TAKE BACK YOUR HEALTH Part 2 + head,” or “I’ll bury you alive.” He spent nights awake sitting on his bed prepared to bolt if I broke down the door to kill him. A few years into the illness, the television told him he was Jeffrey Dahmer, and the President told him to kill me. My son isn’t violent. But statistics speak for themselves. Psychosis (hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia) often leads to violent and tragic acts by those who are otherwise nonviolent. It was a several day battle to get him hospitalized. But he was released in 3 days in the same condition. Finally, we got a little breather, though. For a couple of months, although his psychosis was still present, it had at least improved. But this often didn’t last. With Sean’s paranoia that doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and his family were trying to poison him, he often refused medication. Soon Sean took another downturn. He couldn’t comprehend real conversations because the hallucinatory voices were so overpowering. He carried on arguments with these voices, told news anchors on the TV to shut up because they were talking about him, and was angry with the Pope for something the Pope was doing to him. He repeatedly insisted he was traversing. As a result, there were two of him, or maybe three — and he didn’t
know which was the real him. He became confused and didn’t know where he was and often pleaded with me to get him home. I’d try to reassure him, “you are the real Sean, and you are safe at home.” It was heartbreaking. Finally, several years into my son’s illness, I was able to get his psychiatrist to put him on Clozapine, the gold standard for treatment-resistant patients. Although Sean still experiences mild psychosis and is disabled, he’s seen a remarkable improvement. But my son and I aren’t alone. This plays out for millions of seriously mentally ill people and their families dayafter-day, week-after-week, and year-after-year as loved ones spiral further into the abyss. In recent years, legislative proposals have been introduced. There’ve been some very small strides in changing laws to improve the care and treatment for those with SMI. Still, there’s a long way to go to ensure appropriate and adequate treatment for all the sons, daughters, parents, and siblings in America suffering from serious mental illness — and for the countless people who in the future who will be struck by this dreadful fate.
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