Butterfly encounter offers spiritual release

Mental health patients find a spiritual release by raising monarchs
By Nicole Levy of the Journal Sentinel
Aug. 17, 2012

"And the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in a landscape selected at random - is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude" - Vladimir Nabokov

John Eagan holds the dusty wings of a monarch butterfly between his fingers, just before he releases it into what the Rev. Ray Gurney has named a "transformation garden."

"Did I do that well enough?" Eagan asks Gurney.

"That was beautiful, beautiful, John."

Eagan, who is 33, identifies with the weeks-old monarch: after time as an egg, a caterpillar and a chrysalis, the butterfly has assumed its final identity; after a breakdown and 15-month recovery at the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Complex, Eagan has begun to counterpoise his life.

This is the second year that the facility's staff is helping patients - adults and children - raise and release monarchs. It was Gurney, the complex's spiritual integration coordinator, who approached its spiritual committee with the idea. For patients who have had difficulty with organized religion, the program may offer an alternative.

To Gurney, the miraculous transformation of the compact chrysalis to winged monarch "represents nature, which has nothing to do with an organized religion, but it's very spiritual and it means a lot to people," he says.

He collects monarch eggs from under the leaves of milkweed plants. They grow in the complex's triangular courtyard, which he hopes will soon be registered as an official monarch way station with the University of Kansas' Monarch Watch project. read more here

If you live in the Orlando area, check out Lukas Nursery just for an idea of how something like this could be a blessing.

Seniors take action and stop shooter at grocery store

Gunfire wounds 3 at grocery in Pierce County
A 20-year-old woman armed with a revolver opened fire in a grocery store on Pierce County's Key Peninsula on Saturday afternoon, wounding three men. In the shooting's aftermath, a husband and wife provided crucial help — the wife sitting on the shooter while the husband tended to a man who had been shot.
By Ken Armstrong and Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times staff reporters

A 20-year-old woman armed with a revolver opened fire in a grocery store on Pierce County's Key Peninsula on Saturday afternoon, wounding three men. In the aftermath, a husband and wife provided crucial help — the wife sitting on the shooter while the husband tended to a man who had been shot.

The shooter was still inside the store when Pierce County sheriff's deputies arrived and took her into custody.

The woman has a history of mental illness and apparently didn't know any of the victims, Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said. "All she told us was that she didn't like the people she shot," he said. "But we have no way of tying her to any of them."
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Death row inmate missing part of brain

Attorney: Death row inmate missing part of brain
BRETT BARROUQUERE
Associated Press
Wednesday, August 1, 2012

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Kevin Wayne Dunlap's decision to plead guilty to killing three children and attacking a woman in her home near Fort Campbell caught his attorneys by surprise. Now, they think they understand why.

Defense attorneys say the former special operations soldier is missing the frontal lobe in his brain that controls impulses and decision making. The damage rendered Dunlap incompetent to plead guilty to a capital offense, defense attorney Kathleen Schmidt wrote in a brief to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in Dunlap's case Aug. 16 in Frankfort.

Schmidt raised the issue of Dunlap's competency in a brief and also wrote that the motivations behind Dunlap's decision to plead guilty "are murky at best, unfathomable at their heart."

"Dunlap's behavior was perplexing from the start," Schmidt said. "In short, he was willing to plead guilty even though he did not even know for certain what he was pleading to at the time the judge conducted the plea colloquy and he admitted guilt.

What could be more impulsive?"

The judge who sentenced Dunlap to death, as well as prosecutors, say he's been examined and they found no basis for a claim of mental incompetence.

