Virginia Tech, Voting Rights, Stigma Concerns Open NAMI Convention

SAN DIEGO, June 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The recent tragedy at Virginia Tech in which a mentally ill student killed 32 students and professors and the stigma surrounding mental illness are on the minds of many NAMI leaders as they arrive in San Diego this week for their annual convention.

In a session Wednesday with standing room only, consumers and family members discussed whether the Virginia Tech tragedy will result only in a backlash that leads to further discrimination and exclusion, or instead will lead to sweeping changes in the mental healthcare system.

Concern over stigma was heightened by a front-page story on June 19 in the New York Times titled “States Face Decisions on Who is Mentally Fit to Vote.”

NAMI response’ was featured today on National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” and on a live, hour-long broadcast Tuesday on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Discussion of Virginia Tech at the convention include the President’s Task Force Report on the tragedy. Last week, NAMI called the report a “disappointment” that only echoed an earlier presidential report in 2003.

“We don’t need any more commissions or task forces. We know what to do,” said NAMI executive director Mike Fitzpatrick,

Last year, NAMI issued a landmark report that graded each state’s mental healthcare system. The national average was D.

The same week as the Virginia Tech shootings, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation of the Georgia state hospital system in which 115 deaths have occurred over five years — an average of 23 a year — based on neglect, abuse, or substandard care.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy observed in 1968 that “there is a violence that is slower but just as deadly and destructive as a gunshot or bomb. It is the violence of institutions, indifference, inaction, and slow decay,” Fitzpatrick noted.

“That is the kind of violence that too long has marked our mental healthcare system,” Fitzpatrick said. “Failures inside a fragmented system. Failures of will by governors and legislatures. Everyday, we confront the violence of a mental healthcare system that gets a D as the national average.”

NAMI

CONTACT: Bob Carolla of NAMI, +1-619-291-7131 ext 3081, or+1-703-953-9606 (cell), bobc@nami.org

Web site: http://www.nami.org/