From the Prozac Capital of the Nation... Deception Rules

[Guest guest]

Friends,

The following article was just forwarded to me. I want to point out a couple of things to you. Reading between the lines, I believe the woman who was killed was most definitely attending a local NAMI support group. The article indicates that Vicky Cottrell, president of the Utah Chapter of NAMI was a very close friend to the victim - Gall. I know Vicky personally. She is a good woman, but sadly a very mislead woman... She lost her own husband to a suicide and has a daughter who is struggling with a serious "mental disorder", and that daughter of course, is on all kinds of drugs...

Vicky and her gang are staunch supporters and defenders of NAMI... I am going to attempt to influence the author of this article to look at this tragedy from a completely different perspective.. If any of you would be willing to help me, I'd sure appreciate your input. Utah has the shameful stigma of being the "Prozac Capital of the Nation", thanks in large part to the work being done by Vicky and her NAMI supporters. I hate to bring a good woman down, but when you have to .... you do.

Tim... ... Glitter... ... Joan... Collissa ????? Can you help me out here right after Christmas?

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,355014384,00.html?Sunday, December 23, 2001Slaying accents plight of mental illness By ThalmanDeseret News staff writer Last Wednesday night, in a clean, well-lighted house as solid as they come on Harvard Avenue, the tragedy of Gall's death was hitting home. It wasn't just the schoolteacher's life cut short at age 57 that saddened her friends who gathered for an impromptu memorial service. It was the bitter fact that her own child stands accused of killing his mother — his devoted and tireless ally who — who had helped him battle a mental illness for five years. The 30 people at the service shared friendship and a life with Gall as parents or relatives of someone with a mental illness. They hadn't planned on seeing each other again until January when their support group was scheduled to meet again. " was a tremendous humanitarian, and I'm not just saying that because she's gone," said friend Janet O'Neal, who went to lunch with Gall three days before her death. "She had a grace about her, she didn't let her friendships lapse. She didn't just know people, she touched them." But since summer she hadn't been able to reach her son Leonard, 25, who is accused of killing his mother with an ax in the worst throes of a bipolar disorder on Dec. 14. People who know the family say "Lenny" had for eight months refused to take medications that had stopped his psychotic breaks. "When he was on his meds, that was the real Lenny, not what he has been lately," said his brother, . Those at the service lamented the fact that family members couldn't talk him back into treatment and the law couldn't force him back onto his medication, which, according to a family member, he ironically tried to overdose on before his arrest Dec. 16 in Reno, Nev. He is being held at the Washington County Correctional Facility there on criminal homicide and auto theft charges. Bail has been set at $1 million cash.Public stigma Local mental health experts say cycling off and on medication is a pattern for many people with mental illnesses. They often don't like the side effects, which can include weight gain or constant drowsiness. Or they can start to feel better and somehow convince themselves they no longer need the drug. Despite the vast improvements in drugs, a lot of people will cycle, which can become a big problem for their families, said Janina Chilton, a program manager with the state Division of Mental Health. Like a lot of physical diseases, mental illnesses are lifetime diseases and need to be treated as such, she said. But that is about the only similarity, as far as public perception is concerned, she said. "People would sooner get sick with almost anything else. They don't want to admit it, their families avoid dealing with it and they tend to not seek treatment until symptoms get so troublesome or a crisis develops and they can't avoid it any longer." Friends of the family say that Leonard Gall, who has a degree in film studies from the University of Utah and had reportedly worked twice the past year on movie sets in California, for some reason believed that taking medication was a sign of weakness and that if he just exhibited enough faith in God he would get better. He was raised Catholic but joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a year ago. Chilton and advocates for the mentally ill say people with brain disorders often have the notion that if they would just pray hard enough or show enough faith they'll be normal. They can believe their illness is God punishing them for sinning, or they obsess about not being forgiven for things they do. "Faith is strong and very powerful," said Msgr. J. Terrence Fitzgerald, vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City. "And certainly we believe in miracle cures. But the norm is that faith leads toward getting help. There is certainly no evil origin in these events, which strike us almost as terrorist actions. They are acting out of an illness that is not their fault, just as an insulin imbalance is not the fault of the diabetic." Mark , senior chaplain at the University of Utah Medical Center, says the public stigma about mental illnesses are most noticeable to him. "These are not wicked, bad people. But I've noticed that when someone is physically sick, people bring them flowers. If they become mentally sick, they throw stones." Aberrant thoughts, actions or feelings "are not God's way of punishing the sinner," said Elder B. on, an emeritus member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' First Quorum of the Seventy, in a speech this past April to LDS Church regional welfare leaders. "They come from disease not transgression. To assume they are is not only overly simplistic but also contrary to the teachings of the church." "The truth is that many faithful Latter-day Saints . . . experience personal struggles with mental illness, or are required to deal, perhaps over long periods of time, with the intense pain and suffering of morally righteous mentally ill family members," he said, adding that the pain of the mentally ill is made worse because many end up carrying it "without the loving acceptance or understanding from others." There is a stigma out there and people are quick to judge and blame the person who is sick or their families, said Sal Ventura, a father of a mentally ill child. "I must say I was the same way before," Ventura said. "Unless you live with it, you don't really understand."Redouble efforts Ventura, like many parents, is afraid that Gall's death will only sharpen the point on the false public perception that all people with severe mental illnesses are violent and that mental illnesses, no matter their variety or severity, are the same. Lack of acceptance and understanding isn't just limited to insensitive neighbors, said Vicki Cottrell, a good friend of Gall's and executive director of the Utah chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. The police and the courts' hands are tied, and efforts to change commitment laws get stonewalled at the Legislature. Just last week, Gov. Leavitt proposed a $1.8 million budget cut in 2003 for mental-health programs. "This to me is so incredible that I have a hard time finding the words to describe how tragic our system is," Cottrell wrote in a letter last week to Leavitt. "I can't believe that we don't reach out and help these suffering people." A bigger tragedy than Gall's death is the fact that nothing has changed since the fatal shootings by mentally ill people at KSL-TV offices and the LDS Church Family History Library in 1999, Cottrell said. "Those became gun control issues, not lack of treatment issues, which all these are." Gall, who taught at the state's shelter school for children in state custody, tried in August to have her son committed to an institution where he could be monitored. But current law didn't allow it because "immediate" danger couldn't be shown and a history of threatening or erratic behavior cannot be taken into account. The laws are intended to protect the rights of the mentally ill and prevent the state from acting too capriciously in taking someone into custody. Cottrell said Gall couldn't legally just turn her son out and spent the last five months frantically looking for help. "Lenny is also a tragic victim of this insidious illness," Cottrell said. "He was a fine young man who loves his mother very much. He has an illness that twists the mind to such a degree that there is no more reality. He was vulnerable enough to believe that he could let God take it away, and by the time it was apparent that God didn't take it away, Lenny was too delusional to act on his own to do something about it." Something can be done to prevent future tragedies, she said, vowing that her group will redouble its efforts to bring treatment and services for mental illness out of the public policy margins. "If we don't do something to raise awareness," she said, "'s death will have truly been in vain."

