My Day: Mental Illness Next Door

Why do we highly publicize a mass killing by a mental ill person for days and then go home and ignore it until the next round of weapons are unleashed on the innocent? Are we truly shocked by these actions? Or just keep hoping it will go away… back into it secret hiding place?

Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with mental illness. As most of you know, I wrote about it years ago in a series: Homeless Son: A Mother’s Diary. Let me assure you that it was the most painful thing I have ever done, because at one point we did not know where he was. It was printed in several newspapers and I received a recognition from “The World and I”, a global magazine. To make a long story short, my youngest son, Todd, is mentally ill. He is an adult and was diagnosed with a nervous breakdown at age 30, after many, many mis-diagnosis’. Up to that time, he was brilliant, loving, delightful, twelve hours away from a double major. Ran Davco Pest Control, a small business, with his brother. Wife, two  small sons, love for sport cars and soccer. He held two professional jobs briefly with Merrill Lynch and TransAmerica before all hell broke loose.

At this writing I am again in an “advocate/mother mode” fighting with the system in another state and congress concerning my son and this dreaded disease. (Texas ranks number 49th in the nation on mental illness care). So many people ask me about Todd and of course his classmates, friends, family keep up with him. In case, the mental illness side shows up boldly in cycles. Todd is extremely knowledgeablyof his illness and the medications surrounding it. Simply put, he gets off his medications. When he is off, he is not functioning. When he is on it, he is
back to my adorable son.

Mental illness is America is one of the thing we do not do well. It is clearly a broken system. It is vague and nondescript and the Affordable Care Act has not found it way. The American Psychiatric Association is a bit more brutal, but candid. In America, more than 65.1 million Americans are mentally ill, touching about one-in-four. I personally feel that schizophrenia and bipolar disorders are the ‘one-size-fitall’ diagnosis for 99 of the cases. And quite frankly, I do not have the solution. But a sufficient part of the problem is ignoring it and keeping it a secret. For me it is just a painful passion.

Ester Davis can be reached at www.Esterday.com