo Silicon Valley entepreneurs have discovered a cool way to market products. They opened a donut shop and turned it into a fun-filled insane asylum. The store teems with "lighthearted" ideas based on vulnerable human conditions. Favorites are wrapping children in straitjackets for fun photos, donuts with clever names like cereal killer, and a 'head-trauma' donut decorated with dripping red jam.
What's wrong with mocking mental illnesses to sell products? Other stigmatized minorities (such as GLAAD - Gays and Lesbions Against Defamation) could answer that question easily. The mental health community is still not sure.
Perhaps the extraordinary article below, reprinted from 2004, will help us to rethink our community's goals and how to reach them.
April 18, 2004 - News of the WeekA PSYCHIATRIC SURVIVOR NAMES BIGGEST CHALLENGE
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel, "Severe mental illness is a tiring challenge, every waking moment, every waking day. Do not dismiss this essay..."Biggest challenge of mental illness is the stigmatization
By MAEL ANNE DINNELL
April 18, 2004
I belong to a community, a social class and a subculture that, by necessity, requires that I regularly be categorized for the purpose of treatment and concrete assistance.
This is a community whose members are familiar with constant challenges and frequent anguish. People die frequently in this community, from suicide, drug overdose and physiological complications, which are the side effects of very powerful medications — side effects like tumors, heart problems, kidney failure, poor liver function, toxicity, etc.
But for all these high prices, we in this community suffer most profoundly from stigmatization, derision, misunderstanding and discrimination that no other minority would allow to pass unchallenged. Paradoxically, the way we are included in society is by segregation, which we wearily (and necessarily) allow. We are the "mentally ill," the consumers in a system of a particular kind of care.
I feel urgency, in the light of attempts by the governor of California to minimize and even cap our services, to address the larger society about what life is like for us. Severe mental illness is a tiring challenge, every waking moment of every waking day. Do not dismiss this essay at this point out of an ignorant conviction that we are lazy, crazy or unsalvageable. You stand to learn something about your fellow human beings.
Segregating us allows for specific kinds of treatment the average citizen does not require, but it also engenders our dismissal. We are accused often of being dependent on the mental-health services that provide us with medication, living assistance, payees, programs, therapy and group support. But you would not judge a diabetic for being dependent on insulin, or the dependence of someone with kidney failure on dialysis. These things are matters of life and death to us, not only health and comfort. At some point we have been judged inappropriate enough often enough by society to warrant our assignment as members to this system, but at some point our functioning in it becomes relevant to the length and quality of our lives. There are many people in this society with fixed delusions or idiosyncrasies of thought and behavior that never get diverted into this system, and whose lives are not affected in terms of length or quality. The quality of our subjective experience (of ourselves and of the world) then becomes the most important aspect of being assigned to this system.
The typical image of a mental-health client is one of a client in crisis. That is when the public notices us, and that is when we come to the attention of the police. These acute episodes are the subject of ignorant jokes and the reason for unquestioned prejudices.
In actuality, most of the time we are not visibly distinguishable from you. But jokes and stereotypes at our expense occur regularly even in ultra-liberal Santa Cruz, and even in the alternative publications. Derisive references one would never dare to make toward blacks, for instance, or women, are commonplace and acceptable. Even now someone reading this is protesting that I am overly sensitive. I think not.
We joke about or own behavior sometimes. But there is really nothing funny at all about the experience of serious mental illness. Coping with it requires an outstanding level of strength, willingness, motivation and commitment. Most people could not survive it; in fact, many of us don't. I, personally, thank God every day for the new generation of "atypical" psychotropic drugs; they have freed me from the nightmare of cognitive confusion, misperception and emotional deadness that I lived with for almost half a century, whether acutely or in relative remission.
But I have paid a price for the use of the drug that changed everything for me: my body thermostat has been ruined and I suffer regularly from overheating and feverish states. This long-range effect was not known when I started on it. This is a typical example of the kind of trade-offs we are required to make in exchange for the blessing of being functional and feeling well.
In spite of infighting, we emphasize our segregation by the inclusion of only each other in our social lives. Why should we struggle valiantly to blend in with and facilitate the rest of the people in society? We accept each other as we are and meet each other where we are. We do not have to constantly explain ourselves or strive for some vaguely understood kind of appropriateness or redeem ourselves for the sin of being subjected to a condition we can manage but not cure or control. We can live, work and socialize within a group in which each individual is faced with the same dilemma.
It is trite and cliché to say, but the world itself is insane. World and local events are dominated by acts that are profoundly inappropriate — that is, inhumane — from genocide to child abuse and molestation to wars fought for the sake of territory and resources. It is almost amusing because the behaviors that find us relegated to the mental-health system (very early on in our lives) seldom involve violence against other human beings. As a group, we are no more violent than society at large; in fact, we are more likely to be victims of violence.
Sickness and health are determined mostly on the basis of peculiarity — not a moral standard, not a measure of our respect toward the rights of others. To "fit in" — somewhere — is the more and the mantra in this society. It does not pay to stand out. And neither is it easy to stand out. Thus, our sub-community is open to those who do not belong, and closed to those who do.
There is beginning to be movement in our community, as there has been for some time already in the ranks of the physically disabled, toward a kind of solidarity, political involvement and awareness that we represent an important voting bloc. My personal mission is to write and act toward the goal of not only establishing and maintaining concrete "patients' rights," but educating society at large about the image and the needs of the mentally ill — in all of their various circumstances, from life in the larger community to homelessness to institutions and facilities.
I know without a doubt there are people who have read this far saying, "This cannot be a person with real mental illness, she is too logical and articulate." And this is precisely the point I have endeavored to make. We are talented, we are verbal, we are interested in things; we struggle with a handicap the majority of people don't have, but you make a grave mistake to dismiss and outcast us.
In any case, we will be heard, and we are here.
Mael Anne Dinnell is a Santa Cruz resident.
