"My loved one had a psychotic break and attacked me. I didn’t know anything about psychosis and had no idea why my loved one thought I was the devil and he had to beat the devil out to bring him mom back. He was incarcerated and I survived. When we got it we got COT and everything was great. I thought it was over until the clinic nurse practitioner denied continuing COT since stabilized behavior was present. Then five more years of hell. I had to lock my doors every night. One night I fell sleep to wake up at 1am with my Loved One standing over my bed with a knife. My Loved One accused his father of 10 years of beatings as to which my husband was not believed and threatened with arrest.
My loved one stole anything he could right in front of any convenience store clerk: booze, kratom, lottery tickets, anything. It was posted online my loved one wanted to kill me, his loving brother and his father and commit a school shooting so the children would go straight to heaven. This ALL because COT was denied. They fought guardianship but we won. They fought COT we won. They fought having a petition for psychiatric evaluation and we won. We won by going to the top and threatening to expose everything.
Crisis teams, the police, NAMI advocates ALL came to our house and said, you should have called when he was really dangerous. I’m alive because of AZ Mad Moms. My Loved One is alive and thriving because of clozapine. The supposed “last resort medication”. So until this last resort med is given, how many lives have been lost? How many mothers are dead and left their other children without a mom? Arizona Mad Moms is the only place to get real help in Arizona. How pathetic. An organized fed up group of terrified mothers can do more than our legislators to stop this madness."
*COT = Court Ordered Treatment
Each story is shared by someone impacted by untreated SMI,
lightly edited for clarity, never for meaning.
Do you have an ask? If you were sitting down with your legislator, how would you ask them to help you?
"My ASK is to repeal the IMD exclusion act and to go after fraud in our housing system. Pay caregivers who are going broke from supporting their loved ones. Stop mom dumping."
