I had originally planned on a nice Christmas
related blog post for this week to make up for all my time away due to the
publicity and such for Illusions, which, by the way, is doing very well! I had planned some more catch up, including discussion on my upcoming "Bayside Romance" series, of which my next book, Paramour, is the first book.
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| The Cover Of My Upcoming Book, Paramour |
Unfortunately, the Connecticut shootings
changed that. Friday, December 14th,
was my birthday. It started out a great day and ultimately evolved into
something sad and tragic. Even though I live in Florida, the shootings at Sandy
Hook Elementary affected those where I worked.
Someone at our school is from the
Newtown area, her mother teaches in one of the other schools in the area. She
actually knew some of those killed. We
had parents who were shocked and in tears over the tragedy,
their fears for their own children’s safety magnified. I will always recall exactly where I was when
I got the text about the shootings – in a room full of prekindergarten students. Nothing focuses you on your job more than knowing you have twelve lives in your hands.
For the next several days, of course, there was
the inevitable media explosion, I don’t
need to recap that, we were all there in one form or another. Of course, there
was an anti-gun explosion prompting arguments on Facebook, fisticuffs in bars
across the country and one actual shoot-out in a mall parking lot. There’s been
much talk regarding gun control and death and for some it’s gotten to an
overwhelming point. Interestingly, I find myself walking another path in the
tidal wave of grief and shock that has stemmed from this horrible occurrence.
If you haven’t the time to venture over to check it
out, the long story short of it is that Ms. Long is the mother of a violent
mentally ill child. A child she lives in fear of and wants desperately to help
yet she knows that what there is ultimately cannot be changed. And this is no twenty year old, this is a child.
I found this blog extremely interesting – it was
actually the only to the point discussion
that I found regarding mental illness coming from the media in regard to the Sandy
Hook Elementary tragedy. This blog post
quickly went viral, showing up all over Facebook and then certain news outlets
picked it up, but, by and large, the mainstream media continued to focus on the
fire arm aspects of the tragedy – they still are. A quick perusal of the major media outlets
this morning revealed stories about the NRA being silent, the question of
violent movies causing more violence and of, course, more gun control. There was only one article regarding mental
illness and it was extremely small compared to the others. This concerns me.
Within the venues that run our country very little
discussion seems to be going on regarding the real issue here – the shooter was
obviously mentally ill and this country’s mental health system is wretchedly
broken. Interestingly, the discussions
regarding mental illness are going on in real time. It’s being discussed at
length in many a work place and amidst friends or family. Social networks are
ablaze with discussion regarding Adam Lanza’s mental state and the state of the
mental health system in this country. Many
people on the street, a lot of us who work in the helping professions, are
discussing this part of the Newtown tragedy at length because there are some
very obvious mental health issues within this situation. During one discussion someone stated that
"nobody really had a right to say anything about Adam Lanza’s mental state because
there had been no diagnosis mentioned”.
From where I stand, we do not need
to see the nuts and bolts of this man’s diagnosis. A mentally stable person
doesn’t go gunning down a school full of children the week before
Christmas. The act alone tells us that there
was some sort of mental illness involved. This was no ‘revenge’ shooting, Adam
Lanza wasn’t fired or bullied by a bunch of five and six year olds. Something was wrong within this man’s brain.
As both a former minister’s wife and a social worker,
I have far more experience with mental illness than most. I also have more
personal experience with the subject than I’d like to as well. I grew up with
an un-medicated mentally-ill mother that pretty much made my childhood hell. Much of what Liza Long wrote about in her
blog post is not unfamiliar territory
for me, sadly. The violent outbursts,
the cruel and abusive behavior, the mood swings that have family members
walking on eggshells a great deal of the time – it’s an uncomfortable and
unsettling way to live, especially when the patient is the parent. As hard as the situation is for her, Mrs.
Long, as the parent of the patient, has some limited control over her son given
he is a minor.
Adam Lanza’s mother didn’t have control over her
son at all when it came to his mental health. He was twenty. Here is one of those ‘wrong’ parts regarding
our current mental health situation and a reality that most people don’t even know
about the system. Once a mentally ill
child is an adult, all bets are off. In
giving the mentally ill rights, Ronald Reagan gave them the right to say “no”
and that includes them saying no to their medication. So, if Mr. Lanza was even actually prescribed
medication he didn’t have to take it, nobody could force him.
