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Sunday on cspan2 or online at booktv. Org. Book tv 25 years of television for serious readers. Two years ago some colic so they started mine site news the only National News site focused solely on Mental Health reporting. We did so to fill a void but long before we launched my guest today Meg Kissinger was that ground is one of the only reporters in the country working squarely on the Mental Health beat for 35 years the walkie journeys sentinel covered the workings and failings of what we euphemistically called the Mental Health system in this country. Is meg also knew about those issues on a much more personal level as we will talk about today. Her memoir while you were out tells a story of growing up in the chicago suburbs with his Seven Brothers and sisters a charming but manic father, a brilliant but knowing an absent mother and a messy pile of secrets. Welcome it is so great to be with you in talking about this amazing work. Thanks rob i cannotth think f anybody i would rather be talking to about it that with you. It is my privilege. Thanks so much. What i love about this book is you break the kenai of a reporter, the storytelling shops that may be part of the kissinger dna and the passion of someone who looked squarely at humanl suffering and institutional failure wants to expose it. So lets start here. What prompted you to write this book . To dig through an air your family story . How did that flow from her years as a Mental Health reporter . Yes. It has always been inmate. As the fourth of eight kids and as you wisely point out a boisterous clan weas were. Th i was always the nosy when the e monkey in the middle so curious about what was going on in my family. We did not talk about it. That only made me even more curious. And when tragedies befell us and they did in spades that piqued my curiosity all the more. I was inclined to write stories about how people with Mental Illness suffered in this country and are not well attended. That provided me with the pretty lively career for quite some time i wasth very fortunate to work at the milwaukee sentinel which is ape regional paper with editors are squarely dedicated to writing about people less fortunate and gave me all kinds of support in terms of a budget to go places and the time to write these stories in great depth. I was very grateful for that. But i realized years and years into this that kind of the most intense story was the one i never really examined thoroughly thats a story of my own family. I do that the same way i approach investigative stories storythat are right for the newr which was a scary undertaking. It meant i had to file freedom of information request might Police Records i got there medical files it was a mystery that needs to be solved. As a very personal mystery i was more than a little nervous about doing it. That comes through the digging. Its an incredible piece of investigative work in this book. There is a lot of pain in the story but there is also humor. I ferocious drive by you and your siblings to help and protect each other. I think may be the best way to give ail sense of your family ad your delicious storytelling would be for you to read a couple off passages on the first chapter of your book. Could you do that for us . Quick short rob i shall thank you so much. This is the beginning of the book im going to skip down to the last section of the same first chapter. It starts out by saying that we were little mr. Patty and i like to pretend ferocious tigers lurked in the space between our twin beds just waiting to rip us to shreds. Ar they stocked us at nice with their razorsharp fangs growling and starting and licking their chops. Dip a toe or finger down to low and snap they chomp it off clean bone. We bounce from one bed to the next shrieking as we flew through the air. Pipe down u2 or i will come and there and beat you to a bloodied pulp. My mother would yell from her bedroom down the hall. The invisible tiger it scared us. Our mother did not. Watching this i whispered to patty as they leaned over the side of my bed slowly wiggled my fingers down into the pit. She would poke her curly little head over the side of her bed and stared at the big blacks hole. Nervously wheezing as she waited for one of the tigers toer take debate. I squeezed my eyes shut imagining the hungry beast skulking towards us the smell of their musky filling my nostrils the thumping of my heart in the middle of my throat. I said pipe down my mother would call out weaker this time. We knew she did not have the energy to beat us much less into a bloodied pulp. My mother and earth wild while debutante with a genius iq noun spent her days writing ointment ngon babies blistered at bottom. Bottoms. My pinks knocked off our faces fostering art with her spit and dripping warm medicine into her losing infected ear canals. She sucked our lunch bags with pita butter sandwiches have this conjugate latin verbs. Types are term papers from bouncing a baby on our lap and ironing our uniform glasses. Her own mother was. Dead and she had no sisters so it fell to my mother she raised her eight children more or less by herself. While my father was out of time most of the week on business. My father we called him homer sold advertising space at companies that manufacture tranquilizers at a socalled Ethical Pharmaceuticals to harried mothers of the baby boom. Business