In June 2024 the Mental Health Association of Portland held its Law & Mental Health Conference with a focus on psychosis. Joanna Naples-Mitchell presented “Why ‘Excited Delirium’ is a Fraud”. In March 2022, Physicians for Human Rights published a report which she co-authored titled “Excited Delirium” and Deaths in Police Custody: The Deadly Impact of a Baseless Diagnosis, which found that “excited delirium” has racist origins, lacks a scientific basis, and should not be used as a diagnosis or cause of death. She reviews the report’s findings and the sweeping changes in law and policy that have followed.
Joanna Naples-Mitchell is a human rights lawyer in New York City and the U.S. Research Advisor at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), where she supports PHR’s research and advocacy related to the intersection of law enforcement, racism, and medicine. As PHR’s U.S. Researcher from 2019-2022, she coauthored three reports, including the March 2022 report “Excited Delirium” and Deaths in Police Custody: The Deadly Impact of a Baseless Diagnosis.
Joanna Naples-Mitchell's slides https://www.lawconferences.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Law-and-Mental-Health-Conference-Presentation-PHR-Excited-Delirium-May-31-2024-Final.pdf
End Excited Delirium - Campaign Zero https://endexciteddelirium.org/
Emergency medical association rejects ‘excited delirium,’ used to describe some deaths in police custody - CNN 2023 https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/12/health/acep-rejects-excited-delirium-term/index.html
White Paper Report on Excited Delirium Syndrome - American College of Emergency Physicians, 2009 https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/white-paper-report-excited-delirium-syndrome
Mental Health Association of Portland https://www.mentalhealthportland.org/
- KBOO