PLEASE INCLUDE SMI IN YOUR PLATFORM by Dede Ranahan

Hi Mental Health for US

Just discovered you and your platform asking 2020 political candidates to talk about mental health in their campaigns. I see no specific mention of serious mental illnesses (SMI) such as schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder, bipolar disorder, etc. Some people are not able to recover from SMI and languish in prison, in solitary, in not-so-good care homes or in their parents’ back bedroom for years and years.

I belong to a dozen Facebook groups of families of the SMI. Their stories are horrific and from across the nation. They’re not able to find help anywhere.

I want to support your efforts. I’ve been sending letters to candidates and calling on Facebook and on my blog for 2020 candidates to step up, speak about, and put forth national plans for SMI that do the following: Reform HIPAA, repeal the IMD exclusion, do brain research into these insidious brain diseases, provide for long-term care and short-term outpatient services, improve access, provide housing, supported education, and family supports. Not simply mental health. Not simply drug and alcohol addiction. Serious mental illness.

Would Mental Health for US be willing to expand its platform to include SMI - specifically spelling it out, not simply lumping it into mental health?

I hope your answer is yes.

You can read stories about SMI individuals and families — across the US - that I’ve been posting for 31/2 years on my website and blog. You can also read my own story in my book about my and my son’s struggles for over 25 years to get help for his SMI. He died in 2014 on a hospital psych ward. He was transferred, without my knowledge, out of county (lack of beds), his records weren’t forwarded with him, and I couldn’t get doctors to talk to me (HIPAA) even though I was on my son’s Advance Care Directive.

I unwittingly captured the last year of Pat's life in my book which, among other things, includes his story and many stories of individuals and families being failed by the system.

I will sign on and volunteer to help you once I’m satisfied that this undertaking includes SMI and specifically mentions it in your platform.

Thank you. I look forward to hearing from you.
Dede Ranahan

www.soonerthantomorrow.com
A Safe Place to Talk About Mental Illness in Our Families

Sooner Than Tomorrow — A Mother’s Diary About Mental Illness, Family, and Everyday Life
By Dede Ranahan with Patrick Ranahan
http://www.bit.ly/soonerthantomorrow

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https://www.mentalhealthforus.net Please read this platform and send a message asking that it include SMI specifically.

http://www.bit.ly/soonerthantomorrow

SOONER THAN TOMORROW - A MOTHER'S DIARY (Coming Soon) by Dede Ranahan

My book, Sooner Than Tomorrow — A Mother’s Diary About Mental Illness, Family, and Everyday Life, has been six years in the making. In a few days, it will become available on Amazon. The journey continues.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

(Page 445 in Sooner Than Tomorrow)

First, thank you to my son, Patrick. Thank you for your poetry, your Facebook posts, and your life. You’re the most courageous person I’ve ever known.

Thank you to my daughters, Megan Mace, Marisa Farnsworth, and Kerry Joiner, for reading Sooner Than Tomorrow and giving me permission to put it out there, sharing our family with the world. Your endorsements mean everything to me.

Thank you to everyone I mentioned in the telling of my story. We’re all in this thing we call “life” together.

Thank you to early readers: Ann Hedrick, Pat West Guinn, Kathy Hayes, Mary Lyn Rusmore-Villaume, Rosemary Sarka, and Irene Underwood. You gave me the cojones to believe in myself.

Thank you to the cheerleaders, those of you read my book excerpts week after week at soonerthantomorrow.com and sent me emails, text messages, cards, and letters: Joan Andersen, Tama
Bell, Chris Biswell, Judy Bracken, Madeleine Cunningham, Bev Chinello, Deborah Fabos, Anne Schmidt Francisco, Heidi Franke, Sheila Ganz, Jeanne Gore, Joyce Herrerias, Swannie Hoehn, Rose King, Nancy Krause, Joan Logue, Grace McAndrews, Jan McKim, Mary Murphy, Fran Neves, Liz Noel, Teresa Pasquini, Den Proudly, Karen Riches, Mary Sheldon, Stace Shurson, Sandy Turner, Kimberlee West, Annette Williamson, and to so many more of you who left comments, likes, and loves on Facebook. You kept me going, especially on the days when I thought, what am I doing?

Thank you to Sharon Lefkov, Kerry Joiner, and Michele Joiner for proofing my pages for spellings and typos. Thank you to my little brother, Jim Moon, for bringing my old photos back to life. Acknowledgments also to Sue Clark, my first editor, who read every page out loud with me and assured me, “Yes, this is interesting.” And to the Lincoln Library writer’s class who listened, in the beginning, when Pat was still with us.

Special hugs to Pat’s Facebook friends.

Thank you to Michele DeFilippo and Ronda Rawlins at 1106 Design for your professionalism and guidance.

And finally, thank you to all of you—those I know and don’t know—who are reading Sooner Than Tomorrow. Readers are the whole point of writing. The why in the what if.

—Dede Ranahan

P.S. Love to my heroes—the millions of mothers of the seriously mentally ill who fight for their children every single day.

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