noonecaresaboutcrazypeople_1y4oqp, Author at No One Cares About Crazy People

A MOTHER’S PLAINSONG PLEA FOR HELP

You can find Debbi Anderson’s wrenching cry from the heart farther down this post. I have left the two parts exactly as I found them on a private Facebook discussion site. They are long and messy. That’s the thing about mental-illness narratives. They don’t clean up well. They shouldn’t clean up well. “Polishing” them, “editing them down,” “trimming” out “wordiness,” “sprucing up” bad diction—these are forms of murder within this genre. This kind of sanitizing leaches out the violated humanity in the original words. It distills the raw passion down to journalese.

And that is a core problem with writing about mental-health issues, whether quoting from a frantic mother or composing expository prose about the nature of brain disease: it comes out either too long or too sterile.

Here I am going to risk both the former and the latter. I’m going to give you the context of Debbi’s two messages. (There is some repetition.) And then I am going to turn things over to Debbi, who has given me her permission. In a later post, I will examine some of the public-policy roadblocks to relief for her and her stricken son.

Set aside some time. But please try to read every word of Debbi’s stream-of-consciousness burst of despair. At a minimum, it will (re-)introduce you to a world that most people shrink from even thinking about. If a miracle occurs, it might infuriate you into joining the ranks of the reform advocates.

Debbi Anderson is a working-class woman who lives in Wichita, Kansas. Her son Devin has spent 18 of his 36 years in a fog of severe schizophrenia, and the voices in his head have driven him again and again to the streets (see the “missing” poster link below), to addiction, to jail, and to at least ten suicide attempts: “dangerous” behavior. Dangerous “to himself and others,” as the bloodless bureaucratic bromide has it.

Debbie, whose photographs show a blonde woman with large, penetrating eyes, has stood with her son all this time, tortured with worry as he has shuttled in and out of “care centers”—another bloodless bromide. (Some work well; others—well, read Debbi.) She has divorced his father and remarried, to a man who means well for Devin yet understandably lacks a clue as to how to maintain a bond of trust with him.

Things have hit rock bottom. Devin has been evicted from his latest hovel, a “rat drug infested apartment” in Debbi’s description, that his latest caseworker found for him. Why? Because he is uncontrollable. He is uncontrollable because the voices in his head ordered him to go off the stabilizing medication that once worked for him. The bloodless bureaucratic bromide-term for this condition is “anosognosia”—lack of insight. The bedraggled bailiwicks of American mental healthcare are suffocated under bureaucratic jargon and acronyms. And this is probably one big reason that no one cares about crazy people.

Here is Debbi:

I have attempted to post something about three times on here and every time I deleted it! I have ADHD, so if I jump around on here you’ll know why LOL I feel like you need to know that before you read this! My son was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 18 is 36 now most of my family was worried about what the neighbors would think! My mother was extremely narcissistic so I know I get no support there! It has been 18 years of hell! he has a severe case! When he was diagnosed I was relieved in a sense I could finally put a name to what was attacking my son!! But I went from saving him from himself to having a gun pulled on me trying to get him out of a motel I was young and stupid back then that isn’t gonna happen again! but phone calls at night needing a ride because got beat up dont know how many times going out on the streets panhandling staying in the worst dirt bag place you could find. He had at least 10 suicide attempts when he goes off his medication the voices just torture him! Constantly went missing here in Wichita Kansas and then got so delusional and manic he thought that $.50 the rapper stole his lyrics He tried three times to make it to California and the third time’s a charm! Made it to California went missing for over a year. I searched every day it was hell! I was not sleeping throwing up malnutrition losing my hair (I’m sure some of you have been thru this!) After the year was up my mind was taking over like it was trying to prepare me for that awful phone call or knock on the door we all dread! And then a phone call came in, from a hospital in south-central LA it was my son finally someone called me and asked me if I had a son named DEVIN! How he ever survived that i’ll never understand it had to be a God thing! He wanted to stay there! So in order for me to get the help that he so desperately needed I had to give up my rights so we could be a ward of California by the way one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make doing that! He started the revolving door in California just like he did here in Wichita Hospital group home run away hospital group home you know the routine for years and until he met a doctor that really helped him! Who would’ve thought an old-school drug like haladol would help him so much one shot monthly XR! So he’s in the same group home for quite a while he started making phone calls to me back home in Kansas and he sounded more like MY SON!! than ever since the day he was diagnosed!!! Still had attitude problems but nothing like it used to be not going out on the streets and doing God knows what and doing things that I wish I never new about! He was somewhat stable so he decided he wanted to come back home! Everybody else was thrilled I was scared don’t get me wrong I miss him so much! But the thought of having him back here in my face and going through hell again I wanted to believe that everything was gonna be OK so desperately! deep down inside I knew it wouldn’t be! I have been with an amazing man going on eight years he is my support system he is my world he just could not understand why I wasn’t so excited I felt guilty don’t get me wrong I want to see him so bad I really missed him it had been over seven years since I saw my son! so I set up a meeting with his group home and we had a plan the team met and we had an exit strategy I laid down my boundaries and my rules you know nothing too terrible no drinking in my house and no drugging and you will let me know where you’re at! Because I have worried enough through the years to last one person 20 lifetimes! But the first several months went really well I’ve bonded with my son since the first time he’s been diagnosed we were getting close he still had some issues but like I said nothing like before! Then when he got comfortable back home he started getting Like he had ants in his pants!