wasnt brisk especially in her northshore chicago neighborhood where women come a great number of them Irish Catholics like my mother were expected to fill the pews with as many children as they could bear whether they had the stamina or not. Her fathers sudden mood changes and our mothers melancholia made as tense like little dear teetering through the forest. Vulnerable and unprotected we decided the tigers could come bounding toward us at any second. Our maybe they creep up on us slowly slinking through the glades. As tigers often do. We wanted to be good. We tried our best to be brave. Once we dared ourselves to Fall Asleep Holding Hands over the tiger pit but we never stopped worrying about the beast we imagine swirled between our beds. We knew we were no match for them and we dreaded the day they would rip us apart. It seems like only a matter of time, indeed one day the tigers did come. Joe made to finish the end of the chapter . Sure if you are up for that would be great. We are not real tigers i think. Guest they were not real tigers of menace justice ferocious with the power just as deadly. They scratched and clawed until they made mincemeat of us all. Some and our family were devoured from head to toe. Never to be seen again. A sister ripped to shreds and swallowed whole then years later a brother snaps before our very eyes we could see it happening when just cannot do anything to save him or it may beat we were too scared to try. Both of us left tried to hide but the beasts were relentless. Just when we thought we were free one would spring toward us and then another, and a nether eventually we were all mauled anded mangled. No one escaped unscathed. In time we learned if we were to survive we cannot just shiver under our covers like patty and i used to. We would each have to figure out a way to fight back wrestle them to the ground pound them into submission once and for all. If not they would surely come back and get us too. Oh wow. What a great way to start a book. Guest thank you. Stu went looking back on life in the kissinger household what were the signs even in retrospect that things were not all good with your mom and dad and later with some of your siblings. What strategies did you devise to deal with some of the chaos and confusion that seem to have rained . Guest i think i first picked up on it as a 5yearold. My mom was really a loving wonderful person. But she could be very spacey she would often drift off and it was hard to get to her. She was quite busy as i just outlined she had eight kids in 12 years and a husband that was gone a lot. But how we would cope with that . When leaned on each other i think. We would look to each other for comfort. My sister patty and i, the roommates that we were we would lull ourselves to sleep. My mom did not have the bandwidth to attend it to us too much but she did read to arched each night which i w love. We did all the full opportunity to get rocked to sleep every night so we kind of did that for each other. And then as we got older and things were more apparent there was trouble within, we just again tried to kind of find comfort with each, other. Where i grew up was an enclave of very big families being catholic. And the neighborhood we grew up inin was one of some wealth waso we had some privilege. There were just big old families. But if you ran out of a brother or sister there were plenty of families down the block with was spare brothers and sisters. These families kind of melded together. I am sure, i know now as an adult a lot of families were also struggling with alcohol abuse or Mental Illness. So we look to each other. See what you had to i guess. You wrote a lot about secrets and your family some of which you did not really figure out until decades laters your writing the book. For example he had an uncle all you knew about him was he was a pilot who died during world war ii. Tell us what you learned about him another childs in training . Is blew me away. This is my fathers older brother jack. We imagine or think we just assumed he was killed we knew he died during world war ii and he was a pilot. We connected the dots and assumed he was killed someplace in germany or japan violently. Again my dad never talked about it and neither did his appearance my grandma and grandpa they lived with us off and on for some time when we were young. All we know about uncle jack is we set a prayer for him every night went we would say grace at hodinner we would always includa shout out to uncle jack. Anyway when it came to learn by getting his army records was that he was killed in texas american soil of course in training. And they were so desperate for pilots in the early going this was in 1943 so the beginning of the american involvement in the war they would take these young guys and put them up in these planes with almost no training was the case of my uncle who was scrambling to finish his Flight Training and went up on a saturday night unsupervised and i came to learn over 15000 young i am assuming men was probably exclusively men in those days 15000 died in training. That is just staggering to me it is a story its not very widely known or told that is one secret another was on my moms side of the family my moms youngest brother was bored when she was away at her freshman year of college she was embarrassed her mother was having a baby she was afraid people were going to think it was her baby