good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to mental health matters and today my my guest is state representative paul hero from attleboro i just want to before we start i just wanted to talk to you too just to mention what would you do if your eighteen year old son or daughter became mentally ill out of the blue with nothing to  preclude to just somebody that you just didn't know and maybe sometimes somebody you just didn't want to know what would you do where would you go that's the questions and answers that we try to bring you and while we're doing it we're trying to get rid of stigma and once we get rid of stigma there's more research and want to more research maybe that wouldn't happen for your kids and maybe you wouldn't get depressed so paul i just want to thank you for being here and we're going to talk about legislation because paul is up on the hill and he you know he's in amongst everything and we're go talk about some myths that we have in and mental illness and try to get the different mindset of you people and  you know fifteen and twenty years ago i wanted to go for a ph d in clinical psychology you know and do counseling specifically with kids but what happened was i ended up going off into the more public policy realm i work in jail and i work in prisons you know there's a very heavily concentrated population of people with mental illness in jail in prison as well and so now as a legislator i find this to be an area of you know a public policy that really touches pretty much everyone's life absolutely while we're talking about jail did you know the massachusetts had the highest rate of suicide in the jail for the mentally ill i do know about  that yeah and that's something that massachusetts deal c when i used to work there i was director of research at the dio c and that was an issue that we were dealing with back in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine and they're still concerned about it now i don't know and i don't think anybody knows what it is that is driving that you know it's you know the vast yossi is a very professional organization you know the administration is very professional the correctional officers are well trained and of course are going to have you know isolated cases of you know a good employee not behaving themselves or acting a professional way but overall the agency is a very well run professional organization in they've had many reports commissioned looking at this very issue know it's just one of those things that you know pretty much any any issue is going to be a continuum in a range of you know the frequency of something happening and it just so happens that i'm not sure why massachusetts falls on that range and sort of you know the you know at the end of the extreme you know we have the highest rate of suicides here and you know the correctional officers they deal with a lot of stress and p t s d as well if i can tell you a little bit about it because i have been able for three years to go into the prison and in their programs and and i've met the know that these people who are mentally ill they're hearing all these voices in their heads they've perhaps been out on the street they've perhaps shoplifted they've or tried to get something to eat if they happen to your in a on the grass ok they're guilty of mr mean it when you hit like three misdemeanors then you're guilty of a felony so then you go into the prisons and these guys are still here in these ways is in their hands so then we have all of these recruit guards which i try to teach compassion before their time control and  if they are trained to keep these people in order they are using control and these people that are on the streets are not used to control they're not used to all  and what i heard from the prisoners and the guards was if somebody really wants to commit suicide the inmates will not stop them they will actually help them they will put things in the way of the guards so that they will have to climb over a lockers and chairs and everything to get to these prisoners that have tried to hang themselves and that's why these prisons are able to get away with it and go on to something that they hope is going to be better mental illness it is really something  measurement of programs to make sure we know what works and what doesn't so we can reform what works for and what doesn't work and do more of what does that was one issue but the other one and i was kind of advise not to do this but i also campaigned on mental health advocacy and the idea that mental illness or mental health is a you know issue doesn't affect people it's just just not true you know if the national institute of mental health estimates that about it over the course of somebodies lifetime of forty five percent of the population earth affected with some type of mental illness either in the form of a state treat and over the past year the national institute of mental health says it's about twenty to twenty five percent so that's roughly one in two people over the course of  lifetime or you know one in four or you know one of five one in four over the past year alone and if it's not you with the numbers being that high if it's not you it's going to be somebody you know and you know but basically does it affects everybody effects us  you know in terms of public policy because as we were just talking about there's a huge concentrated population of people living with mental illness in the prison system or jails and we're paying for that there is you know a lot of issue with you know i mean you could talk about mental illness as postpartum depression you know it's a state you know it's not a trait it's just a temporary you could talk about anything in the d s m something like eighty h d we might talk about you know schizophrenia or bipolar disorder you know so these affect different people in different ways another one that's in the d s m is pedophilia you know and that is you know something that is a you know urge or inclination to you know since and it's so i thin it's scary yeah and that's that's a public safety issue so you know mental illness really does affect everybody so the idea that you know well i don't have a mental illness and my wife doesn't have a mental illness or my kid doesn't have  that's just it's you really looking at the world with blinders on if you think that and chances are either you're wrong about it or you're in denial and yes absolutely people are in denial as far as your child god forbid i ever wish anything on anybody's child but schizophrenia hits the age of between eighteen and twenty five right at the primary a life right when you're years starting to figure out what am i going to do with the response i am i going to go to college am i going to go to work i'm not going to get married and then all of a sudden you you start to hear voices and then all of a sudden you're totally disabled and you get be can get on and you have a certain amount of money per month you can't work you can't if your parents keep you in the house that's great a lot of people with mental illness are aggressive and they don't mean to be aggressive it's just the illness talking and so a lot of parents cannot handle it and and that's where it really is that if there were some incentive for these parents to keep these what's going on around you other times it can be a byproduct of you know improper medication you know it's not often that the mental illness like a symptom of the mental illness or should say a diagnostic criteria we put it like that  diagnostic criteria of mental illness isn't aggression per se that is rare there might be some that have that's right conduct disorder for example but the you know there's usually a those are by products of the mental illness not  characteristic of the mental illness and so those can be treated around so that will decrease the chances of aggression but it goes to what you're talking about which is what type of resources to parents and families have available to them to help cope and help you know with the afraid of the people around them and the people that are on the side on the street terrified of the police you know they have the ability columns and cetera et cetera and they're really scared so you know you've got to you've got to put it in your head that these are people these are sick people and we want to get on well the only way to get a well is get rid of the stigma and keep the