March 22, 2009 - News of the Week
'MENTAL HEALTH NEWS' SUMMER ISSUE WILL SALUTE RECOVERY AND THE CONSUMER MOVEMENT
Ira Minot, the survivor of a serious mental illness, created Mental Health News in 2001 as a tentative educational project. Minot had endured a decade of disability caused by a condition he never anticipated and did not understand. As he began to recover, he vowed to turn a spotlight on the shadowy world of mental illnesses, often called "the last taboo." Mental Health News quickly expanded from its small base in New York to become a "source of information, education, advocacy and resources from the local, state, and national news scene." Published quarterly, current and back issues of Mental Health News are available online at www.mhnews.org
"Recovery and the Consumer Movement" is the topic for the Summer 2009 issue. The deadline for articles is May 1. For more information, see the announcement below (minus pictures) just received by email from Ira Minot.
"Recovery and The Consumer Movement"
a salute to the people and progams that are transforming our mental health care delivery system
CALL FOR ARTICLES AND ADVERTISING
Deadline: Friday, May 1st
We Invite Your Participation
Contact Us Today !!
(570) 629-5960
SPECIAL 25% ADVERTISING DISCOUNT FOR ALL PEER-RUN CONSUMER PROGRAMS
TO HELP US SPOTLIGHT YOUR VITAL SERVICES FOR THE CONSUMER COMMUNITY
Here Are A Few Suggested Article Topics Related to Our Theme:
Call Us With Your Idea for An Article !!
iraminot@mhnews.org
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Reprinted with permission
March 1, 2009 - News of the Week"ANOTHER KIND OF VALOR" TEAM WILL VISIT COMMUNITIES
As our service members return from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, greater numbers than anticipated are finding their homecoming clouded by mental health difficulties. Many search in vain for help, and news reports of family breakdown and suicide are mounting.
But invisible wounds are easily ignored. Is it possible to raise the public's understanding of combat-related stress disorders? Can we prevent the tragedies that lie in store for too many veterans, their families, and their communities?
Filmmaker Dan E. Weisburd and the California Institute of Mental Health have created an ambitious public awareness project, "Another Kind of Valor," designed to illustrate and explain the disabling effects of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The video kit consists of 3 DVDs with nine powerful half-hour vignettes based on actual stories of battle trauma, plus a learning CD that serves both as a learner's guide and a facilitator's handbook useful for self-study or group discussions. The kit provides a powerful stimulus for discussion of problems that are affecting families and communities nationwide. (how to order)
In addition, the VALOR team has scheduled "Learning Day" conferences in five cities, with more in the planning stages. Each conference will be tailored to the community's special needs, using the videos for illustration and guidance as needed. VALOR's "learning CD" will be augmented by local panelists that may include veterans, family members, mental health and substance abuse professionals, sheriffs, police, judges, medical providers, attorneys, civic leaders, and others selected by the conference planners and VALOR team.
By evening, an ideal Learning Day will have given every voice due attention, and will find the community's leaders working together, equipped, inspired, and determined to find solutions to the unmet needs of its returning service members.
In a review of "Another Kind of Valor" for www.miwatch.org, Phyllis Vine, Executive Editor, notes that in the light of evidence of cavernous gaps in meeting the health needs of vets "it would be surprising if the next Congress failed to fund essential programs." Vine suggests, "Before deciding what action to take, elected officials should be required to see the docudrama "Another Kind of Valor."
February 1, 2009 - News of the Week
BRITISH LAUNCH MULTI-MILLION-DOLLAR 'TIME TO CHANGE' CAMPAIGN
Don't miss the inviting website! www.time-to-change.org.uk/
Three British consumer-led organizations have united in a massive effort to defeat discrimination against people with mental illnesses. They are determined to get across the real story about mental health, told by those who know. The campaign will appear in 4-week phases over the coming months.
The first 4-week phase is a straight-talking campaign which runs from January 21st and includes:
The TV ad shows that being told to 'pull yourself together', being left out of things and treated as 'a problem' can lead people with mental health problems to despair – tragically for some, they just can't go on. TV viewers will be left in no doubt that the way they treat people with mental health problems like depression can make all the difference.
'Time to Change' is run by leading mental health charities: Mental Health Media, Mind, and Rethink, and is backed by £16 million from the Big Lottery Fund and £2 million from Comic Relief.
Each of these organizations is an established powerhouse. Their united website, www.time-to-change.org.uk/ offers a wide range of excellent resources.
January 18, 2009 - News of the Week
HOW 'WONDERLAND' WENT WRONG
'Wonderland,' a television series said to depict an urban psychiatric emergency room, was cancelled nine years ago by ABC after only two episodes. Now, with a reprieve from satellite TV, all eight episodes of 'Wonderland' may be shown. The news opens old wounds.
Wonderland's publicists in 2000 touted the show as gritty realism. But in fact, the show's inspiration was a special unit for forensic psychiatry where patients were judged to be "criminally insane." Mental health advocates who saw the two initial episodes were appalled by the shootings, stabbings, bizarre exaggerations and hyperactive pace. Former patients with experience in psychiatric ERs faulted the factual errors, lurid violence and nonstop chaos, and noted that while "doctors had complex lives, patients were a freak show."
New York Times critic Bernard Weinraub wrote that in researching the series, writer/director Peter Berg spent nearly 7 months taking notes in a forensic unit at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. A Berg interview with Ariel Levy of New York Magazine points to Berg's fixation on atypical cases: "I divided my time between the maximum-security ward for criminals -- from Goldstein the subway pusher to a guy who swallowed a couple of batteries at Rikers in a suicide attempt -- and the psychiatric emergency program, in which people come in off the street or are brought in by the police or EMT."
Berg, a multi-talented former actor, told interviewers he hoped to portray a psychiatric hospital more honestly than had ever been done before. But his result was over the top, even for a maximum-security ward.
