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Heathe Voices 2016 – Deeply Rooted Connections
Last year I wrote a post about attending Healthe Voices 2015 in Jersey City. It was an amazing new event hosted by Janssen Pharmaceutical and Everyday Health that brought together 60 online advocates across many different conditions to help us strengthen our advocacy work. This year, I was honored to be asked to be on…
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Treatment Before Tragedy
On this ninth anniversary of the tragic loss of 33 lives at Virginia Tech, please also remember: Seung-Hui Cho Was diagnosed with mental illness before the age of 18. Seung-Hui Cho’s family tried to keep him in treatment after age 18, but were unable to even know if he was in treatment because of HIPAA…
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Advocates Are Stronger Together
This Friday I will be at Healthe Voices 2016 in beautiful downtown Chicago! Healthe Voices is a weekend conference that brings patient and caregiver advocates for many different conditions together to learn how to improve our advocacy. I attended the inaugural conference last year in New York and it was amazing to meet different advocates…
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Renovation
I painted this stencil over the top of Tim’s closet when he was eleven years old. That was the year everything changed. Tim was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia. He attempted suicide. He had two inpatient hospitalizations. Tim has always loved Superman, and Tom has always loved REM, so this stencil was the perfect expression of…
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Why Won’t Congress Act on Treatment Before Tragedy?
From the Washington Post article, on the incident this week of shots fired near the Capital: Authorities identified the wounded suspect as Larry Russell Dawson, a minister from Tennessee. The 66-year-old Dawson previously was arrested in October in the District after he allegedly disrupted Congress by shouting that he was a “prophet of God.” Yet,…
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A Parent’s Perspective – Elizabeth Loan
Years ago I worked for a school who only served kids with moderate to severe disabilities, primarily Autism. Part of our training was a series of lectures from other health professionals, support service agencies and other assorted individuals who worked in the field. One of the trainings was titled, “A Parent’s Perspective.” It consisted of…
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Treatment Instead of Punishment
You may have read the story when it happened. On May 22, 2015, J’Aire Lee, three years old, was found dead on a swing in Maryland. A neighbor called the police and said his mom, Romechia Simms, had been pushing him on the swing for “an unusually long period of time.” That time turned out to…
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Columbine and Action
Did you see Sue Klebold on ABC’s 20/20 last Friday? I watched it twice.
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Refocus, Redesign
Happy 2016! It’s February, I know, but I’m finally ready to share my new and improved blog with you. I hope you like the new design, with more images, video (coming soon!), and a fresher, cleaner, more positive look. It matches my improved outlook on the blog, and on advocacy. I’m tired of advocacy that screams…
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Fall Fail
I dislike this time of year. It’s not because summer is waning and, here in the Midwest at least, leaves are starting to fall from the trees. It’s not because summer hours at work are drawing to a close (not that I have much opportunity to use them anyway). It’s because I feel like such…