E-mail: jthalman@... <mailto:jthalman@...>

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[Guest guest]

Friends,

The following article was just forwarded to me. I want to point out a couple of things to you. Reading between the lines, I believe the woman who was killed was most definitely attending a local NAMI support group. The article indicates that Vicky Cottrell, president of the Utah Chapter of NAMI was a very close friend to the victim - Gall. I know Vicky personally. She is a good woman, but sadly a very mislead woman... She lost her own husband to a suicide and has a daughter who is struggling with a serious "mental disorder", and that daughter of course, is on all kinds of drugs...

Vicky and her gang are staunch supporters and defenders of NAMI... I am going to attempt to influence the author of this article to look at this tragedy from a completely different perspective.. If any of you would be willing to help me, I'd sure appreciate your input. Utah has the shameful stigma of being the "Prozac Capital of the Nation", thanks in large part to the work being done by Vicky and her NAMI supporters. I hate to bring a good woman down, but when you have to .... you do.

Tim... ... Glitter... ... Joan... Collissa ????? Can you help me out here right after Christmas?

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,355014384,00.html?Sunday, December 23, 2001Slaying accents plight of mental illness By ThalmanDeseret News staff writer Last Wednesday night, in a clean, well-lighted house as solid as they come on Harvard Avenue, the tragedy of Gall's death was hitting home. It wasn't just the schoolteacher's life cut short at age 57 that saddened her friends who gathered for an impromptu memorial service. It was the bitter fact that her own child stands accused of killing his mother — his devoted and tireless ally who — who had helped him battle a mental illness for five years. The 30 people at the service shared friendship and a life with Gall as parents or relatives of someone with a mental illness. They hadn't planned on seeing each other again until January when their support group was scheduled to meet again. " was a tremendous humanitarian, and I'm not just saying that because she's gone," said friend Janet O'Neal, who went to lunch with Gall three days before her death. "She had a grace about her, she didn't let her friendships lapse. She didn't just know people, she touched them." But since summer she hadn't been able to reach her son Leonard, 25, who is accused of killing his mother with an ax in the worst throes of a bipolar disorder on Dec. 14. People who know the family say "Lenny" had for eight months refused to take medications that had stopped his psychotic breaks. "When he was on his meds, that was the real Lenny, not what he has been lately," said his brother, . Those at the service lamented the fact that family members couldn't talk him back into treatment and the law couldn't force him back onto his medication, which, according to a family member, he ironically tried to overdose on before his arrest Dec. 16 in Reno, Nev. He is being held at the Washington County Correctional Facility there on criminal homicide and auto theft charges. Bail has been set at $1 million cash.Public stigma Local mental health experts say cycling off and on medication is a pattern for many people with mental illnesses. They often don't like the side effects, which can include weight gain or constant drowsiness. Or they can start to feel better and somehow convince themselves they no longer need the drug. Despite the vast improvements in drugs, a lot of people will cycle, which can become a big problem for their families, said Janina Chilton, a program manager with the state Division of Mental Health. Like a lot of physical diseases, mental illnesses are lifetime diseases and need to be treated as such, she said. But that is about the only similarity, as far as public perception is concerned, she said. "People would sooner get sick with almost anything else. They don't want to admit it, their families avoid dealing with it and they tend to not seek treatment until symptoms get so troublesome or a crisis develops and they can't avoid it any longer." Friends of the family say that Leonard Gall, who has a degree in film studies from the University of Utah and had reportedly worked twice the past year on movie sets in California, for some reason believed that taking medication was a sign of weakness and that if he just exhibited enough faith in God he would get better. He was raised Catholic but joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a year ago. Chilton and advocates for the mentally ill say people with brain disorders often have the notion that if they would just pray hard enough or show enough faith they'll be normal. They can believe their illness is God punishing them for sinning, or they obsess about