Cindy Lange-Kubick: Journalist and mental health advocate to speak in Lincoln
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Pete Earley is a big time journalist. He was once a reporter for the Washington Post. Then he left daily news to write books, nonfiction accounts of life inside a federal penitentiary and tales of CIA spies and a Mormon murderer. Eleven books in all, books that have won awards and been on bestseller lists.
He titled his latest book “Crazy.”
It’s a story about mental illness.
A true story about the failings of this country’s mental health system. A story that follows the lives of mentally ill people Earley met in the Dade County jail in Miami during nine months of research there.
And it tells the story of a young man named Mike.
A bright college student who wrapped his head in tinfoil to keep the CIA from reading his thoughts. A stubborn, handsome guy who broke into a neighbor’s house to take a bubble bath during a psychotic episode.
A kid who got sick and then got sicker, a kid whose dad, a big time journalist, lied to get him help and used his influence to get him help, and then wrote a book to help show the rest of us what’s going on in this great country of ours.
He’d spent his 30-year career being the objective journalist, says Earley from his home in Virginia Monday morning, and then when his son got sick, that changed.
“I became an advocate.”
When he comes to Lincoln Thursday to give the keynote address at the annual meeting of CenterPointe, an organization that helps people struggling with both mental illness and addiction, he will tell them what he has learned.
He wants to leave the audience, and the rest of us, knowing two things.
That anyone can get sick. Anyone can get schizophrenia. Or bipolar disorder. Or major depression.
“It’s not something you choose. Your heart gets sick. Your brain gets sick.”
And that our system — putting sick people in jail, hamstringing parents so they can’t help their kids, not having enough resources — needs big time help.
“I want people to know we’re locking up people with brain disorders. That’s the main thing I want to yell and scream about.”
Mike was nearly finished with college when the first signs came.
He took a bunch of homeless people out to breakfast and then couldn’t remember whether it was real, or a dream. He didn’t sleep for five nights. He shut his eyes while driving his car, trying to find out whether he was awake or dreaming.
He started taking medication after the car crash. And then he stopped.
The delusions came back. Earley drove his son to the emergency room of a local hospital. They waited four hours for a doctor to tell them there was nothing he could do.
Had his son threatened suicide? the doctor asked.
Had he threatened anyone else?
Come back when he does, the doctor said.
Three days later, Mike broke into a house. He was dirty, he told his father later, he needed to get clean. He turned framed photographs down so the people in the pictures couldn’t see him. He filled up the tub.
He was charged with two felonies.
“The law kept me from getting him help and now the law wanted to punish him.”
He told his lie that day. The cop outside the door of the treatment center where the police had taken Mike after the break-in looked at the father.
You don’t want him to go to jail, the officer said.
Earley went inside. He threatened to kill me, he told them.
A few days later he broke the journalists code of ethics when his insurance company threatened to cut off coverage for his son’s hospitalization.
I know Mike Wallace, he told them. If you don’t let him stay, I’ll call him.
He was a desperate father. A privileged man living in the wealthiest county in Virginia, and it was nearly impossible for him to help his sick son.
And, so, he wrote a book.
And he met the “throw away” people. And he’s told their story.
Something needs to be done to balance the rights of sick people and family members who want to help them get well, says Earley. We need to stop filling our jails with the mentally ill, we need more treatment centers and better treatment centers and the money to make them work, he says.
Topher Hansen, the director of CenterPointe, met Earley this spring in Washington, D.C. He listened to him talk.
He heard the message.
It was powerful. He figured people here needed to hear it, too.
Lincoln is a pretty good place to live, says Hansen.
It does a pretty good job providing services for people with mental illness.
But it’s far from perfect.
“We still treat people in jail, we still have people on the streets, we still have long waiting lines for treatment.”
Someone calls him nearly every week, he says, desperately searching for treatment for an adult son or a daughter.
I can’t help you, he has to tell them.
Crazy, isn’t it?
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
If you go
Hear Pete Earley, author of “Crazy: A Fathers Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness,” speak at CenterPointe’s annual meeting and luncheon on Thursday at the Cornhusker Marriott. Tickets are $25 and available by calling 475-8717.
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