Local Community Panel to Discuss Mental Health Issues as Part of 'One Book, One Community' Project

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Pete Earley, author of Crazy, this year’s One Book, One Community project selection.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A panel of mental health and community assistance providers from Northwest Arkansas will discuss the intersection of the mental health and the criminal justice system and its implications for future mental health advocacy programs. The discussion is part of the fifth annual ‘One Book, One Community’ project, which is focusing on mental health issues. The event will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 22 in St. Paul’s Fellowship Hall in Fayetteville and is free and open to the public.

The panelists will provide distinct perspectives from their respective fields and provide insight into how the community can work together to reform mental health and the criminal justice system. It will include Tom Petrizzio, the CEO of Ozark Guidance, a mental health provider for children, adults, and families; Sheriff Tim Helder, Washington County Sheriff; Jon Woodward, the CEO of 7Hills Homeless Center; and Chris Arias, the Director of NWA Medical Center UAMS Psychiatric. Laura Kellams of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families will serve as the panel discussion moderator.

The book chosen for this year’s One Book, One Community project is Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, by Pete Earley. In it, he uses two of his own experiences to explore problems with the way America’s mental health care system and its law enforcement system interact.

The first experience occurred when his son, who is bipolar, was arrested for breaking into someone’s house and became tangled in both the mental health system and the criminal justice system.

The second experience is Earley’s year-long investigation inside the Miami-Dade county jail, during which he followed inmates with mental disorders through the criminal justice system and out into the streets. Earley concluded that the American mental health system is “crazy”; that persons with mental illness are ending up behind bars where they are punished rather than helped.

Crazy is being read this semester by incoming freshmen as part of the U of A’s new University Perspectives course, and also by students in classes from a variety of disciplines. Local community book clubs associated with the Fayetteville Public Library have added the book to their reading lists. Beyond that, everyone at the university and in the community is invited to read the book and take part in events organized around the theme of community mental health.

For more information about One Book, One Community, please visit onebook.uark.edu.