NAMI/National less than honest with members

Call 202 224 3121 or go here and urge your U.S. Representative to co-sponsor HR 3717, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act.

NAMI State and local chapters do brilliant work trying to improve care for people with the most serious mental illnesses and provide comfort to them and their families. NAMI/National is ignoring the most seriously ill in order to be politically correct.

Representative Tim Murphy (R. PA) has proposed HR3717 the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis” that does much of what NAMI local and state members have been begging for.

New NAMI Needed: National Alliance on SERIOUS Mental Illness (NASMI)

I think there needs to be a National Membership Org that focuses exclusively on Serious Mental Illness including important politically incorrect issues that NAMI refuses to address like preservation of enough psychiatric hospital beds, expansion of Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT), and relaxation of civil commitment laws.

One way to get it going would be to get former NAMI National Board Members to lend their name, form a nucleus. Perhaps call the new organization the National Alliance on Serious Mental Illness (NASMI)

State and local organizations can eventually make a decision as to whether they prefer to be part of the existing NAMI, or the one that makes serious mental illness their number one priority.

I believe the following former National NAMI Board Members might be willing to help: Eleanor Owen, Bernie Schell, Gerald Tarutis, Carla Jacobs, perhaps Fred Frese, Richard Lamb,and moi. If you know of more names, add them to this post.

Here is the National Alliance on Serious Mental Illness Facebook Page where you can discuss the idea https://www.facebook.com/seriousmentalillness

Lynn Shuster: Hero of Mental Illness Advocacy

I once wrote an essay on my hero, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey. Today, it's about another hero: Lynn Shuster. Lynn Shuster (and her partner in crime, Mary Kirkland, who I don't know as well, but admire from afar), were until recently leaders of NAMI/Buffalo. They are so extraordinary that the Buffalo News ran an article on their decision to step down.

Lynn has been my idol ever since I joined the movement (CA 1982) to improve care for the most seriously ill. She was older than me, and different than every other NAMI member. How? Lynn doesn't --as she would say, "take any shit". She makes these bald, impolitic, truthful statements about how horrific the mental illness treatment system. Everyone else was pulling their punches and ignoring the elephant in the room: treatment for the most seriously ill sucked and no one was doing anything about it. And she would reel in horror when others who called themselves 'advocates', tried to say how nice Commissioner so-and-so was. "He could be the nicest man in the world. Our job is to make him do his damn job and give the seriously ill better care!" she would say (usually followed by "sheesh").

I once wrote an article, "NAMI's Delusions: Counterproductive Beliefs Held by Mental Health Advocates" almost entirely based on what Lynn taught me.

Lynn has this ability to focus on the most important issues, even while all other advocates are focusing on feel-good ones. While they were trying to create pretty brochures, Lynn was trying to save psychiatric hospitals. While they were criticizing the lack of "people first" language, she was trying to stop the system from jailing people merely because they had mental illness.
Lynn taught me that being at the table isn't as important as making progress and that the two are often inversely related. In a note about her retirement, she wrote:

Never trust a bureaucrat. It's THEIR money (and power and prestige, it's just our loved one's lives. And we know which comes out on top. "Making nice" makes you feel good, but doesn't result in success. News reporters are our friends. Tell the truth, the REAL truth.... Maintain a sense of humor even in dark days--we all need to laugh. Persevere. Persevere some more.... 

 Lynn (and Mary): You're right. I'm gonna "persevere". I'm gonna start a new Facebook Group called, "Bring Lynn and Mary Out of Retirement".