Dr. Stephen Seager: Shattered Families: The Collapse of America's Mental Health System

Sunday, Sept. 13 at 6pm EST, +Author Stephen Seager, a psychiatrist, best-selling writer, and movie producer, returns to "Human Rights Demand" to discuss the criminalization of mental illness for prison profits. Call-in number (347)857-3293. Speak on air at that number. More than 1.25 million of America's prisoners are mentally ill people. Over 60 percent of inmates in solitary confinement are mentally ill. Half of all police violence incidents involve a person with mental illness. Most victims of prison abuse are mentally ill. Many families suffer Legal Abuse Syndrome (LAS) from trying to extract their vulnerable relatives from the abusive and sometimes murderous prison profiteering system. STOP CRIMINALIZATION OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE USA.

Hear the radio show live or taped at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/humanrightsdemand/2015/09/13/dr-stephen-seager-psychiatrist-author-movie-producer-shattered-families

Dr. Stephen Seager wrote: "I have been a psychiatrist for twenty-five years and have worked extensively with the seriously mentally ill (SMI). Recently, I wrote a book, "Behind the Gates of Gomorrah, a Year with the Criminally Insane." While doing publicity for this book, I came in contact with many families of persons with SMI. Listening to them and recalling my own experience, it quickly became apparent that whatever national mental health system once existed has now totally collapsed."

Please support Dr. Seager's movie to give this matter the attention it deserves at its Indiegogo fundraiser:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/shattered-families#/story
The movie is entitled "Shattered Families: The Collapse of America's Mental Health System."

Please be aware that Senator Bernie Sanders, a U.S. presidential candidate, announced plans to introduce legislation this fall to eliminate the private prison system in America. Sanders also said that his campaign would focus on eliminating the War on Drugs, which AIMI members know is actually a war against drug addicts and their families. With mental health professionals like Dr. Seager and public officials like Senator Sanders striving to improve justice in America, we may soon arrive at positive change.

MaryLovesJustice Neal
Director of Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill
"AIMI vs. USA"
http://AIMI-HumanRights.blogspot.com
Director of "Human Rights Demand" channel at Blogtalkradio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/humanrightsdemand
Website: Wrongful Death of Larry Neal
http://WrongfulDeathofLarryNeal.com
"Dog Justice for Mentally Ill"
http://DogJusticeforMentallyIll.blogspot.com
Email Addresses
MaryLovesJustice@gmail.com
Phone 678.531.0262

Jerome Murdough Radio Interviews: Homeless Vet Baked at Riker's Island

Jerome Murdough, 56, was a homeless Marine Corps veteran who was roasted to death at Riker's Island Jail in February 2014. No New York official or prison officials notified Murdough's family when he expired in a solitary confinement cell where the temperature was over 100 degrees. Murdough was in a section of the prison where inmates should be checked by the correctional officers every 15 minutes, but this was not done.

Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill (AIMI) will sponsor radio shows about Murdough's life and death and discuss how similarly situated Americans might be saved from what Murdough endured: numerous arrests, solitary confinement, homelessness, and avoidable death. Radio shows will be announced at this article. The general public is invited to call our radio programs during live broadcasts to share their viewpoints. Blogtalkradio links can access the live shows as well as recorded broadcasts that are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Sunday, March 23: "Human Rights for Prisoners March" on Human Rights Demand channel (3pm EST Sundays). Mary Neal discusses Jerome Murdough's demise and the secret arrest and wrongful death of Larry Neal, her mentally, physically disabled brother who also perished in jail. (347) 857-3293
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/humanrightsdemand/2014/03/23/human-rights-for-prisoners-march

Tuesday, March 25: "Dr. Ansari's Human Rights Updates" on Human Rights Demand channel (1pm EST Tuesdays). Dr. Mustafa is an international human rights attorney and dean of the American Institute of Human Rights. (347) 857-3293
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/humanrightsdemand/2014/03/25/dr-ansaris-human-rights-updates

Thursday, March 27: Mary Neal interviews Bob Darby, a former member and organizer of "Food Not Bombs," author, public speaker, and advocate for the homeless mentally ill. (3pm EST on Human Rights Demand channel). (347) 857-3293, A link will be provided.

Background information regarding Jerome Murdough's death is in the next article,
"Mentally Ill Marine Vet Baked at Riker's Island: AP Blew the Cover-up"

http://dogjusticeformentallyill.blogspot.com/2014/03/mentally-ill-marine-vet-baked-at-rikers.html

Jerome Murdough suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He was presumably arrested for trespassing and vagrancy when he sought shelter from harsh winter weather on the roof of a building in Harlem. Murdough had endured numerous misdemeanor arrests in the past, as is common among acute mental patients from the working class whose mental illness is essentially untreated.

Murdough would ordinarily visit his family at least once every three months and sometimes more often. He is survived by his 76-year-old mother, a middle aged sister, and a host of other relatives and friends. Associated Press (AP) notified Murdough's family of his death three weeks after he died.

Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill recognizes that Murdough's avoidable death is a worst case scenario of what happens when mental illness is criminalized instead of treated like a chronic health condition. Acute mental illness requires continuous monitoring and treatment like heart disease and other physical ailments. Treatment is ordinarily withheld when persons with severe mental illness suffer from anosognosia, which prevents them from realizing they have mental illness. Families are not permitted to commit mentally ill relatives to inpatient psychiatric treatment facilities unless they proved to be an immediate danger to self and others. Even when there are suicide attempts or assaults on family members and others, the mentally ill are usually jailed instead of treated in mental hospitals.

Information about anosognosia is available at Treatment Advocacy Center
http://treatmentadvocacycenter.org/component/content/article/1790

Severe mental illness is a disability that affects many of the 1.25 million mentally challenged inmates in America's jails and prisons. They comprise more than 60 percent of the 80,000 inmates who are relegated to solitary confinement, which further erodes their mental health. It costs at least $168,000 per year to incarcerate each inmate in New York and more for people who require special services like Murdough. Treating the mentally ill in AOT programs, which mandate continuous psychiatric care and provide subsistence assistance, is more affordable and just.

Please join our radio discussions about Jerome Murdough and similarly situated people.

Mary Neal, director
Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill (AIMI)
http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/aimi
Dog Justice for Mentally Ill
http://dogjusticeformentallyill.blogspot.com
Wrongful Death of Larry Neal
http://WrongfulDeathofLarryNeal.com

Paragraph 1 repeated: Jerome Murdough, 56, was a homeless Marine Corps veteran who was roasted to death at Riker's Island Jail in February 2014. No New York official or prison officials notified Murdough's family when he expired in a solitary confinement cell where the temperature was over 100 degrees. Murdough was in a section of the prison where inmates should be checked by the correctional officers every 15 minutes, but this was not done.

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 into a deadly restraint chair for control. But this happens to mentally ill Americans routinely in the nation's jails and prisons. What happened to Larry Neal?

Mentally Ill Americans Need Dog Justice. Treat mental illness medically, not legally.

Advocate for U.S. Congress to pass H.R.3717 - Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act

Preventing Advocacy for the Mentally Ill

The video embedded below is an example of the censorship faced by Mary Neal regarding efforts to give ASSISTANCE TO THE INCARCERATED MENTALLY ILL. In January 2009, Rep. Eddie Johnson (D-TX) introduced H.R.619, a bill into U.S. Congress that would have resumed Medicaid insurance payments for psychiatric inpatients. That funding was deleted in the 1970s. As a result, private prisons were opened across the nation because of overcrowding as hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people who were released from hospitals became prison inmates instead of hospital inpatients. Their health condition had been criminalized. The concept of imprisoning rather than treating America's acute mental patients is very lucrative for numerous prison investors moonlighting as public officials.



Today America has approximately 1.25 million mentally ill inmates, without whom private prisons would not exist. Sick people are the backbone of the private prison industry. Between incarcerating psychiatric patients and the War on Drugs, private prison owners and investors created a huge empire by taking full advantage of victims' psychiatric conditions and drug addictions. I became the most censored person in America because of my advocacy to expose and oppose the mass incarceration and murders of America's mentally ill.

The proposal to resume using Medicaid for psychiatric hospitals under H.R.619 died in congressional committees. It was a bill that would have made mental hospitalization available for indigent acute mental patients BEFORE tragedies and avoidable crimes. But cyber stalkers were hired to prevent advocacy by hundreds of members of Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill, an online human rights organization. Throughout 2009 and 2010, years when national health care insurance was the main subject on every news show, H.R.619 was never mentioned by any journalist. The system did not want America to know that an alternative to arrests of mental patients was on the table.

Families of acute mental patients are ordinarily denied assistance for their loved ones experiencing crises. Sick Americans are deliberately left untreated until after crimes in order to keep the prison system well fed. Municipalities actually have quotas they must fulfill with private prison companies in their areas - contracts promise private prisons to keep them filled to a certain level, then our courts deliver. The worse the crimes that are committed by psychiatric patients, the longer prison terms they receive, and the more money prison investors get as a result of those sentences. That is, IF they make it to jail alive and are not killed by police officers while in custody. Many sick people are not so lucky.

Denying treatment for the lack of mental hospital beds and awaiting a crime to treat the mentally ill does not save tax money. It only redirects tax money to prisons instead of to treatment facilities.

Chronic health conditions like congestive heart failure and kidney failure are treated medically. Only mental illness is treated legally. Only mentally challenged people are shot or Tasered to death when they experience health crises - which is a circumstance that should be avoided by community care under an assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) program so that no hospitalization or incarceration would be necessary.

The criminal justice system must wait until AFTER there is a crime to act. If mental illness was not criminalized, our communities would be safer, because sick people would not be left untreated unless and until they commit some crime ranging from vagrancy to murders.

Demand an end to criminalizing mental illness. Demand that psychiatric conditions be treated as a chronic medical condition and not as a crime. Ask your congressional representative to reintroduce a bill like H.R.619 to resume health insurance for inpatient care for our mentally ill relatives and neighbors in crises and those who require long-term containment. Demand that AOT programs are enacted and used for psychiatric patients in your communities. AOT programs give subsistence assistance and mandated psychiatric treatment. AOT programs should be ordered for every psychiatric patient exiting a mental hospital or correctional institution to help them avoid future hospitalizations, incarcerations, death-by-police, and homelessness. Give ASSISTANCE TO THE INCARCERATED MENTALLY ILL.