The Guardian continues its series on the American mental health system with a practical article by Paul Appelbaum, Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine and Law at Columbia University. It seems the last rethinking of the American mental health system took place in 1955. Can we improve our mental health system without investing billions of dollars? No, we can’t. Therein lies the problem.
We have pretty good mental health services for those who can afford to pay. For those who can’t . . . well, just thinking about it can make you crazy.
No genuine system of mental health care exists in the United States. This country’s diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems are fragmented across a variety of providers and payers – and they are all too often unaffordable. If you think about it, the list of complications is almost endless:
Patients transitioning from inpatient to outpatient treatment often fall between the cracks.
Mental health and general medical treatment are rarely coordinated.
Substance abuse treatment usually takes place in an entirely different system altogether, with little coordination.
Auxiliary interventions that are so essential to so many people with serious mental illnesses – supported housing, employment training, social skills training – are offered through a different set of agencies altogether … if they are available at all.
Our mental health system is a non-system – and a dysfunctional non-system at that.
I first realized that , prisons had become the go-to institution for treating mental illness when I met Adolphus, a man in his forties who lived in Tulia, Texas, with his elderly mother. Adolphus had been diagnosed with schizophrenia by the doctors at the state hospital in Big Spring, but he rarely stayed on his meds. They made him feel sleepy, he said, like his head was stuffed with cotton.
Dolphus, as his family called him, preferred to self-medicate. He used crack cocaine. It made him feel normal.
Dolphus showed up at the door one night asking for twenty dollars “so I can get myself a room.” I offered our guest bed. “You got any HBO back there?” he asked.
It was easy to get frustrated with Dolphus. His mother called the police when his delusions got so out of control that he made her afraid.
Eventually, Dolphus was caught with a few rocks of crack. Well, not exactly. When the police asked him to turn out his pockets, he swallowed the crack and then refused to give permission to have his stomach pumped.
The DA decided that Adolphus needed to be permanently removed from the streets, but there were no hospital rooms. Public health officials recommend that states maintain 50 psychiatric beds per 100,000 population; Texas has 8.5.
So Dolphus was charged with obstructing justice and, owing to his multiple prior convictions, the prosecution was asking for fifty years.
I learned that the trial was underway when the defense attorney remembered to call a family member when the trial was half over. We raced down to Plainview, arriving just as the defense was ready to present its case. The attorney didn’t know that Dolphus was schizophrenic. Nobody thought it mattered. Dolphus’s lawyer tried to put me on the stand to testify to that fact, but since I had no standing as a medical expert, the judge refused to let me testify and the jury was left in the dark. (more…)
Rev. John Dear is a noted peace activist and author. He is a follower of the nonviolent way of Jesus. He has traveled worldwide, rubbed shoulders with numerous peace activists including the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and the Berrigan brothers. He is a student, via their works, of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He is the author of numerous articles and books relating to peace, justice and nonviolence.
For several years he was the priest for several congregations in New Mexico. His persistent—Roman Catholic authorities called it obdurate—criticism of nuclear weapons and of those who build them resulted in his removal from New Mexico, with the result that now he is a priest without a parish. No, the nation, even the world is his parish.
Patricia and I were privileged to hear John Dear in Amarillo on May 16 at an event cosponsored by the Peace Farm and the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Amarillo. At that event I purchased his most recent book, The Nonviolent Life, and since then I have worked my way through that short but heavy volume.
The book is divided into three sections—Part One: Nonviolence Toward Ourselves; Part Two: Nonviolence Toward all Others; and Part Three: Joining the Global Grassroots Movement of Nonviolence. Each section concludes with questions for personal reflection and small group discussion.
In Part One Rev. Dear makes the case that all nonviolence must begin with nonviolence toward ourselves. We cannot love others if we hate ourselves. The great commandment of Jesus is to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And often we are filled with self-loathing. If we hate ourselves how can we love our neighbors? And if we hate our neighbors how can we love God? To cultivate nonviolence toward ourselves we need to acknowledge to ourselves the hurts and putdowns we have received. We need to acknowledge to ourselves our own self-worth. We don’t need to be afraid to pat ourselves on the back. Cultivating nonviolence toward ourselves is a daily lifelong attitude adjustment project.
If we are inwardly violent to ourselves it’s easy to turn our self-loathing outward and become mean and hateful to others. Peace and justice advocates, believing so strongly in their own cause, can become mean and hateful in the process and thus do more harm than good. I have to acknowledge that this strikes a sensitive nerve. I am not physically violent, but I can have a mean tongue and a meaner pen. Rev. Dear, along with the Epistle of James, reminds me to keep guard on that.
