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One of the things that comes with learning that mental illness can touch anyone is also recognizing that on any given day, it might. You don't know which friend, or how, or when. No matter our background or training, we are often ill-prepared for it, and feel helpless when it does occur.

Early in the 2000 state legislative session, a very good friend of the mental health advocacy community encountered the system, touching off a firestorm based on serious allegations, which ended his career. Based on a plea agreement recently reached, the actions of our friend may again stir a debate about perpetration, mental illness and criminality.

Assemblyman Jerry Johnson, the ranking minority member of the Assembly Mental Health Committee, was accused of actions indicating he may have been stalking a member of his staff. Further indications are that this stalwart advocate for access to mental health services was, unbeknownst to us in the advocacy community, receiving treatment himself for some time.

Without Assemblyman Johnson's efforts, mental health parity legislation would not pass the Assembly each year with full bipartisan support. In 1999, Assemblyman Johnson was among the first to publicly state that Involuntary Outpatient Commitment proposals were the result of far too many years of system neglect in this state, and rose early in the debate on the Assembly floor to say so.

He voted no on "Kendra's Law," saying it was, "A lack of obligation on the part of the state of New York. I don't think this is a step in the right direction." He added that by passing the bill, he was "Afraid that we'll be taking away from current services, and abhor the shifting of funds from one program to this one. Because of the enactment of this legislation, we should search our souls and go forward seeking services for people who need them."

Almost prescient in his remarks, Assemblyman Johnson is today convicted of a crime perpetrated against a member of his own staff, serving a jail sentence tied to treatment. At the core of the issue, some terrible things may have transpired—leaving a woman victimized and scarred.

How do we comprehend all the facets of this? Media mouths quickly jumped on words like "crazy" and "pervert," and telling us when we complain that we are overreacting. These are the same "news" people who on virtually all other stories would never have come to a conclusion absent so many facts.

We often hear allegations that perpetrators try to hide behind mental illness, and we've heard some of that too. Mental illness should not be used to excuse behavior, but as long as people refuse to understand mental illness, they will never understand the behaviors it may cause.

Each time the criminal manifestations of mental illness have been thrust into the public eye, the results have been further stigmatizing. This is no more readily apparent than in the political arena, where the path to power is littered with people who have not been effectively treated for their psychiatric disabilities.

This lies in sharp contrast to physical health, where it is apparently OK for a major presidential candidate to grab a microphone and regale us every time his heart pauses, or to nominate for vice-president a person who has had three long-term hospitalizations for heart disease, episodes related to health needs a scant 18 inches below the brain.

We frequently ruminate about "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." Sometimes, good people do bad things. It has been a very rare occasion when a cause like ours has had a friend like Jerry Johnson. We wish our friend a full recovery, and hope that time, support and treatment helps heal any wounds he might have left.