My 26-year-old son has schizoaffective disorder. He and our family have had eight years of hell coping with this severe mental illness, in which he experiences episodes of psychosis. Before the onset of this debilitating brain disease at age 18, he was a gentle, thoughtful, very bright young man, with a huge college scholarship to study engineering.
My son has had seven psychiatric hospitalizations. Due to psychosis, he has often had to be medicated against his will. He has been in straightjackets and handcuffs. He was a missing person with media attention to help locate him in 2019. In August 2021, he took a van from a place he worked and led police on a slow chase through four towns. He was the top story on Boston news channels that night. When the police stopped him, they drew their weapons on him, and he was taken into custody and hospitalized.
My son had been in a state-funded group home, which was a good placement as long as he stayed on his medications. In January, he decided to stop his long-acting injectable antipsychotic medicine. Program staff took the position that he has the “basic human right” to refuse medication. My husband and I met with staff every 3-4 weeks and emphasized the importance of prevention and ensuring he was on medication. We were told that while it was the “clinical recommendation” that he take the medication, it was still his choice.
He ran away from the group home while in psychosis and was sent to a hospital in June, where he remains. He is still in psychosis after four months there, and three hospital staff have lodged assault charges against him. Thus, the place that is supposed to care for him, to keep my son, other patients and staff safe, now only provides an unsafe environment for all and exacerbates his illness with legal charges.
Despite a legal determination of incompetence, mental health staff members tell us my son has to agree to be treated, even though a hallmark of a schizophrenia spectrum disorder is to not understand you have an illness.
Our family continues to be concerned for the personal safety of my son and the safety of others. It is very difficult to continue to hear what cannot or will not be done for him. I continue to try to find solutions that will help him stay out of psychosis by maintaining him on the medication he needs.