Dunlap, 40, was sentenced to death March 19, 2010. He pleaded guilty to stabbing and killing 5-year-old Ethan Frensley, 17-year-old Kayla Williams and 14-year-old Kortney Frensley when they returned home from school on Oct. 15, 2008, in Roaring Springs, near the sprawling Fort Campbell military installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee state line. Dunlap remains on Kentucky's death row at the state penitentiary in Eddyville.
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Doctors often miss PTSD if they don't look for trauma

I read a lot of mental health news reports that do not get posted here because they do not involve veterans. This one is something anyone living with PTSD should know about. Psychiatrists can and often do misdiagnose PTSD as something else. If they are are not looking for a traumatic event in a life, they usually diagnose it as something else. The only way to end up with PTSD is after trauma but the symptoms can look like other forms of illness. This is the story of a woman diagnosed by different doctors.

DIAGNOSIS ROULETTE

Psychiatric patients can be labeled with numerous conditions during their treatment, labels that come to define them and their insurance status. Now psychiatry is revamping the mental-disorder book, further jumbling the picture.
By Stacey Burling
Inquirer Staff Writer

Over her life, June Sams has been told she has schizophrenia and four mental health disorders: bipolar, post-traumatic stress, major depressive, and personality. The 60-year-old Chester woman's current diagnoses - she thinks these fit - are major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders plus PTSD due to childhood trauma.

A doctor told Elisa-Beth Gardner, 51, of Swarthmore, that she had borderline personality disorder (BPD) in 1996. Three months later, she was told she had bipolar disorder. Then a doctor said she had both. Her current doctor thinks she has BPD and PTSD, but not bipolar.

When Sonia Weaver, now a 43-year-old Lancaster resident, got sick in 1997 - as a new mother and University of Chicago divinity school student - a psychiatrist said she had postpartum depression.
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Flip side of a group home and neighborhood

I thought this was going to be about another neighborhood trying to keep people in need out but wow, was I wrong on this. If you ever wanted to know the flip side of the story, here's one that will leave your blood pressure boiling.

Group homes stir anger in quiet Normandy Park
July 29, 2012
Normandy Park residents accuse for-profit care provider Hanbleceya of secrecy and deception in housing mentally ill and drug-addicted clients in their neighborhoods, and were even more dismayed when told state and local authorities have no power to step in.
By Christine Willmsen
Seattle Times staff reporter

One person heard the rumor at a Normandy Park book club. Another got wind of it chatting with neighbors on a walk. Then residents saw strangers moving in next door.

By the time citizens of this small, tight-knit suburb, just south of Seattle, realized that a private, for-profit California company was buying houses and moving in the severely mentally ill and drug-addicted — well, it was too late.

In the past six months, the La Mesa-based company, called Hanbleceya, has opened a treatment clinic in Normandy Park, bought three homes and rented two others. The company has plans to expand in Normandy Park, and also possibly to Burien and Des Moines.

When residents sought answers from Hanbleceya, which charges about $100,000 a year per client for treatment and housing, they say they encountered secrecy and deception. What has disturbed them most is that there appears to be no government oversight of this new breed of long-term mental-health treatment that couples semi-independent living with off-site clinical care.

Because Hanbleceya doesn't provide treatment inside the homes, they are not considered residential treatment facilities, which are regulated by the state Department of Health (DOH). And because Hanbleceya doesn't provide other supervised care inside the homes, they most likely do not fall under Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) regulation.
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Jail Death of Gulf War Veteran Haunts Joe Arpaio

Jail Death of Veteran Haunts Joe Arpaio, 'America's Toughest Sheriff'
Jun 3, 2012
Controversial Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio faces a lawsuit over the suspicious death of a mentally ill veteran in a Phoenix jail.
Terry Greene Sterling reports.

On a quiet day in early January, the family of Marty Atencio, a mentally ill Gulf War veteran who had died under suspicious circumstances at one of Sheriff Joseph Arpaio’s jails in Arizona, gathered to pay their respects at a funeral home in Phoenix. In their tributes to Atencio, who was 44, the grieving family recalled his recoveries, his relapses, his homelessness—and their struggle to help him.

Last Friday, six months after Atencio was buried with full military honors, the Maricopa County medical examiner released an unusual autopsy report that paints a horrifying picture of his last hours.