Becoming nonviolent to ourselves is not a one and done affair. It is a lifelong project. Rev. Dear returns to this topic throughout the book. Maybe it’s a problem for him, too?
Part Two emphasizes nonviolence toward all others, including God’s creation. This nonviolence is active, not passive. We don’t just roll over and play dead in the face of violence and injustice, but we do not return violence for violence. Glenn Stassen makes the case that turning the other cheek and walking the second mile shames the violent one in his violence. Dear emphasizes the environmental aspects of nonviolence. Raping the earth is violence. Brutality to animals is violence. (Rev. Dear is an advocate of vegetarianism). Working in industries which live off violence is participating in violence. After the session I had opportunity to speak with him briefly about this. I told him how so many of the young people in our church, in my church specifically, go into the military upon graduation from college. We are reminded to pray for them. I confessed that I am torn about this. I don’t say don’t pray for them, but neither do I want military service to be considered a badge of honor. He said, “Pray for them, but pray for the young people of Afghanistan too.” Pray for people who are subject to our drone strikes! Praying for our national “enemies” can be active nonviolence!
Some of us can become active in local organizations for peace and justice, such as Friends of Justice. We can witness impossible possibilities. I remember being at a meeting near the end of the trials of the Tulia Drug Sting victims. Everyone who went to trial had been convicted. Legal minds said it would be impossible to overturn the convictions. One woman whom I will not name jumped up and said, “No! We’re going to see that they all go free!” Within three years all those convictions were overturned.
Part Three regards becoming a part of the global movement toward nonviolence. Not all of us can be personally involved. But all of us can be advocates.
Meeting Rev. Dear has caused me to reexamine my own life, to try to be sure I’m not inwardly or outwardly violent, and to recommit myself as much as in me lieth to be a follower of the Way of the nonviolent Jesus.
Paige Patterson says it’s okay for a devout Muslim to study at Southwestern Theological Seminary. Why is this a big deal? I doubt the seminaries affiliated with American Baptist or Cooperative Baptist congregations would have a problem enrolling Ghassan Nagagreh, a student who believes there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet.
But there are good reasons why even the Washington Post took notice when the president of Southwestern Seminary pulled strings on behalf of of a non-Christian student.
Paige Patterson is committed to Truth with a capital “T”. Scientifically verifiable truth; the kind you can take to the bank. Make no mistake, fundamentalism has its advantages. Start with the a priori assumption that every jot and tittle of the Bible springs directly from the mind of God, and things get real simple.
If the Bible says only orthodox Christians are bound for glory, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims need not apply. No exceptions.
If the Book says women can’t exercise authority over men, there will be no female pastors, simple as that. (more…)
It takes time to wrap your head around education reform. The vocabulary is daunting: Common Core, charter schools, VAM, high stakes testing, Race to the Top. And just when you think you’ve mastered the material, you realize that the details don’t matter because the education reform debate is being driven by money. First you have the poor people who don’t have enough money to send their kids to school with a full stomach. Secondly, a handful of philanthropists has distorted the reform debate by placing far too much money on the table.
The school reform issue boils down to a simple question: who is responsible for low student achievement? Should we blame a society with a remarkably high tolerance for poverty; or should we blame educators and administrators who blame poverty for their poor performance? (more…)
Would Jesus support the death penalty? Mother Theresa posed the question to the Governor of California in 1990. She was pretty sure he knew the answer.
Only 5 percent of Americans believe that Jesus would support government’s ability to execute the worst criminals. Two percent of Catholics, 8 percent of Protestants, and 10 percent of practicing Christians said their faith’s founder would offer his support.
The Barna poll revealed that 42% of Christian Baby Boomers believe the government should have the right to execute the worst criminals (whatever Jesus might think).
But pose the same question to Christian millennials (roughly those between 18 and 30) and only 32% give an affirmative answer.
Things get really interesting when the death penalty question is posed to Christians who are particularly serious about their faith. The Barna study
“showed an even sharper difference in support for the death penalty among “practicing Christians,” which Barna defined as those who say faith is very important to their lives and have attended church at least once in the last month. Nearly half of practicing Christian boomers support the government’s right to execute the worst criminals, while only 23 percent of practicing Christian millennials do.”
Did you catch that?
When you ask boomers about the death penalty, religious devotion increases support for the death penalty by ten points (give or take); but devout millennials are ten point less likely to support the death penalty than the nominally religious members of their cohort.
