Eleanor Bumpurs

Editorial: Saving the Mentally Ill

How do you perceive the mentally ill? Is there sympathy? Frustration? Perhaps both? For those who barely deal with the mentally ill, frustration supersedes all emotions. That frustration lies when a sufferer’s emotions or actions defy logic and social conventions. It’s particularly misunderstood by those who barely interact with the mentally ill altogether, never taught that conditions like obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disease, are the result of an involuntary chemical imbalance that renders the sufferer helpless. It’s a disease where its symptoms are not so apparent, and where the fight for normalcy happens in the cerebral arena.


Read More

Bronx Woman Shot by Police Sergeant Spark Questions of Protocols

By DAVID CRUZ
A somber Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters that the NYPD fatal shooting death of a 66-yearold mentally ill woman from the Bronx “should never have happened,” citing the incident could have been avoided. And the questions kept coming: Why was a gun used over a Tazer, which the officer had? Why wasn’t Emergency Services Unit, which handles the mentally ill, brought in? “It’s not for lack of training,” de Blasio told reporters at a news conference that focused on the shooting. “There were decisions made that should have been made differently.” De Blasio condemned the actions of the shooter,


Read More