+ TAKE BACK YOUR HEALTH Part 2
A mother’s harrowing tale of her son’s decline into mental illness and signs to watch for in teens and young adults. By Kimberly Blaker
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egardless of our kids’ trials and tribulations during childhood and into the early teen years, the furthest thing from most parent’s minds is that their young adult child may develop a serious mental illness. Unfortunately, it’s an equal opportunity disease that can strike even model kids who’ve rarely experienced a difficult day in their lives. The incurable brain diseases of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder combined strike one in every 25 people — typically as they enter adulthood. My son (who I’ll call Sean) was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder at the age of 19. This disease is the combined illnesses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The first several years of his adult life were spent inside a living hell — literally. The early stage was marked primarily by delusions and paranoia: there was a government conspiracy against him, Li’l Wayne and Drake were writing derogatory songs about him, and pimps were trying to kill him. But this was only the beginning of a downward spiral. The first year of treatment showed an only mild success. Antipsychotics are relatively fast-acting, and if monitored, can be quickly adjusted or changed. Unfortunately, throughout the country, there’s a severe shortage of psychiatric beds, a lack of adequate federal and state funding for mental health care services, and laws as sick as those who are ill. So he was in and out of the hospital within days, still in psychosis. Further hindering recovery, he was allowed only one 30-minute psychiatric appointment per month despite having a severe brain disease. There are two broader problems with treatment for the SMI in America. These are laws and funding.
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Central Florida Lifestyle | March 2021
Well-intended laws were created decades ago to protect the rights of seriously mentally ill individuals. But legislators didn’t take into account that those with SMI are often unaware of their illness due to a symptom called anosognosia. As a result, those with SMI are most often unwilling to seek treatment. Mental health hospitals have shut down in droves in recent decades. At the same time, public funding for treatment has dwindled drastically. This has impeded the development of adequate out-patient services and housing for seriously mentally ill people. Important to note, new research indicates episodes of psychosis may cause more damage to the brain. The lack of timely, adequate, and appropriate treatment often results in each episode becoming increasingly more severe, reducing the likelihood of recovery. This had proven true for Sean. A year into his illness, he received a message from a game of Scrabble to cut off his ear or toe or to break a leg to save the world. In the middle of the night, I awakened to his blood-curdling screams. He had jumped 15 feet from a tree, fracturing his back instead. Just before this feat, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to silence the commands. He branded his arm with a fork, a scar that remains today. He was admitted for psychiatric care, but released within seven days with little improvement. Over the next three years, he was hospitalized with increasing frequency, always released within days. He was paranoid and lived in constant fear with the belief his family and friends wanted to kill him. He hallucinated that I said such horrific things to him as, “I’m going to chop off your
