POD ALMIGHTY: Being Thankful, Visitation & Saving/Making $$ on the Backs of the Mentally Ill

Jeff & Jackie 2012

BOMBSHELL:

New policy for mental pods at Tulsa jail. 

NO SIBLINGS ALLOWED TO VISIT

(my FB post 11/14/17)

We were shocked to learn this when filling out the application to visit Jeff at the DLMCJC, shiny new mental pods.

New rules:  No sibling option.
Spouse, parent, child, legal guardian, or visitor assistant, only.

The Sheriff's Department runs the jail.  Last week I filed an appeal with the jail administrator in hopes of visiting my dear brother when I came to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving.

My information is already in the jail computers because I visited Jeff in 2016 when they had him in solitary confinement for months prior to sending him to Vinita.  That was before the highly anticipated mental wing opened.  So, I can officially compare BP/AP:  "Before Pods" / "After Pods"

I'm beginning to see my long-term thoughts and social media outreach, working.  When I write honest, hard-truth posts, people DO read them!  Out of the blue, real movers and shakers see how egregious things are, how futile efforts on behalf of Jeff have been - until the power of the www gave our voice wings.  

I was contacted early this week by a Tulsa Mental Health professional, who told me that another Tulsan that can affect change asked her to check into the "no sibling" policy at the jail after seeing my blast.  (YES!!!!)  This person wanted to know the status of my appeal.  So, I immediately reached out to the Sheriff's Department again, and after several phone calls, later that day my appeal to visit was approved by the assistant jail administrator as a "one time only exception."  It is a family holiday, after all.  These suffering souls NEED FAMILY SUPPORT.  Why on earth - no, WHO on earth thinks it's a good idea to deprive the criminalized mentally ill of whatever support they have?  I've been told most families in situations like ours write off their loved ones.  It's just TOO HARD.   But we haven't, and we won't.  It's the system that's putting up road blocks, as always.

JAIL: The New ASYLUM. This Ain't Camelot, Folks

When I look up JAIL in the dictionary, it might as well say...

ASYLUM

Let me begin with the obvious:  Jails are not mental hospitals.

     There are no long-term mental hospitals any more.  That's good, because they were horrifying places.  Then, good intentions closed the mental asylums, to be replaced by Community Mental Health Centers.  It was the brief, shining moment of a Camelot dream in our American history, when President Kennedy (who's sister Rosemary, suffered with a mental handicap) tried to find a better way.  https://www.ymadvocacy.org/the-community-mental-health-act-of-1963/
I admire him for trying.  It just hasn't worked for the most ill. 

     Now, 54 years later, the Camelot experiment has proven to not be enough for the most difficult cases.  Today, the seriously mentally ill are either invisible, or suffer fates of being treated like animals, ostracized, criminalized, and punished for their afflictions.  Things got worse, not better.

     Do we care?  I'm not sure.  Caring means doing something about it.  

     One answer is, to find the root cause.  Functional medicine is where to start.  A daunting task, as each person is an individual, and each brain is a a vast, complex universe.  But if someone is in the harrowing throws of a delusional life, how does punishing them do anything helpful? 

100 DAYS of Torture, Ongoing

THE MENTALLY ILL, CRIMINALIZED

We wouldn't treat our animals this way....but we allow humans to live in torture.

Exactly one year ago, today, was the One-Hundredth day my brother had been held in solitary confinement in jail. 

Let that sink in for a moment. Seclusion in David L Moss/Tulsa County Jail, due to a delusional episode that has the District Attorney hurling eight years TO LIFE at him, even though they know he’s one of Oklahoma’s most serious “mental” “cases”. (I separate the “words” in quotes, deliberately.) The court system in Tulsa has known him for over a quarter century. But, in the non-progressive - and in this case assbackward state that Jeff lives in, where I grew up, where my first child was born, and where my whole family still lives… Oklahoma just gets it dead wrong. 

Don’t misunderstand…I LOVE Oklahoma. But my beloved home state is a massive disappointment on this. Jeff has had serious “mental” problems so long, and his life has taxed the system (and our family) all these decades, yet the Oklahoma “justice” system allows and even exacerbates fear instead of having compassion for these tragic and suffering souls. The system jumps to an assumption of guilty before due process. It goes for the jugular of punish instead of taking real and thoughtful care of those that suffer in this way. Indeed, I’m the first one to brag that Oklahoma has the nicest people on earth. I truly believe this, and am proud of having been brought up here. But on this issue, sadly, Oklahoma wears the “we’re trying to help” proudly on it’s sleeve, but in Jeff’s case, that has amounted to a human disaster. Inhumane, i.e., lacking humanity. Makes me spit fire!