Policy Archives - KARTAR DIAMOND

Taking Care of the Seriously Mentally Ill Should Be Like Good Parenting by Kartar Diamond

How would you feel about someone who allowed their child to live out doors just because they wanted to? Would you respect a parent who allowed their child to eat out of a dumpster, take harmful drugs or wander around in a drunken stupor? Would you feel comfortable knowing your neighbor’s violent teenager is allowed to cause property damage and make threats to hurt people? Of course not! You would know that the parents needed to buck up, set boundaries and consequences, and [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2023-04-09T23:07:42+00:00April 9, 2023|Advocacy, Mental Illness, Policy|0 Comments

What Is A Mental Health Case Manager? by Kartar Diamond

Each jurisdiction has its own terminology, so the job description of a case manager may be called something else in other areas. In our experience, a “case manager” is a social worker who assists a person with mental illness. Case managers may work in conjunction with a therapist or psychiatrist, as part of a mental healthcare team and they work for the Department of Mental Health directly or through an agency that is contracted with the Department of Mental Health. Case managers may [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2021-08-02T15:22:10+00:00August 2, 2021|Advocacy, Policy, Treatment|0 Comments

What Is SSI? by Kartar Diamond

SSI stands for Supplemental Security Income. It is a monthly Federal stipend provided by the United States Social Security Administration (SSA) to those who qualify. You can also find out about SSI from the Social Security Administration website, but this article serves as overview with some editorial comments. Disability benefits can be granted to those with either physical disabilities or mental illness, or both. In order to qualify, Social Security has to verify that a person legitimately has a serious disability which prevents [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2021-05-16T22:31:26+00:00May 16, 2021|Mental Illness, Policy|0 Comments

Why Do the Mentally Ill Stop Taking Their Medication? by Kartar Diamond

The purpose of this article is to highlight the reasons why some individuals stop taking anti-psychotic medication, against the advice of family, friends and doctors. My purpose here is not to rally sympathy for a mass shooter who has stopped taking his medication. My purpose is not to discuss the merits or the risks of taking anti-psychotics to begin with. In fact we have, generally speaking, two large camps when it comes to public opinion. There are those who are strongly opposed to [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-09-22T18:14:06+00:00September 22, 2020|Advocacy, Mental Illness, Policy|0 Comments

Breakdown: A Clinician’s Experience In A Broken System of Emergency Psychiatry

I had a very personal interest in reading Breakdown, by Lynn Nanos, L.I.C.S.W., because I have a family member with schizophrenia. Along with many others, I have felt intensely frustrated with every aspect of the mental health care system, including hospitals and their staff. I needed to find out what she had to report from her own professional experiences as a mobile emergency psychiatric clinician, with the special skills and ability to orchestrate involuntary hospital admissions. The book is well written, heart-wrenching in [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-09-21T03:58:08+00:00September 21, 2020|Advocacy, Book Reviews, Policy|0 Comments

What Is an LPS Conservatorship? (Part 1)

A conservatorship is a legal instrument which grants a person the responsibility of being the legal guardian for another adult. The person who is conserved is called the “conservatee.” There are different types of conservatorships and one which some people are familiar with is the kind of conservatorship put in place for an aging adult who has lost their ability to handle their own affairs. This can happen with dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. Some conservatorships are long term or permanent. In the case [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-09-15T03:19:00+00:00September 15, 2020|Advocacy, Mental Illness, Policy|0 Comments

What Is An IMD? by Kartar Diamond

The acronym IMD stands for Institute of Mental Disease. This is a fairly recent re-naming of what used to be called a mental hospital, a mental institution, psychiatric hospital, or in the last century: Insane Asylum. Once attached to the word “insane”, there are now certainly plenty of negative connotations with the word “asylum.” Its original meaning and usage was more akin to a refuge, providing safe haven, shelter and protection, such as “refugees seeking asylum” in another country. Over the last sixty [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-09-05T18:45:46+00:00September 5, 2020|Mental Illness, Policy|0 Comments

In Memory of Mental Illness Advocate DJ Jaffe

With both shock and sadness, I heard yesterday about DJ Jaffe’s passing the day before. It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks ago when I responded to one of his Facebook posts. He hid his illness well and worked tirelessly until the very end. Others who knew him well have already written beautiful commentaries and his Facebook page has an outpouring of condolences which I hope his whole family will read. I didn’t know him well, but my son and I [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-08-25T17:20:35+00:00August 25, 2020|Advocacy, Policy|0 Comments

An Odd Time to Thank Law Enforcement

Without the need to elaborate, Mental Health Awareness Month included a day which will be seared into history as a pivotal moment in Black Lives Matter. May 25th, 2020 was a day when nearly the entire planet witnessed virtually a sickening and unnecessary death of a human being at the hands of excessive police force. So why would I want to send a virtual letter of gratitude to law enforcement, aside from the fact that U.S. police officers are mostly good people, trying [...]

By Kartar Diamond|2020-08-21T16:56:19+00:00August 21, 2020|Advocacy, Policy|0 Comments