Tag: Mental Health

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

A recent rash of 911 calls for assistance for people with medical and mental health emergencies that resulted in the patient being shot and killed by the responding police has sparked lawsuits for ending the drone wars and concerns for how police are trained to deal with the emotional disturbed.

Police Brutality, Mental Illness and ‘The Memphis Model’

by Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, Democracy Now!

Elsa Cruz filed a federal lawsuit in New York this week, months after police shot her husband dead. Last May, Cruz called 911 asking for help with her husband, Samuel. She feared he hadn’t taken his medication while she was on vacation in her native country, the Philippines. Eight months, almost to the day, before Cruz was killed, not far away in Harlem, Hawa Bah called 911 to ask for medical help for her son, Mohamed. Rather than getting medical help, Mohamed Bah was confronted by the New York City Police Department. Within hours, he, too, was shot dead by police, hit eight times, once in the head. Mohamed’s sister, Oumou Bah, is suing the City of New York and unnamed police officers. While neither lawsuit will bring back the dead, they may prevent future deaths by forcing the New Rochelle Police Department and the NYPD to adopt an increasingly mainstream police practice for dealing with emotionally distressed people, called “The Memphis Model.”

In an exclusive interview Tuesday on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, I had the chance to interview Hawa Bah and Elsa Cruz. They were meeting each other in our studios for the first time.[..]

This is where “The Memphis Model” comes in. Maj. Sam Cochran is a retired officer with the Memphis, Tenn., police. In 1987, police responded to a man who was harming himself, and threatening others, with a knife. The police killed the man. Community outcry prompted the mayor to call for a solution. They developed the Crisis Intervention Team. Sam Cochran explained to me, “It’s a community program [with] three main partnerships: law enforcement, local mental-health services providers and also advocacy.” CITs put a trained officer or mental-health professional on the scene, to de-escalate a situation. Since its inception in Memphis, it has been adopted in more than 2,500 communities in 40 states, as well as internationally.

Cross-posted to CandyBullets.

– In any manga, anime, or pictures (most likely including games).

– That feature sexual acts or sexual like acts that would be illegal in real life OR any sexual acts or sexual like acts or implication of a sexual relationship between close relatives OR those who can not marry if they were real AND

– Where the depiction / representation of the relationship is presented in an unjustifiably glorified or overly emphasized manner.

=> Is considered harmful to a minor’s mental health regarding sexuality, and therefore the Tokyo Metropolitan Government shall have the power to unilaterally restrict the material. where the sexual or sexual like act is considered to be excessively disrupting of social order.

That is the criteria for censorship for the scary new Tokyo Youth Healthy Development Ordinance. This is a list of what marriages are currently illegal in Japan today;

1) Marrying to one’s self or anyone of the same sex.

2) Marrying an immediate blood relative. (Children and parent, grandchild and grandmother, etc.)

3) Marriage between a relative by affinity within the third degree. (Siblings, uncle and nephew, etc.)

4) Marriage between two relatives formed by marriage in a parental relationship. (A husband and his wife’s mother or his mother-in-law.) This holds true even after divorce or if the spouse has died.

5) Marriage between an adopted child or adopted child’s spouse with his or her adopting parents, their immediate siblings, their blood relatives, etc. (An adopted son’s divorced wife and the father of one of the adopting parents, etc.) This holds true even after divorce or if the adoption is nullified.

As you can see problems begin to arise quickly. To start with the most glaring problem, the bill gives power to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to censor material that “glorifies” same-sex relationships, this should be an immediate warning bell. The bills stated purpose (“… promoting the healthy development of people under the age of 18 by restricting their access to material that is carefully considered harmful by the Government.) was a warning bell (i.e. terrifying) from the start. The bill slipped in under the radar however do in large part to its author and champion, the Tokyo Metropolitan Governor, an ex-tv personality famous for his snake oil charm, Shintaro Ishihara assured worries with claims he intended to merely go after so-called rorikon (lolicon) and shotacon titles, given that the bill didn’t even aim to censor them entirely per se but merely keep them from minors the bill appeared benign. It wasn’t. The first problems that began to appear were with the claims of “Restriction of Access”, this was a convenient story cooked up by Ishihara’s teem that did a lot to stave off criticism, the idea was that titles “censored” by the government would reappear under an “Adults Only” label, but this was immediately proven to be a sort of impossible catch-22; in the very first batch of manga the government announced it was censoring, Masahiro Itosugi, the mangaka of Aki-Sora (one of the titles being censored), announced the manga was going out of print because it didn’t qualify for the adult label… and it wasn’t allowed to be published without the adult label. Check mate. Furthermore, in Japan, if a manga series is relegated to the adult section, it will destroy the sales. This means publishers will no longer try to confront controversial or hot button issues, because even if they are one of the lucky ones and they aren’t removed from the market entirely they’ll end up deep in the red by being regulated to to the adult section under the absurdly vague parameters of this law.

copyright © 2011 Betsy L. Angert.  Empathy And Education; BeThink or  BeThink.org

It happened last night.  As I reflect, I realize it has happened all along.  Each day, in most every moment I have an opportunity to look at life and learn.  Yet I become consumed with more immediate concerns.  He said. She said.  The system, situation, or some other entity supplants a deeper assessment.  Years ago, I came to understand that I create my own chaos, calm, or shades of what will be.  As an Educator, I speak of this often.  My students often quote me on the subject of choices. Yet, until yesterday, I never fully grasped how true my words might be.  I am unsure why the events of the evening took me where they did. I share the story.  

copyright © 2011 Betsy L. Angert.  Empathy And Education; BeThink or  BeThink.org

Once again, Americans are up in arms or perchance, better armed and dangerous.  Only little more than a week into 2011, citizens have had to confront their fears, feelings, all at gunpoint.  It began on a calm, clear Saturday.  In a Safeway Store Tucson parking lot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords held one of her customary Congress on the Corner events.  It was January 8, 2011.  Friends and admirers from each political Party turned out.  Suddenly, cordial chatter turned icy cold. gunshots shattered the calm.  People were slaughtered.  Some survived.   However, as a nation, we were all wounded.

Retorts followed.  Seemingly, a culture was changed, or was it?  Just as has occurred, many times in the recent past, people quickly took sides.  Blame was ballied about.  Solutions were also presented.  Some argued for stricter gun control laws.  Others used the occasion to validate a need for less restrictive restraints on gun ownership.  Persons who held a position similar to the most prominent victim proposed a need to protect themselves.

This past week a conference opened, from the 10th to the 14th of January 2010, to discuss the growing suicide rate among our military and veterans community.

This is an extremely important issue, the Mental Injuries and Post Traumatic Stress as to War, that should be right up there along side never starting one except as a Very Last Resort when all else fails and to always plan an exit strategy as we should have done in Afghanistan after 9/11. Bringing in any and all support functions, promised rebuilding monies, NGO’s, government agencies gear to help rebuild including those in the military, in Afghanistan’s case after toppling the government that supported the criminal terrorist who carried out the devastating attacks on our country. Iraq should never had been allowed to happen!