(The horror of a genuine psychiatric ER was caught on videotape this year when Esmin Elizabeth Green, after waiting for help for nearly 24 hours in the eerily quiet waiting area of Kings County Hospital psychiatric center in Brooklyn, collapsed to the floor and died. The video shows that as the hours passed, a few staff members or other patients wandered in and out of the room; finally someone prodded the body with her foot. Wonderland's contrived and stigmatizing horror is no match for reality.)
"Can there be anything worse for a critic than to fall in love with a piece of work and then find out that some fine people have very good reasons for hating it?" (read article...)
December 7, 2008 - News of the Week
A LOOK BACK AT DUBIOUS JUSTICE
Would A Jury Today Be More Enlightened?
Nearly a decade ago, the year 1999 began in New York City with a senseless tragedy that shocked and saddened the city and dominated the news for months. On January 3, Andrew Goldstein, who had been discharged three weeks earlier from a psychiatric hospital with a one-week supply of medication, pushed Kendra Webdale, a lovely young aspiring writer, to her death under an oncoming train.
The Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington VA quickly declared Andrew Goldstein a "treatment resister" and made him a poster boy in their crusade for forced medication. Then on May 23 a different view of Goldstein emerged in a stunning cover story in the New York Times Magazine. The article exposed a trail of negligence - mixups, dead-end waiting lists, premature discharges - by the mental health facilities where Goldstein had repeatedly asked for the help he knew he needed. But by then, "treatment refuser" had become Goldstein's destined label.
Latest update: in 2007 a third trial for Andrew Goldstein ended with a negotiated conviction for murder and a prison sentence of 25 years plus 5 years probation after release.
A decade-old article below by Michael Winerip leads one to ask, Has the public become more aware of mental health issues since Goldstein's first jury trial in 1999?
Another article reprinted below, The Railroading of Andrew Goldstein (2002) shows how justice was derailed.
ARTICLE:
New York Times
November 21, 1999
The Way We Live Now: 11-21-99; The Jurors' Dilemma
By MICHAEL WINERIP
While the jurors tried to figure out what, if anything, was going on inside Andrew Goldstein's head when he shoved Kendra Webdale to her death, we reporters stayed busy speculating on what was in the jurors' heads. Midway through the trial, during a lunch break, half a dozen of us were sitting around the courthouse press room eating our $3.50 tuna sandwiches from Lil's when a TV reporter cut right through all the expert psychiatric testimony. "I'd vote guilty," she said. "I'd want to make sure Goldstein goes away for a long time."
That of course was not what the trial was supposed to be about. It was the jurors' job to decide whether Goldstein knew right from wrong when he pushed Kendra Webdale in front of the subway train or whether he was insane at the time, and thus not responsible for what he did. Was he once again in some sort of uncontrollable psychotic fog as he had repeatedly told psychiatrists in recent years each time he'd punched and shoved people? Or was he a budding Ted Bundy who craftily used his schizophrenia as a shield for his rage against women?
If judged sane at that awful moment, Goldstein would be guilty of murder and most likely would serve at least 25 years in a state prison.
If judged insane, he would go to a secure state psychiatric hospital. There he would be re-evaluated every two years to determine whether he was fit for discharge. And that, I believe, scared the hell out of many New Yorkers -- the possibility that Andrew Goldstein could be back on the streets in a few years' time. It was, to my mind, the prosecutor's secret weapon.
At the start of their deliberations, the 12 jurors polled themselves. Five felt Goldstein was guilty of murder; three felt he was not guilty by reason of insanity; four were undecided.
Hannah McCaughey, 32, a graphics designer, was among the undecideds. But as the days passed, she and most of the others switched to guilty. Partly, she said, it was because Goldstein had seemed more rational in his videotaped confession than she'd anticipated. "I would have expected him to seem more delusional," she said. "Like he thought Kendra was a green monster and her head was on fire and he was trying to put it out."
But there was something else, several of them said in interviews, that kept eating at them, that they knew, as jurors, they were not supposed to consider, but that they could not help worrying about. "I was thinking, What happens if he's found not guilty by reason of insanity and gets out in a short time," McCaughey said. "I know we weren't supposed to talk about it, but I brought it up once myself. I said, "Let's talk about the ramifications of our judgment."
"Having grown up in New York," she added, "I know that people don't stay in mental institutions very long. I thought to myself, How am I going to feel in a year or two or five when he's killed somebody else? The state's record is so bad -- it definitely had an influence on me."
The truth is, if Goldstein was judged insane, he would probably spend as much or more time locked away. A 1995 study from the journal Law and Human Behavior looked at the cases of 526 New York defendants in criminal trials who claimed insanity; most of them, about two-thirds, were unsuccessful. But those who were judged insane actually wound up spending more time confined to psychiatric facilities than their guilty counterparts spent in prisons. Experts I spoke with agreed. Dr. E. Fuller Torrey [see footnote by ja], one of the nation's leading researchers on schizophrenia, has examined John Hinckley Jr., written a book on Ezra Pound and pushed for tougher commitment laws for mentally ill people resistant to treatment. But he has no doubt that if Goldstein was found insane, he'd be locked away for a long, long stretch: "In these high-profile cases, psychiatrists know the public is watching. Psychiatrists aren't particularly brave people. No psychiatrist is going to stick out his neck for someone like Goldstein. There's too much at stake."
Even a veteran New York City prosecutor told me, "We generally don't have a problem with criminally insane people being released before we think they're ready."
After the jury deadlocked, 10-2, and a mistrial was declared, the media focused on the biases of the two holdouts who felt Goldstein was insane. It is just as important to look at the biases of the majority.
I am no bleeding heart. The primary victim here is not Goldstein but the Webdales. They've already been tortured twice this last year. They lost a beautiful daughter, and now, after forcing themselves to attend this gruesome murder trial every day for weeks, they will face it all over again at the retrial. And yet, because they labored to turn despair into something constructive, George Pataki this month, for the first time during his five years as governor, was shamed into offering significant new resources for the mentally ill.