Atencio’s cause of death was tied to “complications of cardiac arrest” due to “acute psychosis, law enforcement subdual and multiple medical problems,” wrote the medical examiner, Mark Fischione. The medical examiner didn’t specify whether Atencio died of natural causes or was killed by the officers.

Atencio is at least the 12th inmate to die under strange circumstances in the Maricopa County jail system. (The Phoenix New Times lists 11 other such cases here.) And listing “law enforcement subdual” as one cause of death, according to former Maricopa County chief prosecutor Rick Romley, is particularly unusual because it could implicate law enforcement in Atencio’s death.

The former soldier’s allegedly rough treatment by officers at Arpaio’s infamous Fourth Avenue jail in Phoenix was caught on routine jail video tape. By then, Atencio had been in police custody for over four hours and had been showing signs of “acute psychosis,” the medical examiner reports. The video appears to show burly officers from Phoenix and Maricopa County piling on Atencio, apparently after he said something, though exactly what remains unclear because jail cameras don’t record audio.
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Mentally ill inmates on the rise in California prisons and jails

Mentally ill inmates on the rise in California prisons and jails
By Jocelyn Wiener
CHCF Center for Health Reporting
Published: Sunday, May. 27, 2012

MODESTO – Inmates with serious mental illnesses deemed incompetent to stand trial are languishing in California jail cells for months as they wait for state hospital beds to open up, according to advocates, jail officials and family members.

State and county budget cuts to mental health programs are combining with prison realignment and a shrinking number of state hospital beds to exacerbate the problem, they say.

In many counties, seriously mentally ill inmates routinely wait three to six months in jail before a state hospital bed opens up, said Randall Hagar, director of government affairs for the California Psychiatric Association. He calls the situation, which he says has gotten worse in recent years, "tragic."
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OEF-OIF veteran records deputies punching homeless woman on bus

Deputies Punch Homeless, Mentally Ill Woman on Bus
by Kristina Chew
January 11, 2012

Two Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs have been videotaped hitting a woman with unspecified mental health and other disabilities. The incident happened on Monday night, on a Metro bus in Bellflower. Jermaine Green and his fiancee Violet Roberts boarded a bus and noted another passenger, a woman with a stroller full of pillows who clearly had “special needs.” The two deputies, one male and one female, boarded the bus at the next stop and confronted the woman, grabbing at her and telling her to get off the bus. The male deputy punched her — and Green recorded everything on his cell phone video camera.

Said Green, who had just returned home after serving in the army for six years with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan:

“I couldn’t believe it. He seen me taping. He looked up at the camera a few times, and he still hit her like that, and I can’t believe he didn’t try to diffuse the situation at all.”

“In the Army, they gave us extensive training for rules of engagement. There’s proper protocols and steps you take. This lady didn’t do anything, she wasn’t combative and he actually turned combative on her.”

When Green refused to hand over the video, the deputies told him he could be arrested and asked if he had any warrants. Green answered, “”I said no, I’m a veteran, I just came back, I have six years, I have no record, and he said ‘We’ll see about that.’”
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Mental illness often ignored by churches

This is something that goes on no matter how many churches are in your area. A couple of years ago I visited over 20 in the Orlando area and found out just how disinterested they are. I wanted local churches to step up to help National Guard families with the crisis of PTSD but only one of them responded. The pastor happened to be a chaplain and wanted to help but he was being transferred to another state. If they don't want to get involved helping veterans, what chance does anyone else have?

Mental illness often ignored by churches
Published: June 23, 2011 at 8:31 PM
WACO, Texas, June 23 (UPI) -- Mental illness is prevalent in church communities but is also accompanied by significant distress that is often ignored, U.S. researchers found.

Study co-author Dr. Matthew Stanford -- a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University, and an expert in mental illness and the church -- says families with a member who is mentally ill would like their congregation to provide assistance.
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Mental illness often ignored by churches

Feds: Mentally Ill Targeted in $200M Medicare Fraud in Florida

There is an ad here in Florida attacking Grayson and Kosmos along with Nancy Pelosi. The problem with the ad is that while it is true they were part of the millions cut from Medicare, it was against waste, fraud and abuse, just as this report how bad the problem is. No one lost benefits and tax payers were well served by going after this kind of fraud. Whoever is behind the ad, just doesn't care about the elderly or the tax payers when they use an ad doing good but paint it as bad for attempted political gain.

