Handcuffs Save Lives

Nov. 3, 2013

So much media attention has been given to the connection between crime and mental illness, but I am not here to join that fray. I am simply stating a fact: my 21 year old bipolar son is in prison.  Though he had no criminal record, he may serve more than 3 years for the crimes he committed. 

There are days when I barrage myself with questions, aching with anxiety over my son's new reality. Why him? Why us? Where did I go wrong? What did I miss? Why did he do it? And, Why didn't I just bail him out? Was I too upset? Too hurt? Too angry? Too frightened? Why didn't I just bail him out? 

There were so many factors involved in my decision not to bail him out. Not only was his bail set so high it exceeded the value of my home, I was standing behind something I'd been telling him—“If you get arrested, I am not bailing you out.” Tough love they call it. I'd been telling him this for over a year, “If you get arrested, I am not bailing you out.”

Today, seven months after his arrest, I definitely go through pangs of heavy guilt for not trying harder to gather the bail money. I probably could have done it with family and friends' help. But when I am really honest with myself, I know the truth: 

Being arrested saved my son's life.

During the time leading up to my son's arrest, he was a ticking time bomb. He self-medicated with drugs and alcohol, unable to hold down a job. He no longer lived with me, a choice he made when he refused mental health treatment the year before. Instead, he planted his belongings at his dad's house but more often than not, slept wherever his head hit a pillow or even floor. More than once, he was even kicked out of his dad's house for stealing, something he'd done to me too.

And the lies. The lies he told us just added to our pain. He had himself convinced that we didn't know about his lifestyle, but we knew. We all knew. In his own words, now seven months later, he calls himself “a lying, cheating, piece of sh*t con-artist.” I can't disagree. That's who he was. That's what his illness left untreated allowed him to become. So back then I was living day to day with this reality: I will someday get a phone call telling me one of two things—either my son has been arrested or my son is dead.

When I received the call in March, there were no theatrics. I didn't cry or yell. I simply sat down in a daze and thought, “At least he's not dead.” There were no tears that night, just a thick fog in my mind and a sick feeling in my gut, neither of which have subsided since.

These past seven months have been filled with a lifetime's worth of pain for our family. And the pain is not over yet. There will be years of it. But there is hope. Yes, there is indeed hope. On the day of his arrest, my son told the officers that he was bipolar and that he'd been off his medication. He asked if he could go back on it. So after a short bout of detox the hard way, cold turkey, my son began to take a prison prescribed regimen of bipolar medications. While these aren't the desired ones that his doctors would have prescribed, they are at least something in the right direction. His mania and depression are somewhat treated, though not completely. But in prison, mental health care is subpar, or at least that's what we've experienced.

Today, though, my son is a new man. Yes, he wears DOC whites and speaks to me through glass when I visit, but he is completely a brand new man. He has accepted the consequences of his actions. He is seeking forgiveness from all those in his life that he wronged. 

And he is himself again. He is the articulate, curious, clever, creative, witty, charming lover of life I knew before bipolar disorder took him from me. My son is back. And when he gets out of that cement hell, he will be a man whom people will respect and revere. 

Being arrested saved my son's life.

Two Sets of Bars

August 30, 2013

It isn't easy to find the right medication for mental illnesses. Some people try for years to get just the right "cocktail" of meds to work for them. They call their doctors, report the side effects, and try again until they get it right. But they eventually will get it right.

But when you're in prison with a mental illness, the rules change.

When you're in prison with a mental illness, there are certain medications that are not allowed at all. Medications that are easily abused are not permitted. These medications may be what you took before, but that doesn't matter. The rules change when you're in prison.

When you're in prison with a mental illness, you get what they give you when they give it to you. If you complain of side effects, you risk being taken off all meds completely.

When you're in prison with a mental illness, you are visited by psychiatrists once a month if you're lucky. You might get to see a counselor or you might not. Your symptoms might get reported accurately or they might not. You might receive adequate treatment or you might not. The rules change when you're in prison.

When you're in prison with mental illness, there are two sets of bars: the ones that keep you from the world and the ones that keep you from the you you used to be.

"So Maybe You're Not Bipolar"

August 6, 2013

Seek Treatment. That's what we hope people with mental illnesses do. We want them to feel free to acknowledge their condition and seek treatment. Talk to a therapist. Try medication. Follow a doctor's plan to treat your illness. "You can feel better if you seek treatment." Isn't that what we say?

Well, that's what my 21 year old son has done. Finally. After over two years of ignoring his diagnosis, he's finally acknowledged it and sought treatment. In prison.

See where it's gotten him.

He is currently incarcerated in our state prison. Inside, he has had to convince the DOC psychiatrists that his Bipolar Disorder is real. The psychiatrists on the payroll who are expected to treat inmates for mental illnesses have been less than helpful.

All this time, while my son has been in prison, he's been trying to tell them he's "Bipolar". At first, they believed him and gave him a generic anti-depressant and a low dose of a mood stabilizer. Not the meds he'd been on in the past, but at least they were something. Then he was experiencing bad side effects so he reported them to the psychiatrist making her rounds on his tier that day. This was her response:

"So maybe you're not Bipolar!"

You can imagine my shock when my son told me a medical professional said this to him. Isn't it her job to diagnose and treat mental illnesses? Yet she can speak to a patient like this?

But the worst part was what she did next.

She took him off the anti-depressant completely. She told him that in order to receive any more treatment, his doctor needed to contact her and inform her of his Bipolar diagnosis. She left him on the low dose of mood stabilizer which he said did "nothing". Subsequent visits from her and other psychiatrists doing their rounds on his tier did nothing to improve the limbo in which he'd been damned.

So for the last several months I've been trying to acquire all of his records to prove that he IS, in fact, Bipolar. First, I called his regular doctor who was unable to call the doctor at the prison- this is because the diagnosis did not come from his regular doctor, it came from a psychiatric hospital. Makes sense.

So then I went the route of requesting his medical records. Sounds easy enough. But consider the fact that he's 21 years old. This means every single medical professional he saw in his lifetime required a separate release form signed by my son. So, through snail mail, I began my quest of accessing the forms, sending them to him to be signed, having him send them back to me, and then sending them to the correct establishments in hopes of receiving the records. This was a nightmare. Thankfully, the nurse at his regular doctor's office helped me with this and eased the stress considerably.

We were almost home free when we realized that the release forms we'd been using were not accepted at certain mental health facilities. 

Back to the drawing board.

Thankfully, at this point our attorney stepped in and worked his magic to acquire the records more quickly. It's amazing what attorneys can accomplish. What took us months took him less than a week. So now, we may have finally struck gold. The last of the records have been acquired and presented to the prison mental health ward director along with a personal note from our attorney.

After FIVE MONTHS, my inmate son may finally be given the proper medication for his Bipolar Disorder.

So Maybe he IS Bipolar like he's been saying all along.