When ever he had money in his pocket the streets with Would call him! countless nights talking him out of using drugs the voices telling him to stop taking his shot then he meets a girl that’s an alcoholic and all goes downhill from there starts taking off I have no clue where is that then he decided to ask his case worker for an apartment and they put him in the most rat drug infested apartment they could find he got evicted because he can’t even take care of himself he’s so delusional because he’s been off of his shot for quite some time now which should’ve already been in the case file at the mental health place that he goes through I know there’s like a huge file on him but nobody bothers to look at that it’s already been proven he can’t live alone he can’t shower now he doesn’t even know he needs to! he barely eats! out on the streets living homeless panhandling for money and doing other things on the streets I don’t even want to talk about they are so horrible! This is what happens when the voices told MY SON not to take his monthly shot The mental health services here has told me they’re going to quit him if he doesn’t make contact with them and work on his goals. My son is out of his mind right now! he doesn’t even believe I’m his mother! How can an irrational person do what their supposed to do?!

I need help before the suicide attempts start again! By the way I am off his release so that makes it twice as hard! I know that we all have different issues and that we’re all on different levels my son is on an extreme level right now he’s very sick! He puts himself in the most dangerous situation he can find! I call that a danger to yourself I still can’t get him hospitalized! He’s been back for a year and a half and stayed on his medication for probably half the year since he came back and he’s only been hospitalized twice and never got to stay they sent him home and he was still delusional well they didn’t send him home they dumped him off at a shelter!! The system is so broken they have nothing to protect our severely mentally ill!!

(Later post)

