- Category: Categorically Excluded, Jail Instead of Hospital, Medicaid & Insurance
- Tag(s): Anosognosia / Lack of Insight, Co-Occurring Substance Use, Incarceration
My loved one was diagnosed seven years ago. That is when the hallucinations and psychosis started. I do not know how many years before then she had the voices in her head. I can only guess that, I think the voices started when she was in her 20s. And she self-medicated with Street drugs. After a brief time in jail, she got on antipsychotics.
After her son was murdered, she developed posttraumatic stress. And a couple of months after that is when the psychosis and hallucinations started. There is a history of schizophrenia on her father’s side. She believes she is chipped by the FBI.
I have been living through her psychosis and anger for many years. She had her own house, but was so paranoid that she made many emergency and nonemergency calls to the police. She had many more incidents of bizarre behavior, too numerous to document here. She is in and out of psychosis and has been for seven years on a daily basis. She’s on a drug cocktail that I don’t agree with. But she does take. One of them is an antipsychotic. Which I believe helps.
Sometimes I talk to her and she comes back to me. Sometimes she can’t because she is talking to her “people”. they are very real to her. When she is mad at somebody, which she has anger issues, to her, they are dead. Whether they are alive or not. And she does talk to dead people like they are right there with her.
As far as SSDI she wanted me to help her. When I went to fill out the form, it was all about physical disability. I called the number and I told the person that I talked to that she is not physically disabled. There is something going on with her that is not right. At that time, I did not know what schizophrenia was or that she had it. In that timeframe, she told me she had schizophrenia, and then not too many months later, she denied having it. Back to the phone call for SSDI. The person I talked to told me to type it out and include in the paperwork I was filling out. After I mailed the paperwork, she was approved within two months because all they had to do was check with the local police and all the bizarre calls were documented. She was approved within two months.
She is now living with me. She is not violent. But when she is angry she fights with her “ people”. Many times, I think she has anger-induced psychosis.
It is hard to put into words what we have been living through.
*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:
Rewrite SSDI rules so mental illness is recognized as a disability. Disability benefits must protect the mind as much as the body. Stop making families beg for proof.
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