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36 <br />MENTAL HEALTH TASK FORCE REPORT <br />ATTACHMENT I <br />Frustration and Grief <br />Not long after reform was implemented, one of my long-term therapy clients who had a very severe <br />psychotic disorder developed multiple sclerosis (MS). She blamed the MS on her antipsychotic medication and <br />was angry at her psychiatrist so she decided to change providers (She had been with [our program] for more <br />than 10 years). She had also moved from Chapel Hill to Durham. When she got to her new provider, she <br />refused to sign a release for them to get her prior history. After establishing care with the new provider, she <br />called me upset about the psychiatry services she was receiving. I talked with her about ACT services, as she <br />clearly met the criteria and had Medicaid. She thought it sounded great, so I told her to ask her new <br />community support worker to refer her for these services. She called me again to say that her new worker <br />didn't know what ACT was. I called her provider and told them she was interested in a referral to ACT. They <br />said they couldn't refer her because they didn't have the history to support the need. I called the Durham <br />Center to see if I could refer her for ACT. They said I couldn't because I was no longer her provider. Well, the <br />final outcome of this was that the woman died of an accidental overdose of pain medication. She was floridly <br />psychotic at the time of her death, and refusing all mental health services. So my frustration with what has <br />happened to the system is also tinged by grief. I know there are other stories like this. <br />News & Observer -Editorial <br />Published Wed, Aug 26; 2009 <br />A verdict on violence <br />Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed on one thing regarding Alvaro Castillo, the 22-year-old <br />man who will serve a life term for the murder of his father and other crimes: he is mentally ill, and <br />seriously so. Castillo's story played out in dramatic fashion in a Hillsborough courtroom last week, <br />but in the end, the jury seemed to reach the inevitable verdict in finding him guilty. <br />Judge Allen Baddour said he would recommend that Castillo get mental health treatment in prison. <br />That's good, for this was a tragic tale indeed, in which earlier treatment might have helped. <br />As related in the course of Castillo's trial (his attorneys were seeking a verdict of not guilty by <br />reason of insanity) his father, Rafael Huez Castillo, ruled the household with an iron hand. His son <br />was clearly disturbed. At one point he talked his mother into taking him to see the site of the <br />infamous Columbine school shooting of 1999 in a suburb of Denver. <br />In addition to his father's murder, Castillo was convicted of firing on students at his former high <br />school, Orange High. Clearly he was obsessed with committing school violence. In light of horrific <br />school massacres around the county in recent years, his action against the school, which he planned <br />in advance, was inexcusable. Apparently, only alert action by a teacher and school security guard <br />prevented bloodshed there. <br />While Castillo clearly and by his own admission is disturbed, the jury faced a serious challenge. Not <br />to imprison someone who did what he did would be to engage in a risky optimism. Even though <br />34 <br />