Yes! I was on the website today advocates for the mentally ill on Facebook and I read the blog with the sister that had a mentally ill brother and when I read it it was like I was reading about my sons life! I posted on there several times about my son and I think you even commented on one of the posts my son is 36 he was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia When he barely turned 18 so I have been doing with this hell for 18 years! When I read that she said she’s been doing this for 33 years i was like oh my god that’s gonna be me! I have been told has been the worst case of voices a doctor in California told me that several years ago! I’m from Wichita Kansas and my son was delusional and off meds several years ago thought the rapper 50cents stole his lyrics, so he tried three times to make it to California It scares me to think what he would’ve done if he did find him he was missing for over a year I searched every day he was found over a year later in south-central LA how he made it that long alive I will never know!! so anyway he decided he wanted to stay in California which they have a better mental health system than Kansas and more funding for the mentally ill so he stayed there a few years and decided he wanted to come back home because he was stable finally found medication that would work Every month he is supposed to take a shot of haldol XR it is The most lucid I have ever seen my son! But eventually those damn take over and they tell him not to take the medication! We have done revolving door run away , state hospital group home Rinse and repeat! you know throw in a couple jail times in there! I have spent his entire life practically saving him from himself I have had a gun pulled at my head shot at trying to get him out of a dangerous situation with gang members! Did that when was when I was young and stupid LOL that won’t happen again! I’m just blown away he got that far Wichita Kansas to south-central LA On Greyhound bus But he was manic and full of energy as he’s gotten older his illness so much worse! Attempted Suicide at least 10 times he gets off his meds for a long period of time voices are going to take over and literally torture him he will shoot anything in his veins there any kind of drug because he’s convinced it makes the voices go away when in reality it makes it amplified! He has a CaseWorker I’m not on any release he refuses to sign it! Years ago I wouldn’t be able to get him talked into going to the hospital as he’s gotten older he acts like I’m not his mom and he literally tells me you’re not my mom I don’t know who you are he doesn’t know who I am he’s so far gone he told my daughter the other day several months ago that he was an alien and he can’t ever take a shirt off because he has a hoses all over his body! He says he doesn’t even know his name he said he is black when reality he’s white The Services here we have for him are horrible They been just been letting him fend for himself he has met criteria for a danger to himself several times over but here it’s not actually trying to commit suicide they don’t think it’s a danger to himself when in reality he’s doing a slow methodical suicide he doesn’t care if he lives or dies! If he was walking down the street and there was a bunch of mean guys with guns and on the other side it was a bunch of nuns wanting to help him he would go over to the bad guys with them every time! Straight now he doesn’t shower and clean he was living in filth downstairs to meet her but he left the door unlocked one day and it was ungodly the mental health passivity here in Kansas has hardly any funding so they find a cheap drug infested apartment the last place in today well he got evicted there and now he’s on the streets hustling money running around with murderers prostitutes and drug dealers They all take advantage of him he won’t let any of us near him he runs from a course I am like the devil because I’m the one that wants to get him help when you’re that ill anyone who wants to get him help is the enemy! It’s heartbreaking he gets worse every day anyway there’s so much more but I’ll stop there I know it’s rambling and confusing I’m sorry also that’s why I want to him on the shot because he wouldn’t take his regular tablets but now he won’t even show up to get a shot it’s time for his shot this month again he has not been on it for four or 5 months The voices in his head Literally torture him! If he stays off his meds for too long he starts contemplating suicide! it’s been 18 years of hell! But I’ll never give up! The mental health care facility here where his caseworker is told me yesterday that if my son doesn’t start taking his medication and working towards his goals and if he doesn’t stop missing all his appointments they were going to take him ofc there caseload and he will no longer be a part of their agency they are worried about liability because he’s out there on the streets if something happened! unbelievable! I am so upset about that it seems like the more severe they get the worse they’re treated legally community wise and everything else! No so he can’t think rational how would he even know to go to his appointments he doesn’t even think I’m his mom! So tired of everyone thinking that they’re capable of talking or thinking rationally at this point! Thank you again for letting me share it’s good to get the stuff out of me I cry a lot I feel so defeated!

A WORKSHOP FOR MOTHERS OF THE STRICKEN

The mothers of mentally ill children exist in a special Hell-Within-a-Hell.

I can attest that this is true for many fathers as well. Yet evidence from many sources shows us that it is the mothers who suffer the most. Sadly, they often struggle alone, as many of their husbands withdraw from the the horrors and the responsibilitiers of coping with such a calamity.

My friend, the psychologist Lotte Weaver, understands this. Lotte and her husband, the wonderful singer-songwriter Ray Weaver, are the parents of an afflicted daughter, Savannah. The three of them remain a tightly bonded family unit.

Lotte and Ray have shepherded Savannah through a precarious but successful stabilization. Lotte has turned her energies and her formidable intellect to mental-health advocacy. Her latest project, an online workshop for “for mothers of sensitive and stricken children,” as she phrases it, will go online March 8–International Women’s Day.

I strongly recommend it for all mothers of such precious children. Lotte’s own mission statement, below, expresses her mission with more eloquence than I can muster.

https://www.facebook.com/lotte.weaver

“So, something happened today.
And I am writing this post with tears streaming.
It is what happens when we are met in our vulnerability. Met as who we are, with ALL that we are. Understood in ways that only someone who has gone through similar experiences as our own can understand.
My friend – although we have not yet met in person – colleague and fellow parent of the severely challenged, Ron Powers, wrote the kindest post to me.
He wrote me on a day where I felt so vulnerable, and he could not know that his message reached me as I needed it most.
He is, like me, an advocate for better conditions (much better) for the mentally ill and their families. He wrote the outstanding and heartbreaking bestseller No one Cares about Crazy People (The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America). A must-read if you have a child struggling with mental health or severe illness.
We share being ‘out there’ with our own stories because our hearts have led us down the path – and once the heart speaks, you better follow. No other road seems possible after that.
But it is vulnerable!
Some days, it just feels powerful and right. Other days, I want to pull back in my mousehole and act like I was never ‘out there’. Today was such a day.
Then he wrote me, and he changed my day with his words: ‘Lotte, I just saw your post on the mother’s workshop. What a breathtaking idea and presentation. I have so much respect for you. I want to build a blog around this. I am requesting your permission to do so. Godspeed this workshop and your rare leadership in mental healthcare.’
Thank you Ron for reminding me of my leadership. Sometimes the responsibility can feel heavy. But today you made it feel light again.
And thank you for meeting me in my vulnerability today. And for sharing your’s with me.
I am ready to go all in again.”
Lotte Weaver