Saying ‘no’ also includes removing any and all
family members from official health paperwork – if there even is any. Thanks to HIPAA, once the mental patient
removes a parent or guardian from their medical contact sheet, those people can
no longer be privy to the patient’s condition or treatment. This practice alone is exceedingly dangerous
and detrimental to the seriously mentally ill patient. Unscrupulous therapists can manipulate them,
unconventional treatments can be used without the patient’s true consent and
patients can eschew therapy or treatment all together without anybody being the
wiser other than the doctor’s office.
It should be pointed out that in most states that
until a mentally ill person actually hurts themselves or others there is little
most medical professionals will do and even then their definition of “hurting one’s
self or others” is fairly narrow.
Committal is rarely heard of any more because those hospitals barely
exist anymore. What we have now are lock-down wings in hospitals where
seventy-two hour holds take place for the most part. It’s rare for a mentally
ill person to be held in the hospital for longer than a week, two at the
most. The process for removing their
rights is costly and time consuming – and many times only happens after a
serious crime has been committed.
And those are just a few of the basics of what is
wrong with our mental health system…keeping those in mind, let’s look at the
Lanza situation going on in the myriad of discussions out there:
Yes, Adam Lanza’s mother kept many guns in her
home and she probably didn’t store them properly. She knew her son had
problems, yet she taught him to shoot anyway (hence the reason that I don’t
hold a lot of sympathy for the woman).
Teaching a mentally ill person to handle a gun is like passing them a
stick of dynamite – it will explode and when it does it will not be pretty.
Yes, the man killed way too many people with said guns, but, had Adam Lanza
been locked up inside a mental institution, I wouldn’t be writing this article
right now and the aforementioned blog poster, Liza Long, wouldn’t have to be
scared to go to sleep at night because her son would be locked up in the
juvenile ward of the same sort of institution.
This is the number one problem with the mental
health system in the United States today. Not the lack of medication, not the
lack of accessible care (although affordable care, of course, is still nowhere
near on the horizon), not the lack of support resources available. The number one problem with our mental
health system is the lack of storage space for human beings.
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| Danvers - Horrible Asylum, Awesome Kirkbride |
I know a lot of people who work in the mental
health field. I see what they go through with their clients, I know how hard
they fight for the rights of the mentally ill. I have participated in advocacy
for the mentally ill and I fight just as hard as they do to reverse the stigma
regarding mental illness.
Yet, at the same time, there are different levels of
insanity, if you will. Mentally ill people with a history of violent behavior
need to be handled and treated differently. It is not one size fits all in the mentally ill world. I understand that there will be
those who do not agree with this statement but given what I’ve seen over the
years – not to mention experienced – I believe the safest location for a
mentally ill individual with violent tendencies is behind a locked door with no
access to the outside world.
State hospitals were intended to house
mentally ill people. The problem was, though, in the beginning, is that there
was little to no differential assessment as to what was and what was not a
mental illness. From the late 19th Century into the mid-20th
Century, anybody and everybody who was slightly off kilter landed in the mental
hospital, along with those who were indigent.
All of the major state hospitals
in this country became warehouses for the unwanted of all forms. Revelations of
all forms of abuse and neglect brought about their closures, which, at the
time, seemed like a good idea. Had Ronald Reagan been able to foresee the
ultimate outcome of that decision I think he would have tried to do things a
little differently.
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| Examples Of A Violently Mentally Ill Patient's "Work" |
Let’s fast forward. This is the 21st
Century. Times have changed. In the area of assessment and diagnosis alone
we now know that those with Downs Syndrome and forms of autism can function
happily in society. We know that clinically depressed people can receive
medications that can help them function.
People with epilepsy are in the clear as well. Homosexuals, cross
dressers and transgender people get a pass now too. Children born with encephalitis and other
varying forms of debilitating birth defects would now receive proper care at
home until their deaths. There are now specialty clinics for people with
disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, alcoholism and drug addiction, treatment
for these disorders could remain standing on their own. People with tattoos and piercings are no
longer considered mentally ill, nor are people with BDSM fetishes. The homeless
who are not mentally ill have programs that can help them get back on their
feet. Fifty years ago, literally thousands of people just like these could be
found inside the walls of mental institutions. Today such admissions wouldn’t
even be considered.
