While digesting all of the public announcements and warnings, saturated info streams on social media, countless press conferences, and regular updates on rate of infection for Coronavirus Pandemic, it occurs to me that I need to take a moment and be thankful that I’m sane. The last significant social upheaval that ushered in an enormous amount of stress and inconvenience in my life and community was the 2015 Freddie Gray riots in Baltimore. Capturing the attention of our country and covered by national news, the unrest was incited by outrage over the death of a 25-year-old black man at the ..read more

You would have only assumed me to be confident, prepared, and poised to impress if you happened to encounter me in the halls of the Maryland State House. But what you probably wouldn’t have noticed is that I was deliberately shifting my weight on to my left side. This posturing was to counter the unsettling, embarrassing, and uncontrollable shaking of my leg. The formal and official environment of the government legislative branch, coupled with my inexperience as a mental health advocate, had boosted my adrenaline. The result was a pesky case of the shakes.   I was there along with NA ..read more

Another tragic story about a mentally ill inmate committing suicide in a Michigan jail. Unlike many reports on jailhouse suicides, this report includes information on the population of mentally ill inmates and their inability to care for them. As many as 80 percent of inmates in Michigan jails have some form of mental illness, according to a January report published by the governor’s Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration. The report also found that 1 in 4 jail inmates is severely mentally ill. Along with comprehensive, mandated CIT for all police officers and correctiona ..read more

My latest relapse into psychosis happened only in August of 2019. For five weeks, I was tortured by messages buried as barbs, directives, and insults into every Facebook post, Twitter tweet, and Instagram entry. The assault on my mind and sanity was relentless, and I knew I had to escape it somehow, someway. I found that respite on youtube. I found myself on youtube searching for vintage Mr. Rogers episodes. The shows were pure, kind, inspiring . . and most of all, I was unable to detect any subliminal messages or directives from the government. For five weeks, during August 2019, all I allowe ..read more

Once the nightmarish grip of psychosis had been broken with the use of antipsychotic medication, it was time to engage in the recovery process.  As described in an earlier post, the recovery from psychosis can be just as traumatic as living through the psychosis itself.  “. . .the reality is that breaking from psychosis is an equally disruptive event — all of a sudden, everything you trusted and believed in crumbles into disturbing remnants of delusion. Your universe is flipped upside down and nearly destroyed. It is a cataclysmic experience. I had to attend almost six months of intensi ..read more

Bedlam: An Intimate Journey Into America’s Mental Health Crisis, named as a nod to the notorious English lunatic asylum of the 1400s, is an unflinching look at the cataclysmic state of today’s American Mental Health crisis and the series of cultural notions and governing decisions that caused its unfortunate arrival. Dr. Kenneth Paul Rosenburg distills the unacceptable state of how America currently treats mental illness by weaving his own family’s story with those of others observed at the psychiatric emergency department of LAC+USC Medical Center. Alongside these personal anecdotes ..read more

Police found Zach Banner crouched in a corner, doused with petrol, and concealing a pack of matches in his pocket. Immediately transported to the station, psychiatric nurses assessed his mental state. They reported he told them that “life was not worth living.” Is it just me? . . or does it take a trained psychiatric nurse to determine that this person is suffering from severe mental illness? And rather than taken to jail, wouldn’t a more reasonable choice be to deliver him to a hospital emergency room. Well, I guess it must be just me because the formally trained psychiatric nurse saw ..read more

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