because she was 18 years old and she was throwing a baby around the neighborhoodio people would make baby. Sumption it was her anyway my uncle also named john was born with down syndrome. But my grandparents were never really accepting of that and they resisted the opportunity to get him into the care that he really needed. I think that was a source of great sorrow and frustration for my mom. So they came into the marriage both ofhe them with these secres and sadness from within. That never really resolved those traumas when they began their own and baby production. It was on shaky ground the family was even launched regrets i have to sayts the piece about the pilots and training stuck a chord with me because my own kefather tried to fake his way into the air force. He had a bad vision he tried to volunteer and he tried to fake his way to the vision test but failed to do so and ended up in the army. It makes me realize i am glad he did not make his way into a pilot was in the careers of pilot that he wanted for. We would not be having this conversation probably. That is rates. So your moms hospitalization later, actually gave away the punchline. It was a day you came downstairs and your mother was nowhere to be seen. Your father voted you into the car and drove you off somewhere. Tell us about that. This session we just moved back from connecticut. My dad had started a magazine he and another guy started this magazine it still around called physicians management. It was intended to be a business magazine for physicians tips on how to manage their practice. But really the beauty of it was that it wasas chockfull of advertisements and especially this is in the early 1960s, 61 or 62. Tranquilizers are coming onto the marketplace fast and furious. The early versions of prozac or i should say sedatives. The socalled Ethical Pharmaceuticals which meant you got prescriptions for them. America was going gangbusters with pharmaceutical sales. So we moved out to connecticut so that my dad could manage the business in new york city. I lived an idyllic town of new canaan. But that went bad for my father quickly and he began to have doubts about his Business Partner and the tension between the two became so much she quits he ended up suing his Business Partner there is to molt their e move back in a hurry. My dad about this house my mother had not even seen it was not really to her liking. Anyway she was quite frazzled she just had her seventh baby i was going into first grade i came down the stairs one morning and she was just gone. Anyway we were not told where she was we had no idea. I thought maybe she had another baby. [laughter] the current baby was only about five months so i just didnt know the details at that stage of the game. Anyway we were hauled off my sister patty and i to my uncles house in chicago it was an adventure but itt was a scary adventuree because we had no ida where dhec we were going or why so we were there i dont think we were even there very long. But when you are five years old three days or however long it was seemed like a long time especially when you dont know why you are there. I later came to learn my mother was being hospitalized for hedepression. She would go back into the hospital a few months later almost like symptomatically it was the very week that president kennedy was assassinated. So while america is morning this terrible tragedy im a first grader worrying again about where my mother is. It was a pretty intense time in my life. Other would be followed by others and later by the decline of your sister nancy into severe depression and eventually to her death by suicide. Some years later your brother danny also took his own life. So how did your family navigate and talk about these issues about the Mental Health problems that were smacking you in the face . Well the short answer is we didnt. At first. Ultimately it could not have been avoided. I will tell you about the night my sister nancy died. So nancy was very troubled. And again in that era we are time with the mid 1970s they dideo not refer to people as bipolar now that would probably be what she would be called. She had severe mood swings she was very impetuous. She got psychotic she had hallucinations and delusions. I have seen some medical records it refers to her as having schizophrenia or affective disorder. I kind of think i am not a medical professional by any stretch but knowing what i now know having spent so many years writing about the Mental Health system my hunch is she was bipolar but had psychotic features. Nonetheless she was quite ill it was very disruptive. She could be violent. She could be very menacing. She could be she was wholly reason she was brilliant but she could be a tough one to live with. I steered clear of her i was four years younger than she. I just knew to stay out of her path. When she got sicker and sicker i was a teenager and i was frustrated with her i was angry with her for taking up all the oxygen in the room making my mom and dad is so worried. My dad was a very emotional guy he would cry he would be so worried about her and so sad. My mom was not one to show great emotion i think maybe that went hand in glove with her depression and more of a flat affect. I knew she was very worried about her. So nancy had many, many suicide attemptsli some more public than others. When she finally did die and i go into that mystery that surrounded the