Harry Magnet to Speak Publicly in Salt Lake City May 1

Harry Magnet Presents

Navigating to Peak Experiences


Do certain people, places, or activities trigger in you an Intense Reaction? These are peak experiences.

Harry Magnet has had unusual peak experiences at different places. Harry has studied geophysical patterns in these peak experiences in different regions of the country, over a period of more than six years. Find out more about Harry’s peak experiences.

The ubiquitous geomagnetic field is what helps guide birds and other animals in their seasonal migrations. Harry Magnet has discovered that he may be sensitive to the natural geomagnetic field, and use it to intuitively navigate. Harry may also be sensitive to man-made magnetic fields, especially when sleeping.

Harry navigates to his peak experiences by means of feelings and symptoms. He has a personal and family history of mental illness. Do his findings have any relevance to our understanding of mental illnesses, including bipolar mood disorder?

www.harrymagnet.com

www.harrymagnet.blogspot.com


*Harry is not selling or promoting any product.


Sugarhouse: Thursday, May 1. 6:30 p.m. Sprague Library, 2131 Highland Drive.

Admission is free. You only need to bring an open mind.

Parents Denied Information on Their Children's Mental Health Care

Imagine being a parent of a child with serious mental illness. You’re anxious about your child’s well-being. You’re concerned about his future. You feel stressed out having to cope with his mood swings, meltdowns, tantrums, antisocial or violent behavior, etc. You’re disappointed that your child’s future isn't as bright as you once imagined. On top of these sources of anguish, what you don’t need is a mental health system that denies you information on your child’s treatment. This is what many American parents of mentally ill people are faced with, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article.

The article describes several parents of violent mentally ill men. Suzanne Lankford's adult son allegedly knocked her out with a blow to a head, participated in an armed robbery of a mall, and assaulted a nurse and law enforcement officer. He has exhibited paranoid symptoms, phoning in reports of people stalking him, and barricading himself inside a room to ward off imaginary assassins. Ms. Lankford is unable to get any information on her son’s treatment, due to privacy concerns.

Pat Milan's adult son, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, had cut his throat and dug his own grave in his backyard. His son was admitted to a treatment facility in 2011, but released eight days later despite protests from his father. Professionals at the treatment facility noted homicidal and suicidal ideation, and that he had a suicide plan. Pat Milan was denied access to these treatment records. After being brought home, Mr. Milan’s son attached a shotgun shell to a steel pipe, put the combination in his mouth, and exploded the shell via a fuse (the article didn't say if he died).

Being denied access to treatment information isn't only a problem for parents of adult children. Pennsylvania has a law that allows a child as young as 14 to prevent his parents from receiving information about his care. Quoting Rep. Tim Murphy (R, Pa.), "So you have a seventh- or eighth-grader making decisions on their mental illness. I wouldn't let a 14-year-old decide much of anything."

What is the reasoning behind this denial of access to information about immediate family members? Ira Burnim of the David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group, says that confidentiality is vital to ensure that patients seek treatment. According to Burnim, "the current system discourages patients" from seeking care because of the stigma of mental illness. HIPAA is the legal framework that restricts access to protected mental health care information.

The article also talks about the obstacles to involuntary commit mentally ill individuals to treatment. Five states don’t allow involuntary mental health treatment at all, Nevada has a bill pending that would allow it in some circumstances, and the other 44 states have stringent requirements for involuntary treatment.

E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, estimates that 216,000 of the homeless population, or about 1/3, are adults with severe untreated mental illness. He also estimates that there are 400,000 untreated mentally ill adults in jails and prisons.

I think that immediate family members should by default have access to health information. Parents should be given access to their adult children’s mental health treatment records. This access should only be taken away if the child specifically requests it. There’s no reason to deny parents information. In most cases, parents are trying to do their best for their children. They need to be informed to either make decisions on behalf of their children, or assist their children in making the correct decision. Mental illness impairs judgment and rational decision making. People with mental illness need all the help they can get from their family.

