DJ Jaffe

Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Justice Programs certified Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) as an Effective Crime Prevention Program. This comes on top of previous recognition by the DOJ Office of Community Oriented Policing Initiatives.

AOT allows courts to order mental...

The recently announced proposed closure of Kingsboro Psychiatric Hospital in Brooklyn, is the latest step by the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) to get out of the business of providing treatment to people with serious mental illness and spurred a massive demonstration in...

The chair of the California Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (MHSOAC) wrote an op-ed in Capital Weekly criticizing families of people with severe mental illness who criticize how Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) funds are spent. He claims the program is working well. But...

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Agency's most recent and widely-quoted report on the prevalence of 'any' mental illness and 'serious' mental illness in America failed to count the 300,000 individuals with serious mental illness in jails and prisons, the 200,00 who are homeless and the

The anniversary of the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords by an allegedly mentally ill Jared Loughner should engender sympathy for Ms. Giffords, sympathy for Jared Loughner, and consternation with Congress.

The shooting was not an isolated incident. Congress itself was the target of another man allegedly with untreated mental illness...

Eric Clark, an allegdly severely mentally ill man convicted in 2003 of murdering Flagstaff, Ariz. police officer Jeffrey Moritz in 2000, was just ordered freed or retried because evidence of his mental illness was withheld from his initial trial, reports the Treatment Advocacy Center.

According to U.S. District...

A new nationwide survey of 2,406 senior law enforcement officials (75% of whom were officers longer than 20 years) documents police and sheriffs are being tremendously overburdened with the "unintended consequences of a policy change that in effect "removed the daily care of our nation's severely mentally ill population from...

A little noted Laura's Law Progress Report quietly filed by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health earlier this year shows Laura's Law has reduced the incarceration and hospitalization of people with severe mental illness and saved taxpayers money which can be used for other purposes.

What's amazing about Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in America (2010, Broadway Paperbacks) is how it can go from sheer brilliance to sheer lunacy within the same page. And it does so repeatedly with a preponderance of brilliance...

The San Francisco Chronicle asked the mayoral candidates whether or not they support Laura's Law. Laura's Law lets courts order a very small group of severely mentally ill (only those with a past history of violence, arrest, or multiple hospitalizations) to stay in treatment as a...

In light of the increasing incidence of homelessness, arrest, incarceration, suicide and dangerous behavior by (and to) people with untreated serious mental illness who refuse voluntary treatment, and the impending release of incarcerated mentally ill to Orange County...

If media reports are true, Scott Dekraai -- hereinafter to be saddled with the "Seal Beach Salon Shooter" sobriquet -- had bipolar disorder, a history of violence, wouldn't stay on treatment, and was a perfect candidate for Laura's Law except for one fact: Orange County mental health...

An op-ed on SAMHSA I wrote in the Washington Times begins:

Presidents Ford and Reagan and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords were all attacked by people with untreated serious mental illness. In spite of the risk to public safety and homeland security posed by letting some people with serious...

Historically, the argument to provide better treatment for individuals with serious mental illness has been made in terms of reducing the 5,000 suicides, 1000 homicides, 175,000 homeless, 218,000 incarcerations and $100 billion spent on mental illness and mental health....

An article in California's Capital Weekly (that I co-authored) lists several examples of California police shooting people with mental illness. The article argues that the reason this happens is California's mental health system has stopped treating people with the most severe mental illnesses. This is surprising, because California's...

In California, it is playing out with relentless familiarity: the death of Kelly Thomas at the hands of Fullerton police has led to the usual criticisms of the police and calls for better training and more compassion.

But Carla Jacobs, founder of the California Treatment Advocacy Coalition...

I had the opportunity to ask my Congressman, Charlie Rangel, a question at his recent town hall meeting. I took notes (not dictation), and here is how the conversation went, more or less (in other words, I've paraphrased):

DJ Jaffe: With the budget deficit in mind, there are people with...

The June issue of Schizophrenia Bulletin contains an action plan by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey on how to reduce the stigma of mental illness. As I've previously written, I do not believe there is "stigma" to having mental illness; in other words, mental illness is not a "mark...

In this week's National Review, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, of the Treatment Advocacy Center, argues that to improve care for people with mental illness, President Obama should eliminate the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA).

Eliminating mental health agencies in order to...

Much of the country is in a dither over the Supreme Court decision (Brown v. Plata) that requires California to release up to 33,000 inmates in order to reduce prison overcrowding. Rather than dither about it, Mary Ann Bernard wrote a passionate and thoughtful...