That leaves us with, even though it’s not even out
yet, hard cores of the DSM V – Schizophrenia, personality disorders that can
cause major issues such as Narcissist Personality Disorder or Borderline
Personality Disorder for example, severe forms of Bipolar disorder, ODD, rage disorders and
certain dissociative disorders. Sociopaths could be added to this list as well
if they’re found and diagnosed properly – might cut down on the serial killings
around the country. Veterans with violent forms of PTSD such as what my late
husband suffered from could also be considered on an as needed basis since the
VA does next to nothing to help them when they’re having a psychotic
break. These are people who have little
to no control over their mental condition. There is something broken within
their brain, end of story. We either
eliminate them or we house them as we used to.
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| An Old Cage Bed - Used In 19th Century Mental Hospitals |
I can hear people saying “wow, that’s harsh!”. Perhaps, but do we want a rerun of this past
weekend? Had Harris and Kleibold been properly assessed and locked up,
Columbine would have never happened. Had the Virginia State shooter been
properly assessed and locked up, that situation would have never happened. Had Gaby Hayes’ shooter been assessed and
locked up she wouldn’t have had to suffer as she did. Mental health advocates often complain about
the stigma that affects the mentally ill and it’s important to know that it does exist – but people like the
aforementioned are part of what creates that stigma. I am well aware of fully
functioning mentally ill people. I’ve worked with literally hundreds over the
years who’ve lived productive and good lives. Yet those lives are constantly
tainted by the bad behaviors of the violently mentally ill ‘on the loose’.
In giving the mentally ill ‘rights’ Reagan did those
who are seriously mentally ill a great disservice. A large chunk of seriously mentally ill
patients from the big close downs of the 80’s went right out into the streets
because they had nowhere else to go. Just as large an amount ended up in group homes,
which they quickly took off from. You
cannot provide somebody options when they’re not mentally capable of considering
them. It’s like handing a three year old a lollipop right before they know
they’re going to eat lunch and saying “here, you want this?”. You know they’re going to say yes.
Bear in mind I’m not talking about somebody who
‘goes postal’ because of stress. That is NOT a mental illness, it’s a brief
mental state whereby if they kill somebody they deserve to go to jail. I’m
talking about people with real mental illness track records who cannot hold
jobs, cannot keep themselves clean, cannot even eat sometimes because the
voices in their head tell them not to and have a track record for violent behavior. Just
as an example, within a properly run facility a Schizophrenic could actually
have a productive albeit somewhat limited life. Left to their own devices they almost always get into trouble.
Just a couple of examples: I was once a family support facilitator for
mental health support group.
We had an extremely violent Schizophrenic young man whose mother was
just positive that his medications were going to cure him. She came to a
meeting on a Monday all excited about how great he was doing and by Friday he’d
stabbed her to death. He was prescribed the meds but nobody could force him to
take them. A writer colleague who writes
for one of the major television crime
shows has written her own experience with mental illness into that particular
show by having one of the characters explain how her fiancé, an aspiring
attorney, fell to his Schizophrenia and ended up homeless. Another episode
showcased how that same man went on a major crime spree, killing several
innocent people and kidnapping a little boy because he thought the child was
his son. She couldn’t help him, his
family couldn’t help him, nobody could force him to take his medications so he
was left to do what he wanted which, obviously, was not a good idea.
Now, before I receive a plethora of hate mail, yes,
there are Schizophrenics who take
their medications and they manage to function – that is because there is
somebody right there hanging over their every move and they are willing to
cooperate and take their medications. An overwhelming majority do not and an
alarming amount of Schizophrenics are either homeless or incarcerated.
Which is, ultimately, where a large amount of our
mentally ill population is being housed these days: in prison. To be blunt, this pisses me off. Prisons are
for criminals, not the mentally ill – but when a family has nowhere else to
turn, they’ve exhausted all other options, many don’t even fight to try to get
their loved one off if they end up committing a crime. Behind bars they’ll be “safe”. They’re no more safe behind bars than they
are living on the street. Our prisons
are overcrowded as it is. Take the mentally ill population out of the prisons
and we’ll have more room for actual prisoners.
