Global Crisis

• #CultOfCompliance - Oregon Prisons and Mental Disability: Prisons as Asylums. Ending mass incarceration will require, among other things, community-based mental health care. Too bad we've been closing them in Chicago.
• Freddie Gray and Disability - An intersectional approach to a sensitive issue. But we cannot just ignore lead paint and its consequences. 
• There is No Autism Epidemic - Just better and different diagnosis. 

Prisoners with severe mental illness are routinely tasered, pepper-sprayed, isolated, and denied access to adequate mental health care - according to a new report by Disability Rights Oregon.
Disability Rights looked at the Behavioral Health Unit at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
That’s where prisoners with severe mental illness, who’ve committed violent crimes, are often placed.
Sarah Radcliffe, an attorney with Disability Rights, says they found prisoners being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; and an imbalance of power between security and medical staff, which led to inadequate mental health care. “And we also found that prisoners in this unit are subjected to frequent unnecessary use of force, by staff, often in response to behaviors that are related to their mental illnesses,” she said.

@Lollardfish Rly like that you took on "boondoggle" issue. By def'n not a boondoggle for those who have to pay our own way much of the time.

— Carrie Schroeder (@ctschroeder) May 6, 2015

“There was a big hole when you go up the steps,” Gray recalled in 2009. “There was a couple of walls that wasn’t painted all the way, peeled. . . . And like the windows, paint was peeling off the windows.”

Before Freddie Gray was injured in police custody last month, before he died and this city was plunged into rioting, his life was defined by failures in the classroom, run-ins with the law and an inability to focus on anything for very long.

 Many of those problems began when he was a child and living in this house, according to a 2008 lead-poisoning lawsuit filed by Gray and his siblings against the property owner. The suit resulted in an undisclosed settlement.

Reports of Gray’s history with lead come at a time when the city and nation are still trying to understand the full ramifications of lead poisoning. Advocates and studies say it can diminish cognitive function, increase aggression and ultimately exacerbate the cycle of poverty that is already exceedingly difficult to break.

It is nonetheless hard to know whether Gray’s problems were exclusively borne of lead poisoning or were the result of other socioeconomic factors as well. From birth, his was a life of intractable poverty that would have been challenging to overcome.

“Jesus,” Dan Levy, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University who has studied the effects of lead poisoning on youths, gasped when told of Gray’s levels. “The fact that Mr. Gray had these high levels of lead in all likelihood affected his ability to think and to self-regulate and profoundly affected his cognitive ability to process information.”

Levy added, “And the real tragedy of lead is that the damage it does is irreparable.”
By the time Gray and his family moved into the hovel on North Carey Street, which became the subject of the subsequent litigation, the amount of lead in his system had fallen. But he and his sisters began developing problems.

His sister, Fredericka, developed issues with aggression, Gray said in a 2009 deposition. “She still got problems like that,” he said. “She still do. She always was the aggressive one. She liked to fight all the time and all of that.”

Equally troubling was the children’s performance in the classroom. The twins and an older sister were diagnosed with either ADHD or attention-deficit disorder ADD, and Fredericka’s academic career was “riddled with suspensions,” court records say.

It wasn’t any better for Freddie, who never graduated high school and was often absent from his studies because of truancy or suspensions. “All the schools that I went to, I was in special education,” Gray said.

Why is no one discussing Freddie Gray's disabilities? Historically, disabled persons have had a higher risk for ineffective interactions with law enforcement personnel. Recent examples in our geographic area include the cases of Nellie Latson and Robert Saylor. This is not to discount factors of racism at all. But disability discrimination or "ableism" is the most hidden "ism" of all and our society is just not dealing with it. In Freddie Gray's case, racial discrimination is compounded by disability discrimination and when we ignore this fact, any solution to the problem of police bias and brutality will be incomplete.
The police must be trained in how to respond to individuals with developmental disabilities of all races. This does not mean we make excuses for the actions of adults with disabilities — visible or invisible. All adults must be held to the same standards of the law. What is does mean is that people who communicate, think, learn and emote differently must have the accommodations, supports and guidance needed to level the playing field. This also means that civil workers in a city like Baltimore in which hundreds of children have sustained lead poisoning must receive training to ensure public safety for all citizens.
We have been promising persons with disabilities the right to full community integration for decades. This promise rings hollow when society refuses to analyze and to discuss openly how we collectively and personally respond to the diversity of disability.