not being forgiven for things they do. "Faith is strong and very powerful," said Msgr. J. Terrence Fitzgerald, vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City. "And certainly we believe in miracle cures. But the norm is that faith leads toward getting help. There is certainly no evil origin in these events, which strike us almost as terrorist actions. They are acting out of an illness that is not their fault, just as an insulin imbalance is not the fault of the diabetic." Mark , senior chaplain at the University of Utah Medical Center, says the public stigma about mental illnesses are most noticeable to him. "These are not wicked, bad people. But I've noticed that when someone is physically sick, people bring them flowers. If they become mentally sick, they throw stones." Aberrant thoughts, actions or feelings "are not God's way of punishing the sinner," said Elder B. on, an emeritus member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' First Quorum of the Seventy, in a speech this past April to LDS Church regional welfare leaders. "They come from disease not transgression. To assume they are is not only overly simplistic but also contrary to the teachings of the church." "The truth is that many faithful Latter-day Saints . . . experience personal struggles with mental illness, or are required to deal, perhaps over long periods of time, with the intense pain and suffering of morally righteous mentally ill family members," he said, adding that the pain of the mentally ill is made worse because many end up carrying it "without the loving acceptance or understanding from others." There is a stigma out there and people are quick to judge and blame the person who is sick or their families, said Sal Ventura, a father of a mentally ill child. "I must say I was the same way before," Ventura said. "Unless you live with it, you don't really understand."Redouble efforts Ventura, like many parents, is afraid that Gall's death will only sharpen the point on the false public perception that all people with severe mental illnesses are violent and that mental illnesses, no matter their variety or severity, are the same. Lack of acceptance and understanding isn't just limited to insensitive neighbors, said Vicki Cottrell, a good friend of Gall's and executive director of the Utah chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. The police and the courts' hands are tied, and efforts to change commitment laws get stonewalled at the Legislature. Just last week, Gov. Leavitt proposed a $1.8 million budget cut in 2003 for mental-health programs. "This to me is so incredible that I have a hard time finding the words to describe how tragic our system is," Cottrell wrote in a letter last week to Leavitt. "I can't believe that we don't reach out and help these suffering people." A bigger tragedy than Gall's death is the fact that nothing has changed since the fatal shootings by mentally ill people at KSL-TV offices and the LDS Church Family History Library in 1999, Cottrell said. "Those became gun control issues, not lack of treatment issues, which all these are." Gall, who taught at the state's shelter school for children in state custody, tried in August to have her son committed to an institution where he could be monitored. But current law didn't allow it because "immediate" danger couldn't be shown and a history of threatening or erratic behavior cannot be taken into account. The laws are intended to protect the rights of the mentally ill and prevent the state from acting too capriciously in taking someone into custody. Cottrell said Gall couldn't legally just turn her son out and spent the last five months frantically looking for help. "Lenny is also a tragic victim of this insidious illness," Cottrell said. "He was a fine young man who loves his mother very much. He has an illness that twists the mind to such a degree that there is no more reality. He was vulnerable enough to believe that he could let God take it away, and by the time it was apparent that God didn't take it away, Lenny was too delusional to act on his own to do something about it." Something can be done to prevent future tragedies, she said, vowing that her group will redouble its efforts to bring treatment and services for mental illness out of the public policy margins. "If we don't do something to raise awareness," she said, "'s death will have truly been in vain."

E-mail: jthalman@... <mailto:jthalman@...>

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World & Nation </dn/wir/0,1552,,00.html?> + Utah </dn/cit/0,1549,,00.html?> + Sports </dn/spt/0,1547,,00.html?> + Business </dn/biz/0,1554,,00.html?> + Opinion </dn/edt/0,1555,,00.html?> + Olympics <http://wintersports2002.com/dn/oly/1,3899,,00.html?> + Front Page </dn/1,3643,,00.html?> © 2001 Deseret News Publishing Company MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: Click Here