“BECAUSE THE TRUTH IS RAW AND UNAPOLOGETIC”

Mark Rippee after his motorcycle accident

If you follow this blog, you know that I’ve written many times about the tragedy of Mark Rippee of Vacaville, CA. Here is a powerful essay by one of his two indefatigable sisters, written in May 2020 and reposted by her today, that says it all, and better than I have: https://www.catsvisions.org/post/no-apologies-by-catherine-j-rippee-hanson

DID SOMEONE MENTION “SOLITARY”?

Yes: I did.

I cited this barbaric penalty in my previous blog post, which was a plea for Ashley Biden to join her father’s Administration and co-ordinate federal policy regarding mental healthcare reform. Solitary confinement in our jails is one of the scourges that most needs reforming–obliterating, actually–if we are to call ourselves civilized. Solitary works horrors on the human brain. It drives mentally ill prisoners deeper into madness, and can afflict the sanity of those who have not shown symptoms of brain disease. And it does no good whatsoever–corrective, societal, or moral. That is the widespread theory. Here is the latest glimpse of the widespread practice.

A Virginia Prison Held A Man In Solitary Confinement For Over 600 Days

Original bed inside solitary confinement cell in old Franklin County Jail, Pennsylvania. Credit: Andrea Linefsky, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

ASHLEY BIDEN, WE NEED YOU!

Will you step up as the standard-bearer for the mentally ill?

Full disclosure: I have struggled with this blog post for days: post it or throw it away? Revise it one more time so that it reads as Beltway-savvy, or put on my Mister Smith hat and hope it will ignite a 1939 Hollywood moment? Decide to not intrude into the life-choices of an honorable private woman who made it clear recently that she wants to remain private, or say the hell with it and make the intrusion anyway?

Hell with it. Here goes:

On August 23rd of last year, America lost one of the two or three greatest champions of mental healthcare reform since Dorothea Dix. The vast sub-nation of the afflicted, their families, and their ardent yet scattered and over-burdened advocates is seeking a replacement: someone who can help unify this nationwide archipelago of sufferers into a single movement with a coherent voice.

I believe that Ashley Biden, the new President’s daughter, is the person most graced by fate to advance our mission. And I will tell you why: in addition to her experience and expertise in mental health issues, Ms. Biden would embody an influential link to policymakers that the afflicted and their caretakers have yearned for roughly since the founding of the Bedlam Asylum in 1377.

I can already hear the screams of “nepotism!” from the President’s political foes. (At the same time, I’m mindful that some of the most stalwart friends of the mentally ill have been Republicans.)

As Elizabeth Warren used to say, I have a plan for that: make Ms. Biden an unpaid White House staff advisor specializing in the interests of the mentally ill.

(Ashley, is there anything else I can do to enhance your life before I sign off??)

Let me give a thumbnail sketch of the man whose death has created such a vacuum:

Dj Jaffe was 65 when cancer took him from us. Most Americans had never heard of him. Yet within the archipelago, he was a superhero. He’d walked away from a cushy career in advertising to take up the cause when his sister-in-law developed schizophrenia. He understood and worked with Congress, the courts, community health centers, and the county jail, having mastered the complexities of schizophrenia and its related chronic predators upon the human brain. In 2011 he founded the indispensable Mental Illness Policy Org., a colossus of links to data, information, helpful sources, and policymakers. He was a co-founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center along with his own personal hero, the pioneering E. Fuller Torrey. His nonprofit book, Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill, is the single most comprehensive manual on the subject in our time.

Dj Jaffe’s passing has left an unacceptable void of wisdom, energy, and passion at the center of our efforts to reclaim the grievously broken systems of mental healthcare in America. There are dozens of men and women who would do credit to my late friend’s legacy. And then there is Ashley Biden.