Still, Andrew Goldstein was also dealt a losing hand twice. First, by a mental-health system that refused his repeated requests for community care and long-term treatment, that kept dumping him back on the streets even though he'd attacked more than a dozen people in two years. When I first obtained his 10-year, 3,500-page record for the article I wrote in these pages last spring, I was amazed by how clearly a dysfunctional system was able to document its own failures.
Knowing that 3,500-page record, can we really expect a juror who suspects that Goldstein was insane to have faith that the system will someday in the future correctly judge whether or not it is safe to release him? That is a lot of added pressure to place on a juror. It's the second bad hand dealt Goldstein: a psychiatric system that has lost the public's trust lowers the odds that a mentally ill human being will get evenhanded justice.
Michael Winerip is a staff writer for the magazine. His last article was "Bedlam on the Streets."
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The failure of the legal profession, the court system and the public to grasp the vital concepts involved in the two trials of Andrew Goldstein further reinforce the fact that we at NAMI have much work to do.
In January 1999, Andrew Goldstein, an unmedicated, delusional person with paranoid schizophrenia who had been unsuccessfully seeking help at various hospital emergency rooms, pushed Kendra Webdale to her death on the tracks of the New York City subway. Unfortunately the terrible tragedy of this young woman's death clouded public perception of the situation which allowed this to occur: the failure of the public system to offer the required state-financed housing with day services, clinic visits and an intensive case manager, to this seriously ill young man.
It was, however, not the system which was on trial, but the other "victim" of this tragedy, Andrew Goldstein himself. The first trial ended in a hung jury, because two jury members had had some limited experience with the mental health system and consequently understood the nature of Goldstein's illness and his inability to form the necessary intent to commit murder in his psychotic state. The public's outcry for revengeful punishment did not, however, cease.
In late February, 2000, a second trial was commenced. After hearing the evidence, the judge instructed the jury that they had the option of convicting the defendant of manslaughter in lieu of the second degree murder charges, if they found that he had acted with "depraved indifference," but without the requisite intent necessary for a conviction of second degree murder. It took the jury only two hours to reach the verdict of second degree murder.
The irony of the situation should not be overlooked: Andrew Goldstein was being held at Bellevue Hospital following his arrest where he was willingly receiving treatment for his illness and consequently would not be able to appear sufficiently psychotic at his trial to demonstrate to the jury the disabling effect of this illness on his judgment. The defense pinned its hopes on taking Mr. Goldstein off his antipsychotic medication and putting him on the stand, to better show the jurors his mental state at the time of the attack. This novel concept was thwarted when Mr. Goldstein struck a social worker, further indicating his violent state of mind when unmedicated. Judge Berkman insisted that Mr. Goldstein be offered the choice of taking his antipsychotic medication, which he chose to do. The result was that the jury was able to see a passive, sedated individual and not the person whose delusions caused his violent behavior.
NAMI's suggestions to the defense counsel to utilize the virtual reality videos produced by pharmaceutical companies which demonstrate the psychotic state of mind, as well as comparisons to the diminished capacity suffered by individuals who are experiencing the onset of a diabetic coma or an epileptic seizure, fell on deaf ears. The subsequent result demonstrates the ignorance of the judge, jury and defense counsel with respect to paranoid schizophrenia. Andrew Goldstein never got a fair chance.
At the conclusion of the trial, the jurors were convinced that punishment, not treatment, was warranted. Mrs. Webdale, the victim's mother spoke at the sentencing hearing: "It is my contention that if Andrew Goldstein had been held responsible many incidents ago, there would not have been 13 assaults and one homicide committed by him. His ongoing aggression was tolerated and acceptable." The presiding judge concurred saying that the attack stemmed from the state mental health system's failure to punish Mr. Goldstein for past assaults.
On May 5, 2000, Judge Berkman gave Andrew Goldstein the maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison for the murder of Kendra Webdale. What is wrong with this picture? Has the "justice system" reverted to a witch hunt to punish the violent mentally ill whom the public system has dismally failed? Are we, as a society, going to be content with the gross misunderstandings of mental illness which were demonstrated in this trial? How are we going to educate the judiciary about these issues?
The ultimate irony is that the New York State legislature, ever reluctant to provide sufficient funding for treatment for the mentally ill, hastily passed a bill, commonly referred to as "Kendra's Law," allowing for court ordered treatment or commitment of the mentally ill under certain circumstances. Andrew Goldstein who is now rotting in the state prison system, had tried repeatedly to get help before the attack. He even sought his own commitment when he realized that he was out of control. The misnomered "Kendra's Law" would not have prevented this tragedy.
PATRICIA WARBURG CLIFF, an attorney and mental health advocate in New York City, serves on the national board of NAMI as well as on the board of NAMI-NYC Metro. Her only child, Kenneth Johnson, succumbed to depression in 1995, as a result of the private health care system's failure to adequately diagnose and appropriately care for his illness.
November 21, 2008 - News of the Week'ANOTHER KIND OF VALOR' CAPTURES TORMENT OF STRESS DISORDERS IN VIDEO VIGNETTES
An Audience Discussion Guide is Included to Promote Public Awareness
For details and order information, click http://www.cimh.org/Learning/Publications-DVD/Another-Kind-Of-Valor.aspx
Will the grateful American public provide our returning war veterans with the help they need to cope with combat-related stress disorders and brain injuries? The public first needs a basic understanding of these challenging conditions. To bridge the gap in public understanding of wounds that are disabling but invisible, the California Institute for Mental Health (CIMH) has released 'Another Kind of Valor', an outstanding set of videos that is both deeply moving and a powerful stimulus for discussion of problems that affect families and communities nationwide.
