2. Prison investors in decision making positions risk the safety of families and society in order to relegate people with serious mental illness into the legal system for prison profiteering. Martin will be given psychiatric treatment before his trial, if the case goes to trial, and the judge and/or jury will not see evidence of his mental illness. That is why the insanity defense is seldom used and is often unsuccessful when used to defend a mentally ill defendant. Some sick defendants are sent to mental hospitals for years to get them "trial ready," whereas the system only offered Martin two days of evaluation and treatment before the crimes happened.
3. People and organizations that object to mandated psychiatric treatment (hospitalization and assisted outpatient treatment programs (AOT)) are expected to object strenuously in the coming weeks to H.R.2646 "Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act," because the congressional bill which was introduced by Rep. Tim Murphy and Eddie Bernice Johnson in 2015 has provisions for non-consensual psychiatric treatment.Obviously, Martin needed someone else to make his health care decisions while he experienced a mental health crisis. When you read the objectors' rants against mandated psychiatric treatment, please think about Martin, the former Major League Baseball prospect who may never get to play baseball again and never again have the support of his father and uncle. He was deprived of treatment until he killed them.
4. People like Martin with serious mental illness usually receive mandated treatment after they have already done irreparable harm and are awaiting trial or have been sentenced to jails and prisons, but none of the "freedom of choice" voices are heard in those cases. People who protest mandated psychiatric services won't be around when Martin regains his mental balance through delayed treatment and realizes that he killed his father, his uncle, and an ADT alarm installer before receiving the long-term care he needed.
5. Keep challenging lawmakers to pass your bill, Congressman Tim Murphy (PA-18). Keep fighting against federal contracts with private prison companies, Senator Bernie Sanders. We who are families of persons with serious mental illness and realistic people throughout this country who care about the human rights of mentally ill people, their relatives, and neighbors know that both are sorely needed.
6. Read about Brandon Martin, who was deprived of treatment until he did an avoidable triple murder at KTLA.com, the first of eight(8) links below. Brandon's denial of psychiatric treatment should remind us that 1.25 million others (our nation's mentally ill inmates) were deliberately left untreated until they committed crimes to excuse prison sentences that enrich prison investors in the United States. In the 1970's, unscrupulous elected representatives voted for a Medicaid exclusion that deprived Americans with mental health disabilities of inpatient treatment. Millions of persons suffering from acute mental illness were turned out of asylums and have since been denied hospitalization because of the Medicaid exclusion. Most of them could have functioned well outside of a hospital environment if only their needs for continuing psychiatric treatment and subsistence assistance had been met under assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) programs.
7. Instead of rendering timely treatment for mentally challenged Americans, many thousands of people with serious mental illness roamed America's streets in the 1980's, homeless, resorting to street drugs to "get their heads on straight," and being subjected to incarceration for offenses ranging from vagrancy to murders. Hundreds of thousands have been warehoused in prisons, and thousands more have been killed since the 1970's in violent encounters with community bullies and by police officers attempting to conduct lunacy arrests. Some of those warehoused in prisons now include veterans who transitioned home from battlefields with invisible wounds to be killed by police officers or become prisoners of war in the USA. At least 50 percent of all violent police incidents involve a person with mental illness. More than 60 percent of prisoners in torturous solitary confinement are mentally ill, and roughly 40 percent of the nation's chronically homeless people also have mental health and/or drug alcohol issues. Yet, some mental health advocates will dare to come to us and say it is against sick people's civil rights to treat them without their agreement.
8. Do not be fooled. Private prison and jail companies are very wealthy, and mentally ill Americans comprise more than half of their commodities. Their lobbyists have significantly more free speech and freedom of press than persons who advocate to decriminalize mental illness and drug addictions and remove barriers to adequate care. Private prison and jail companies also finance political campaigns for "tough on crime" politicians, although people experiencing mental health crises are not made well by enacting draconian laws. It is reasonable to assume that private prison investors also make considerable donations (whether or not the donations are publicly acknowledged) to so-called advocacy groups and human rights organizations that contest enforced mental health treatment.