This kind of thing happens way too often and it needs to be stopped for the sake of everyone.

Feds: Mentally Ill Targeted in $200M Medicare Fraud


Hugh Collins
Contributor

(Oct. 21 ) -- Two Miami health care companies and four owners and senior managers were indicted today in a $200 million fraud scheme that targeted mentally ill patients, federal authorities said.

American Therapeutic Corp. and Medlink Professional Management Group allegedly paid kickbacks to Florida assisted-living facilities to deliver their patients to ATC.

The companies would then bill Medicare therapy sessions that were unnecessary or never performed at all, the indictment said.

Agents with the FBI and Investigations Division of the Office of the Inspector General are seen outside the American Therapeutic Corp. building on Thursday in Miami. Federal agents raided the building during an operation that resulted in the arrest of four in what is being called one of the nation's biggest Medicare fraud cases.

Some of these patients were suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia, and were not aware of what was going on.

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Feds: Mentally Ill Targeted in $200M Medicare Fraud
Feds: Mentally Ill Targeted in $200M Medicare Fraud

The homeless brother I cannot save

We read about numbers of homeless, but families know their names. they become homeless for all sorts of reasons. One of the big ones is mental illness. We read about families so fed up, they can't take it anymore and turn their backs on these people, but some families did all they could. This is about a sister who clearly loves her brother but because of mental illness he lives on the streets. If you have someone in your family living on the streets, you may find some sort of comfort from reading this heartbreaking story from a sister. If you judge the homeless as just being lazy, then you should read this to understand why so many are homeless. Society turned their backs on the mentally ill a long time ago.

The homeless brother I cannot save

By Ashley Womble

A year ago, Jay traded my parents' home for the street. But the more I try to help him, the more I lose myself.

Like any New Yorker, I was no stranger to homeless people. I passed by them on my way to the shiny glass tower where I worked for a glossy women's magazine: the older lady perched atop a milk crate in the subway station, the man curled up in a dirty sleeping bag and clutching a stuffed animal. They were unfortunate ornaments of the city, unlucky in ways I never really considered.

Until one hot summer day in 2009 when my little brother Jay left his key on the coffee table and walked out of his house in West Texas to live on the streets instead. In the days that followed I spent hours on the phone with detectives, social workers and even the FBI, frantically trying to track him down. A friend designed a "Missing" poster using the most recent picture I had of him wearing a hoodie and a Modest Mouse T-shirt, a can of beer in his hand and a deer-in-headlights expression on his face. I created a Facebook group and contacted old acquaintances still living in our hometown of Lubbock, begging everyone I even remotely knew to help me find him. No luck. If it had been me, a pretty young white woman, chances are my face would have been all over the news -- but the sudden disappearance of a 20-year-old guy with paranoid schizophrenia didn't exactly warrant an Amber Alert.

In the year and a half that mental illness had ravaged my brother's mind, I'd learned to lower my expectations of what his life would be like. The smart kid who followed politics in elementary school probably wouldn't become a lawyer after all. Instead of going to college after high school, Jay became obsessed with 9/11 conspiracy theories. What began as merely eccentric curdled into something manic and disturbing: He believed the planners of 9/11 were a group of people called "The Cahoots" who had created a 24-hour television network to monitor his actions and control his thoughts -- a bizarre delusion that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Eventually, his story expanded until "The Cahoots" became one branch of the New World Order, a government whose purpose was to overturn Christianity, and he had been appointed by God to stop it.
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The homeless brother I cannot save

From Bible to bullets, mentally ill man killed by police

Oak Ridge resident shot, killed by police
Man was alledgedly holding knife as he approached officers
By Bob Fowler
Knoxville News Sentinel
Posted July 20, 2010

OAK RIDGE — With four Bibles bookmarked and opened nearby, plus a black velvet painting of Jesus Christ on the hood of his car, Rodney Eugene Harris was “conversing with the Lord” Sunday afternoon, a neighbor said.