actual day she did finally die and what i learned in writing this book which really floored me and it wont spoil and went at that is little twistel. I will tell you this the night she died my dad called us all into the living room he instructed us in no Uncertain Terms hef said it if anybody as this wasnt an accident. So that seemedd kooky to me why would anybody in the world by that e . Everybody had known, everybody in the parish, everybody on the block, all of our friends knew nancy had attempted suicide many times. They were not going to buy any kind of caulk may be an explanationthat it was an accid. My dad wasnt trying to be mean he was worried. Hed was worried she would not e afforded a funeral that the Catholic Church did not look thoughtfully or kindly on people who died by suicide they consider that a sin. A mortal sin you were not to be given a funeral or be buried on catholic grounds. One of my dads a best of friends had a son who died the year before of suicide my dad went to that funeral and came home heartbroken their parish priest knew the boy had died by suicide and did not allow his body into the church so they had a Memorial Service the boys casket was in a hearse idling down the block. So anyway that was the atmosphere that nancy died in. That was the motivation for my dad telling us not to reveal she should died by suicide. But what that did to me was to make me more ashamed. And to suggest nancys death was something we should be ashamed of. And her Mental Illness was a choice i think that sets the stage for us to try to push that down. She died on a friday night. Her funeral was on monday morning. On tuesday ier went back to my summer job i was going to my senior year of college. We all just went on about our business and we never sat down as a family to discuss it. That seems insane to me now. But that is how it was for us. Theres little passage in the book were you write about the way your family dealt with some of this andnd im just going to read that quickly. Our family language of wisecracks and oneliners had been our way of keeping us all from panicking to distract us from thesc truth we were scared out of our minds. We usedd it as a bandaid to kep fear and anger from infecting us. But often made fresh air and sunlight to heal and we still were not ready to sit down as a group and thoughtfully consider what was happening. We were simply in survival mode. Something clicked with all of us in the months after daddy died we began to feel cursed. This could happen twice in our family why not a third time or a fourth . Was there something in our gene pool that would kill each of us . Our gene and bill pool as we called it referring to the names of your parents. We started looking around wondering who might be next. Nature or nurture . Either way we were in trouble. Take twoe alcoholics one bipolr the other with crippling anxiety and let them have eight kids in 12 years. What could possibly go wrong . Which really struck me at sums s up a lot about your family and also epitomizes your writing which just is so direct into the points as well as the humor that i think circulated in your family. When you look at the Mental Illness that coursed through your family what do you conclude about that nature nurture genes and environment question you pose in that passage . And what do you think could have made a difference in your family to have maybe helped prevent the suicide of nancy and danny if anything . Yes. I do think, i know bipolar runs in our family. And we are still at the infancy stages of really understanding of Mental Illness in the way that we do other illnesses. I know theres a lot of research for theres a lot of good people working really hard to help us better understand that but we are so far away from that. So anything i say is based on conjecture. My gut instinct is we are just prone to that. Weof have that in the same way families have the bracket gene for Breast Cancer or some other hereditary illness. It is just lousy in our family. What could have helped us with a lot. We could have had Early Intervention both in these schools, our teachers could have been on the lookout for this. Family therapy for sure. I know a lot of families going through similar some of things our family went through. They are getting good care. They are getting family therapy. These therapists are inviting the parents in and his siblings and work shopping and in our day as went nancy it was first getting ill and others in the family too, we were seen as the enemies we were seen as the root cause. There is the old story line of the cold and distant father and his schizophrenic mother and how they parenting was the cause of their Mental Illness. We now know that is a bunch of hooey. So it danny was the second youngest and our family nancy was the second oldest they were 10 years apart. Danny was 14 years old when nancy died. He was very embarrassed to have a sister who died by suicide but he did tell people she died in an accident. And he always saw that as a weakness. Which is so ironic. He would later go on to develop his own version of bipolar. The dissemination and the shame of Mental Illness was really very strong in him. I really feel more fully talked about nancy, taken out the blame and the shame how she was dealt with she would have felt freer when his own bad thoughts able to confide more ns get greater comfort from us i thought so much of