Posted by:
anagrammy
(
)
Date: December 18, 2012 01:30PM
I have lived in California, Washington, Oregon and Utah with a mentally ill son from age 23 to the present age 44. He has schizophrenia and bipolar illness.
California is NOT better than Washington. I got my son released from a California mental hospital where he had been so heavily sedated on Thorazine (old drug!) that he was drooling and I was the only person he recognized.
Arriving in Washington, they would not accept him into the mental hospital until he "did something." So sure enough, it was property damage and he went to jail, THEN to a mental hospital (even though he had a full-blown diagnosis and several suicide attempts).
Those mental patients released by Reagan are NOT saving you money--the majority of them are now in prison. The money moved from one column to another because of a politics. Reagan's idea was well, now we have better drugs so everybody clear out. Clearly not a well-supervised action dedicated to the best care for the mentally ill, now was it?
Once my son was in the state hospital, he went through the whole system, moving from the criminally insane ward all the way through the PALS program and eventual release after 2 years. When setbacks occurred, which they do, he was taken into St Peter's Hospital in Olympia for 90 days, where they fine-tuned his drugs.
Meanwhile back in California, a deaf mute and six other patients of the state mental hospital died from abuse whereas during the same time period NO patients died. In California, my son had gone for a short period to one mental hospital and was released with a guitar and all his belongings, clock radio, etc., and told he was "done." They didn't even bother to call me to pick him up! That was in Richmond, CA. In Bakersfield, the Kern County Hospital released him before he was detoxed from a suicide attempt by overdose and he was found wandering around the streets in 105 degree weather babbling. He had my phone number in his wallet, thank goodness.
I would take Oregon, Utah or Washington mental health programs any time compared with California. He is here now and has been "helped" with supported job services for going on four years with the result of one job for six weeks at the food bank. Compare that with Utah, who found him a job with a team of people like himself, cleaning a dental office in Holladay for two hours a day five days a week. He won an attendance award at their company holiday party! In Utah, he was able to get financial help and live in his own apartment. In California, he lives in a roach-infested hotel at market rate with no money available for a disabled person for housing assistance.
I have been through horrifying experiences which I will not bother to describe-- I have posted about these before. I have been chased in a parking lot, I have screamed over the roof of a car in the middle of the street, I have redialed the phone and caught my son dialing a gun store, I have had him show me a self-inflicted knife wound in his chest on the way to Christmas dinner.
My other son told me flat out he wanted to kill people with a rifle--strangers. I gasped and asked why. He said "so I can make them stop laughing at me." He told me he wanted "the respect" a killer gets (he had been in prison for drug sales). I called the police and you know what they told me --this was in Sunnyvale, CA-- they said, "Call us if he does anything, he has to commit a crime."
Later he fractured the skull of his best friend with one blow. I called the police and both he and the friend denied it was him. They said they had been attacked by "some black guys" cruising around Cupertino looking for a fight.
He wanted to go back to prison because he was "someone" there and he felt he had no place in regular society. He ended up going with a buddy in Utah going from bar to bar picking fights so he could beat people up, which he enjoyed. I got him to go to a psychiatrist in Utah who told him, "Come back when you have stopped drinking and we'll see what psychiatric problems you might have."
We have to have a mental health policy that ACCEPTS a warning call from a citizen to report a danger to society BEFORE the person commits a crime like mass murder.
Ironically, later (in Orem) I called the police because he told me he was thinking of killing his sisters in their beds. The police came right out and took him into custody where he was transferred to a facility for a psychiatric evaluation.
You almost get the feeling it depends on who answers the phone whether your report is taken seriously.
Anagrammy