Harris, 48, was walking up and down Hillside Road in front of his home, “looking up in the sky and talking,” Scott McGuire said.

Minutes later, the man neighbors said everyone knew had mental problems was lying mortally wounded in a neighbor’s yard, shot several times by police.

Oak Ridge Police Chief David H. Beams said Harris was advancing toward four officers, large knife in hand, and refusing repeated commands to drop the weapon.

Harris had just stabbed a police dog and yanked an embedded Taser barb out of his body that had been fired by one officer in a bid to subdue him, Beams said.
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Oak Ridge resident shot, killed by police

Glenn Close Is Removing The Shame That Shadows Mental Illness

Regular people end up making celebrities heroes because everyone needs one. In this case, I do agree. Glenn Close could very well end up being a voice for millions of people but above all for those connected to the military, either by active duty or veteran, our real heroes.

It would have been wonderful if like Bob Dole talking about erectile dysfunction, there was another famous people talking about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder so that there would be more public knowledge of what it is and what it is not. Think of the millions of men seeking help for their own problems because Bob Dole showed them it was ok to talk about it. It didn't even matter if they liked him or not, the point was, he was publicly talking about it. This is what mental illness needed all along, especially when it comes to PTSD and the military. They are the first to go to help and the last to ask for help.

It would be wonderful if they could get the generals who came out publicly about their own war demons to do a commercial and show the others there is nothing to be ashamed of but until then, until someone in a position of power speaks out publicly, this will have to at least begin the conversation. So thank you Ron Howard and Glenn Close for doing this.

Glenn Close Is Removing The Shame That Shadows Mental Illness

October 29, 2009
by Elizabeth Willoughby

In an effort to bring mental illness into everyday dialogue, Glenn Close co-created the Bring Change 2 Mind campaign and, with the help of director Ron Howard, created a public service announcement pointing out how common such illnesses really are.

The first problem about awareness, even though one in six adults suffer from one form or another, is that mental illness is invisible. The other problem is the stigma attached to it.

“I think a lot of people will find that it’s kind of a relief to simply acknowledge that mental health issues are something every family deals with,” says Howard, “and yet it clearly does still remain stigmatized.”

The stigma is so powerful that it causes many sufferers of illnesses such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and post traumatic stress disorder to go undiagnosed, and therefore remain without the help that is available to them.
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Glenn Close Is Removing The Shame

When doctors get it wrong, keep looking and talking

I haven't been posting today because this morning I woke up to a big shock. I have a 13 year old Golden Retriever. His name is Brandon. He's one of the best dogs a person could ever hope for. Yesterday he seemed to really be having a problem. He never complains about pain, so it's always a guessing game. His appetite was great as usual, but he kept losing his balance. He's been treated for arthritis, so I assumed it was acting up again. Last night he still wanted to play with his favorite toy, a stuffed duck that quacks. He pounced around the house like he's a puppy again with the thing sticking out of his mouth as he shakes his head trying to "kill it" but then lays down when he's done playing and laps it. Last night he kept falling down but got right back up and kept on playing.

This morning, I got his food ready but he didn't come as soon as he heard the fork in the bowl. I put the bowl down and went to get him. He couldn't get up. Right away I thought it was his hips, so I picked him up. No easy task since he's a huge breed of Golden and weighs about 90 pounds. He couldn't stand up.

I called his vet and was advised to get him to the emergency Vet's office because they had all the right diagnostic equipment. We picked him up, carried him to the car and the techs at the vet's met us at the door. After several tests, they found a problem with compressed discs in his spine, which meant he needed something stronger than that other medicine he was taking. They found a little arthritis in his hips, which was a relief in a way. They also said he had Idiopathic vestibular disease. Read about that here.