course he spent hundreds ofof hours over my life thinking about why did my brother and sister get to that point . And i think people who decide to die by suicide really feel there is no other option there is no better way out for them. I wish so much we have been able to have these conversations so that they had other alternatives. Lets shift gears to your work as a journalist. What made you decide to pursue the highpaying glamorous career . And quickly why could she latch ontot the Mental Health beat . You know what is so funny . My first job was in upstate new york and watertown new york i have no idea where that was. I did not Pay Attention in geography class when they said new york i thought ill go shopping on the weekend and go to broadway it is a seven and half hours its a long way from watertown to new york city. And i had forgotten this. My old editor a great way still Exchange Christmas cards with found a series i did back then onge Mental Health and teenager. I am sure that was me trying to learn what i could to the lens of a journalist. I had not been offered that as a sister of someone who just been died by suicide. Or somebody who has a substantial amount of Mental Illness in the i family. I think i was using again i dont think i know i was using myl journalism as a cover to gt my own therapy. I could do that without any trappings of secrecy. I could very aggressively full throated lady investigate what it was like to struggle with Mental Illness whats available for people. And not a surprise especially in those days was not a lot available and not a lot of sustained good care. So i just gravitated again a curious person a covered crime in the courts for many years. I wrote a gossip column of all things. It was way to stay in daily newspaper as well raising two tiny kids. I always felt my wood back to stories people with Mental Illness. And the shabby ways they are treated. Because for me and never stops shocking me. I never become or noun to the fact that we do such a horrible job and caring and need help so much. Do what i want to give viewers a little taste of your news writing. And the incredible empathy that comes through in that work. This is from a piece that you wrote it was published as part of a series i and 2000 and the milwaukee attorney sentinel part was the title of the series . It was called broken promises which is kind of the title of every investigative series i think. But that was it broken promises. It sounds like a tape recording in slow motion as jaw is clenched his steel blue eyes are darted across the eastside restaurant the owner needs him for free if he promises not to beg outside the front door. It has been a long slide from the kitchen of his childhood in where he, his parents, his brothers and sisters bow their heads the shipe bus so lord in these thy gifts. Eating garbage c out of trash cn trashcanand alleys of the easts. Give this gift so relatively rare disorder marked by symptoms of schizophrenia, mania and depression. He hears voices. Sometimes he thanks its god whispering in his ear. Other times it is stay tuned teasing him, mocking him, daring him to his evil handiwork. His girlfriend from seventh grade giggles and coos, at least he hears his voice. Sometimes it cannot stop laughing. Other time he cries so hard he chokes. Been addicted to crack cocaine. Way to escape the fun house mirror of his mind. Diagnose abusing drugs and alcohol. And mentalas health reports. If this were report 1975 john mike bennett locked up in a hospital,wh told when he could eat, where he could smoke his beloved cigarettes, who is friends would be and often how to shave. Today he walks free, sleeps outdoors moms money off of strangers, has a 40ounce cans of beers has sex with strange men in exchange for rocks of crack cocaine. Six month journal investigation of the plight of the mentally ill in milwaukee fed many people like john wandering homeless living in squalor, imprisoned and members and warehoused in Nursing Homes or other institutions where they get little if any care. That is powerful stuff maga. Tell me about this series and the reaction to it. The wonderful john who i ended up, i followed that guy. He died two years ago of comed. But his family. He lived a longg time. Yes he did. He was a champ. He was a brilliant man. He was hilarious. I think i laughed i cannot member laughing its hard as i did when i was with john. And another woman i spent many years writing about. What propelled me too this was i would see people out around town who i knew had Mental Illness in the same way my sister did and others in my family did. It just seemed how is it there getting care. I was looking into my own window the most intelligent caring just thoughtful people. I thought if this could happen to one of their own it could happen to anybody. Again i dont think i know we are so quick to judge people with Mental Illness we want to assign blame that is a human instinct i think. I must be something the parents did it is some character flaw it cannot just be that they arere l this is bad behavior it is willful behavior. And it needs to be punished. I just know that is not true. And john to me, personified that for me. We are also ready and many journalists to caricature people with Mental Illness. So impressive to me is the way lend reallyra rich portraits of the people you write about. He spent a lot of time with them. They are human there fully