{"id":418524,"date":"2017-09-03T11:26:42","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T17:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=418524"},"modified":"2017-11-27T09:29:58","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T16:29:58","slug":"mental-health-advocate-shares-deeply-personal-reason-for-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/09\/mental-health-advocate-shares-deeply-personal-reason-for-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental health advocate shares &#8216;deeply personal&#8217; reason for work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QxehlT_OtUY?rel=0\" width=\"771\" height=\"433\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Mental health advocates work daily to address the needs of those with behavioral health issues. One of those advocates is Micah Pearson, who was recently selected to serve on the national board of\u00a0the National Alliance On Mental Illness, or NAMI.<\/p>\n<p>On a recent episode of KRWG-TV\u2019s \u201cIn Focus,\u201d Pearson shared a personal reason he works as an advocate. He says he is a person living with Bipolar disorder &#8212; type one, rapid cycling with psychotic features &#8212; and he says he has also had an unfortunate experience with law enforcement, being\u00a0placed in detention without access to treatment for an extended period of time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of the work I do with our community and our organization as a whole is to prevent that from happening to other people,\u201d says Pearson.<\/p>\n<p>Pearson, who used to work as an information technology manager at The Washington Post, says he had a pretty good life. However, Pearson also says he was in an abusive marriage with his second wife, a relationship he says actually led to him getting an accurate diagnosis of his behavioral health issues.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this story<\/h3>\n<p><em>This story\u00a0is part of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/05\/haussamen-discusses-investigation-of-behavioral-health-system\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a collaboration<\/a>\u00a0between NMPolitics.net,\u00a0the Las Cruces Sun-News and KRWG News, supported in part\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/01\/grant-will-help-nmpolitics-net-investigate-behavioral-health-system\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">by the Fund for Investigative Journalism<\/a>, to examine\u00a0southern New Mexico\u2019s struggling behavioral health system. Listen to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/krwg\/audio\/2017\/09\/in_focus_16_072717_micah_pearson.mp3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an\u00a0audio version of this report<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-418524-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/krwg\/audio\/2017\/09\/in_focus_16_072717_micah_pearson.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/krwg\/audio\/2017\/09\/in_focus_16_072717_micah_pearson.mp3\">https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/krwg\/audio\/2017\/09\/in_focus_16_072717_micah_pearson.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cThe fact of the matter was that I wasn\u2019t engaged with psychiatric services before I got into that relationship,\u201d Pearson says.<\/p>\n<p>Pearson says his wife abused him physically and emotionally and stabbed him, which led to law enforcement showing up to his home one day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe police came and saw that I was 6 feet tall and she was 4-foot-11,\u00a0and that I had a diagnosed mental health condition, and locked me up,\u201d Pearson says.<\/p>\n<p>He says he was\u00a0in custody in Virginia for over two weeks. During his first week, he says he was kept in a holding cell where the lights were never turned off. He had a small window, and he was dressed in what he describes as a \u201csmock\u201d or \u201cturtle suit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was a difficult but illuminating time in that detention center that Pearson\u00a0says was located just over a mile from NAMI national headquarters, which he didn\u2019t know at the time.<\/p>\n<p>During his time in detention, Pearson says he was denied a public defender. He says he eventually he was able to acquire an attorney with his parents&#8217; help. The attorney successfully argued for his release and got an assault charge dropped, Pearson says. He pleaded guilty to another charge so he could get a waiving of probation that would allow him to leave Maryland and start over in Las Cruces, where his parents were living, so he could begin treatment for his behavioral health issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI actually did end up with a criminal record solely so I could engage in mental health treatment,\u201d says Pearson.<\/p>\n<p>Once he moved\u00a0to Las Cruces, Pearson started treatment and recovery, and eventually started to do community work and advocacy with NAMI. He says he built relationships with providers and people in the community, and that helps him in his daily work.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Pearson says the National Alliance On Mental Illness works on legislative advocacy, and provides education for families, peers and providers. He says the organization is active in Do\u00f1a Ana County.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have family and peer education programs. We also have family and peer support groups, and at the legislative level we work with the county and the state on several different jail diversion programs,\u201d Pearson says.<\/p>\n<p>One of the unfortunate realities of the United States, Pearson says, is that the prisons are what he calls \u201cthe largest mental health facilities.\u201d There are many people facing behavioral health issues in prisons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConservative estimates are anywhere between 30 to 60 percent of any given detention center are people living with mental health conditions,\u201d Pearson says.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/08\/police-are-on-front-lines-in-dealing-with-behavioral-health-issues\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a recent story<\/a>, KRWG News cited <a href=\"ttps:\/\/www.bjs.gov\/content\/pub\/pdf\/mhppji.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a 2006 study<\/a> by the Department of Justice that found that 64 percent of local jail inmates, 56 percent of state prisoners, and 45 percent of inmates in federal prisons have symptoms of serious mental illness.<\/p>\n<p>Pearson says those with mental health issues should be treated as having health issues &#8212; instead of leaving the criminal justice system to deal with the issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMental health is only a criminal justice issue when we have failed them in every possible way,\u201d says Pearson.<\/p>\n<p>In Do\u00f1a Ana County, Pearson says he has a good feeling about the \u201cStepping Up Initiative\u201d that he says has brought together county officials, mental health providers, first responders, law enforcement, social workers\u00a0and NAMI to figure out how to improve\u00a0behavioral health services in the county and reduce the number of people in detention with mental illness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Micah Pearson lives with Bipoloar disorder and says he had an unfortunate experience with law enforcement, being placed in detention without access to treatment for an extended period of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":418534,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[115,710,203],"class_list":["post-418524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-dona-ana-county","tag-health","tag-law-enforcement","series-distressed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}