Documentary provides insight and explores mental illness at Oregon State Hospital

By Michelle Cole, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. June 25–The latest film about Oregon’s infamous state mental hospital contains scenes from Hollywood’s “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” but the stories it tells are real. “Guilty Except for Insanity” is a 90-minute documentary offering viewers a chance to get to know three men and two women [...]

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Three weeks after he was shot during a traffic stop, Portland Officer Christopher Burley said he’s not angry at the man who shot him but wishes he could have gotten the mental health he needed before their encounter. “The community as a whole failed Mr. Otis,” said Burley, referring to Keaton Otis, the mentally ill [...]

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A mental health system still strapped in restraints

The Oregonian Editorial Board Oregon State Hospital patients and staff remain locked in a “culture of despair” even as a new hospital rises and the state acts to reverse decades of neglect Just outside the brick walls of the Oregon State Hospital, where 550 construction workers are building the nation’s newest mental hospital, there’s hammering, [...]

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Mental health care provider returns to profitability and starts building a cash reserve

Cascadia Behavioral Health recovers from near collapse Mental health care provider returns to profitability and starts building a cash reserve Portland Business Journal – by Courtney Sherwood Business Journal staff writer Cathy Cheney | Portland Business Journal Under Derald Walker’s leadership, Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare quietly turned itself around. Two years after a financial meltdown nearly [...]

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Shenkman considering using insanity defense

Shenkman may pursue the insanity defense in the hostage case.

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Bratcher stays at OSH

By SCOTTA CALLISTER SALEM – Jessie L. Bratcher will remain at the Oregon State Hospital, the state Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB) has decided. Bratcher’s confinement was the subject of an April 28 hearing before the PSRB, the state panel that now is in control of his fate. A Grant County jury last December found [...]

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Still Crazy after All These Years

Paul Simon, the poet laureate of my generation, penned this phrase in his 1975 hit album of the same name. In 1843 Daniel McNaughton, in a misguided attempt to shoot Robert Peel the British Prime Minister, wounded his secretary, Edward Drummond, who died shortly after. The case spawned the first rules to apply when an [...]

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Amanda Stott-Smith pleads guilty to drowning son, attempting to drown daughter

Nearly a year after Amanda Jo Stott-Smith was taken into custody in a downtown Portland parking garage, the 32-year-old woman pleaded guilty Tuesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court to the drowning death of her 4-year-old son and attempted drowning of her 7-year-old daughter. Stott-Smith will be 67 before she will be eligible to apply for [...]

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