A little bit of suicide awareness can go a long way

Reducing the risk of suicide means eliminate the stigma of mental illness and improving awareness of the signs and symptoms of individuals at risk.

Now national and state experts across the country are working to educate individuals on the need for increased access to mental health treatment and services to reduce the risk of suicide.

Now that National Suicide Prevention Week has just passed, professionals say it's particularly important to bring awareness to suicide prevention this year

Statistics show that suicide rates in America for males and females aged 10-24 climbed 8 percent in 2007, the largest single one-year rise in 15 years, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

In addition, this is an extremely important time to bring awareness and education to military personnel, retired veterans and their loved ones because of the alarming rise in the suicide rate among veterans returning from war, professionals say.

According to national statistics, a young person commits suicide every two hours, making it the third leading cause of death for those under the age of 24. Every two hours, a teenager takes his own life.

In 2005, more than 6,250 U.S. veterans committed suicide and the rate at which veterans took their own lives was double that of the non-veteran population, with the youngest veterans returning from occupied Iraq and Afghanistan the most likely to commit suicide.

“While we must not romanticize suicide, we also must not ignore it. If we do so out of fear or shame, we lose the opportunity to take steps to prevent future tragedies,” said Debra L. Wentz, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Association of Mental Health Agencies (NJAMHA), which represents 125 nonprofit community mental health care providers.

“We should all be alert to the signs and symptoms and be aware of available resources in case we believe a friend or a loved one is at risk. And we must ensure that there is timely access to treatment when an individual is in need,” said Wentz.

She said many of these tragedies could be prevented through "timely, effective mental health treatment and services."

"With appropriate treatment, individuals with mental illnesses can lead full, successful lives,” she said.

NJAMHA advocates to state legislators and policymakers, urging that the New Jersey and federal budgets allocate sufficient funding to ensure continued provision of services to consumers already in treatment programs, as well as many more who can wait as long as five months for an appointment.

Wentz said that the risk of suicide can increase while individuals endure long waits for services and their mental health deteriorates.

“Mental illnesses are very real illnesses, just like any physical disease, and must not be treated differently," she said. "Such awareness and understanding should lead to the elimination of discrimination in funding and insurance coverage and the stigma that hampers individuals from seeking the help they need."

A poem to remember the troubles of a 21-year-old man, 20 years ago

The Abyss, Part V (Feel cold)

I shed
My clothes
I lose
My soul
My head
Hits fog
My arms
Are logs
The walls
Are white
The light's
Too bright
My tongue
Feels cool
The stick
Is cruel
The door
Sticks out
Walk free
Walk out
But I
Feel cold
They shed
My clothes
With it
My soul
The scale's
Too light
I eat
All right
Don't stare
At that
It's there
It's fat
But they
Know well
I'm gone
A shell
The lines
Are long
My face
Is drawn
My clothes
They slip
I shed
Too quick
With me
I lull
I shed
My soul
The drink
They give
Is smooth
On skin
I sip
I wait
I lick
I taste
I drink
It lays
It tastes
Like clay
Drink more
I'm told
Be man
Be bold
It rolls
Way down
It sticks
It pounds
It sits
Down there
Where pain
Is where
I've lost
My soul
So keep
My clothes
I'll close
My nose
I'll drink
All those
And I'll
Compose

What is it about first grade, anyway?

I was the most popular kid in my kindergarten class. In first grade, I was quite possibly the least popular.

Why? Well, the things I got away with in kindergarten were shunned, stunted and mocked: Crying, being taller than everybody, being cute.

The biggest hurdle to jump was the transition from a half-day of building blocks and playing "thumbs up" to a six-hour marathon of filling out math problems on "ditto" sheets and reading and analyzing Clifford.

As a father of three young'ns, I now can see how that's the biggest hill to climb. Now that a new school year is starting, it's no wonder that I'm seeing a lot of kids hanging outside the doorways to their school, crying and clinging to their parents. "I don't want to go," the say. "I want to go with you."

