Margot Kidder 'meanders' at Pullen's hearing on mental illness

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Margot Kidder 'meanders' at Pullen's hearing on mental illness

Wednesday, April 26, 2000

By NEIL MODIE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

A King County Council committee took up a sensitive, provocative issue -- how to cure the mentally ill -- in a celebrity-circus atmosphere yesterday.

The star of the event was movie actress and former mental patient Margot Kidder, who delivered a long, rambling monologue about the benefits of natural medicine and the perils of psychotropic medications for treating mental illness.

"Boy, am I meandering," Kidder said at one point during the hearing.

She came at the invitation of committee Chairman Kent Pullen, R-Kent, a proponent of natural medicine. He has drafted an ordinance setting a goal of making those suffering from mental illness "well" rather than merely medicating them and cycling them repeatedly through the county's mental-health system.

Pullen's proposed ordinance, which he plans to introduce next week, also would require county mental-health authorities to track their clients' progress -- or lack of progress -- in recovering.

While praising Pullen's goals, others in the field said later they were concerned about the heavy emphasis he and Kidder placed on natural remedies for mental illness.

Pullen's ordinance makes no specific mention of natural therapies.

During the hearing, Pullen temporarily called a recess so that he could hold a long news conference with Kidder and other natural-medicine proponents. By the time the hearing resumed, everyone who had signed up to testify had departed.

One of those was Eleanor Owen, executive director of Washington Advocates for the Mentally Ill, who said later she was appalled at Kidder's "very, very, very slanted view of hospitals, doctors and medication."

"If we were to withdraw the use of all psychomedications from use in this country, we would be building thousands of wards (for the mentally ill), maybe millions," Owen said.

Owen, a critic of the pharmaceutical industry's psychotropic drug-marketing practices, has worked with Pullen in drafting his ordinance.

Kidder, 51, who lives in Livingston, Mont., said she has been diagnosed in the past with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress syndrome -- all labels she rejects. She called for alternatives to treating the mentally ill "other than drugging them up and locking them up."

"Four years ago this week, I was locked up in a nut house in L.A., thinking 38 CIA agents were after me," she told Pullen's Labor, Management and Customer Relations Committee. Kidder said she was released after "fooling" a judge by pretending to be sane, and has made herself well with amino acids, vitamins and other natural medicines.

She did not acknowledge any benefits of psychotropic drugs until Councilman Larry Gossett, D-Seattle, quizzed her about it. He said he has known mentally ill people who benefited from drugs as well as natural remedies. "Prozac has saved my life a couple of times" during thoughts of suicide, Kidder said. Had she stuck to her prepared speech, Kidder said, she would have warned mentally ill people not to abruptly quit their medications. Other natural-medicine advocates also said such medication has a role.

Joanne Asaba, who manages the county's mental health, chemical abuse and dependency services division, said the county already measures "improvement in the quality of life" of medically ill clients.

P-I reporter Neil Modie can be reached at 206-448-8321 or neilmodie@seattle-pi.com