I have a personal example to relate about this. When I was a freshman in college, I had some serious mental health issues. I saw someone at the student health center, who referred me to an outside therapist. To pay for this therapy I would have had to tell my parents about it, since I needed their financial assistance. I didn't want them to know about my problems, so I decided not to pursue treatment. I have no idea whether or not therapy would have been helpful at the time. But the rational decision would have been to try treatment, even if it meant that my parents would know that I was having problems. The problems eventually got worse, and my parents found out about them anyway.

Involuntary treatment is another issue. The article combines mental health information and involuntary treatment, but I see them as separate. I used to be in favor of involuntary treatment for the mentally ill. That was when I believed that drug treatment was effective and safe. I don’t believe that any more, after reading Anatomy of an Epidemic (which I review here). Drug treatment has never been proven to be long-term effective for psychiatric disorders. Depending on the drug, side effects can be severe and debilitating. Antipsychotics have some of the worst side effect profiles, with the older ones causing movement disorders like tardive dyskinesia, and the newer ones causing metabolic disorders like weight gain and type-2 diabetes. The people most likely to be involuntary committed are those with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. They are almost guaranteed to be prescribed antipsychotic drugs. I don’t think that people should be coerced to take drugs that have never been shown to improve their long-term functioning, and which have such serious side effects.

In conclusion, let’s allow parents to be informed about their adult children’s mental health treatment, but let’s not allow parents to involuntarily commit their children to forced drugging and hospitalization.

Bipartisan Push for Better Mental Health Care Won’t Be Helpful

In the aftermath of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, with memories of the Aurora movie theater shooting, the Gabby Giffords shooting, and the Virginia Tech shootings still in mind, people demanded that the U.S. Congress do something. These shootings, along with many others, were perpetrated by mentally ill individuals. Liberals wanted more gun control. Conservatives wanted more armed guards and armed civilians to take down the shooters. The divided congress was unable to pass a gun control measure. But apparently liberals and conservatives were able to agree on one thing, according to a recent New York Times article: better care for the mentally ill. According to the article, “[t]he emerging legislation would, among other things, finance the construction of more community mental health centers, provide grants to train teachers to spot early signs of mental illness and make more Medicaid dollars available for mental health care.” There would also be support for children who faced trauma, and suicide prevention initiatives. Approximately 1.5 million additional people with mental illness would be treated each year.

This is a good, thing, right? What’s there to complain about more mental health treatment? There’s nothing to complain about, if one believes in the current drug-based model of care. Treatment in this context will be primarily psychoactive drugs. The community mental health center will recruit and encourage people to see a doctor and get a prescription for a psychotropic medication. Teachers will spot early signs of ADHD, depression, and bipolar disorder in children, and put the children on the road to chronic stimulant, antidepressant, and antipsychotic drug treatment. Medicaid is notorious for drugging up the children who rely on it for health care. Suicide will be prevented by prescribing antidepressant drugs. The vast majority of the 1.5 million additional treated people will be prescribed drugs.

After reading Anatomy of an Epidemic (which I review here), I stopped believing that psychotropic drugs are an effective long-term solution for most mental disorders. The evidence is just not there. Some drugs, such as antipsychotics and benzodiazepines, are effective short-term solutions to psychotic or anxious symptoms. The problem is that they don’t help the patient function better over the long term. While the evidence isn’t clear that drugs caused the explosion of debilitating mental illness in recent years, they certainly haven’t helped prevent it. Drugging of children in particular (for ADHD or bipolar disorder) has likely led to poor long-term outcomes, including mental (psychotic disorders, increased suicide rate, rapidly-cycling bipolar) and physical (extreme weight gain and type 2 diabetes for children taking atypical antipsychotics).

I would have preferred to see congress pass a gun control measure. The mentally ill and guns go together like North Korea and nuclear weapons. People with mental illness should not be allowed to purchase firearms. They should not have access to them in their homes. Adam Lanza’s mother was tragically irresponsible for having guns in her home. Her son used these guns to kill her in her home, then 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary, including 20 children.

I have lived with serious mental illness for some 30 years. Mine has been under better control than many people. I have never been hospitalized for mental illness. I have never had to quit or leave a job due to mental illness. But I would never trust myself with owning or having possession of a gun. The reason is that there are times when my emotions become extreme or difficult to control. In those times, I don’t want access to a gun. It only takes one mistake for a personal or public tragedy to occur.

