Blog: Mental Illness

Mentally ill man beaten with bats by his “guardians”

Feb 4, 2014

A 25-year-old mentally challenged man was beaten with an aluminum baseball bat by his grandfather's girlfriend because it was "lighter and easier to swing," according to the suspect. Detectives from the Allegheny County District Attorney's Office arrested the 61-year-old woman and her 68-year-old boyfriend, both from Arlington Heights and charged them with assault, among other things, on Monday. A preliminary hearing is set for Monday, February 10. The two suspects are currently being held on...

Erie court upholds child abuse sentencing

Oct 18, 2013

A judge from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld a prison sentence after a convicted child abuser attempted to have it reduced. Police in Erie found the woman's four-year-old naked and terribly bruised at her Chestnut Street apartment two years ago in October 2011. Police said that she was shivering and had a black eye and other bruises on her back, stomach, and legs. Police had gone to the residence after the toddler's grandmother asked...

Jails have become overrun with many who are considered mentally ill

Sep 25, 2013

In a 2006 United States Bureau of Justice Statistics poll, 56% of state prison inmates and 64% of local inmates were said to be suffering from some sort of mental illness. Mental health experts today say those numbers are too dated may have been grossly underreported even then. We see the effects of uncared for mental illnesses in the news almost daily. Around the country and here at home, hardly a few days go by...

Mental health facility budget cuts are happening all over the region

Sep 24, 2013

Despite mass shootings and murder-suicides tied to people with serious mental health issues, states around the country continue to cut funding every year. Budgets cuts lead to reduced access to care–it's as simple as that. And with deplorable acts of violence taking place at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C., the elementary school in Newtown, and the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic here in Oakland, now seems like the worst possible time to cut the...

$11 million in cuts to mental health in PA has its consequences

Sep 23, 2013

Mental health facilities in western Pennsylvania are nearly extinct. Budget cuts over the past 30-40 years have forced state-run psychiatric hospitals to close their doors, leaving previous inhabitants to be dealt with by the law, for-profit companies, local hospitals, and outpatient caseworkers. In the decades bookended by the 30s and 60s, state-run "mental hospitals," as they are commonly referred to, were prevalent, self-sustained micro-communities where the afflicted were able to thrive and even be cured...