- Category: Discharged Without a Safe Plan — Hospital, Family Inclusion (HIPAA), Jail Instead of Hospital
- Tag(s): Abuse in a Facility or Jail, Anosognosia / Lack of Insight, Homelessness, Incarceration, Severe Deterioration
- Location(s): FL
I am a loving and caring mother of a 38 year old son with medical disabilities with severely mental illness. I am a senior and have been the only caregiver. I am appalled at how the United States government have refused to render medical care to my son that suffers from a brain disease/disorder.
In our country the unfortunate people that have SMI are incarcerated, punished and abused. Our government doesn’t allow the family members advocate for an adult with SMI. It is disgraceful, animals are treated better than our loved ones.
Our government needs to build more psychiatric facilities that can provide 24 hour care for these individuals. They did not ask to be ill. I believe our government doesn’t want to spend the money to provide the care these people need.
There is no cure for schizophrenia or agnosognosia. It is proven that each time an individual suffers a psychotic episode and the length of the episode increases the damage done to their brain. If our government did provide the necessary medical care and facilities for the patients with SMI these patients would have a better quality of life and society would be safer from these patients especially when they experience a psychotic episode.
There is no cure for schizophrenia. It is a progressive disease. My son has been arrested because the police officers thought he was drunk or high on drugs, but he was having a psychotic episode. He has been abused by guards while in jail and refused medical care. When I was able to bail him out I had to take him directly to the hospital for medical care. My son was a patient in numerous psyche hospital for approximately 48-72 hours and released to the streets to wonder around instead of contacting a documented family member available to pick him up upon discharge.
How many more innocent people is the government going to allow to die because they refuse to have the psyche hospitals to provide housing and medical care for these patients. Our government allows people that are in psychosis make medical decisions whether they want help or not, when they clearly are INCAPABLE OF MAKING THESE DECISIONS. To make it worse they refuse to inform or allow the loving family members advocate for them
to the doctors and staff.
*Each story is shared by someone impacted by untreated SMI, lightly edited for clarity, never for meaning.
THE ASK
The author’s message for legislators:
If it was your love one that had SMI would you want the Hippa laws to be changed to allow adult family members to make decisions for your SMI family members so these patients would get the medical care they need?
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