My father, an elementary school principal for nearly 30 years, says first grade was not only the hardest to teach, but also the hardest to find the right teacher to teach. The emotional issues run the gamut from hyperactivity to depression.

It's quite possibly that defines the profile of a child - a perception that seems to stick with a boy or girl throughout their time in school. Children seem to also know that it's a make-or-break year, and that first impressions matter: If they don't make friends now, they won't later.

Lately, I've been watching and rewatching clips from the movie "Almost Famous," and I'm reminded of what it's like to not quite fit in. I was a child who was ahead of the curve - the teachers used to move me to the side of the class, place a pile of books in front of me and forget about me for the rest of the class (I was the only one who knew how to read).

The movie reminds me how parents play a big role in shaping the perceptions kids have of each other. While it's good to have parents push their kids and compel them to excel, it's bad to eliminate the potential social consequences from the equation.

9/11 and mental health: A link that will live in infamy

Nearly 3,000 people died on Sept. 11, 2001. But the mind was one of the most significant, and lingering casualties.

On the seventh anniversary of the attacks, it's important to remember that there are resources for people still suffering.

From Columbia University and it's book, "9/11: Mental Health in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks:"

Does terrorism have a unique and significant emotional and behavioral impact among adults and children? In what way does the impact of terrorism exceed the individual level and affect communities and specific professional groups as well as test different leadership styles?

How were professional communities of mental health clinicians, policy makers and researchers mobilized to respond to the emerging needs post-disaster? What are the lessons learned from the work conducted after 9/11 and the implications for future disaster mental health work and preparedness efforts?

Yuval Neria and his team are uniquely placed to answer these questions having been involved in modifying ongoing trials and setting up new ones in New York to address these issues straight after the attacks.

No psychiatrist, mental health professional or policy maker should be without this book.

Time to take steps to ensure mental health parity

The National Eating Disorders Association has issued the following alert:

Call-in day for passing mental health parity is this Wednesday Sept. 10. The NEDA wants people to call their members of Congress.

From the NEDA:

Action: On Wednesday, Sept. 10th, you should call your U.S. Representative and Senators by using the toll-free Parity Hotline: 1-866-parity4 (1-866-727-4894). The Parity Hotline reaches the U.S. Capitol switchboard which can connect callers to the offices of their members.

If you don’t know who your senator is, you can simply tell them your state and they will connect you. For your representatives, go to www.house.gov and then enter your zip code – this will identify who your Representative is.

Targets: All members of the Senate and House.

Message: "I'm calling to ask that the senator/sepresentative urge the congressional leadership to pass mental health and addiction parity legislation this month before Congress adjourns."

Background: The House and Senate committees of jurisdiction reached an agreement on the language of a good parity bill that will be brought to the floor of the House and Senate (H.R. 1424 and S. 558). First, however, they must agree on the source of $3.8 billion in offsets ("pay-fors" over 10 years) required under the Budget Act.

That video game may not be hazardous to your health

Perhaps it wasn't the repeated playing of Karate Champ and Pac-Man that drove people to drugs and crime after all.

"Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do," which will be released soon, turns that notion of violent T.V. causing violent behavior on its head.

The book, written by Lawrence Kutner, is based on a $1.5 million research project funded by the U. S. Department of Justice.

Kutner said society is beginning to see a more widespread "backlash" against the notion that violent media cause violent behavior in the real world.

"It’s not just our research. A few days ago, Stephen King wrote an essay about this for Entertainment Weekly," he said. "At the opposite end of the publishing food chain, yesterday the 180-year-old British medical journal The Lancet ran an editorial calling the link into question and challenging the previous research."

Kutner, who is a co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, called the issue "a hot topic in the areas of mental and behavioral health."

Areas of dispute range from public policy, he said. What, if any, are the links between violence in video games and violence in society?

"There are also the very practical issues faced by parents daily," he said.

