Advocates, Patients Push For Mental Health Resources In Mississippi
Newsy
The state is trying to figure out how to provide mental health patients with more community-based options.
Melody Worsham is a mother, teacher and volunteer who says she's fought a 30-year battle with a disease that mental health professionals were supposed to help her with but instead left her feeling humiliated.
"I live with PTSD, with psychotic features. And as soon as someone hears the word 'psychotic,' they think I am that person that's in some sneaky little dark closet and I'm doing some sneaky little back-channel thing on social media, and I'm about to pull out an AR-15 and get on the rooftop somewhere," she said. "I don't have a dangerous bone in my body ... It angers me so bad because it puts a barrier up to people asking for help because it's that automatic."
Worsham penned an open letter to the state's attorney general pointing to a 2016 Department of Justice lawsuit against the state of Mississippi for unnecessarily institutionalizing adults and children with mental health disabilities.