Idiopathic Vestibular Disease in Dogs
veterinaryhelp Questions and Answers Thursday, 27 July 2006

Idiopathic vestibular disease is also referred to as old dog vestibular disease or geriatric vestibular syndrome because it is typically seen in older dogs. Clinical signs are acute in onset and are often described as a stroke. This is due to disruption of the peripheral vestibular system that controls balance.

Signs seen with this disease are consistent with those expected in other peripheral vestibular diseases - peripheral meaning not involving the brain but the vestibulocochlear nerve in the ear. Patients may be unable to stand, fall to one side, tilt the head to one side or have an abnormal flicking of the eyes called nystagmus.
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The poor dog is dizzy and his head is tilted to the side. There is no way of knowing when this disease really started but the vet said he'll get worse before he gets better. We are going to try to keep him home because we don't want him to be alone in a cage as the vet takes care of him. We'll see how this goes over the next day or so and then decide what to do. The Vet was sure that he'll recover well but may end up with a tilted head. It's also good to know that he needs to have the right medicine for his spine instead of his hips.

There is a point to all of this.

His regular vet is wonderful and she is very caring. She thought since large dogs have problems with their hips and arthritis, that was why he was having some problems. It's was an easy guess to make. It also didn't cause any questions when he seemed to be having an easier time walking on the medicine he was on. Naturally dogs can't tell you when we're wrong. Dogs like Brandon, very stoic when it comes to pain, usually don't let you know when there is something seriously wrong either. It's up to us to notice the changes in them and know when it's time to get them more help than we can give.

All of this boils down to humans being diagnosed as well. When it's PTSD, the doctors can get it wrong simply because if they are looking for depression, bingo, they find depression. If they are looking for bipolar, they find it. If they are looking for paranoia or schizophrenia, they find that too. The problem with PTSD is that PTSD comes after trauma. If the doctor doesn't really listen and we don't pay enough attention, then we walk away with the wrong diagnosis and most of the time medicine that seems to help for a time, but the real problem is getting worse.

I know it sounds odd to compare a dog to a person with PTSD but when you think about it, it does make sense. People with PTSD are usually not looking for it since they don't know what it is. Doctors won't look for it unless they know something happened to the patient they are just meeting. The wrong medicine and the wrong treatment may mask the real problem and it's very important for the families to know the difference. PTSD patients often are in denial and too often never connect a traumatic event to what they are going through, so they don't communicate with doctors any better than a dog does with a Vet. It takes the right tests to know what they are dealing with. I've seen this happen too many times.

People suffer because we don't communicate well enough with doctors but most of that comes from our own lack of knowledge. Just as I was totally lost this morning with my beloved dog, we can all feel lost if we have no understanding at all. Had I not known what PTSD was before my husband was finally diagnosed, I would have settled for the original diagnosis of possible bipolar. I opened my mouth and told the doctor what I knew.

It's up to us as someone who knows them to make sure they are taken care of the right way. Just as my dog was in pain and I didn't know it, or at least knew the right cause of it, too many PTSD wounded are in pain and if we don't have a clue what it is, we make a lot of mistakes while they suffer. Make sure you know what PTSD and then open your mouth to the doctor so they can test for the right thing. Otherwise, the real problem is just being covered up.

I'll keep you posted on my dog as well. Pretty ironic though that one thing lead to another since this was not the original intent of this post.

Advocates raise alarm about rise in mentally ill prisoners

Advocates raise alarm about rise in mentally ill prisoners


By Kate Santich

Sentinel Staff Writer

July 9, 2009
The number of people with mental illness filling Florida's jails and prisons is growing at an alarming rate, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and threatening to exhaust the entire budget for mental-health programs, advocates warned Wednesday.

State Rep. William D. Snyder, R-Stuart, announced a renewed push for legislative changes that would redirect money to community-based programs aimed at stopping the "almost madness" of the current system.