I can hear
somebody saying “well where would we put the mentally ill that need to be
locked up?”. As I said before, it’s time
this country revisit the notion of reopening the mental institution. I’m sure that conjures up pictures of
American Horror Story for some but the reality is that, if run properly such locations
could provide safe haven for those who must be “kept” for no other reason than
their brain makes them a violent individual. I’m not saying build a Kirkbride
and go backwards in time, I’m saying take a hospital already in existence, bar the windows, provide
all the amenities of home only have solitary rooms for outbursts and medication schedules that they aren't allowed to deny.
Training for employees would be paramount, paying those
employees properly to deal with the violence and pain they would see every day
would be required as well. Medication regimens would be necessary and patients
would be required to follow them. Care plans would be created, developed and followed with state oversight the same
way preschools around the country are watched over. Budgets would need to be strict, no research
should be allowed on site (it’s long been determined that lobotomies are now
unnecessary…) and treatments such as ECT (electro shock therapy) would be
closely monitored instead of ‘at will’.
There could be therapists on site but therapy would not be required
because, frankly, there’s no point for some of these types of patients, they
cannot be reprogrammed. Those that can be redirected properly could be allowed
supervised visitations. Birth control would be provided because forced
sterilization is never a good idea. These
are just a few basic ideas of how a hospital such as this could be implemented
in the 21st Century. The seriously mentally ill could still function
within its walls but they couldn’t hurt anybody except possibly themselves or a
caretaker that lets their guard down.
Personally? As the child of a violently mentally ill
person I would have rather grown up knowing my mother was in the hospital. It
would have been far easier to go visit her on holidays knowing she was
medicated and ‘happy’ as opposed to living with her free range where her mood
was never stable, her anger issues legendary and I was made to pay for her
mental illness by family members and so-called friends alike. This brings up a valid point regarding the
stigma of mental illness that shadows all mentally ill people. No family member is ever to blame for their mentally ill family member’s issues. EVER.
The father and brother left behind in the Lanza family aren’t to blame for the
shooter’s mental state. People don’t cause true mental illness – a broken brain
causes true mental illness.
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A Particularly Disturbing Piece Of Artwork
By A Seriously Mentally Ill Patient |
All of this said, I can hear people grumbling, well that was unpleasant. Yes, it was.
Mental illness IS unpleasant. For all involved. The point of this blog is to open some doors
into the heart of this horrible tragedy. This is not about guns. This is about
a seriously mentally ill man whose rage consumed his soul and he took that rage
out on innocent children – and the people there to protect them who died
valiantly trying to do so. Had this man been in a mental institution this
needless tragedy would have never happened.
In the days and weeks to come, as the gun debates loom
and grow longer, remember this blog. Remember the heart of the matter and the
brain of the killer – neither of which had anything to do with fire power and
everything to do with being so severely ill that being locked up was the only
way to truly protect society from him.
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| The Sandy Hook Elementary School Victims |
In conclusion, I was just notified of this story on FOX News - who I don't follow but if it's true, my point is proven.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/18/fear-being-committed-may-have-caused-connecticut-madman-to-snap/?cmpid=prn_aol&icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D247519
Fix the system before it's too late for anybody else.
As of late there has been much talk just about
everywhere and anywhere media related regarding what is expected of a ‘celebrity’. Interestingly enough, according to fellow
colleagues, published authors of any type fall under this category heading. 
Most of us don’t have to deal with the paparazzi
nor do our names show up in magazine after magazine and while some of us do
participate in television interviews, most of the time it’s an on screen-off
screen proposition whereby our book and all that it entails is promoted. (It
should also be noted that, by and large, most writers don’t want fame and
fortune. They want to tell a good
story and if that story pays the bills then huzzah!! Yes, there are some in it for the cash
but they are in the minority in my opinion.) 
And that’s exactly what celebrity in this instance is – in one way or another – it’s a job. The performance for the
actor or comedian, the singing or playing for the musician, the writing for the
screenwriter or the published author –
it’s all work that results in a product whether it's a book or a movie or a cd, there's an end result for the effort. (Unless you’re a Kardashian or Honey
Boo Boo, reality television does not count in this equation in my
opinion.) 