The CIMH video kit consists of 3 DVDs with nine powerful half-hour vignettes based on actual stories of battle trauma, plus a learning CD that serves both as a learner's guide and a facilitator's handbook useful for self-study or group discussions.
Returning to civilian life from combat is almost always a hard road to run. Studies have shown that a third of G.I.'s returning from the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan - more than 300,000 men and women - have endured mental health difficulties.
While most Americans can empathsize with the challenges faced by veterans suffering from physical injuries and disabilities, it is often more difficult for civilians to comprehend the complex emotional and psychological problems confronting veterans suffering from post-deployment mental health issues - or the invisible injuries of war - such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and traumatic brain injury. By bringing these stories to life through the docu-drama format, Another Kind of Valor helps to foster awareness, discussion, and understanding of the struggles our disabled veterans and their family caregivers face, and contributes to the development of a more supportive encironment in which they can begin to heal and recover from the wounds of war.
MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS ARE STRESSING OUT VETERANS' ADMINISTRATION
War Veterans Seeking Help In Record Numbers
By Lou Michel
Buffalo News
November 7, 2008
Dana Cushing is a disabled veteran who is supposed to receive an hour of counseling each week through the Buffalo VA. But she shares that hour of a psychologist's time with 15 others in group therapy. "So you have 60 minutes divided by 15 people. That's four minutes apiece, and that's not going to help," Cushing said.
She is not alone.
Returning war veterans are seeking help for depression, anger and other mental health problems in record numbers in Buffalo Veterans Affairs Medical Center and similar hospitals around the country.
The most common treatment is medication. In fact, the number of prescriptions given to local [Buffalo] veterans to help them with mental problems has increased from about 1,700 seven years ago to almost 8,000 in the 2007-08 fiscal year.
The problem is that medicine, on its own, does not teach the veterans how to cope. That is why a campaign is under way to enlist psychologists and other mental health providers to work with war veterans.
There's just one catch. There's no pay. It's volunteered time. Not a lot. Just one hour a week. "We're appealing to the social and moral conscience of behavioral providers in the community to reach out and offer one hour per week," said Thomas P. McNulty, president of Mental Health Services of Erie County. "Soldiers and their families deserve nothing but the very best from our community."
The need is pressing and will continue to grow, according to Barbara Van Dahlen Romberg, national founder and president of Give an Hour. "I hear from some veterans that it is difficult to get immediate appointments and frequent appointments," she said.
The effort here and in other states comes at a time when more federal money is pouring into the Department of Veterans Affairs to treat psychologically injured veterans. Critics say there is too much emphasis on medication and not enough on counseling. Antidepressants top the list of medicines prescribed to returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at the Buffalo VA, which has spent more than $2 million on psychiatric medications since 2001.
E-mails to Romberg from the loved ones of veterans across the country often express concern that the vets are "primarily receiving medications and not enough counseling," she said. A volunteer force of psychologists is "nimble and fluid" and can fill in the gaps as needed, Romberg said.
The demand for counseling is expected to continue to increase as more veterans return home, McNulty said. To date, an estimated 1.6 million service members have spent time in Iraq or Afghanistan. "What we're hearing is that the wave of veterans returning will put undue stress on the current system, and new resources must be identified to meet that need," he said, adding that he is working with VA employees who cannot be faulted for the growing demands.
And, McNulty says, it's not only veterans who need the care. Their family members, children especially, need counseling to cope with extended absences caused by multiple deployments. "Let's say the mom is the one in the service, and mom's not home two years. The kids feel bad. They've lost two years. Then mommy, or daddy, returns from the war into a home that is already stressed by their absence," McNulty said. "In addition, there's the issues the soldier brings home."
There are others, as well, who could benefit from the planned local chapter of Give an Hour. Consider Army veteran Christopher Simmance. Over the last two years, the City of Tonawanda man says he has seen four or five psychiatrists and is awaiting assignment of a new one. "My old psychiatrist quit in May. He told me he couldn't stand how the VA was treating vets. He gave me a bunch of refills," said Simmance, who developed post-traumatic stress disorder several years after serving in a Middle East international peacekeeping force.
Medication alone, the vets say, doesn*t heal. Yet it is a big part of their treatment. And while the VA's mental health staff might appear sufficient in number to treat the more than 2,000 new war veterans [from Buffalo] of the last several years, these men and women are not the only ones who rely on the VA. Each year, the Buffalo VA treats more than 40,000 veterans, who are all entitled to care from its 11 full-time psychiatrists and 70-plus psychologists, social workers, addiction therapists and part-time mental health workers.
Working with McNulty to launch the local volunteer effort a few weeks from now is Christopher M. Kreiger, a disabled Army veteran, who suffered traumatic brain injuries serving in Iraq and post-traumatic stress. "I've been out trying to push to see if psychiatrists would be willing to donate an hour a week to a veteran in need who cannot get it at the VA," Kreiger said. "Even the staff that works at the VA says there's a shortage."
Rather than sit at home and complain, Kreiger, of the Town of Tonawanda, says working to help fellow veterans has helped him. "The more I get into it, the more my problems don't seem so big," he said, explaining that idle time is a big problem for psychologically wounded veterans. "I just sit at home. I just watch TV," Simmance said. At one point, he said the VA wanted to assign him to a foreign-born psychiatrist. He refused, claiming his overseas military experiences would make it difficult for him to open up to that particular doctor.
Simmance said he consumes up to four prescription drugs a day for his post-traumatic stress. Bret Mandell, an Army veteran who has seen action in Iraq and Afghanistan, described similar experiences in dealing with the VA, adding that he has taken up to seven different medications for post traumatic stress. "Every time I went up there, they kept switching me around to different people, and I couldn't get a good relationship with anyone to where it benefited me," Mandell said of the VA.
