I Didn’t Understand Mental Illness Until it Gripped my Son
Photograph by Todd Cravens
My son reached a milestone in his life on May 27, 2021. He graduated from college. He had hoped to achieve this goal in 2014, but his mind had other plans. His dream of becoming a video game writer plunged into chaos when his concentration betrayed him and invisible voices overpowered him.
His mind raced, and he fell prey to delusions unaware they had supplanted reality. He lost his college friends who slinked away out of fear, and he hid his problem from me because he didn’t know how to explain the unexplainable. Mental illness exposed the truth on December 26, 2012, when his mind broke.
The next day I flew up to Spokane, Wash. where he attended college and ran through the hospital emergency department doors to hear my 21-year-old son shout, “You are not my mother!” This became my first encounter with a mental health crisis. I understood none of it other than the panic and pain that engulfed me.
Mental illness had erupted in my universe, but in reality, it had been lurking for years. My son’s psychotic break had been filled with early warning signs going back to middle school. I beat myself up. I pondered how I, a news reporter and editor, who prided myself on keen observation skills missed the most important story of my life – my son’s struggle with severe mental illness. Simple, mental illness had never touched me directly.
Over the next two years my son’s fixed delusion of me not being his biological mother perched in his brain through six hospitalizations and three residential treatment facilities that ultimately dumped him into homelessness. During the worst of times when he disavowed me, verbally abused me, and berated me for controlling his life, I knew that was not my son. I knew schizophrenia had twisted his brain. I knew his neurotransmitters were overreacting. I knew none of it was his fault. Frustrated, I had no solution to his horrific situation.
Still, I refused to listen to those who told me to let my son hit rock bottom. My son was filthy, hungry, penniless, and homeless. If that didn’t qualify as rock bottom what the hell did? He wouldn’t have even been in this situation if California’s mental health system hadn’t tossed him to the curb. Who in their right mind would want that life? My son wouldn’t have traded his dreams of being a video game writer for homelessness. It became clear early on in my efforts to save him that the real definition of insanity was our country’s mental health system.
So, I left my position at the newspaper and went searching for my son. Through luck and good timing I managed after nine months to get him off the streets of San Francisco and eventually into treatment in California. The hospital was able to get him conserved because he had a strong “history” of non-compliance. In other words, he needed to be in the gutter to qualify. After close to six months of treatment – hospitalization, residential treatment programs, and intensive outpatient care – my son’s genuine self started to re-emerge.
He returned home because success required a strong support system coupled to clinical care. He wanted to return to college. This meant staying local and enrolling in a two-year school to test the pressures of academic life. It meant taking his time. Life was too precious. Our priorities had changed. Each accomplishment – passing a class, running an errand, seeing a doctor – without any assistance was a win, and over time my son found his confidence. Through it all my son taught me the meaning of perseverance, patience, the value of life, and to never give up.
When my son graduated from college several of my friends said, “It couldn’t have happened without you.” I didn’t see it that way. My son and I were a team. Yes, I helped guide him. I provided him with the tools. But it was up to him to pick up those tools and follow through. As his brain grew stronger, he did just that.
With the right medication, proper tools, and support in the mental health system, those with SMI can succeed. My son proved it. But his story should not be the exception, his story should be the norm. There is still much work to be done.
This post was originally printed in the Treatment Advocacy Center’s “Personally Speaking” blogs.