fleshed human beings. I think it is a gift and it is so important in covering this deal. But it also must have been when you immerse yourselves in these stories given your own Family History it mustve been incredibly difficult emotionally and psychologically for you. I wonder how you coped with that thank you for that it was a generous description of my writing. I have not read that stuff in so many years. That is how i remember him. How i dealt with it was go harder and harder and harder. So that was not good. I am now a trainer for the dart center on trauma and journalism at columbia university. So my work is now with a journalists writing about Mental Health. What i advised them is what i wish someone advised me these are human beings you need to be mindful with their own Mental Health. But i was on such a mission. Ii really had a feisty streak in me andnd i wanted people to kno, i am really still just flattened by the discrimination against people with Mental Illness. It makes me so angry. I just think people need to really understand that. That was the fuel in me that kept going and telling me stories over so many years. I was at this for over 25 years. But towards the end of that time i really got ground into the dirt. I really felt like i was again on a mission. I always tell my students journalists are not advocates. In favor of the truth we want to shine a light. But we are not lobbying politicians. We are showing what is happening and letting the changemakers do it how they will. That is a very thin line that gets blurred a lot. But i really feel that was my task to hold the weight up to people with Mental Illness. Show them in all of their humanity. They are not saints but neither are they sinners they are a little bit of both their human beings. But my own Mental Health was really almost getting flashbacks of my own. I write in the book sometimes at night i would lie there thinking about the story i was working on and see my mother, my brother, my sister. One time i was in a laundromat i was doing a series of articles about the horrific housing for people with severe Mental Illness. These are people who used to be institutionalized and when they started downsizing the asylum and the m state Mental Health hospital they were not good exit plans there is not good permanency planning. A lot of these folks ended up in that single room only there are boarding houses they were a rat infested exposed wires, awful places. I was chronically bad i ended up at a laundromat in milwaukee there was a really funny lady in their i could just tell she was a character but naturally gravitated towards her. Anyway, long story short turns out he told me she was from a little town outside of chicago and i said really, where question if youve never heardu of it and i said i am like shut up ie. Am from there she said no you shut up. We started pushing each other like elaine from seinfeld. Any weight she knew my sister nancy they had been together in the psych ward at evanston hospital. I thought wow, things have really come full circle. Here i am profiling a woman who could have been my sister and knew my sister. So that was wonderful and a horrible at the same time. I came to follow her for many years. She too died and when she died her family kindly asked me too give the eulogy. I became very fond of her and that is kindan of an occupationl hazard when you spend so much time with the people you are writing about. You tend to fall in love with them. Or you care about them so deeply but i eventually stopped writing about georgia was her neighbor stopped writing aboutut georgiai did consider her to be a dear friend and i did not want those two roles. I would tell myself and now the now a book writing late tell the reporter lady you need to take some Mental Health breaks of your own. Had a guy and the newsroom one time tell me you started to look like the people you cover it. And it was true i was getting ground down. D wow. When you decided to do the book that was obviously a big decision. And you knew you were referred before to having fear brother and sisters medical records. You are also writing about very personal stuff about surviving siblings. How did you of the struggle to get them to go along with this . Whatat was their attitude toward it . What did you fear wouldd be ther attitude toward it . Right. I love my brothers and sisters so much and i care about them so much i put that way over any kind of ambition i had as a journalist. I would say in the hierarchy of things i am a wife and mother and now grandmother and sister first. And then a journalist. But i hope i can combine those goals. But it was not worth it to me if this was going to cause a rift with any of my brothers or sisters. We had all been through way too much to pile on anymore agony. So i reached out to all of them and i want to do this. I want to bear witness and tell what it was like for our family. But im going to do it in a way one of my investigative projects. I am going to seek out all of these records and look through moms diaries look through chicken scratches in the aa book. Im going to go full tilt here. I dont know what im going to find. But if you want to blackball this tell me right now. To a person they did not flinch. I knew i love them anyway. But then i really love them because they gave me not just the green light but as i was putting this together i had so many questions and would