"Mom, I have something for you," my son said in a voice not his own. He had just asked for money, and I told him no.
I was sitting outside in the sun. He came around the corner, and the last thing I remembered was his hand reaching into his pocket. "Oh no," I thought. Somehow I knew he was reaching for a knife. The next thing I knew, I woke up covered in blood. A voice in my head that called me "Sweetie" was telepathically telling me what to do: don't look at your stab wounds, call 911, go next door to the neighbors and wait for the police.
When the police came, I told them my son was schizophrenic and that we had just moved to California from Seattle. "Please don't arrest him," I said. "He needs to go to a mental health facility. He's never been violent."
The officer's voice was unnecessarily rough. "Lady," he said, "He's going to jail."
For 15 years, I had tried to get help for my beautiful, hilarious, athletic son. Just before his 21st birthday, the voices started. At his worst, he thought Audrey Hepburn controlled the universe, that we were all robots, that he was Satan. I had called the police on him several times, desperate to get help. I was always told that when he was evaluated, he seemed normal, and that they couldn't hold him against his will. He was diagnosed schizophrenic and given oral meds, but he wouldn't take them consistently. I begged doctors in the ER to give him an injectable antipsychotic, but they always said he had to agree. "He's never going to agree!" I shouted in frustration.
When he was arrested for the second time for over-reacting when someone in the neighborhood questioned him about wearing a black hoodie while walking to the 7-11, I told him I couldn't continue to support him if he didn't take the injectable drugs. Four years after diagnosis, miraculously he finally did start taking the monthly shots, and our lives temporarily got better.
After he was arrested for stabbing me 7 times, I spent a week in the hospital with a punctured lung. The knife hit an artery in my arm that took a long time to stop bleeding, and it shredded my radial nerve so my left arm felt like it was made of metal. I had an operation that night to remove bone fragments that were floating around my body.
A day later, my daughter called the community mental health center and discovered what had happened. My son had gone to get his monthly injection on time at the new clinic, but their computer was down and they couldn't administer the shot. He went back 8 days later-- we theorize he wanted to be free of the side-effects for a few days-- and was told he still couldn't get the shot because by then he was so late a doctor's note was needed and a doctor would have to be tracked down. In the meantime, I had emailed the clinic to double check, and was never told he didn't get the shot. "I am working from home because of Covid," the return e-mail said. "You can reach me at the following number."
The morning he was denied the shot the second time, he came home in his hallucination and stabbed me 7 times. He still has no memory of it.
My son waited in jail three long years just for adjudication. He faced 11 years in jail, and the prosecutors came after him with no mercy even though I wrote many letters explaining the situation. We had a lawyer and many friends and family behind us, but now the justice system was failing us in the same way the mental health system had. He was denied a mental health diversion because prosecutors argued it wasn't the schizophrenia that caused the stabbing. I cried every night for my son, who shared his food in jail, taught someone English, and donated his many books after he read them.
Finally, a letter I wrote touched the heart of a new prosecutor, and she found a compassionate judge from Seattle who gave him probation. Even after that, the state appealed the sentence and won -- the state just didn't want to stop prosecuting my son -- but the same judge intervened again, and he is now living with me on 7 years' probation.
When he was released I thought in relief, "Now the mental health system will finally understand the situation and give us the help we need." That didn't turn out to be true. It was still a struggle, and I remain amazed at how hard it is to get adequate help. It is largely our family that keeps my son healthy and sane. I have at times felt we were still fighting the system that calls me a "helicopter mom." I still feel we re-invent the wheel every day, and that if it weren't for a loving family, my son would be homeless and possibly dangerous.
But my son is definitely one of the lucky ones. He willingly takes the medications that quiet the voices and hallucinations. He is able to talk about his schizophrenia and how he is feeling mentally that day. When he doesn't feel right, he does short bursts of physical activity, listens to classical music, uses meditation apps, puts ice on the back of his neck, talks to me, the dog, his sister or a friend. He spends a lot of time writing creative pieces that channel his thoughts. He no longer drinks alcohol, smokes marijuana, or does any other drug -- ever. He doesn't smoke, vape, and keeps sugar and caffeine to a minimum, because he has learned all those things reduce the amount of antipsychotics in his body.
Our life is still harder than most, because he has few friends and still hears the voices sometimes. But he is so grateful for all the good things that have emerged from the past six years. At a haunted house recently, I asked my son in amazement why he wasn't scared like he used to be.
"Mom, it's not real," he answered. "I've been through far scarier things that actually are real."
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?
Listen to the families. Mental health should not be tied to the mentally ill person agreeing to treatment. I would not have gotten stabbed, and my son would not have spent three years in jail, if we would have been listened to and doctor's hands weren't tied by outdated laws. And there needs to be a lot more support for families struggling with SERIOUS mental illness. Recovery is possible, but families need HELP!
