A call for mental health reforms

LAS CRUCES — A mother, a judge and a scientist each took the stage at the Domenici Public Policy Conference to share their unique view on improving care for people with mental illness and ending the cycling of mentally ill people through a justice system ill-equipped to help them.

More than 1,000 people registered for the ninth annual conference at New Mexico State University, which in its first day centered on mental illness.

Liza Long, author of “The Price of Silence: A Mom’s Perspective on Mental Illness,” described how she knew something was wrong when her toddler son would lose himself in uncontrollable, three-hour tantrums. But it would take years — and multiple encounters with the criminal justice system — before he was properly diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder.

Her now 16-year-old son suffered “because of a brain difference,” she said, describing the difficulties she faced trying to get him the right treatment.

“If it that was hard for me as a highly educated, highly privileged white woman to get services, how hard is it if you are poor?” she said. “I just didn’t think it was fair. I just didn’t think it was right.”

She became an advocate, and her son has become an advocate, as well, she said.

“We want to blame the kids and we want to blame the moms,” she said. “That is what we do in our society.”

Science, at least, may have at last moved beyond the era of “bad mothers and bad genes,” said E. Fuller Torrey, director of research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute.

Researchers now know that serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder “are not genetic diseases,” Torrey said.“It’s not that genes don’t play any role, but these are not genetic diseases.”

That understanding has implications for the future of treatment, he said, which could lie in anti-inflammatory medications to treat inflammation in the brain or even in vaccines.

Steve Leifman of the Miami-Dade County Criminal Court Division stands at the intersection of mental illness and criminal justice every day. He has presided over a yearslong community effort to get treatment to those who need it and stop the cycling of the mentally ill through the justice system.

“We have made mental illness a crime in this country,” he said. “Our crisis system and our laws are painfully antiquated, fragmented and do not reflect our science and medical research ... and are in great, great need of reform.”

Leifman described the changes he has helped spearhead in Miami-Dade County that have helped connect people with mental health services, reduced the jailed population by almost half and allowed the region to close down a detention center, he said.

Former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, for whom the conference is named, served New Mexico in Congress for 36 years and made mental health legislation the anchor of his legacy.