As I say, Ms. Biden has made it clear that she dislikes “the spotlight,” and bravo for that. Yet her role as an advisor to her father, or perhaps as director of a new foundation, need not entail being in the spotlight so much as seizing the spotlight. And turning it around upon a shadow-enshrouded system that to this day abuses insane people with barbaric neglect and cruelty reminiscent of the Middle Ages.

With scattered exceptions, the mental-illness archipelago historically has been starved of government access. And when any level of government intervenes, it usually leaves things worse than they were. (I write this as a believer in active government.)

Think of “deinstitutionalization,” the sixty-year-old policy disaster that set off the national homeless calamity that expands to this day. Think of county jails as our new, dysfunctional mental hospitals. Think of mind-destroying solitary confinement, a useless torture practice that too often serves as a convenient storage-box for possibly prodromal juveniles. Think of un-convicted juveniles, untreated afflicted kids among them, waiting behind bars, often for weeks and months, for their trials. Think of untrained or uncaring police killing psychotic victims on the streets.

The crises and atrocities cited above are known to most people with a passing interest in the squalid fate of “crazy people” in America. The wish-list below will seem arcane to lay readers; yet it is packed with urgent, unaddressed problems that stunt and shorten the lives of the chronically mental ill, spread a widening cone of misery through their families and communities, and diminish the financial—and moral—health of the nation.

I’m indebted for this list to Leslie Carpenter of Iowa City, who with her husband Scott forms a tireless advocacy duo in America. Here it is:

–End the outdated, discriminatory federal rule known as the IMD Exclusion. This will increase the number of acute-care and long-term beds.

–Increase reimbursement rates for mental health professionals, direct care staff and facilities. This will help with recruitment, retention and quality of staff caring for people with serious mental illness (SMI).

–Modify the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) to allow for more reasonable communication with families who are all too often the unpaid caregivers for loved ones with SMI.

–Increase funds for continued research for schizophrenia and related brain disorders.

–Fund and expand Assisted Outpatient Treatment Programs, along with Civil and Criminal Mental Health Courts.

–Expand funding for Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers in every state in the country.

–Stop wasting money on unproductive anti-stigma campaigns and. Use those funds to pay for the treatment of the most seriously ill, and the stigma will go away.

–Stop funding just more housing. Allow HUD subsidized funding for residential care facilities, group homes and facilities all along the continuum of care for people living with SMI and substance use disorders. Funded housing, tied with assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) programs, will allow the housing of people who don’t know they are sick, and keep them in treatment via outpatient civil commitments for treatment.

–Stop shutting down Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) if someone has to be hospitalized for 30 days or more. Shutting down the ability to pay rent is a major cause of homelessness among the chronic mentally ill.

–Create loan forgiveness incentives for mental health professionals practicing in rural locations.

–Fund medical schools to increase enrollment for psychiatrists and other mental health professional programs including nurse practitioners, physician assistants and psychologists.

Every one of these proposals requires intense, coordinated governmental action. As of today, there is no governmental coordinator. Not even Dj Jaffe had such power. This thin and secretly failing hero drew upon his extraordinary passion, his vast self-education in this complex cluster of subjects, and his gift for eloquence in the media, in testimony, and in his book.

The dispossessed mentally ill people among us cry out for a figure to replace Jaffe, and perhaps even surpass his legacy. Given Ashley Biden’s training, intelligence, commitment to the cause of mental health, and principled access to the (recently besmirched) corridors of congressional power, I believe that she could be this figure—a catalyst for reclamation.

We live in a fragile national moment, a moment saturated with promise and with menace. On the hopeful side, I marvel at the brisk accomplishments of President Biden’s first weeks in office, and I hear an old trumpet sounding, and I can almost envision a second New Frontier. On the dark side linger the shock-images and aural bedlam of the Capitol insurrection and the miasma of the impeachment trial, with portents of worse to come. And I wonder whether collective psychosis—madness—is our new pandemic.

It will take every person of good will to steer our future toward the light. Mental illness is just one item in a crushing agenda; yet it looms over us all, a scourge of mostly unfathomed proportions. (How far have some of us drifted into collective psychosis? Is there momentum in this direction?) A voice of informed influence near the apex of our government would be a godsend. The archipelago needs you, Ashley Biden.

