Channeling Grief and Anger into Advocacy and Acceptance

Mimi Feldman, Mindy Greiling and I have been co-hosting our podcast, Schizophrenia: Three Moms in the Trenches, for almost a year now. Our 32nd episode this week has garnered more YouTube viewings in its first two days than any other so far, and guest Jerri Clark, our " Fourth Mom in the Trenches" for this episode, is the reason.

If you want to know more, please subscribe to the podcast on itunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and/or on YouTube. Our facebook page is @schizophrenia3moms.

Here are some of the notes:

What if: the mental health system would pay more attention, take more steps to help , before tragedy, violence, or crime finally calls attention to symptoms of SMI (serious mental illness)?

What if Darrell Brooks (charged with murder after plowing his mother’s car into a parade in Wisconsin) had been helped, and treated, instead of ignored or imprisoned? His mother, Dawn Woods, wrote a letter to the media. She, too, is a “mom in the trenches”. So is journalist/advocate/mindfulness coach Jerri Clark, our guest for this episode.

What if Jerri’s son Calvin had received treatment, despite his “civil right ”to refuse it - although the refusal itself is a symptom of his illness?

She says: 

“I watched my son delivered into society’s underbelly by design. He spent months homeless, met law enforcement again and again, and tried multiple times to die. These traumas are part of a tragic inventory of the requirements for public assistance when someone has a serious mental illness”