Tag: Board Blog

Cedric Lofton

I’ve been deeply concerned about an incident in Wichita, Ks.

A young man, Cedric Lofton (17) was in the foster care system and experienced a mental health crisis. His foster care dad called 911, and it was believed by all that Cedric would be admitted for inpatient services, but law enforcement officers altered documentation to reflect that he would otherwise be locked up in a juvenile facility as they did not want to transfer him for care.

This young man died while in police custody and the incident was ruled a homicide. A task force was developed to find facts of the case and make recommendations, while Kansas DCF investigated Cedric’s death and I wonder as I advocate for individuals with mental illness in our criminal justice system, perhaps I could help with legislation to define and narrow ‘stand your ground’ laws in Kansas.

Thoughts:

I learned that a defendant admitted themselves for inpatient services at a state hospital and thus, missed an offender registry appointment. As probation violations are felonies, this defendant is looking at prison time and I feel this to be unacceptable.

Probation violations should be treated as a contempt violation, so rather than making it a new crime, the courts should be enforcing prior orders.

12 Steps Mental Health Recovery, Wally Wilson

We admit that our old ways of being had failed us and that our lives had become unmanageable without skills, strategies, treatments, changes in our thinking.

We came to believe that with faith in ourselves we could learn how to manage our various states and their symptoms.

We made a decision to believe in ourselves and turn our lives around.

We made a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves.

We admitted to ourselves and everyone else the exact nature of what we found in ourselves.

We were entirely ready to put forth the work to manage our states and any defects we found.

We grant ourselves the grace to be human and learn new ways to be.

We made a list of everyone who had been harmed by our symptoms and became willing to understand their experiences with us and to do better in the future.

We take responsibility for the consequences of our symptoms in our lives and work to make amends where we are able.

We continue to look into and inventory our lives for issues where our symptoms go against our internal integrity.

Through meditation, tools, medications, therapies, and other means we seek to improve our relationship with ourselves and our integrity and with others.

Having experienced these things in our lives that brought us here, we reach out to others to give them hope and even help and support.

A Rural Mental Health Crisis

Rural Kansans Need Help

From the High Plains Public Radio I learned that we’re seeing an increase in suicide deaths in rural Kansas. In reaching out to community mental health centers, I learned that area hospitals shuttered adult and child psychiatric units to reassign staff to COVID patients. This means that if you lived in Garden City and your child needed crisis services, after screening, your child would have to endure a 3-4 hour drive to Wichita for admission. This is unacceptable, but we’re in a pandemic where nursing staff are overrun with COVID patients. I’m working on getting ARPA dollars out to these community mental health centers to help cover the costs for transport, whether it be with ambulance, or secured transport. I wish I could do more for my rural peers with mental illness.

COVID19 Vaccine Clinic

We’re proud to announce that we are hosting the Shawnee County Health Department in the Oakland Community Center for a COVID19 vaccine clinic. Pfizer vaccinations will be administered on July 28th and August 18th between the hours of 11am and 1pm, walk-ins are welcome, the shots are FREE and no ID is required.