As most of us give thanks, the State of Georgia tortures a(nother) helpless human being

Ashley Diamond Is Black, transgender, bipolar, and nonviolent. And the Georgia prison system has illegally consigned her to Hell on earth.

Just read. And petition. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/us/ashley-diamond-transgender-prison.html

“TODAY IS A DARK DAY”

Mark Rippee of Vacaville, California, has entered what may be the final struggle for his catastrophic life. His survival prospects are not good.

Most readers of this blog know about Mark’s grotesque misfortunes that span thirty-three years. And about the shocking indifference to them among the social services and the members of the Solano County Board of Supervisors. To refresh your memory, click on this blog link to read my previous posts.

Mark Rippee -outside the Vacaville hospital where he was released. Credit: Linda Rippee

Mark was released from a Vacaville hospital on October 26. He had spent two hundred fifty-eight days there, the longest respite of his tortured life since June 1987, when a motorcycle crash left him blinded, his body shattered, parts of his brain exposed, and his mind vulnerable to the schizophrenia that soon struck him. He’d been hospitalized after being struck by a car for a second time while wandering sightlessly around the town.

No agency in the city, the county, or the state of California cares about Mark Rippee. The attached links detail how his sisters Linda Privatte and Catherine Hanson, both women in their 60s with major illnesses themselves, have tried in vain to obtain conservatorship over him and to find a secure place for him to live. The care agencies and political bodies enfold themselves in narrow interpretations of law and policy. The sisters believe that in fact some laws meant to protect people such as Mark have been violated, with no one inclined to enforce them.

The family has been helped, materially and spiritually, by a growing army of concerned friends and Vacaville citizens. The sisters have posted a call for blankets, food, medium-sized long-johns and lined sweatpants, beanies, deodorant, lotion, hand sanitizer, baby wipes, a coat, gloves, socks. And water. Always water.

To simply read this sad list is to recoil at the scale of difference between Mark Rippee’s plight and the stony disdain—the contempt—of the agencies and the political structure designed to help him.

The charity now arriving is a godsend, and a tribute to the humanity of Vacaville’s private citizens. Yet it is not enough to assure this broken man’s survival. Mark, now 57, remains vulnerable to winter’s ravages, to further collisions with cars and trucks, and—most threateningly—to his environment’s rising Coronavirus rate. Solano County has entered tier 2, the “red” tier, which signals a “substantial” level of infection.

No one tells Mark’s story with more passion and clarity than Linda and Catherine, who have told it to deaf ears for three decades. Their stories and updated reports are linked below.

I’M PAST ANGER. I’M IN COMPLETE DESPAIR by Linda Rippee

Today is a dark day. Mark was discharged from the Acute Care hospital after 258 days of healing from his injuries after being struck by a car for the second time in the last year. He was taken by the facility’s van back to the streets of Vacaville. He left with only a cane, duffle bag, boots, and 2 sets of clothes. They gave him 1-2 months worth of medications but would not confirm what they were. I don’t know how he will know what he is taking or when it is time. He has been on increased Anti-psychotic meds recently and I do not know if he will be on the streets. His new Social Worker is with Solano APS and is the same one who did the “Snapshot Assessment” of Mark and declared him “Not Conservable.” He was planning to meet Mark on the streets of Vacaville to “Receive” him back to town. When we called the facility this morning to check on when he was to be released and how… he was already gone. The nurse claimed, “Oh he is not going back to the streets, but is going to the Vacaville county building!” I started explaining that he is going back to the streets! That is where he has lived on the streets for years! I have 2 people trying to help with getting him a new ID. The facility could not confirm if he even had a blanket. He was supposed to get a flu shot before leaving – he didn’t. We have already put together many things he will need, but with a bad leg and a shoulder that doesn’t work, it will be even more difficult to carry much. He is supposed to still be using a walker – but chose a cane. He will have difficulty social distancing and not touching everything he comes in contact with. They said they gave him a few masks. His discharge was scheduled for 11 am this morning. I tried calling all morning and couldn’t reach him or the Social Worker. It turns out they released him earlier than 11 am, so he was already gone before I could even talk to him. I did not even go to bed last night thinking that tonight Mark will be sleeping on the streets. CJ has been up for two nights bracing herself for his release. His drastic improvement over the last 8 months was not enough proof for the county to comprehend that housing, treatment, and care was exactly what was needed in his case. I am back to taking it day by day to keep him alive. How long before another traffic accident or injury? We know it won’t be long… and we will go back to jumping every time the phone rings.I just received verification from one of our members that he arrived at the Carroll Building in Vacaville and the APS Social Worker was not there! He is now alone and darkness comes.
Linda Rippee

The Road Ahead… by Linda (Rippee) Privatte Updated June 1.

