Three Years after Newtown: Hope

Parents for Care dinner in Baltimore, with
the SuperMoms (and Dads) who advocate for their
children who have serious mental illness

Three years ago, when a mother, 20 first graders, 6 educators, and a young man with untreated mental illness died by gun violence in Newtown, Connecticut, I was on the phone with a social worker in Boise, Idaho. He wanted me to press charges for assault against my then 13-year-old son, who had threatened to kill himself a few days earlier. My back and ribs still ached, and my arms were covered with bruises and bite marks sustained when I tried to keep my son from bolting into oncoming traffic.

When I heard about Newtown Friday morning at work, I put my head on my desk and sobbed. My younger two children were still in elementary school, and I couldn’t even imagine how horrible it would be to lose them like that.

Except I could.

With Representative Tim Murphy

My third son was in an acute care psychiatric hospital--again. After years of trying to find help for him, we still didn't have answers.

But I knew two things for certain that morning. First, my son was not a bad kid. He was not a monster, or a psycho. He was a kind, sweet, sensitive boy who suffered immense pain and deserved help.

Second, I was not a bad mother.

That terrible morning in 2012, without knowing any details other than the age of the shooter and the fact that his mother--and 26 innocent people--were dead, I felt like I knew everything.

So I wrote, "I Am Adam Lanza's Mofher." And I thought I was the only mother in the entire world who could sympathize with Nancy Lanza.

It turns out I was far from alone. Mental illness touches us all in some fashion. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five children will suffer a debilitating mental disorder before age 18.  Almost one in five adults will experience mental illness in any given year (excluding substance abuse disorders). l  And serious mental illness—schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression—affects 10 million adults, or 4% of our population.  These men and women are too often shunted into a nightmarish “revolving door” of prison and homelessness because we do not have the community or medical supports in place to provide them with life-saving treatment. 

A reading from my award-
winning book at StoryFort

Three years after Newtown, I was able to travel around the country and see what's working in mental health--and why we still have so far to go. If you want to learn more about ways you can help children and families like minhe, click on the links below to learn more about these organizations, and think about donating if you are able to do so.

In January, I made my first trip to Washington D.C. as a guest of the Treatment Advocacy Center to celebrate an advocacy award given to Representative Tim Murphy for his tireless efforts to reform the mental healthcare system at the national level. 

In February, I spoke at the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Arizona annual luncheon in Phoenix, where I was able to learn about crisis wraparound services provided to children and families. 

In March, I won a 2015 “Books for a Better Life” award for “The Price of Silence” and I participated with my son in a StoryFort reading hosted by the Cabin in Boise. 

2015 APA
annual meeting in Toronto.

In April, I spoke at the North Dakota Juvenile Justice conference and also visited with several parents whose children were struggling with mental illness. I also spoke at the Showers of Hope luncheon to support the Lindner Center of Hope in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Lindner family has a legacy of philanthropy in their community; they are now contributing their resources to help fund a truly revolutionary center of excellence for mental healthcare treatment and research. I also was the keynote speaker for the Idaho Children’s Home Society, an organization that provides counseling to low income children and families in our Boise community. 

With Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, author
of "Shrinks" (must-read!)

May was a busy month. I spoke at the Siouxland Mental Health Center annual conference and learned more about partnerships with mental health courts that reduced recidivism rates for people suffering from mental illness by more than 75%. That’s a huge savings, both in taxpayer dollars and in lives. I also co-presented a workshop at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting in Toronto. The workshop was the brainchild of Mental Health America’s thoughtful Patrick Hendry. Every advocate should read his paper on meaningful dialogue. Finally, I gave the keynote speech for Thresholds in Chicago, where I was brought to tears by the life-changing work their staff has done as they intervene with at-risk youth and give them a chance at a bright future.

September took me to Miami, Florida, to present at the 8th annual Chair Summit, where I met psychiatric care providers from all over the Americas, including Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman and Dr. Paul Summergrad, and learned about cutting-edge new research and treatments—and enjoyed an authentic Cubano and the best ceviche I’ve ever had. When I returned, I attended my first NAMI-Boise chapter board meeting. The National Alliance on Mental Illness is one of the nation’s most prominent advocacy groups and provides free education classes for the community.

The Oklahoma City Memorial

In October, I spoke at my first non “mental health” conference. Leadership Oklahoma decided to focus their annual meeting on mental illness and its impact on the Oklahoma community. Sadly, less than a week later, a young woman with mental illness crashed into a crowd of people, killing four people. Cathy Costello, whose untreated son stabbed her husband Mark, Oklahoma’s well-respected labor commissioner, was in the audience.   

In November, I was able to meet several of my mom advocate heroes in person at the Johns Hopkins annual Schizophrenia summit. The presenters, top researchers in their field, took time to meet with us as parents and answer our questions at an event organized by the inimitable Laura Pogliano, founder of Parents for Care.  Laura’s son Zac, who suffered with schizophrenia, died tragically at the age of 23 earlier this year. 

And now, on December 14, I’m in San Diego, preparing to attend the International Bipolar Foundation board meeting. Our board members include Randi Silverman, whose poignant film, No Letting Go, tells the hopeful story of a teenager struggling with mental illness and his family, and Kevin Hines, who survived a suicide attempt from the Golden Gate Bridge and is now sharing his powerful story to help others. 

Messages in Dutch Bros coffee lids.

Last year, on the second anniversary of Newtown, I wrote on the Huffington Post that we were “Two Years to Nowhere.”  Today, I have more hope. But real change depends on each of us. As a society, we have an obligation to provide treatment to those who suffer. As individuals, we have an ethical duty to treat one another with respect and compassion.

We still have a long way to go, but it feels like we’re finally moving in the right direction. 