The United States has earned the unenviable title “the incarceration nation.” We lock up six times as many people as countries like Canada and the United Kingdom. And Louisiana owns the highest rate of incarceration in America. Theo Shaw and Robert Bailey, Jr. came close to serving a decade or more in prison; instead, both young men have graduated from college and are readying themselves for even bigger things. On Friday, Theo was the subject of a human interest piece in the NO’s Times Picayune. The next day, Robert Bailey, Jr. graduated from Grambling University and joined the army.
Theo Shaw was at the bottom of his high school class when he was arrested for participating in a high school beat down. But his attorneys believed in him so much that, eventually, Theo started believing in himself. He had to dig himself out of a big academic hole, but he went at the task with grit and determination. He is currently working with the Southern Poverty Law Center in New Orleans and is doing a wonderful job.
Robert Bailey, Jr. with his proud family
Robert Bailey could have been serving time in an isolated Louisiana lock-up; instead, he will be serving his country in the military. He just needed a chance.
That’s why I decided to bring the story of the Jena 6 to national attention. It took some good fortune and the assistance of a broad network of advocacy groups and pro bono attorneys, but we got the job done. In most cases, young men like Theo and Robert have no one to speak for them; no one to believe in them more than they believe in themselves. We can’t save each young person individually; we need to reform the system. That is precisely what Theodore Shaw is doing.
As notorious black youth go, Marshall Coulter can’t hold a candle to Theodore Shaw. Coulter, described by family as a “professional thief,” hopped a Marigny homeowner’s fence in dead of night last July, and the homeowner shot him in the head. That shooting and two more arrests have made Coulter infamous in New Orleans. (more…)
This cartoon from the pen of Ronald Giles first appeared in the London Daily Express in 1956, but it was reprised in the Edmonton Journal a decade later when the death penalty debate was white hot. John Diefenbaker, Canadian Prime Minister and leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, introduced the practice of commuting every death sentence in 1962, but the debate raged throughout the 1960s and capital punishment, in theory if not in practice, survived in Canada until 1976. (Diefenbaker and Tommy Douglas, incidentally, are both Saskatchewan Baptists who made it big in Canadian politics.)
Public opinion on the death penalty, in Canada and elsewhere, can fluctuate wildly over time. Only 18% of the Canadian population favored capital punishment immediately after WW2, but support for the grisly institution gradually increased from that point on.
The strongest argument in favor of the death penalty was that it could save the lives of police officers and prison guards by providing a deterrent.
Dr. Jay Chapman
But, as this story on NPR’s Morning Edition makes clear, responsibility for carrying out capital sentences falls primarily on the shoulders of prison officials, often with dreadful consequences. Dr. Jay Chapman, the man who originated the drug cocktail used for executions in most states, explains that his formula was commonly used by veterinarians to put down animals. But veterinarians know what they are doing and most of the people involved in your typical execution do not. Trained medical personnel generally refuse to participate in executions for moral reasons so prison staff get stuck with the dirty work. In most cases, the NPR piece suggests, these good people are radically unprepared, technically and emotionally, for the burden.
“This is not normal behavior for right-minded humans to engage in,” says Steve Martin, who participated in several executions in Texas in the 1980s. His job was to man the phones in case of a reprieve. He says the whole process is emotionally crippling.
The irony is that a barbaric practice designed to protect prison guards has become a source of nightmares and psychic distress for prison personnel. Last weeks botched execution in Oklahoma was more common than is commonly assumed.
Which brings me back to the cartoon at the top of the page. Ronald Giles is suggesting that support for the death penalty is driven by a crude form of blood lust personified by the Grandma who would love to see everybody hang.
Madame Defarge
Madame Defarge, a Dickens creation from A Tale of Two Cities, had good reason to resent the French aristocracy, but her lust for revenge trumped her humanity. The Daily Express cartoonist was saying the phenomenon might be universal. If we want to support prison guards, we should end the death penalty immediately. Are you a death penalty supporter? Then I urge you to listen to this wonderful piece of radio journalism.
In 1977, death row inmate Gary Mark Gilmore chose to be executed by a firing squad. Gilmore was strapped to a chair at the Utah State Prison, and five officers shot him.
The media circus that ensued prompted a group of lawmakers in nearby Oklahoma to wonder if there might be a better way to handle executions. They approached Dr. Jay Chapman, the state medical examiner at the time, who proposed using three drugs, based loosely on anesthesia procedures at the time: one drug to knock out the inmates, one to relax or paralyze them, and a final drug that would stop their hearts. (more…)
It was good to see the State Board of Education race in North Texas getting some well-deserved attention in the Texas Tribune. Pat Hardy has been one of the sensible conservatives on the State Board for a dozen years, but for some that’s not enough. Real conservatives want creation science taught in Texas classrooms. Real conservatives must believe that Texas school children are being taught that the 9-11 terrorists were freedom fighters and that communism is terrific.