Tracy Kinn, a New York State veterans counselor, says vets need to be proactive if they want to secure VA services. "They work for us, but they are very overworked," said Kinn, a former Marine. Veterans who don't take a proactive approach, she said, may wind up only with medications and "without the care."
Jeremy Lepsch, a psychologically disabled Marine from North Tonawanda, said he has noticed progress in the level of VA care. "It seems they've talked to the staff because everyone seems a lot more friendly and caring," Lepsch said. The VA also has enhanced its day treatment facility on Main Street at Hertel Avenue, describing it as a "psycho-social rehabilitation recovery center," according to Buffalo VA spokeswoman Evangeline Conley. "We're learning and modifying the programs based on current needs and what seems to be best for veterans," Conley said.
Source:
http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Mental+health+needs+are+stressing+out+VA&expire=&urlID=32281567&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buffalonews.com%2Fhome%2Fstory%2F486523.html&partnerID=173606
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November 9, 2008 - News of the Week
IT CAN BE DONE! Peer Counselors Become Agents of Recovery
ARTICLE:
Note on language: readers may prefer to substitute the terms "people with psychiatric disabilities and substance use disorders" instead of "the mentally ill and drug addicts."
Philadelphia Agency Is Rolling Out A Model For Clients, Including Addicts, With Emphasis On Recovery
By Don Sapatkin Philadelphia Inquirer October 9, 2008
Recalling Philadelphia's roots as a medical innovator dating to colonial times, city officials outlined yesterday what they described as sweeping changes - some completed, others envisioned - in the treatment of drug addicts and the mentally ill.
Over the last several decades, scientific advances have dramatically improved the lives of the mentally ill, many of whom are also addicted to drugs and sometimes homeless. But those discoveries have not always guided government programs across the nation that are intended to help.
"The question is how do we reorganize our system to deal with the realization that people get better?" said Arthur C. Evans, director of the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Mental Retardation Services.
At a news conference yesterday at a community mental-health center, Evans said some recovering addicts were being trained as peer counselors, allowing them to use their experiences to help others in similar straits. By paying the peer counselors, the program serves another need - getting people back on their feet and staying connected, as opposed to what has been described as the treat-them-and-drop-them approach.
Evans described the new longer-term model as the most sweeping change in the field since hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people were released from institutions during the deinstitutionalization wave of the 1970s.
The changes, which will be phased in over the next two or three years, will be accommodated in his department's $1.4 billion budget, Evans said, noting that peer counselors are not paid like doctors.
The speakers made a point yesterday of describing their new approach as "recovery" rather than "treatment."
Among them was Robert D. Martin, 42, who said he had bipolar disorder and was addicted to crack and living on the streets of Center City in the late 1980s and early '90s. Early in this decade, he said in an interview, his treatment in "partial programs" - "you sat for eight hours a day, then were sent back on the street" - gave him "a glimmer of life."
In mid-2007, just as some of the rethinking was being implemented at Evans' agency, two weeks of intensive training taught Martin how to support recovering addicts, how to run groups, and how to teach people the skills that most Americans take for granted, such as applying for Social Security cards and preparing to go back to school.
He got a job as a peer counselor and has since been promoted. He moved from the street to a shelter to the three-bedroom house he now rents with his wife of two years in Logan. And he just traded in an old clunker for a 2006 Nissan Maxima.
"I'm living life again," Martin said, sitting outside the news conference at the Philadelphia Recovery Community Center at 1701 W. Lehigh Ave.
The site is the first of several planned centers that will offer a range of support groups, counseling, education and social events in communities.
In general, Evans said, the changes that he calls "recovery transformation" - but that may be known to professionals elsewhere as "recovery-oriented systems of care" - are supported by research.
When he was a deputy commissioner of mental health and addiction services in Connecticut, Evans implemented what was described as the first such comprehensive effort, and when he arrived several years ago in Philadelphia, he set about doing the same thing.
"Over the years, it has become clear that people with addiction problems also have other mental-health issues," said Joe Troncale, medical director of the Caron Foundation near Reading, a leading addiction treatment center.
Troncale had no direct knowledge of the changes in Philadelphia but said the integrative or holistic model that was described to him appeared to be the direction in which behavioral health was heading.
Philadelphia, he said, had been known as a leader in humane mental health services going back to the beginning of the nation, when Dr. Benjamin Rush sought to classify forms of mental illness and wrote the first American textbook on psychiatry.
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Source: NYAPRS Enews
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EDITORIAL
New York Times
November 7, 2008
New York City pioneered the strategy of providing homeless people not just with housing but with drug treatment, psychiatric care and other services they need to live successfully on their own. Even with all the add-ons, supportive housing apartment buildings cost substantially less than shelters and are many times less expensive than jails or beds in psychiatric hospitals.
This strategy is taking root all over the country and proving beyond a doubt that people who were once homeless can be good neighbors and good citizens. Unfortunately, many neighborhoods are continuing to fight the developments, believing that they bring down property values. A long-awaited study from New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy should put an end to that misperception.
The study examined the sale prices of apartment buildings, condominiums and individual homes in New York City neighborhoods where 123 supportive housing developments were opened between 1985 and 2003.
Fear seems to have suppressed property values somewhat while the new developments, which often replaced vacant lots or eyesores, were being built. But that evaporated once people saw the buildings and how well they were run.
In the five years after the developments were opened, the study finds, the prices of buildings nearest the supportive housing development experienced "strong and steady growth," and appreciated more than comparable properties that were slightly farther away. In other words, the closer property owners lived to these often handsome developments, the better they fared.
The Furman study confirms what advocates have been saying for years: well run supportive housing can help both formerly homeless citizens and the neighborhoods in which they are built. Politicians and business leaders across the country should pay attention.
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October 26, 2008 - News of the Week
IT CAN BE DONE!
