Commentary : Plea for a Son Who Can’t Get Help

The following letter was sent to several Orange County judges by the mother of a mental patient whose illness has resulted in a series of arrests and court appearances over the last four years. For obvious reasons, her name is being withheld.

Tomorrow, or next week, or next month or even next year, my son may stand before you to be judged.

The man you will see is 27 years old, though he appears younger. He is 5 feet, 11 inches tall, weighs approximately 195 pounds, has light brown hair (slightly receding) blue eyes and wears steel-rimmed glasses. He has no identifying marks.

If it’s one of his good days, he’ll be clean, neat, quiet and polite. He’ll be visibly frightened, but under control. An observant person might even notice a trace of a smile. A pathetic attempt to appear relaxed and confident.

If it’s one of his bad days, he’ll be in a jail uniform. He’ll be unshaven, and his hair won’t be combed. The eyes that were a clear trusting blue, will be either dull and vacant or wild and terrified as are those of a rabbit caught in a snare. He’ll not have shaved, because on the bad days, he can’t look into a mirror. When he does, he doesn’t see his face. He may see a monster, deformed and horrifying, or a skull with empty eye sockets, or just eyes. Only eyes, that he peers into, trying to find himself. It’s difficult to concentrate on being clean-shaven under those circumstances.

He will have a file about two inches thick. He has stood before judges about six other times. Each time for the same thing. His crime is that of being paranoid schizophrenic. If he had been honest and forthright enough to have become diseased before he was 21, we could have had him hospitalized with no trouble. But no--with malice aforethought, he fought his disease with every fiber of his being until he was 23 so that we couldn’t help him legally. Pretty devious, eh? A perfect example of the criminal mind. (Sorry. That bit of sarcasm should be directed toward those who say to us as parents, “But why didn’t you do something earlier?”)

He lost ground so slowly, so imperceptibly, that none of us were aware until it was too late. Oh, I’m sure he knew something was askew, but he has always tried to be independent and to handle his own problems. This one, however, is too big. Too big for him and too big for us. It’s such a devastating, all-encompassing problem that no one weapon can conquer it. And we have no weapons at all because of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act.

My son is not a “danger” to himself, not a “danger” to others, and he can still get a fork to his mouth, so, we are legally not able to get him the hospitalization he so desperately needs.

So, we’ll go on, and on, and on, subjecting him to more humiliation and needless agony. Spending more and more public funds, wasting more and more time of lawyers, courts and judges, putting him in jail over and over when medical treatment is what he needs. Each trip to jail pushes him further and further into the Dante-like inferno, makes his rehabilitation just a little less possible.

And if he ever does harm himself or others, whose fault is it? Certainly not his. He has been wordlessly crying out for help for four years now, but his “rights” have been protected. Legally, society can force-feed a young woman who doesn’t want it, but we can’t force treatment on a person whose disease destroys his judgment. And this is the best of all possible worlds?

My son led an exemplary life until he was 23. Now this good, kind, gentle, loving being is tortured 24 hours a day by voices that demean and revile him because of currents gone wild in his brain. When he reaches out for love, he is subject to the degradation of jail. His dignity as a human being has been stripped from him, and he is being treated inhumanely under the guise of protecting his “rights.”

If you are his judge, please view his “rights” as you would wish another in your place would view the “rights” of your child or grandchild should they be in his place. And well they might. Mental disease strikes one in every five families in the world and 300,000 new cases are diagnosed each year.

He is not just another case on the docket. He is my son. If he should stand in front of you, please, at least look at him and see him as a person. Help him, please.