Or so says Eric Mahroum, Hardy’s opponent in the imminent runoff election.
Hardy has been placed in a difficult position. Mahroum’s contentions may sound crazy to folks who don’t live in Texas, but most of them have been written into the state’s Republican platform (which, much to the embarrassment of moderate Republicans, reads like Tea Party screed from beginning to end). This explains Mahroum’s central contention:
She’s here for the Republican Party and that means she has to represent her party and our platform.”
The article mentions Democratic candidate Nancy Bean (my wife in case you were wondering) only in passing, the assumption being that either Republican candidate will have a powerful advantage in November. Perhaps. But if the Tea Party man wins this runoff, a lot of moderate Republicans will be tempted to vote for the alternative candidate even if it means losing the convenience of voting a straight ticket.
One could comment on the confused dishonesty of Mahroum’s rhetoric, but his appeal to the scriptural authority of the Republican platform is the central issue at this point. Party platforms are almost always written by the activist wing of the state party, and this document is no exception. Many Republicans flatly disagree with their party’s platform, but they continue to vote for the red team anyway because, well, what would the neighbors think?
But moderate Republicans can tolerate only so much idiocy. There is a limit. Where the line is drawn is anybody’s guess; but if Pat Hardy loses this runoff election, we may find out.
Pat Hardy, a 12-year incumbent on the State Board of Education, is facing a tough challenge from a conservative activist in a Republican primary runoff that could shift the balance of power on the board.
Tea Party groups in the district, which includes Parker County and parts of Tarrant and Dallas counties, have thrown their support behind Hardy’s opponent, Eric Mahroum of Fort Worth, a restaurant manager who has no teaching or school administrative experience and is expected to vote with the far-right voting bloc on the 15-member, Republican-dominated board. Hardy has drawn criticism for taking votes with Democrats on the board, including on issues like teaching creationism alongside evolution in the state’s public schools. (more…)
The New York Times has a wonderful obituary celebrating the work and legacy of ethicist Glen Stassen. Paul Vitello’s lengthy article does justice to Stassen’s progressive Republican father and highlights Glen’s influential advocacy work, much of which took place during the years between my two sojourns at Southern seminary in Louisville (1980-1989). For instance,
Dr. Stassen was among the few prominent evangelical leaders to publicly challenge the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the leader of the Moral Majority, over his electioneering on behalf of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984. And he was among the few to criticize Reagan over his domestic spending cuts, his military buildup and his use of the phrase “evil empire” in 1983 to describe the Soviet Union.
He went on to help mobilize the international disarmament movement that, by some accounts, played a role in removing intermediate range nuclear missiles from Western Europe in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
And there is this:
At the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., where he became a professor of Christian ethics in 1976, Dr. Stassen clashed with administrators who urged faculty members to place ideas like prohibiting abortion, the subordination of women in the family and the literal truth of biblical texts at the core of their teaching.
A bit of nuance would be helpful here. Although I’m sure Stassen made Southern presidents Duke McCall and Roy Lee Honeycutt nervous from time to time, Glen was generally at home in the pragmatic conservatism of the 70s and 80s. The overt fundamentalism of Albert Mohler and the puppet masters who elevated an untested neophyte to the presidency of the denomination’s flagship seminary changed all that. Glen stayed at Southern four years into Mohler’s reign, a testament to Dr. Stassen’s commitment to peacemaking. To quote Bob Dylan, “anyone with any sense had already left town.”
Here’s my favorite bit:
In the early 1980s, while on a research sabbatical in Germany, Dr. Stassen served as a liaison between the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in the United States and several European peace groups.
He was inspired, he said, by the grass-roots activism he saw there: demonstrations drawing hundreds of thousands of people to protest plans for basing NATO missiles in West Germany and 30,000 churches joining in peace forums that filled pews to capacity.
When he returned home, he assumed a greater leadership role in the disarmament movement, serving as co-chairman of the freeze campaign’s strategy committee, a coalition of peace and labor groups that helped organize a protest in Central Park in 1982 that drew about one million demonstrators.
“A thousand things happened to bring about the slow-dawning realization that a freeze was in the interests of both sides,” Dr. Stassen wrote, referring to the 1987 treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union that finally ended the buildup. “People had more of the power and took more of the initiative than is usually perceived.”
It is always in the government’s interest to play down “the role of the people,” he added. “But the treaty would not have happened without them.”
Friends of Justice 