John Nutting

Mr. Smith, you probably don't feel any differently whether or not you've been on a treatment plan the last two years, but

Let's sit down and look at your life the last two years and look at the two years previous to it.

And they begin to see that their life is different.

It's more positive now.

And because their brain chemical mixture is normal again.

Probably the first, most difficult thing would be to not ridicule and laugh behind the person's back that's acting differently.

Try to research what your laws are.

Groups like the National Shattering Silence Coalition in Maine, the Brett Staples Foundation website.

Research what are your laws in your state?

What legislators in your state have

sponsored brain disorder laws in the past.

And so you can begin to know who to reach out to to speak about making things better.

We're better than we used to be 15 years ago in Maine, but we're in the process now.

It's not done yet, but this is a list of 35 tragedies that have happened in Maine from people off their treatment plans.

Every one of them, you can see they're unnecessary.

We had a young man in Maine last year, started going to emergency rooms, begging for help, begging to be put on a treatment plan.

All they did was keep him for two days, calm him down, dump him back out on the street.

Eventually, he got so bad last fall that he attacked some people and broke a woman's jaw, and so now he's in jail.

Now, this is somebody who was asking for help.

had been on a treatment plan previous and had done very well, wanted that again.