Neighbors and Civic Organizations Join With Advocates to Develop Housing Opportunities
Massive institutions on Long Island in NewYork once warehoused tens of thousands of people with psychiatric vulnerabilties. When deinstitutionalization began to sweep the nation in the 1970s, wave after wave of patients were dispersed from Long Island's institutions to fend for themselves. Many sought refuge with families who searched in vain for needed services. Many others ended up on the streets of local communities with no housing or supportive services -- impoverished, homeless, with deteriorating health.
By 1990, community care had become a bitter broken promise. As a result, throngs of destitute patients across the nation are now in jails and prisons for illness-related offenses. The U.S. Dept. of Justice reported in 2006 that more than half of all jail and prison inmates had symptoms of a mental health disorder.
In sharp contrast...
As early as 1972, a Long Island group called Concerned Friends and Parents of Central Islip State Hospital began to meet in Suffolk County. The group grew, evolved, and was renamed Concern for Independent Living. This active, creative group has just celebrated the opening of its latest outstanding housing project (see News item for Sept. 30 below), increasing their creation of apartments to appproximately 550.
An article from 2006 describes how community cooperation turned a seemingly doomed project into a success.ARTICLE source: http://www.concernhousing.org/pollackgardens/Journal-Page9.pdf
ARTICLE
NEIGHBOR OF THE YEAR:
Town of Islip and the West Sayville Civic Association, Neighbors of Pollack Gardens, a project of Concern for Independent Living.
In many areas, local civic associations and community boards provide the primary opposition to developing new affordable housing (emphasis added by by NSC).
But in the case of Concern for Independent Living's Pollack Gardens, an outstanding new supportive residence in West Sayville, Long Island, the project would not have moved forward without the help and support of the West Sayville Civic Association (WSCA) and the Town of Islip Community Board.
After hearing about the proposal to build Pollack Gardens, Brendan McCurdy, President of WSCA, didn't object; instead he called Concern to learn more about both the agency and the program. He brought the information back to WSCA and convinced its members to support the project, a ground up, gut rehabilitation conversion of a run-down adult home. His wife Maura updated neighbors about the progress of the project through the WSCA newsletter, expressing the view that supportive housing would be a positive addition to the community.
Equally important, the Town of Islip Community Board played a critical role in cutting through red tape to save the project's tax credit funding. Three months before the funding deadline, it was discovered that part of the property needed to be rezoned to get site plan approval. This process normally takes more than nine months.
Everyone said it was impossible to secure the necessary approvals in only three months and the project appeared doomed - everyone except Eugene Murphy, Planning Commissioner, and Hope Larson, who was then the Director of the Building Department.
The Town of Islip scheduled an emergency Town Board meeting one day before the deadline, something that had not been done in at least 25 years.
Ten minutes after they unanimously passed the resolution, Hope Larson — who happened to be dressed as Wonder Woman for Halloween — issued the building permit. The very next day, Concern for Independent Living closed on the tax credit financing five minutes before the deadline.
The building opened a little over a year later, where it now provides a wonderful home to fifty individuals with psychiatric disabilities, thanks to the community leaders of West Sayville and Islip. The Network is pleased to honor Mr. McCurdy, Mr. Murphy and Ms. Larson as the Network's 2007 Neighbors of the Year.
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September 30, 2008 - News of the Week
IT CAN BE DONE!
Former Adult Home Undergoes Transformation in NYARTICLE: http://www.27east.com/story_detail.cfm?id=170539
New Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center Opens In Riverhead
By Jessica DiNapoli Southhampton Press September 30, 2008
The building at 260 West Main Street features beautiful artwork, crown molding, high ceilings and a well-equipped gym. These luxurious amenities would suggest that the building is an apartment complex or a hotel found in New York City.
But the newly renovated facility is actually located in downtown Riverhead and owned by Concern for Independent Living Inc., a not-for-profit housing agency that offers permanent shelter for those who are recovering from psychiatric disabilities. The facility, called Concern Riverhead, has been in operation since June and offers its 50 residents apartment-style living as each single-occupancy room comes with its own bathroom and kitchenette.
The residents of Concern Riverhead range in age from 18 to 60, and either have low-income jobs or are homeless, explained Elizabeth Lunde, the associate director of Concern for Independent Living. The Medford-based organization runs similar facilities across Suffolk County and, at the present time, provides housing for approximately 550 people.
The Riverhead facility celebrated its official grand opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony last Thursday, September 25, that was attended by local government officials and representatives of the mental health field.
Concern for Independent Living purchased the building, which was constructed in 1929 and formerly known as the Henry Perkins Hotel, four years ago. From the 1970s until 2004, the building housed the Henry Perkins Adult Home, a facility mostly known for its dilapidated condition.
For the past three years, Concern for Independent Living has invested close to $15 million in renovating the building, with construction commencing in August 2007. Work was completed on the facility in June.
The money for the extensive renovation came from three sources, explained Steve Piasecki, the upstate coordinator for the Supportive Housing Network of New York, a housing advocacy organization. Mr. Piasecki said the New York State Office of Mental Health, the Federal Home Loan Bank and the Community Preservation Corporation all contributed to the project.
"We absolutely improved the facility," Ms. Lunde said. "We want our places to look like apartment buildings or hotels because the folks rise to the level of their surroundings." She noted that there are staffers at the facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
As part of the renovations, Concern for Independent Housing restored the historical architecture of the first floor of the building, including the pediments, and added office space. The agency gutted the second, third and fourth floors of the building, which now house 50 apartments.
"It was a warren of old rooms from the old hotel," Ms. Lunde said. "The Henry Perkins Adult Home ... kept almost everything from the old hotel."
Ms. Lunde noted that there might have been some renovations completed in the adult home in 1920s, shortly after the structure was built.
When Concern for Independent Housing acquired the building in 2004, there were still 120 people living there as residents of the Henry Perkins Adult Home, explained Ms. Lunde. The not-for-profit helped relocate those residents to other mental health facilities in the area before embarking on their renovation plan, she said.
