- Category: Crisis Response, Discharged Without a Safe Plan — Hospital, No Bed, No Placement
- Tag(s): Suicide or Attempt
My son was in an acute psychotic state. As a schizophrenic, these breaks can and do happen without warning. He slashed his own arm very deeply with a knife. My husband and I called an ambulance. The ambulance personnel refused to take him to the hospital simply because when asked directly – mind you, while in a clearly psychotic state – he said he did not want to go.
My son has suffered from schizophrenia for 17 years, so we have experienced other examples of shocking lack of treatment available to families with a very sick loved one. A hospital released our son in the evening from a psychiatric ward without telephoning us to pick him up. He was visiting us in a new neighborhood when hospitalized, so did not know where he was and had no transportation. We had to call police for help locating him.
When he first became psychotic, I searched through the phone book for a lawyer to assist with commitment. An older lawyer I contacted told me that because all the asylums had been shuttered, he no longer could provide any assistance to families, as there was no physical place to commit them.
*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:
To write legislation to allow families to commit loved ones.
share this story:
Read More Stories
Clozapine Should Have Been Tried Earlier
After 16 years of medications that worked for a few months and then failed, clozapine changed everything. A firsthand case for trying it sooner.
“I worry daily if he’s alive and eating.”
Discharged homeless one week after a long-acting injection, with no safety plan. Now he refuses medication, and his mother travels monthly to keep him safe.
The ‘Miracle of Ordinary’ Cost Us Seven Years of Systemic Failure.
After 7 years, 20+ hospitalizations, and repeated discharges as ‘not sick enough,’ a mother finds the treatment no doctor offered: Clozaril.
What does it take to change the law to get help BEFORE danger?
It’s been a little over a year since they buried their son. The system asks to wait until a person is dangerous enough. He got dangerous enough. The law hasn’t
One Pill Between Us and the Cliff
A mother gives her son his pill by hand every night, and sold her home to keep going. Then he turns violent, she calls the police on the person she
They Called It Her New Baseline
A legal guardian warned that her mother wasn’t stable enough to go home. The facility discharged her anyway — actively psychotic, alone in a taxi with no keys, no phone,