Schizophrenia

It always surprises me that I can spell it. I remember back in the 1970s reading all the dreadful stories about mental institutions. My own family had one of these stories. My mother's aunt spent most of her life in Western State Mental Hospital. The same dreadful place Francis Farmer the movie star was in. My mother remembered her aunt as being very strange. Finally the family had her committed. Every thing said about Western State was probably true. My mother's aunt was said to have become pregnant more than once.

June was a teenager when I was born. She was a first cousin on my father's side of the family. June had a mental break down. That is what they called it back then. She was a young woman living in LA and working for the phone company. She was trapped in an elevator during a blackout. When they brought her out of the elevator June was out of her mind.

Her family brought her home to San Diego and she seemed to get better. She married and had a son, and another breakdown. The story was that she was doing laundry and piling the dry laundry on the baby. When her husband asked where the baby was she didn't realize that she even had a baby. Another mental breakdown that some would now call post natal stress. She spent time in Patton State Hospital. I saw her after this as a young wife and mother. She got very involved in a chuch. Still she was not all right. Finally her husband left and she was back in the hospital. She lived with another woman not far from us and visited my great uncle and brought him church literature.

I remember June came to my sister's wedding reception in the early 1960s dressed in a pink frilly dress. I thought she looked silly. Her roommate moved out saying that June had gotten too strange to live with. One day June was found with nothing on and cutting up all her clothing. After that was board and care. My aunt brought June to see my youngest son during these years.

The drug companies went to work and created lots of drugs to make mental illness go away. These drugs changed things. The mentally ill could be treated as out patents and the mental hospitals were closed up.

June took a new drug in the early 1980s. My aunt always said that it was the drug that killed her. My aunt was very bitter about that. June's mental state was not talked about by her. When my son David became ill we talked about it then. My aunt could not pronounce schizophrenia without stumbling over the word. I remember when schizophrenia was thought to be bad parenting. My step mom talked about that. I heard from an early age that my aunt caused June to be crazy. By the time my son was diagnosed with schizophrenia that was not accepted thinking any more.

The problem with all the reform and meds that was supposed to free the mentally ill from the abuses of the past is that the mentally ill can decide if they will get treatment or not. Their brains don't work right! They don't think straight!

David joined the Navy and the stress of that situation cause his first break. He left the base in FL and called his dad. His uncle from Kentucky went to get him and put him on a bus back to San Diego. We tried to get him some help. One night when things were really bad we took him down to the county hospital and tried to get him admitted. David had agreed to go. It took forever for someone to talk to him and then they would not admit him. We came back home. David went home with his father. Alone at the house David cut his wrist. Then he called me and told me what he had done. I called 911. By the time I got there they were trying to find him and going up the wrong driveways. The sheriff's deputy wouldn't let me near. Finally they found him and took him away. He was transferred to the old Navy Hospital. I went there several times to visit. One day David walked out with some visitors and came home in a taxi. The taxi driver was shaking from the stress but he wanted his fare. I paid. A few days later I drove David to the Naval base at Pt. Loma and the shore patrol took him away. Back to the hospital. A few weeks later he was discharged and set free to come home with medication that made him feel sick.

After David stopped taking his meds, I thought that it would be possible to get some sort of help from the courts. Some way to put him into a hospital. A woman investigator from the court came to interview David. She said that David wasn't ill enough to take his case before a judge. I asked if we couldn't let the judge decide. The woman said that it was up to her if a case could be brought and she said, "no!" That was that.

He stole his father's somewhat classic Corvair and took off. We drove to a small town in Nevada to bring David and the car home. He stole our truck and took it to Idaho. He ran from the cops and my husband had to go to Idaho to bring our truck back. Another time David took the Corvair to Washington state and his dad flew up there to bring the car and David home. David left again and was caught in a stolen car trying to cross into Canada. The car had been stolen in Utah by someone that picked up David in Oregon  and then just let him keep the car.  He was in jail and then in Eastern State Hospital. After a few months he was sent back to the jail and then released on to the street in mid winter snow with no warm clothing. My husband's brother drove over from Western Washington to get him. Eventually David took the Covair to northern California and drove it out in the woods and into a creek. It was a total loss. That was the last time he took a car.

For many years when David was younger he would leave home and live on the streets sometimes for months at a time. My husband has driven hundreds of miles to bring him home. Sometime in the mid '90s David was arrested in Idaho. The police officer realized that David was not all right. They wanted him out of their town so they drove him to a mental hospital and told him to sign himself in. David left as soon as the cop drove away and called home. David has been driven out of town more than once by police that do not want to deal with him. David doesn't leave as often now and when he does he comes home sooner.

David lived with his dad most of the time. Now he is here with Hailey and I. He is really and kind person and would have been a very special human being if not for his illness. He reads the paper and keeps up on the news. He is great to talk to most of the time. On the surface he seems sane as anyone. Maybe more than most. That doesn't mean it is easy for any of us. He yells at me because the air is full of acid. Someone poisoned him and people are lying about him.

I guess I'm writing this because I'm tired. I had a photo class yesterday that I had to miss. His father is out of town and David is going through a bad time. There is no help out there for the parents of the mentally ill. If they can cope as we have maybe the mentally ill have a place to live and people to care about them. If they do not have families, they often live on the street. I have read that about one third of the homeless are the mentally ill.

The laws and the meds freed them to live on the streets.