Riverhead Town Supervisor Phil Cardinale, who attended last week's ceremony, said the Henry Perkins Adult Home was "not a positive for the Town of Riverhead." He emphasized during the event that the home, which had been cited by the state for a variety of violations, was poorly managed prior to its closure.
As Ms. Lunde explained, the pristine interior of the Concern Riverhead facility is designed to help improve the mental health of its residents.
"It's nice, it's clean," said Sharon Francis, one of the 50 residents of the facility. "The staff is nice and helpful." Before moving to her new home in downtown Riverhead, Ms. Francis said she received treatment at the Buckman Center at Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood.
The Main Street location is also convenient for residents as they are within walking distance of many small shops and a bus stop, according to Ms. Lunde. Ms. Francis noted that she takes the bus by herself when she has to run errands.
Christopher Betts, the vice president of the Albany-based Community Preservation Corporation, said the former adult home that once occupied the building had been a blight on the community for years. He said the former facility provided substandard housing to its residents.
Mr. Betts added that the recent renovations to 260 West Main Street are not only an investment in the building but in the surrounding community. "Supporting projects like this has a positive impact on property values," he said.
Town officials agreed that the new facility, one of the first buildings that greets drivers who are traveling east on Route 25 in Riverhead, improves their overall impression of the downtown area, which has seen a number or retail stores close shop in recent years following the shuttering of Swezey's Department Store.
"It's a great building to greet everyone," said Riverhead Town Councilman John Dunleavy.
"The restoration of the site is wonderful," Mr. Cardinale added.
And elected officials were not the only ones to agree with that assessment.
"Once upon a time this was a rundown adult home," said William Polchinski, a therapist at the Peconic Center on East Main Street in Riverhead, an outpatient clinic of the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center. "But Concern made it beautiful and it absolutely affects people's mental health."
http://www.27east.com/story_detail.cfm?id=170539
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Source: NYAPRS ENews
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July 21, 2008 - News of the Week
DR. TORREY'S SHORT MEMORY
E. Fuller Torrey is no ordinary psychiatrist. His success at attracting publicity is legendary. His questionable statistics are accepted by the media. His made-up statistic concerning 1,000 annual homicides commited by people with untreated mental illnesses made the Congressional Record. The National Stigma Clearinghouse file is thick with Torreyisms that have appeared in the national media and elsewhere.
Most recently, a muddled Torrey statement charged that "as our readers are well aware, changes in state commitment laws have made it impossible to treat nearly half of discharged patients after they have left the hospital." (see Link below) Torrey's seeming amnesia about his activities over the past 15 years is disconcerting. In 1993, his newly-created Treatment Advocacy Center (Psychlaws.org) launched a fearmongering crusade to make outpatient commitment easier nationwide. Now, nearly every state has a law that permits involuntary outpatient commitment to psychiatric treatment. The catch: There are far too few resources to treat involuntary or voluntary patients.
Psychlaws' strategic use of fear to gain public support may have backfired. Their dire warnings and an obsessive focus on violence may have had an unintended consequence. A study by Corrigan et al (Psychiatric Services, May, 2004) found that such tactics produce a negative effect on public attitudes and less willingness to provide resources. The system backup we now see -- hospitals overcrowded with patients ready for discharge with nowhere to go, and long waiting lists for community housing and programs -- could be fallout from Torrey's successful campaign to change the laws.
Torrey has spent fifteen years crusading for an untested concept that over-relies on medication alone. Meanwhile his charismatic domination of the mental health scene has slowed progress toward more viable solutions. The good news: Although Torrey denigrates all who disagree with him -- actually denying the citizenship of consumers/survivors/ex-patients in the subtitle of his latest book -- his dismissive behavior may have fueled the burgeoning consumer/survivor movement. The first-hand experience of this group has become a boon to the mental health community.
Go to www.miwatch.org for a Book Review by Sue E. Estroff of Dr. Torrey's latest book
The Insanity Offense: How America Fails the Seriously Mentally Ill and Endangers Its Citizens, and What We Must Do to Stop It
Go to www.psychlaws.org for an announcement of Dr. Torrey's book. Top of home page, click Read More
THE FEDERAL CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES OFFERS A FREE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE: CHALLENGING STEREOTYPES: AN ACTION GUIDE - a 32-page booklet with directories. For a free copy call 1-800-789-2647. Available ONLINE at http://www.mentalhealth.org/stigma/pubs.asp, publication SMA-01-3513
The mass media wield a powerful influence over public opinion. It is essential that the news media are challenged to be fair and accurate, and that the mass entertainment media meet standards of fairness when using the public's communication channels.
At stake is the public's understanding of what are known as "mental illnesses." A 1990 survey of public attitudes sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation concluded that "Mass media is, far and away, the public's primary source of information about mental illness."
There is an inexpensive and direct way to combat stereotyping. It is not the only way (perhaps not even the best way), but it is effective and often leads to further dialogue with members of the community and key representatives of the media. The method is a "smoking gun" approach; it addresses misrepresentation head on, explains the damage done, and offers alternative ways of portraying mental illnesses to the people in charge. When the media get it right, praise and honors should reward the extra effort.
Like members of the public, many media professionals have limited knowledge about mental illnesses. Stereotypes become self-perpetuating unless they are replaced by clear, credible alternatives. If mental health activists fail to speak out, we resign ourselves to the status quo.
Most people, and particularly media people, have a natural curiosity about what they don't understand. Seek to build good relationships with journalists and other media professionals by being informative and reliable. Let members of the media know you respect their intention to be fair and accurate.
For a copy of CHALLENGING STEREOTYPES: AN ACTION GUIDE (32-page booklet), call 1-800-789-2647 and ask for publication #SMA 01-3513.
When you call, ask for a list of other excellent educational resources offered by the federal Center for Mental Health Services, a division of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
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