The Guy Sarah Palin Fired Was a Trailblazer, Too

I may be one of the few people in the continental United States who could tell you who Walt Monegan is without having to read a news story or a Wikipedia entry on Sarah Palin.

All you probably know is that Palin, the Alaska governor whom John McCain picked as his vice presidential running mate, is being investigated because of claims that she or others in her administration abused their power or improperly pressured Monegan to fire a state trooper who is Palin's ex-brother-in-law.

Palin dismissed Monegan from his state public safety commissioner post in July, and has provided several explanations for the dismissal since then. But there has been a consistent and ongoing effort to discredit Monegan and impugn his integrity, and dismiss the case as nothing more than a politically motivated hack job.

I interviewed Monegan for 90 minutes in February 2005 when, as chief of the Anchorage Police Department, he was presiding over a crime prevention program that was revolutionary in terms of treating people with mental illness.

That year, I was one of six people in the nation who received a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship to write about mental health issues. I chose the judicial treatment of mental health as a topic - and mental health experts and police departments throughout the country all gave me similar advice:

"Go to Alaska," they said, in so many words. "Talk to Walt Monegan."

As I wrote later, in an April 2005 article for The Record of Bergen County, N.J., many in Alaska suffer from the cold, the constant darkness and the isolation of the state's mountain towns that are inaccessible by car. The state consistently has had among the highest suicide rates in the nation.

Monegan's department was teaching its officers how to deal with a mental health crisis, and serving as a model for other police departments in the country - such as Memphis - who were doing similar things.

At the time, 10 percent of his 330 officers were "crisis-intervention" trainees who were learning how to speak to, deal with and ultimately handle people with psychiatric disorders. They were attempting to wipe away the "psycho-killer" approach to handling crime scenes that almost always yielded the same results: somebody at the crime scene dies; or somebody gets arrested, then thrown in jail, then released from jail and, ultimately, commits another crime.

Monegan understood this. He was a native Alaskan who, according to his biography, was raised in "bush Alaska" in a town called Nyac, by his maternal grandparents. At that time, according to his biography, Nyac was a gold mining community with a population of 54 people and a one-room schoolhouse. "People used to drive their cars for miles on the frozen ice," he said.

He was inspired to change the department's approach, he said, because he was tired of watching the same people - all displaying symptoms of mental disorders - getting arrested over and over, only to end up back in the streets, untreated.

One man, in particular, was involved in a hostage situation that Monegan, as a patrol officer, responded to. Prior to that, his rap sheet involved mostly petty thefts; this time, he was armed and dangerous.

Monegan hoped to talk the man down. But it was too late. By the time he got there, the man took his own life.

"We've all watched young guys grow up and die, or they end up in jail," said Monegan.

Out in front of his department's efforts was a young, energetic and God-fearing police officer named Wendi Shackelford who arranged my interview with Monegan and, like Palin, considered her faith to be her central inspiration. "I think God is calling me to do this," she said.

I rode with Shackelford as she drove Anchorage's ice-ridden streets on a 10-degree February day and watched her deal with the various "crises" that police officers run into every day and go well beyond their job descriptions - but force them to play the role of amateur psychologists because nobody else will.

With Monegan's backing and encouragement, Shackelford had "assigned" herself to a young man who became delusional. His father gave him money and shelter. But nothing helped - instead, he broke into houses, hoping to find a woman who he thought was being kidnapped.

As a dispatcher's voice blared over her radio, Shackelford was busy listening on her earpiece as she fielded repeated cellphone calls about the man while navigating Anchorage's streets.

"He went into another house?" she said. "I knew it was a matter of time...Has he been self-mutilating?"

The officer then made a litany of calls - to psychiatric screeners at the local hospital, to the man's family and then to the local "mental health court," where he would find compassion, understanding and options. She ultimately got the man to agree to her plan, and to get treatment.

"I just try to get people to negotiate," she said. "We don't get paid extra for this. It's a matter of the heart."

This story originally appeared in The Huffington Post on Sept. 3, 2008.