For six long years my friend’s son refused any and all help, embarking instead into the tumultuous, incoherent world of severe mental illness. Haunted by a host of fears, he became a hermit in the forests of their family farm. Fearful of even the food his sister left in boxes on the trails he traveled, he began to lose weight. Unable to comprehend that his family only wanted to see him safe and warm, he clung to his existence in the forest until circumstances forced him to move into a family barn.
Although he was finally sheltered from the elements, his food paranoia persisted. Helplessly, his family had to stand by and watch his physical deterioration because American courts said he had the right to refuse medication as long as he was not an endangerment to himself or others. Only when death by starvation was imminent could, and did, his family intervene. Even at that point it wasn’t easy to get a doctor, a court order or a hospital bed. Arkansas has fewer psychiatric hospital beds now, than it had in the early 1900s.
In time, the courts and doctors agreed he needed help. Slowly, under medication, his sanity returned and the reality of his situation hit. Overwhelmed at the physical weakness of his once strong healthy body, he turned to his family and begged to know, “why did you let me get this sick?”
His mother tried to explain the protection of the rights of the mentally ill, even if they are so ill that they are not capable of understanding those rights. He listened, ate, exercised and began faithfully taking the anti-psychotic medication he had once spurned. He did not want to ever again be that ill.
He applied for medical assistance and disability. Six years of diagnosed mental illness, months of starvation and a severely weakened body were not enough to prove disability. His application was denied. He could try again later.
Meanwhile, he walked the hills of the tree farm with his dad. He reacquainted himself with his little sister, now a wife and graduate student. He made plans with his mother to attend a fund raiser for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Arkansas. They also began talking about presenting his testimony before the Arkansas Legislature to show the need for courts to respond more quickly, more in-state psychiatric beds and the funding to support more services and the better, if more expensive, newer medications. Their plans, talks and work all ended abruptly one morning just before Thanksgiving. His father found his cold body on his bedroom floor along with an empty bottle of pills.
His mother told me, “I know him. He probably was thinking and thinking about it. He did not go to bed planning to do it. He just woke up and decided to quit thinking about it and just do it. For him, his mental illness was terminal.” He is survived by a family who knew him during his healthy, happy childhood and watched him lose himself from his heart wrenching illness as an adult.
He leaves behind one legacy: a haunting question for everyone who says severely mentally ill people have the right to refuse medical intervention, “Why did you let me get this sick?”