call them at all hours texting, calling, emailing. To are person that answered questions. The die did not even know. Heres aui quick example my sisr patty mike taggart paypal ended up in the psych ward in milwaukee when she was a senior in college i never knew that. I later went on to write about the psychiatric hospitals in milwaukee. I had no idea over those years my own sister patty had been a patient there at one points. This was a very intense stuff. I put it all in a google doc the coroners report and the police files and the medical records. And i said to them i have all of this. If you want access it, have at it. If you dont thats perfectly fine to the own thing im going to ask you is before i hit the send button to the editor i want you to read this book and let me know is this accurate first of all and is there anything thats going to cause you so much heart ache it should not be in there . They all read it for they corrected a few things that there was nothing in there, nothing they said please dont put in there. There are some very intimate details in there. So thankay you jake, patty, bil, molly, i love you. Talk a little bit about policy. And connected to families to and away. Early in the book hek wrote a connection between your family and that of the kennedy family. Tell me about that and then about the legacy of john f. Kennedy in 1963 committee Mental Health act exit they were irish and catholic and a lot of them. They died tragically. Many of them. And rosemary who infamously had been the subject of a lobotomy, the horrific like the guy who developed the lobotomy won a nobel peace prize. Anyway nonetheless thats a book in and of itself but she ended up being so disabled by this procedure she ended up in all place at jefferson, wisconsin and the very facility because of his Family Experience and his was very involved in Special Olympics and calling attention to the needs of people with Developmental Disabilities and Mental Illness. They greatly encouraged him. 1963 or signed it on october 31. The last thing hewn did not to y the only guy out there after his assassination the country and onto other investigation by his assassination and of course the vietnam war and civil unrest. Anyway what happened was nothing good. O they did empty out a lot of the asylums. They did not build the community Mental Health centers that they promise. Fewer than half they had earmarked whereverpl else. Assured out of care, a lot of that horrible care but care nonetheless into nothing. So rob i know we are pressed for time but i just want to say your own creation, mind is site news which is the website is a news aggregator and eight news sites i spent my whole life wishing for you are now covering these issues so many years later. Here we are 60 years and beyond this push for Mental Health reform we are still doing a very a lousy job at it. I am grateful to your organization for bird dogging this. You are on the lookout to make Mental Health much more robust was his way to narratively to tell what one family goes through. The need for better mental sohealth care when i read that chpassage about how little has changed and i think back to my own reporting on Mental Health issues and like the 80s how little has changeder as we were writing about people going from the street into jails and the Emergency Hospital and back on the streets and all of that is so much in far greater numbers. One thing, couple positive notes is that in the last couple of years mark money has been allocated to mental help than ever. You will see this and shoot teach Mental Health reporting class at columbia. There are people who have the ambition young journalism students and reporters who really want to cover Mental Health you were the only Mental Health reporter practically and the country for a long time. So how does it look to you now . Yes i agree and i am thrilled put my students are fantastic. They are so eager to write about that they b are equally as outraged as i have been over all these years. They have such a skill. They are also willing to share their own stories. They grew up now and their generation is much freer. They feel freer to talk about this. I think it is so easy to get discouraged, rob. That is where we really need to keep pushing on. I think about h how gay people n the early 80s agitated and really fought for greater government response to the aids crisis. I am so grateful for the example they set the template that is they are. People with serious Mental Illnessow need to do the same ty need to borrow from that playbook. And really demand care. We as journalists need to be telling these stories againd ad again and again and putting human faces on it. Humanize these people who are suffering. And insisting on nothing less then good care. He went thank you you have helped blaze a trail of doing exactlya that and set a really good example for how this can be done. We are trying to keep that going and build on it and thank you so much for spending time today talking about your amazing book and best of luck to you. Speak to think you rob it was such a pleasure to be with you. Weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast every saturday American History tv documents americas story and on sunday booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 comes in these Television Companies and more including cox. 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