Gun sales and ownership should be banned for anyone who has been treated for a psychiatric disorder—I mean anyone treated at any time in their life. This would be a major change from current American law, and would require confidential records being unsealed, but it is for the greater good. Anyone living with someone who has been treated for mental illness should be required, if they own a gun, to keep it locked and inaccessible. The NRA will be furious and scream that we are becoming Nazi Germany, but tough. The NRA’s refusal to consider any type of gun control legislation, and their control of most Republican legislators, have allowed these preventable tragedies to happen.

If the government wants to spend money, what should it spend it on, if not treating mental illness? What about research? The problem with research is that the biochemical / drug paradigm still dominates psychiatric research, decades after it’s been clear that the chemical imbalances that drugs supposedly treat don’t exist. The drugs themselves cause chemical imbalances, but after millions of dollars and decades of research, no one has been able to show that any psychiatric disorder is caused by a chemical imbalance. Any government research money will be wasted on new drugs, new brain imaging, new tests, and other things that won’t do anything to improve the lives of the mentally ill. Research on alternative treatments would be more promising, but only a tiny fraction of any allocated funds would go into this type of research.

I’d like to see the government spend its money on providing a solution to the homeless problem. Current policy is to leave the homeless to their own resources. If they want to live on the street, or in a public park, fine. Short-term treatment with medication is useless, since they go off the medication as soon as they leave the hospital or treatment center. Many homeless are afflicted with mental illness and substance abuse. The fact that they are living on the streets is an indictment of the entire drug-based psychiatric paradigm. Deinstitutionalization began in the 1960’s, a half-century ago. Drugs were supposed to provide the severely mentally ill the stability and mental resources to live outside the hospital. But, as I've said above, drugs are not an effective long-term solution for most mental disorders. Thus many deinstitutionalized patients were not able to control their problems, and live independently on their own. Those without financial or family resources to fall back on ended up on the streets. They are the government’s responsibility, and the fact that they are still on the streets decades after deinstitutionalization began is a sign of abject public policy failure.

I have a recent personal experience with the homeless problem in Salt Lake City. On a rainy night, I stopped in at the city library. The Salt Lake City Library is an architectural masterpiece. Here are some pictures of it:

The city library may be a masterpiece of modern architecture, but it’s a leaky masterpiece. There were many containers filled with leaking water that rainy night. This indicates that beautiful and practical architecture are not equivalent. More relevant for the current discussion is that on every floor of this spectacular library there were homeless people. They were sitting on the chairs, using the Internet, and using the bathrooms. One of the homeless guys camped out in the handicapped stall, prompting a man in a wheelchair to complain. The city library is basically a homeless shelter. This is an insult to the taxpayers who support it, to the patrons who want to enjoy its resources, and to the homeless themselves. They should have a permanent home, and the government should provide it.

During most of my lifetime, American homelessness was largely a problem of mentally ill and substance abusing people. Recent years has seen more short-term economic homelessness. What we need to do is to separate out those who are capable of being employed, and those who aren't. Programs for the short-term economic homeless should focus on getting them a temporary residence, and preparing them to get a job. Even better, prevent them from being homeless in the first place by having available state-supported short-term housing for them if they become evicted from their homes. The long-term homeless, those who are too physically or mentally disabled to work, should have permanent state-subsidized housing. This housing must provide care for their disabilities. They should not have the option to be homeless. If they don’t like the state-subsidized housing, let them show that they can independently live in regular housing, or can live with friends or relatives.

Commitment laws need to be changed. This doesn't mean that mentally ill people should be committed to short-term hospitalization, to undergo forced drugging. It means that homeless mentally ill people should be committed to long-term housing. In some cases, those who are most impaired, this will mean state hospitalization.

This change to our homeless policy will be expensive. It can be paid for with reduced entitlement spending (Medicare and Social Security), reduced defense spending, and increased taxes. The benefits will be enormous—we can reclaim our public spaces, our libraries, parks, and streets, and the homeless will no longer be homeless. It would be a much better use of state funds than expanding mental health drug treatment.