(Nov. 3, 2014) A powerful story in the Washington Post shows in excruciating and tragic detail how easily families of people with severe mental illness can be overwhelmed, and how little our laws and mental health system do to help them (“A father’s scars: For Va’s Creigh Deeds, tragedy brings unending questions,” Nov. 1).
“Sometimes I’d say to Gus, ‘Come on, pull yourself up,’ Senator Creigh Deeds told reported Stephanie McCrummen about his son’s psychiatric deterioration. “I believed in Gus. I believed he would snap out of it . . . I just didn’t know what to do.”
Then, nearly a year ago, less than a day after Gus was released from an emergency hold at a Virginia hospital - reportedly because no psychiatric beds were available - the young man stabbed his father in the head and torso before fatally shooting himself.
In the year since his son’s death, Deeds has returned to legislative work determined to change the laws that prevented Gus from getting the help he needed. He has had some success, but it’s not enough, he told McCrummen.
He knows it is not enough because he has been contacted by countless family members of people with a psychiatric disease who also feel their hands are tied.
“My brother has been diagnosed with schizophrenia since he was 16, and he’s now 33, and we can’t make him take his medications,” explained one family member to Deeds at an event in West Virginia. Her brother has had three psychiatric commitments in the last six months and now he is in jail.
“We had a family member with schizophrenia and spent $10,000 trying to help her,” said another woman at the same event. “She’s stayed in nine different places. . . . She can’t stay with us, because we are afraid she will poison our food.”
Deeds has also received innumerable letters, emails and phone calls, all telling a familiar story:
“My son, Joseph . . .”
“My daughter Teresa . . .”
“My brother’s suicide by starvation . . .”
“There were no beds available for Matt . . .”
“The police arrived and were absolutely clueless . . .”
Like many of these letter and email-writers, Deeds will continue to wonder what he could have done to prevent the loss of his own family member.
But like one family member so aptly said, “You did not fail your son the system did.”
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