9. Families that have no mentally ill members are also seriously impacted by a system that awaits crimes to punish sick people with prison terms rather than giving treatment before tragedies. Consider that whereas Martin killed his own family members and a man who was trying to ensure their safety by installing an alarm system; Elliot Rodger, 22, and Seung-Hui Cho did not. Rodger killed six people in his community, and Cho killed 32 fellow Virginia Tech students. Then each of the young men committed suicide like Virginia's Sen. Deed's son, Gus.
10. No misunderstanding causes decision makers and some mental health organizations to ignore anosognosia, a condition which prevents a person's awareness about his/her own need for treatment. It is not the concern for civil rights of mentally ill people that caused this nation to shut down mental hospitals and reduce budgets for community psychiatric care. A more sinister reason causes America's decision makers to ignore mental illness until there is a smoking gun or dripping knife. It comes down to a simple bible truth that requires no religious training: "The love of money is the root of all evil."
11. Psychiatric treatment methods, including drug therapies, have improved significantly in recent decades. But as long as mercenary owners and investors of private prisons, jails, and probation service companies and prison vendors are allowed to make our nation's decisions regarding mental health care, they will continue to sacrifice Americans with mental disabilities and ignore families' pleas for help during crises, just like police officers ignored Elliot Rodger's family, who were disturbed by his YouTube videos that threatened violence. Prison investors are concerned with having full prisons that demand over $100 billion per year of your tax dollars to operate. Prison investors and their mouthpieces insist that people in crisis must PROVE to be imminently dangerous to self or others before involuntary commitments are possible, because prison profiteers have more concern for hefty dividend checks than for mentally ill people, their families, and for your community's safety.
12. People who receive treatment for mental dysfunctions are not more dangerous than other members in society. However, as Rodger's family's lawyer said, "...this country, this world needs to address mental illness and the ramifications ..." Americans should urge our representatives to co-sponsor the "Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act," with its provisions for limited resumption of Medicaid for inpatients and AOT programs that mandate psychiatric treatment. We must also urge support for Senator Bernie Sanders' bill, introduced on September 17, 2015, the "Justice Is Not For Sale Act." That would prevent the federal government from entering contracts with private prison companies within two years of the bill becoming law.
i) Brandon Martin pleads not guilty in triple murder
http://ktla.com/2015/09/22/former-mlb-prospect-pleads-not-guilty-in-beating-deaths-of-father-uncle-and-adt-installer/
ii) Sergio Robles Denied Treatment: Killed Police Officer
http://dogjusticeformentallyill.blogspot.com/2014/09/psychiatric-crisis-sergio-robles-killed.html
iii) Elliot Rodgers and the Santa Barbara Massacre
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2638427/He-disturbed-boy-British-grandmother-Santa-Barbara-mass-killer-boy-grew-Hollywood-royalty-posted-chilling-blogs-vowing-revenge-against-women-rejected-him.html
iv) Seung-Hui Cho and the Virginia Tech Massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho
v) Damion Hayes: Denied treatment until assaulting innocent neighbor
http://dogjusticeformentallyill.blogspot.com/2014/06/mental-illness-made-damion-hayes-fl.html
vi) Tell Officials to Divest or Resign
http://DivestOrResign.blogspot.com
vii) Contact Your Government Officials
https://www.usa.gov/agencies
viii) A coalition against passage of H.R.2646 could be funded by prison investors.
http://realmhchange.org/2015/09/24/launching-our-murphy-bill-video-and-day-of-action/
Our condolences to families and close friends of Brandon Martin and the alarm system installer. Victims' survivors should have strong civil action cases against the state for neglecting to treat Martin for his mental illness before the tragedy, we feel. Martin should now be treated for mental illness rather than used as another prison commodity. Thank you for giving Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill. It would be illegal to keep a dog in a tight space 23 hours a day and gas or Taser him for barking. It would be illegal to put a dog in deadly restraint for control. That happens to mentally ill people routinely in the nation's correctional facilities. What happened to Larry Neal? Why must a Black family in the USA ask for 12 years what happened to our mentally ill loved one who were secretly arrested and killed?
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