lizzieytish

Hi. I wanted to know what was the reasoning behind leaving out the scene where Plutarch shows his watch to Katniss during the ball?

And what was the reasoning for completely changing the type of cat use for Buttercup? Yes, the THG: CF cat was closer to the correct type for Buttercup but he'd already been established as a different cat in the first movie.

Michael, I have watched the specials about Jani from the beginning and read your book.

Have you ever thought about how, with treatment advances in mental health care every day, Jani may be stable enough as an adult to be able to function in neurotypical society and how having every bit of her mental health past publicized like this may negatively effect her ability to get a job? How prospective employers will be able to google her name and know everything about her, and feel she is a bad employment choice because of all of her personal information that you have made so readily available about her?

What did it say? It got deleted?

There are advances in adult mental health care a hell of a lot more than you seem to care to admit. And Jani will, one day, be an adult whether she acts like one or not. Currently treatment plans for her are exceedingly difficult because childhood schizophrenia is a very difficult illness to treat. But one day she will not be a child with schizophrenia, she will be an adult with schizophrenia and have a lot more treatment available to her.

I understand your ideals, but we are living in the real world. Should people be discriminated because of mental illness? Of course not. Should they be discriminated because of serious medical complications such as cancer? Of course not.

Are they? Absolutely.

Will you be able to change that? Maybe, but within the next ten years? Not likely. Is that sad? Yes. It is the sad reality we must live with currently.

You could have just as easily brought this publicity to the issue using a pseudonym for yourself, your family, and especially the children. I just have to wonder why you did not.

I feel that this is all very simple for you to say, as someone who doesn't have to face these stigmas personally. You face them for your daughter, but not for yourself. Its not you not fitting in, its your children.

And no matter how much our advocates talk a good game, they're still not the ones playing. We are.

And I say "we" as a mentally ill person myself who, thanks to healthcare being as it is in this country, has to "fit in" to provide for myself and my family. Had my childhood and teenage years been publicized (I'd been hospitalized over 70 times in psychiatric care in the space of 9 years) I would never ever have gotten as far as I have in life.

I worry for Jani's ability to do for herself once you are gone.