Same Old Stigma

Brian Wilson’s Biopic Shows Little Love or Mercy for Psychiatry

As the mother of a teenager who has bipolar disorder and a mile-wide creative streak, I was pretty excited to see the new Beach Boys biopic, Love and Mercy.  Composer and musician Brian Wilson has been completely and heroically transparent about his struggles with mental illness. Diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, Wilson works tirelessly to promote an end to stigma through creative projects like the SMiLE sessions.  

But sadly, the movie was not at all what I expected. As an all-too-familiar modern fairy tale of the evil psychologist overmedicating and imprisoning a creative genius, Love and Mercy contributes to the merciless stigma that surrounds mental illness. Most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Love and Mercy, with its deliberately framed stories of Brian Wilson’s success and subsequent mental illness, oversimplifies Wilson’s journey, pitting Eugene Landy (note: Landy is not a psychiatrist) against the fairy princess Cadillac saleswoman who becomes Wilson’s wife. The middle of the story, where Landy coaxed Wilson from three years in bed and a 150 pound weight gain 
to regain some semblance of his creative life and artistic promise, is only alluded to in the film, and the post-Landy period is a mere blurb as the end credits roll. 

Yes, Landy was a bad guy. Love and Mercy’s Paul Giamatti does a brilliant job at showing Landy’s failures, but the fact that the story is true does not make it any less damaging, at a time when the profession of psychiatry is desperate to attract talented physicians in the face of a growing public health crisis. Worse, it's not the whole truth: While what Eugene Landy did to Brian Wilson was truly horrible, Brian Wilson's life before Landy was arguably worse, which is certainly not a justification, but it does show just how awful life can be for people with serious mental illness.  

For the many thousands of children and adults who are in prison, or live homeless on the streets, a mental health professional can be a guide on the path to help and hope. Contrary to myriad negative media portrayals of psychiatrists, most mental health professionals are dedicated to improving their patients’ lives. That has certainly been my son's experience. Yet a 2014 study concluded that “medical students enter medical school with distinctly negative attitudes toward a career in psychiatry compared with other specialties,” which explains why only three percent choose to specialize in psychiatry each year. 

Love and Mercy is just the most recent example of an unbalanced cinematic portrayal of mental healthcare professionals, what Sharon Packer has termed “cinema’s sinister psychiatrists.”  In a study of mainstream movies, Wedding and Neimic (2014) found that for every balanced portrayal (Antwone Fisher, Ordinary People), there were four times as many unbalanced portrayals (What About Bob, Silence of the Lambs, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, etc.) . 

The whole Love and Mercy story is this: Brian Wilson regained his life because of his family, his mental healthcare providers, and his own desire to seek recovery. As he told Ability Magazine in a 2014 interview, "Yes, I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist once a week for 12 years now, and he’s become a really close friend of mine. We talk and he helps me out.”   He also takes medication to manage his condition 

I'm not suggesting that Eugene Landy’s treatment of Brian Wilson was anything but unethical and immoral. It's just not the whole story. For every bad mental health professional like Landy, there are many more good mental health professionals, like the UCLA doctors who correctly diagnosed Wilson, or his current psychiatrist. All I’m asking is that Hollywood tell that story—the story where Wilson is correctly diagnosed, finds the right treatments and supports, and lives the life he deserves.

Maybe We All Need an Intervention

Dr. Phil’s #NickGordonIntervention highlights everything that’s wrong with how we view mental illness

I have to confess my shocking ignorance of popular culture: until I read this HuffPost article from Flawless Foundation director Janine Francolini calling out popular talk show host Dr. Phil, I had no idea who Nick Gordon was. And it doesn’t really matter who Nick Gordon is. What matters is the shocking and exploitative way a young man in mental health crisis was treated on national television, by a man who has tremendous power to shape public opinion about mental illness. 

I also have to confess that I have never seen Dr. Phil’s show, so I have not watched the infamous so-called “intervention.” But a friend of mine whose child was in crisis reached out to him seeking help for her out-of-control son. What she got instead was more of the same “shame and blame” that makes it so hard to parents of children who have mental illness to reach out and get the help they and their families desperately need. In one video clip I did see, my mom friend laughed nervously at her son’s explosive behavior. Dr. Phil chastised her, telling her that her cavalier attitude was contributing to her child’s problems. Newsflash, Dr. Phil: we laugh when our children lash out because we’re trying not to cry. And our children’s mental illness is not “our fault,” any more than a child’s cancer is the parents’ fault.

Dr. Phil McGraw describes himself on his website as “perhaps the most well-known mental health professional in the world.”  Since even I, a television-eschewing person who once thought that Anderson Cooper was a financial services firm, know who Dr. Phil is, I’d say that statement is quite probably true. I wish that Dr. Allen Frances or Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman or Dr. Paul Summergrad, all of whom are actual psychiatrists (unlike McGraw, whose Ph.D. is in clinical psychology) were the world's best known mental health professionals. The fact that these brilliant practitioners don’t have their own popular television talk shows speaks volumes about the problems with mental healthcare in America. As The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon aptly observed about McGraw’s show, “Such a crudely manufactured look at someone else’s pain is numbing where it is intended to be affecting.” 

Numbing. That is exactly the problem with mental health advocacy today. After Sandy Hook, the general public has become so numb to the horrific pain that people like Nick Gordon (and so many others) are experiencing that things like school shootings barely register anymore. When mental illness is nothing more than a spectacle for our entertainment, we become desensitized. We stop caring for those who need our care the most.

Maybe it’s time for society to have a collective intervention about the way we treat mental illness. Stop criminalizing people who are sick. Stop making suffering people into spectacles. Stop treating mental health differently than physical health.  Dr. Phil has famously said, “You either get it or you don’t.” I’m afraid when it comes to mental health and stigma, America’s best known mental health professional just does not get it.