Mark with Houston at Houston’s
high school graduation in 2009
Last week I wrote a “Letter to the Editor” about caring for person with mental illnesses, What is a Parent to Do?. I did not bother to edit the letter to make it two hundred words or less since I knew it would not be published. The “powers to be” have decided to repeat the mistake of the 80′s by closing institutions and sending person with these brain illnesses to the community for care. It sounded good but when the money for community care they did not come people with illnesses ended up not in hospitals or community treatment centers but in prisons and homeless shelters. Now our neglect to treat mental illnesses as other illness like heart condition or cancer we are about, at least in Wisconsin, to repeat the same mistakes.
When I was listening to Hear and Now on Public Radio the other day a writer, Mac McClelland, from Mother Jones magazine talk about her article Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin. Below is a summary of the article from the Hear and Now web page and the article itself can be found at Mother Jones magazine at Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin. Tomorrow I will put the article on the Featured Article web page but for tonight read and learn from the past and pray, hope and work that we do not make the same mistake again. Read and the article Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.
In the 1980s, mental health care transitioned away from institutionalization and toward integrating the mentally ill into communities, with the help of medication and community health centers.
The medications came, but community mental health centers did not. And budgets cuts have meant fewer beds for people with mental illness in regular hospitals.
The result is that often the only way to get help for a loved one who is severely mentally ill is by calling the police.
In a piece in Mother Jones magazine, journalist Mac McClelland writes about how the issue affected her own family.
Her cousin Houston had been displaying symptoms of schizophrenia. He was seeing a psychiatrist and was on medication, but he became increasingly violent.
Houston’s parents asked the psychiatrist what to do. He told them to call the police. For a number of reasons, the family was reluctant to do so.
One night in 2011, Houston stabbed his father 60 times.
McClelland writes, “It’s insanity to kill your father with a kitchen knife. It’s also insanity to close hospitals, fire therapists, and leave families to face mental illness on their own.” Read the article at article Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.
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