research going to get more snow my daughter i think takes about ten or twelve pills a day laurie dhue is that what you take and that's hard that's hard because these pills cause other people problems the side effects that die everyday is the liver problems axis two and you've got state versus trait you know some things like like a sad moment ago postpartum depression that's a state you have other types of oppression that might be a state trait like conditions might be more of schizophrenia conduct disorder you know a d h d that's one that is you know it's in the d s m and i consider anything in the d s m a mental health issue but the you know whether it's a mental illness different story about mental health but you know some kid some people age oa as an adult and so you know but that you know the idea that nobody can get better when that's just not true i mean some people do the a job they can go through different types of treatment you know with either pills hope like you said your daughter is a wonderful person for her yes you know and you know that's just you know it's real testament to the work that you've done with her but there is absolute hope once a mental notice of a trait like mental illness is not a death sentence you know right it's not a death and thank god it's not like cancer which is also not a death sentence no one is but the families experience mental health problems they do they do that's another one a lot of it particularly with depression you know that's one that some people might say how can a kid be depressed all they do is play all day and you know they don't have to pay bills or they don't have to worry about life stressors or anything yeah you know but joe it's just not true kids can become depressed because of parents splitting up because they were being bullied at school they might just be born into you know have  more sensitive temperament and you know it just precursors them to you know depression with life stressors so there's a lot of reasons i kids can be depressed you know but there again there's reason for hope you know and there is you know if a parent intervenes or a school sometimes a parent is absent or negligent and that's part of the depression so sometimes a school is the you know more approach the primary caregiver you know in effect but is that something that is really important to both parents have depression and now the mother has postpartum depression also to add on that and the child is one years old happiest little kid in the world now now and  my vision for him is to keep him happy yeah yeah and i'm hoping i mean that this is my grandson i'm hoping that that will happen and i'm doing my best to have it happen but what i would like to see is mental illness training in the schools as they're young very young and keep on going up until high school and i would like to be the one that trained he still didn't and perhaps you can make it into a law that all schools have had they have to have training on mental illness yeah those my first exposure to the discipline of psychology was when i was i think a junior or a senior in high school and i took a couple of courses in psychology and i was just hooked and so when i went off to college that's what i wanted to study so it's it was an aid training per se we're talking about but if we can do that then you know we can and should do exactly we're talking about with you know real life skills how  illness know violent i would say absolutely not they're scared of their minds and you think you know that's another when we talk about that a moment ago you know people who are have a mental illness are violent you know there's been a whole bunch in the thousand homicides with firearms a year and about twenty thousand suicides of firearms here and the vast majority of those the homicides you know the ten thousand homicides a firearm those are not being done by people with a mental illness they're people with a grudge people who are angry people who are get involved in gang violence mental illness as a precipitating factor for a mass shooting or any type of shooting is actually fairly rare  we reason we talk so much about in the media is because they often surrounded by high profile events but something is high profile because it's rare that's what makes a high profile or the location of it as well the answer that's variables to school schools yeah but the vast majority of the shootings don't involve people with mental illness people who have a mental illness or more likely to be a victim of violence than to commit themselves and that's something that is really it's really unfortunate that our media every time there's a mass shooting whether it's at a school or somewhere else immediately people focus in on mental illness and there's actually you know it's kind of unfortunate whenever there's a mass shooting now it's when it's a white person we focus on mental illness is a person of you know islamic background we focus on terrorism it is a person of a you know a black or african heritage it must be gang related so that you know that's it's we stereotype properly and so this idea that people can just snap out of it is just it's it's almost i would want to say it's ignorant at best in abusive at worst you know because it is sort of picks on people in a way that says you are we you are not good enough to snap out of it and that's abusive in that we're at best it's just ignorance along one of these lines you also have people who are suffering from drug addiction of one form or another i have somebody in my family who has chronic persistent you know really serious drug addiction and my mother my father my sister all pharmacists i come from a medical family but this you know this this individual has you know it's he i remember when he first you know first started talking about he's a silly i would never wish this on anybody it's like an eagle has its talons in me and i'm a little rabbit i just can't get away and it's just it's got me and he's been in awe of rehabs which can cost up to a thousand dollars a week and that's just in there the scholarships available sometimes and but other times people are putting this on their credit card racking up tens thirty forty fifty thousand dollars to get a few months worth of treatment it's not something that people can just snap bottom it's almost hardwired into who you are but the brain is very valuable and it can be also rewired with all the same we are our brains only in the brain as i would say the brain is more important than the heart but the brain is where all your emotion if you love your  but one of the things we look to learn from neuro science as an academic discipline is that when you have brain damage and when you start you know like lesion ing certain sections of the brain that results in you know changes in the personality in there's a very strong correlation between the you know level of consciousness in the complexity of the human brain you know when you compare it to other mammals and so we are basically you know we are   my hope went on her and i was told originally give up all the hopes and dreams you have for your child because she's going to end up and that didn't work because i'll never give up now you know the d s m four we had gender identity disorder but we're starting to learn that you know trans being transgender is not necessarily in one to wellness it's at the core of who you are sex is what it is to be biologically male or female gender is what it is to be psychologically male or female in your gender identity is you know a central in court you know a very core aspect of you and so it becomes complicated and  becomes disorderly in someone's life when society is not accepting of that person who thinks stigma it's another statement it really is and we have you know our public accommodations legislation in the state house there were you know the senate's going to take it up next week i believe in the house will then take it up as well but it is not being transgendered person is not the same as being a cross dresser or being you know gay is not you know you're defective it's you just have a different  wrong yeah and some people say that you know well gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry you know that if the supreme court settled i have a little joke about that and that's that gay people should have just as much of a right to could be miserable and so thank you very much for watching