There is a unique kind of pain in losing your mind, not just once, but over and over. Losing your perception of reality, of your emotions, of your closest relationships-both across months and multiple times a day. Knowing deep down that something is wrong but being unable to stop it.
"We knew right away that any shift in policy that was being reported was a grave exaggeration," Sheldon said, pointing to GLMA's role within the AMA's House of Delegates, where it has a voting seat and direct visibility into policymaking.
Anyone who is under psychiatric care, or loves someone who is, may want to read the book The Devil's Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today, by Susanne Paola Antonetta. If you care about history, particularly the history of eugenics, you may be interested as well. The book may offer us more respect for the mind, for consciousness, and its diversity.
Developmental disabilities are actually quite common. In the United States, about 1 in 6 children has a developmental disability (CDC, 2024). Intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are a group of neurodevelopmental conditions usually present at birth that affect the trajectory of a person's physical, intellectual, and/or emotional development (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2021). Conditions such as Down Syndrome, Autism, Fragile X, Cerebral Palsy, and others are examples of intellectual or developmental disabilities.
Decrepit patient housing units smelled of urine and feces. Patients frequently attacked one another or staff. A chronic worker shortage occasionally left Lawson alone with as many as 19 patients, many in the throes of acute psychiatric crisis. Her superiors didn't respond to requests for assistance, her coworkers sometimes slept on the job, and her employer often failed to provide patients with basic necessities, such as enough food.
They arrive on time, think clearly, and care about their clients. Outwardly, everything seems fine. In private, though, things can feel very different. A clinician's depression may not show up as clear despair. More often, it feels like emotional numbness, quietly withdrawing, or slowly losing interest in things that once mattered. Pleasure fades, curiosity lessens, and the work goes on, but it feels heavier and less alive.
Hall's son Miles was shot and killed by police a block from their home in Walnut Creek on June 2, 2019. The 23-year-old was gripped by symptoms of psychosis, believing he was Jesus and running around the neighborhood with a gardening tool that he said was his staff of God. Hall called 911 to get him medical help as a necessary step toward a conservatorship. Instead she got an armed police response.
