Press Coverage
Work Born from Grief
MOMI is a grassroots effort to improve treatment access and care for individuals impacted by SMI and their families. MOMI founder Jerri Clark wrote about where to start fixing the system, published in the Seattle Times July 1, 2023. Change is needed now more than ever as federal funding cuts threaten to make a bad system worse.
My Son's Story
Jerri Clark wrote a feature article
for Kansas Alumni magazine:
My Son’s Story: A mom’s journey through mental illness, suicide and advocacy.
Why Not Me, The World
Speaking from lived experience and her professional role as a resource and advocacy manager at TAC, Jerri Clark reveals critical gaps in our mental health system:
"The legal criteria that require dangerousness have gotten so extreme that they require evidence of harm, which in effect means they require harm and violence instead of preventing harm and violence. Psychiatric deterioration legal standards can shift that."
A Failing System
Jerri Clark and Hunter Graham shared their tragedies to highlight a need for change in Oregon. Hunter's son killed his mom because of untreated psychosis determined not severe enough to warrant treatment until his actions shattered their family and landed him in the criminal system for life.
On Nov. 4, 2024, KGW8 examined how Oregon waits for an individual to commit a crime before mandating treatment and care.
Commitment to Change
Poor access to medically necessary, involuntary services was a barrier to appropriate treatment for Calvin. MOMI participated on Oregon's Commitment to Change work group that made recommendations to the state's Chief Justice.
From a June 22, 2023, KOIN 6 report:
“When my son died, I knew how desperately ill he was, but he didn’t meet criteria for involuntary care until he stepped off the roof of a hotel and plunged to his death. That’s when he met criteria. That’s when the dangerousness standard was met.”
Brief but Spectacular
Two months before her son, Calvin, died from suicide, MOMI founder Jerri Clark shared her story with the nation in a Jan. 10, 2019, segment of Brief but Spectacular, produced by Steve Goldbloom for PBS NewsHour.
Homeless in Seattle
The Seattle Times featured MOMI founder Jerri Clark on July 25, 2021, as part of its grant-funded Project Homeless, “Becoming homeless in Seattle helped him find psychiatric help. His mom says it shouldn’t have taken that long.”
From the article:
"Trying to help her son navigate Washington’s overtaxed and complicated mental health system, Jerri said, was like watching a penny slowly falling down a large coin funnel. She watched him spiral closer and closer
to the bottom for years."
Desperate Acts
Reporter Austin Jenkins interviewed Jerri and Calvin Clark for a radio report, A ‘Miserable Underworld.’ One Washington Mom’s Fight to Change the Mental Health System.
From the Aug. 27, 2018, article:
"Calvin said he was homeless, depressed and hearing voices when he walked to the mid-span of the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River between Vancouver and Portland and jumped....
'I had to actually attempt to take my own life to even start to get the help that I needed.'”
Life is Complex
While clearing Calvin’s apartment after his death, Jerri Clark spoke with reporter Deborah Wang for a radio broadcast and article, We get it wrong when we say the point is to be happy. A mother reflects after her son dies.
From the March 27, 2019, broadcast:
"I think we get it wrong when we say the point is to be happy...I think the point is to explore all of life’s complexity.”
Time for change is now
Jerri Clark is among 64 co-authors in an award-winning book by Dede Ranahan, Tomorrow Was Yesterday: Explosive First-Person Indictments of the US Mental Health System—Mothers Across the Nation Tell It Like It Is.
Dede started her website and blog in response to her own son’s death. Her website, titled after her first book, Sooner than Tomorrow, builds solidarity among SMI-impacted families.
WA competency restoration
King 5 reporter Susannah Frame produced a series of broadcasts about the inhumane treatment of individuals incarcerated with SMI. The November 9, 2022, report showed how Washington's competency evaluation got significantly worse after a federal court case
called Trueblood was supposed to resolve the problem. Although numbers have improved, much work remains to decriminalize illness.
I wish he was Still Here
Aware Now produced a short film
about suicide, "Still Here," sponsored by National Shattering Silence Coalition.