"We know the cost of constantly incarcerating and re-incarcerating the mentally ill is ... huge," said Snyder, whose previous attempt to change the system died in the 2009 legislative session. "And this is a human-rights issue."

The proposed legislation was based on well-researched treatment strategies at pilot initiatives across the state that Snyder said are already showing reduced repeat-arrest rates and increased public safety.

About 9,000 inmates leave Florida prisons each year with "very serious mental illnesses," Leifman said, and without community follow-up treatment, half of them wind up back in prison within 18 months, typically for violating parole. They have become the fastest-growing group of the prison population.

The number of state prison beds serving inmates with mental illnesses is projected to more than double in the next decade from 17,000 to more than 35,000, requiring one new prison to be built each year to house them and costing taxpayers at least $3.6 billion, Leifman said.

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Advocates raise alarm about rise in mentally ill prisoners

UK Report Cognitive Behavioural Therapy a waste of money

Government wasting money on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy suggests study
Written by Lautaro Vargas
Thursday, 02 July 2009
New research from the University of Hertfordshire has concluded that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) represents is of no value to sufferers of schizophrenia and has limited effect on depression.

Developed from a mix of cognitive and behavioural therapy, CBT is designed to systematically help solve problems in people’s lives, such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or drug misuse.

Professor Keith Laws, at the University’s School of Psychology, is a lead author on a paper entitled: Cognitive behavioural therapy for major psychiatric disorder: does it really work?

This meta-analytical review of well-controlled trials, published online in the journal Psychological Medicine, reviews the use of CBT in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression.

The results of the review suggest that not only is CBT ineffective in treating schizophrenia and in preventing relapse, it is also ineffective in preventing relapses in bipolar disorder.

The review also suggests that CBT has only a weak effect in treating depression, but it has a greater effect in preventing relapses in this disorder.

The authors focused particularly on methodologically rigorous trials that compared CBT to a ‘psychological placebo’ and also investigated the impact of ‘blinding’, i.e. whether or not the people who assessed the patients knew if they were receiving active treatment or not.

Both factors are considered essential before a drug treatment is approved for use in psychiatric disorders.
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Government wasting money on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy suggests study

Act Now to Prevent the Incarceration of People with Mental Illness

Trust me on this. If Fred Frese is involved with this, it is a big issue. We've read about Veterans Courts because they take into account the unique issues veterans have coming back from combat. They are not just doing this for the newer generation of veterans, but for all veterans. Mental illness is not a crime and should never be treated like one.

Act Now to Prevent the Incarceration of People with Mental Illness

June 12, 2009

The criminalization of people with mental illness is a growing problem that devastates many members of our community. A study released this month in the journal Psychiatric Services shows that the prevalence of people with serious mental illness in jails is increasing.

The study, which was presented June 1st at a Senate briefing featuring NAMI National board member Fred Frese, found that overall, 16% of jail inmates have a serious mental illness.

Even more alarming, 31% of female jail inmates have a serious mental illness. These numbers suggest that up to 2 million jail bookings every year involve an individual with serious mental illness. In light of this study, it is more important now than ever before to support programs that help people stay out of jail.

This week, the House Appropriations committee approved the FY 2010 budget for Commerce, Justice and Science programs, which includes $12 million for the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act (MIOTCRA). MIOTCRA grants support communities working on crisis intervention teams (CIT), mental health courts, and similar programs that are proven to help break the cycle of incarceration.

The bill also includes $100 million in funding for the Second Chance Act, which supports re-entry programs to help people get the services and support they need to successfully reintegrate into society. The full House is expected to vote on the bill the week of June 15.

Act Now!Let your Representatives in the House know that people with mental illness should not be in jail.

Write a letter today telling them to support funding for MIOTCRA and the Second Chance Act as part of the 2010 Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Bill.

Learn MoreVisit the Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project Web site to learn more about the study.

Visit the House Appropriations Committee Web site to read a summary of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Bill.

