Moms Walk 100 Miles to Urge Governor to Fix Washington's Broken Mental Health System

And So We Walk.com
It's the slogan of MHRY cofounder Cindi Fisher, now leading a group of MOMS in a 100-mile trek to call attention to the urgent needs of those harmed by the mental health and justice systems.

Beginning in Portland, OR, Cindi’s MOMS will join a gathering on July 24 at noon at the county courthouse in Vancouver, WA then walk on to their final destination - Western State Hospital in Lakewood, WA.

They walk for those like Ronnie, autistic and jailed at age 20 over a minor offense. Deemed incompetent to stand trial, he was forced into a cruel treadmill of isolation, deterioration, hospitalization, overmedication, then back to jail where the whole insane process began again. Now at Western, his right to fresh air and visitation are denied.

Hoping to re-invent communities as places of healing, Cindi and other moms ask the governor to begin by changing the way Western treats its patients.

Tell Governor Gregoire to join these moms in their walk to reform this broken system.

Dear Governor Gregoire,

There are so many things wrong with the current mental health system, it’s hard to know where to start.

Ronnie’s is just one story that illustrates how the mental health and justice systems are working together in an uncooperative manner to make his and others’ lives a living hell. These systems should be working together to make lives and society better.

According to Ronnie’s adoptive mother, Rose, his birth mother starved him as a child to the point where he suffered brain damage and other physical effects. Rose worked with him until he was able to walk, but he never completely healed from the brain damage. He grew up missing a lot of school and attending special classes when he went. Naturally, he did not graduate, and at age 20 he ended up in an argument over eight dollars with another young man, with Ronnie ending up taking the money from his wallet.

The police became involved, and Ronnie, black, was arrested even though the other boy, white, didn’t press charges. Even worse, says Rose, the DA charged Ronnie with grand theft, and he was jailed. Because of his disability, he was unable to understand the charges against him and deemed incompetent. In doing so, the justice system put Ronnie into a torturous treadmill that has lasted over a year.

The way this works in Washington is that the incompetent accused must stay in jail until there is an opening at Western State Hospital. During that waiting period, Ronnie, despite his disabilities, was put into isolation in the jail, which made him “go berserk” said Rose. Then when he was finally transferred to Western, he was placed in the criminal section of the hospital, even though he was not convicted of any crime. While there, says his mother, he was drugged so heavily he could barely speak at times, and she was not allowed to visit him or send him anything (except 3 times in an entire year). 

She and others whose loved ones have been patients at Western State confirm that these patients are deprived of fresh air, visitation and other basic rights if they refuse to go to classes or obey in other ways. Rose explained that Ronnie was so drugged he was too sleepy and tired to attend the classes, and therefore he was denied these basic rights - rights the hospital advertises on its website that as important to treatment:

Visits and communication with family members and significant others is encouraged as it plays an important role in treatment.

What’s worse is that after three months at Western, doctors had to send Ronnie back to the jail in Bellingham WA, where the staff refused to continue the medication, without allowing Ronnie to withdraw gradually, which is documented throughout the scientific and medical literature as necessary to prevent severe withdrawal symptoms and worsened psychiatric conditions. So once again, instead of giving Ronnie the proper medical help and acknowledging his disability, he was put into isolation and deemed incompetent. The entire process had to be repeated, and repeated again.

There remain questions as to way the DA pursued this case against Ronnie, and why, for taking $8, he was charged with grand theft.

But Ronnie’s story is not an isolated one. Cindi and other moms have testified to how this system is destroying their children, and recent scientific literature is focusing on how too many children and adults are being placed on psychotropic drugs unnecessarily and kept on them too long, which, according to Robert B. Whitaker’s compiled research in Anatomy of an Illness, is actually creating an epidemic of chronic mental illness in America and other developed countries.

Cindi and other mothers want to re-invent our communities and hold their leaders and departments of mental health responsible for the scientific evidence that the mental and developmentally ill need and deserve to have choice in their treatment and options beside what places like Western State and the system is now offering or forcing upon them. Despite confirmation from a recent study by Stanford Univ. with the Univ of Chicago - that ant psychotic and other psychotropic drugs, if used at all, should be given only in the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible duration, hospitals like Western continue to drug at maximum doses, for lengthy periods. Such centers also fail to consider the literature showing that supplementing with vitamins can lessen the ill effects of these drugs and even cure some mental disorders. In other words, they consider only the drug and punishment approach.

There are many more stories to tell about the way this broken system is breaking the lives of our minor and adult children, even preventing their ability to go beyond treatment to live productive, happy lives.  Whitaker has documented numerous studies showing that most patients do better in the long term if never being placed in the drug-based system or else weaned off the drugs after only short duration of use - no more than six weeks.

Cindi and her group has been trying to reach these leaders and Western Hospital through dialogue and education in the past. It’s not working. “So,” she says, “we walk. The walk is our voice.”

We ask that you hear the steps these moms are taking and act to immediately stop the abuse at Western State and help these moms reach their goal to bring true healing centers to their communities.

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