Schizophrenia

A 24 year old man stabbed to death his mother and sister this past Monday. His mother was an officer with the San Diego police. His sister had just graduated from high school and was looking forward to art school in the fall. Two lives taken away for no real reason. They say the young man was schizophernic but was not on meds. Someone on the news said that the young man would not have had his mental illness for long, and that he and his family were still learning to cope. He and his older brother had some sort of fight while the mom and sister were away, but the brother said that it was settled. This is all so sad. This family had no idea that their son and brother was a danger to them. If they did, what could they do about it. His mother was a police officer who's duties were working child abuse cases. You would think that if there was help for her son she would be able to find it. In reality there is no help for families of the mentally ill. And most of all there is no help for the schizophrenic. 

The families often have only two choices. Live with the problems or send the victim of mental illness out to live on the streets. And who is to say that someone with schizophrenia is a danger to himself or others.

My son joined the Navy and then fell apart. He went awol and came home. He cut his wrist. Then was in the old Navy Hospital near Balboa Park. They kept him there in the mental ward for several weeks while they worked on a discharge for him. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was put on meds. After his discharge, he had counseling through the county for a time. The meds made him feel sick. He stole our car and drove it to Nevada. We had to go after him and drive the car back. His father had to go up to Idaho and bring our truck back. He was stopped at the Canadian border in a stolen car from Reno NV and spent some time in Eastern State Hospital in Washington state. He left home many times and then called home and his father would go and bring him home. His father flew to Washington state to drive him back after he drove our truck there. Finally he took the car we had brought back from Nevada and ran it into a creek somewhere in Northern California. That was the last time he took off in one of our cars.

I was still at the storage when he started throwing my furniture and he broke a maple rocker. I called the sheriff for help and they just made him leave. The next day he had made it up to Mojave and he called me and said that someone there must have been killed. He said that there was blood all over. I asked him if there were other people around and he said yes. I asked him if they saw the blood and he said that they didn't. A few months ago he mentioned that phone conversation and told me that he thought about it and decided that there wasn't any blood after all. When he told me that voices told him to hurt other people I told him that he didn't have to do anything they told him to do. He is not the kind of person that ever wants to hurt anyone else. I have sent him money Western Union when he gets himself stranded somewhere. His dad has made countless trips to towns in Washington, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona to bring him back home.

When my son went off meds and refused to ever take them again, I tried to get a conservatorship that would have given me the right to hospitalize him for a little while. My stepmom said she would pay the fees and maybe we could get him back on meds. I made the right phone calls and someone from the courts came and interviewed my son. She told me that my son was not all that ill and that there was nothing I could do. She told me that unless she agreed that a judge would never hear the case. No recourse. That was over twenty years ago. We have gone through a lot.

Do we think that our son is a danger to us. No. He is basically a kind and gentle person. He can rant and rave and get angry over things we don't understand. Once he shoved his arm through a window and cut his upper arm. He woke me up and I wrapped a towel around his arm and I called 911. When the paramedics didn't come we had to walk out our long drive to the road to find the sheriffs were not letting the paramedics come to the house. I held my son's arm above his head while he bled and we talked with the officers and they asked us dumb questions. Finally my son was taken to the hospital. Someone there told us that my son needed treatment for his mental illness. Then when they checked into it...nothing...my son was sent home.

My son and his father lived in a separate house on my stepmom's place. After my stepmom died I bought the property. Hailey and I moved here from the storage about ten years ago into the house that had belonged to my dad and stepmom. Five years ago my daughter came to live here and she wanted her dad's little house so my son and his dad moved in with Hailey and me. It hasn't been easy for us. I truly love my son and Hailey loves her uncle. We hear him at night talking to himself...sometimes working himself into a fit of anger. I hope I'm doing the right thing. I don't sleep much at night.