(July 26, 2013) If there was a court ordered outpatient treatment program in my area, my brother, Dan, would still be living in his cabin entertaining children, and my parents would be on their farm where relatives often gathered. Now the farm belongs to someone else, my father’s ashes are spread on its hayfield along with the cremains of my brothers Mark and Steve, my mother lives alone in an apartment, and Dan is in a mental facility. Untreated mental illness has destroyed my family.
Dan suffered from mental illness that went denied, ignored and undiagnosed until he was sent to a mental hospital after murdering Dad with a cap and ball rifle on August 6, 2007. Anosognosia may have contributed to my brother’s denial of his illness but the mental health care and justice systems denied our family the resources to help Dan long before he committed patricide.
Dan was released from prison nearly two years before this fateful day. After shooting a dog, threatening to shoot its owner, and assaulting a police officer, he was sent for a psychiatric evaluation but found competent to stand trial. Once on the stand, Dan presented a cardboard star wrapped in aluminum foil and claimed to be a Federal Marshall. He also said he owned the strip of land along every major highway in the country. Perhaps if he were sent to an institution rather than prison, my father would still be alive. Dan is now destined to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric facility.
But this was not my family’s first exposure to mental illness. Because of archaic laws, my mother nearly died of self-inflicted starvation before she was properly treated. If not for my devoted father, my mother would have joined the ranks of homeless people on the Philadelphia streets. Many winter nights Dad woke to find Mom gone. He searched the cold neighborhoods to locate her wandering aimlessly in her nightgown. He began screwing the doors shut at night to prevent her from escaping. Dad and my brother, Mark, repeatedly took Mom to the hospital but were turned away because she was “not a danger to herself or others.” Not until my husband and I visited to find the smell of death emanating from her frail, bony body did a doctor agree to commit her. Now medications help her to live a relatively normal life.
Mark also suffered with undiagnosed mental illness. He made many attempts to find treatment to stop the voices in his head. Mark tried everything from medicines prescribed by a charlatan to drugs he bought off the streets. In 1999, he walked out in front of a car speeding along an interstate. The family will never know for sure if his death was accidental.
I was so used to living with mental illness that I once married a man who was later diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I thought his dark moods were normal.
I am grateful for Dr. E. Fuller Torrey and The Treatment Advocacy Center, Congressman Tim Murphy for his efforts toward mental health care reform, the agencies that created the Framework for Reducing Recidivism and Promoting Recovery and anyone else willing to explore avenues to prevent minds from spiraling out of control.
Many times throughout my life I have asked, “Why can’t someone do something to help the mentally ill? Why can’t someone figure out a way to prevent tragedies from happening? Why, after all the years of studies and research, does the mental health system still fail? Why are families’ hearts constantly being torn apart when they are turned away from much needed help for a loved one?”
Finally after too much blood was shed; frustrated families began shouting; and members of law enforcement, the court systems and social workers began questioning the senselessness of placing those suffering with mental illness in prison instead of hospitals, the world is listening. Finally!
Theresa Flerx
The original version of this essay appeared in IMHRO's Brain Essay Contest.
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