Read more about the briefing on the prevalence study hosted by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Visions for Tomorrow, Prince William County NAMI giving hope and understanding

Disorders Class Aims To Help Parents
Group Gives Chance To Cope, Connect
By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 5, 2009; Page PW03

Jeri Weeks remembers the disorienting feeling of learning for the first time that her son had schizophrenia. He was 18, and she couldn't track down enough information about the brain disorder that was hampering her son's reasoning and making him withdraw socially.

Weeks called a hotline for the Arlington County-based nonprofit National Alliance on Mental Illness, and over time and with plenty of help, the disarray receded.

"I was very distraught, but NAMI led me to a support group, and that led me to start my own support group, and after all these years, my son is doing well," Weeks said.

Weeks is doing well herself; she's a vice president of Prince William County's chapter of NAMI and this month will begin co-teaching a weekly session aimed at helping Prince William parents or caregivers of children with brain disorders.

The "Visions for Tomorrow" course, in its ninth year, will cater to a large swath of adults whose children suffer in a significant way from behavioral or mental health problems such as depression, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism and several others. The free course, every Wednesday night beginning April 22 at Penn Elementary in Woodbridge, is intended to aid parents who lack support networks or are in denial that their child will suffer for a long time, school and NAMI officials said.
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Disorders Class Aims To Help Parents

Tampa Facility Ready To Help Homeless Women Veterans

Tampa Facility Ready To Help Homeless Women Veterans
By SHERRI ACKERMAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 6, 2008

TAMPA - Tampa Crossroads celebrated its new transitional housing program for homeless women veterans today with a tour of its 100-year-old boarding house facility and a ceremony honoring women who served their country.

The former Cueto-Sierra Boarding House at 1301 E. Columbus Ave. served as a temporary home for soldiers returning from war in the early 1900s and will soon house 16 female veterans.

The women, who are among an estimated 400 female homeless veterans in the Tampa Bay area, will receive treatment for substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, post-traumatic stress disorder and other issues.

They also will take part in job training and educational opportunities designed to help them back on their feet, said Sara Romeo, executive director of Tampa Crossroads, a social service agency that made a name for itself locally by working with ex-offenders.
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Mental Health Court budget cut is counterproductive

Not only is it counterproductive, it is an injustice. The mental health community has worked tirelessly to be able to raise awareness of the difference between someone who has an impaired mental state and those who have criminal intent. Aside from getting average citizens into treatment instead of jail, it has also been raising awareness of the unique circumstances when combat veterans come home wounded by PTSD and end up in trouble. This is one of the last things that should be cut from a budget, especially one that is facing tight financial times. It will only increase the numbers of incarcerated individuals and many of them don't belong there.

Mental Health Court makes strides, but funds drying up
By M.S. Enkoji - menkoji@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Monday, October 6, 2008
Story appeared in OUR REGION section, Page B1
Sacramento Bee - CA, USA


Every week, Superior Court Judge Jaime Román finds a reason among a pile of stuffed manila folders to lead applause in his courtroom.

Both sides of the courtroom join him with genuine joy.

"You are incredibly positive," Román said to a woman standing before him who beamed at his praise. She's a criminal – a mentally ill one.


But she's garnering high praise from a judge, a prosecutor and a probation officer.

Sacramento County's Mental Health Court is diverting mentally ill, habitual, nonviolent offenders away from a cycle that spins them through jail and back on the street.

For a year to 18 months, with intense supervision, classes, medical treatment, unannounced monitoring, housing and transportation assistance – and regular check-ins with Román – they rebuild their lives and stay out of jail.

Mental health court is saving millions in criminal justice costs, as it has in Santa Clara County, supporters say. And it could save much more.

"We're taking people who, through no fault of their own, can't function as a regular part of society and we're helping them," said Siena Riffia, a Sacramento County public defender who works in Mental Health Court.

But just as the new court is hitting stride with stable graduates in school and on the job, the new state budget has virtually gutted the whole effort.

"There is no money," Román said to a handful of stunned clients in his courtroom last week.
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