DEMAND ATTENTION FOR JAMES MARK RIPPEE, FROM GOVERNOR, GAVIN NEWSOM & THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA!

Facebook Private Group “Mark of Vacaville”

Am I Not My Brother’s Keeper? Personal Blog by Catherine J. Rippee-Hanson

The Reporter – Family of mentally ill crash victim considering legal avenues

“We’ve lost our compass.” For California’s most visible mentally ill, is a return to forced treatment a solution — or a false promise? by Jocelyn Weiner, CalMatters.org

No One Cares About Crazy People – Mark Rippee Archives, by Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author

After accident they warned about, sisters of mentally ill man blame the state — and beg governor to act

Mark Rippee, Oct. 26, 2020.
Mark Rippee
James Mark Rippee – Photo Courtesy Linda Privatte
Mark Rippee two years after his accident. He had calmed down and more lucid although doctors warned that it would not last. Photo Courtesy CJ Hanson.
Mark Rippee

Black Children and Mental Illness: An under-examined Hell Within a Hell

The ravages of mental illness continue to flood every corner of society. Coverage of this atrocity has improved in quantity and sophistication in the last quarter-century–but to what end? Policy-makers, law enforcement and public opinion remain largely indifferent to meaningful education and reform. Mis-diagnoses, non-diagnoses, incarceration, hospital indifference, and violent deaths of people in psychosis surge on, gathering speed. And no one is at the wheel.

This strongly observed and written story by Hannah Dreier of The Washington Post throws light into an especially neglected precinct: Poor black families, and the mentally afflicted children within those families. It provides a glimpse of the day-to-day crises of a divorced Black mother, Kelli, and her two sons–one of whom, the 11-year-old Ahav, is diagnosed with schizophrenia.

You may read Dreier’s piece as simply a searing journey into the wilderness of one family’s mental-illness misery, and of the heroic efforts of Kelli to keep Ahav safe. A closer reading reveals a miasma of bureaucratic obstacles, therapeutic failure, option-choking poverty, and the constant dread of trigger-happy law enforcement that imprison tens of thousands of families such as Kelli’s in the rusted chains of our failed mental healthcare system.

You don’t hear much about mental illness reform these days. Has mental illness suddenly evaporated, like the coronavirus?

Not really. It has quietly infiltrated and normalized aberrant public behavior in our deranged national landscape.

It is now front and center in the streets.

And in the ravings of pre-eminent news personalities.

And within the highest levels of a major party.

In the 1960s the breakaway Scottish mystic/psychiatrist R. D. Laing was prominent among many emerging voices proclaiming that mental illness does not exist. His aphorisms such as “Insanity [is] a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world” and “Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through . . . ” made him a charismatic figure among the counter-culture. His work placed him in the company of the greatest denier of them all, Thomas Szasz, whose 1961 book, The Myth of Mental Illness, crippled the status of psychiatry for generations.

In that time, neuroscientists and psychiatrists worked patiently to rebuild the legitimate acceptance of mental illness and its destructive properties. Breakthrough advances in microcomputer technology established, for instance, that schizophrenia is a genuine disease of the human brain, and not just a synonym for “nut job”: it leaves lesions–tiny traces–in the brain; its clusters of flawed genes are genetically inherited and, to date, incurable.

Yet even as science (that fake mumbo-jumbo!) has steadily clarified the properties of mental illness at the top levels of discourse on the subject, its work is being rapidly undermined again where it counts: in the chaotic maw of popular culture, where malign ideology, semi-literacy, and poisonous cynicism threaten to nullify reason. Including reasoning about unreason.

Thus when the ineffable birdbrain Ann Coulter tweet-tweets, as she did on August 27, that she wants the deranged teenaged lethal shooter Kyle Rittenhouse to be her president (above), we may think of her as the hideous drum majorette at the head of a long malign parade, marching directly toward a new Dark Age.