Grateful for Scraps: When Treatment Only Comes Through Court

Can you imagine living in a world where the only hope for your adult child to receive life-saving treatment is that he commits a low-level offense? That is where I find myself after twelve long years of watching my son slip through the cracks of a broken mental health system. For twelve years, I have lived alongside manic episodes and psychosis, endured broken family relationships, and carried the constant fear of what might happen next. I have locked my doors at night against my own child. I have paced the floors after yet another hospitalization, only to see him discharged far too soon, still sick, and with no meaningful treatment plan.

The uncertainty never ends. Will he spiral again? Will he get hurt—or hurt someone else?

These are the questions that haunt me every single day. And yet today, I found myself feeling something unexpected: gratitude. I am grateful that my son’s case landed in a court with a mental health court. I am grateful that the public defender understood severe mental illness and respected the information I provided, recognizing that sharing it with my son could further damage our already fragile relationship.

For a moment, I felt seen - not dismissed, not ignored, but heard. My son is not a stranger to achievement. He was once a dedicated athlete, is college educated, and remains one of the most compassionate people I know. Severe mental illness has stolen so much from him and from us as a family, but it has not stolen his humanity. That’s why I cannot accept that criminalizing people like my son is the path we rely on for treatment. And yet, I am relieved, even thankful, that the court where he will appear has a mental health court.

I cling to the hope that this could finally be a turning point for our family. I live in one of the two states that does not have Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT). Without it, countless families like mine are left with no safety net, no way to intervene before tragedy strikes. And tragedy is striking, over and over again. Every time I hear another story, I feel both a wave of gratitude and deep sorrow. I am grateful that my son has not taken another person’s life. I am grateful he is not serving time in prison.

I am even grateful - though it pains me to say it - that the crime he committed was low level, and in the right jurisdiction, one where mental health court exists. But my gratitude does not erase my grief. I am angry and profoundly saddened - saddened for the families who will never see their children again, whose loved ones died in the grip of untreated psychosis. Saddened for those whose children are locked away in jails and prisons, punished for an illness they did not choose. Saddened for the men and women living on our streets, stripped of dignity, abandoned by the very systems that were meant to help them. Saddened for every family that has lost hope, worn down from years of trying to navigate a fragmented and failing system.

We should not have to hope that our children break the law to get treatment. Families should not have to live in fear or in gratitude for what feels like crumbs from a system that consistently fails to provide compassionate, continuous care. We need real solutions—laws, policies, and programs that meet people with severe mental illness where they are and keep them safe, stable, and alive. Until then, we will continue to see preventable tragedies. And families like mine will continue to live with both hope and heartbreak, wondering what tomorrow will bring