“Our line of performance lubricants and chemicals is preferred by many professional racers and mechanics, as well as a loyal fan base of amateur racers, shade tree mechanics and enthusiasts, all of who want the best product on the market for their vehicles,” said Leah Herrington, Royal Purple Vice President of Marketing. “It’s fitting then that we sponsor Townsend Bell; he’s at the wheel of some of the most technically-advanced open-wheel and sports racing cars where every component – including the lubricants – need to outperform. We want to give someone this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience – to see up close – how Townsend, his crew, his car and Royal Purple work together to succeed.”

If everyone is content with the conference as a legitimate custom, why do post-conference sentiments typically range from disappointment to total rage, always expressed in hushed tones?

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The prevalence of the autism symptom phenotype has remained stable in children in Sweden while the official prevalence for registered, clinically diagnosed, autism spectrum disorder has increased substantially. This suggests that administrative changes, affecting the registered prevalence, rather than secular factors affecting the pathogenesis, are important for the increase in reported prevalence of autism spectrum disorder.

“Audi on demand embodies the brand’s core values of technological progress and a love for discovery,” said Mark Del Rosso, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Audi of America. “The service is rooted in customization, personalization and having the right car for the right moment. While competing services point their customers to vehicles parked on the street, Audi on demand delivers a truly premium experience, with concierges personally delivering and returning vehicles for customers where and when they need them.”

The administration had taken the decisions it announced at the meeting well beforehand, and had taken the time to craft a carefully constructed explanation, neither the decision nor a copy of the remarks were made available to Senate leadership before thew [sic] actual presentation.

The role of the Senate appears increasingly to receive information rather than engage with it in the context of policy making (discussed here).

Shared governance increasingly appears to mean the forms through which selected faculty chosen for their technical proficiency or other attributes, are appointed to committees directed by and for the attainment of administrative objectives. Short comment opportunities may be afforded the institutional voice of the faculty, but the understanding is that the policy has been chosen and only technical corrections will be entertained. Policy is beyond the reach of the faculty (Discussed here).

The phrase "this is a large and complex institution" is not meant as a description of an institution, it is meant as a barrier to effective engagement. Administration is now the domain of specialists who, through their intense and superior knowledge, have become the high priests of the cult religion of university operation.

Policy is for the administrative apparatus--for the faculty there is only an opportunity to engage in technical review. The mechanics of power nicely masks its objective--to produce an optics of complicity in policy formation stripped of any authority to actually contribute to policy.

 Penn State, of course, is neither exceptional nor notable for these changes.  It represents merely one illustration of a much more profound development in the organization and operation of academic institutions....It is unlikely that, except at the margins, the process is either reversible or likely to change course.  

Reporter: what will prevent another Freddie Gray? Mosby: Accountability. R:There hasn't been any for so long. Mosby:You're getting it now.

— stacia l. brown (@slb79) May 1, 2015

I didn’t want to keep the baby. My child deserved better than a life of struggle and frustration due to a condition that he or she would never be able to change. Plus, there was no predicting the severity of the disorder — some children with Down Syndrome are able to feed themselves and attend school; others require more urgent and consistent care. Knowing that my husband and I wouldn’t live long enough to provide the necessary long-term care for our child was stressful, to say the least. I did not want him or her to ever feel lonely, lack independence, or be confined to a nursing home when we passed on.

“Do you remember the people who live in Nana’s nursing home — the ones who aren’t elderly?” I tried explaining to my husband. Mostly they just sat in their wheel chairs, staring into space. “No one comes to visit them,” Nana had said, adding that most had older parents who’d already passed on. My husband listened, then resumed his search...

 On our way home, we stopped at a sidewalk cafe. There I noticed an older couple with their son who appeared to have Down Syndrome. They were trying to prevent him from running out into the street so they could hand-feed him a slice of pizza and wipe his face with a napkin. Though he behaved like a rambunctious toddler, I wondered if he were a teenager or older (it’s often difficult to determine the age of someone with Down’s). I looked at my husband. He had noticed them too.

I called my husband and he headed home from the city. As I waited for him, I spent the next two hours googling this chromosomal abnormality on my phone and wondering "What did we do? How did this happen? Was there something we could have done?"

When my husband arrived, we met with the geneticist. She told us that the blood test I had taken had indicated that the chances were 99 percent that our child was affected by this condition and that we needed an amniocenteses to confirm. She then described in detail the obstacles that we, our son and, potentially, our daughter could face with the arrival of this baby. She explained that it was totally random and there was nothing we could have done and no way to cure it. I scheduled the amnio for the next day.
In the morning, we went back to maternal fetal medicine. I didn't even feel the needle in my stomach and couldn't look at the sonogram screen. On Friday the preliminary results were confirmed.

Over the next few days, we spoke to expert after expert and it became clear that we would have no choice.