(Dec. 19, 2014) I pause at the holiday display of chocolate covered cherries and am overcome with emotion. That is what dad used to give me, until a severe mental illness and anosognosia stole my dad from me when he was fifty-three. Now Dad is seventy-one and homeless. While I sit in my warm house, I think of him. Is he outside in the cold or worse — dead?
Things did not have to turn out this way, but legal barriers made it this way.
Dad is still married to my stepmom Hilda. They still own a house in West Virginia where he left her fifteen years ago after frightening hallucinations and grandiose delusions caused him to cash out his 401K, travel the world as a prophet of God, and return to American streets, homeless.
Before he left, Hilda tried to help him. Rather than admit Dad for a fourth involuntary hospitalization, the authorities said my father was fine — he had gotten pretty good at passing these superficial evaluations. They then suggested Hilda was the one who needed therapy.
Hilda and I could not get a hold of his previous medical records—blocked by HIPAA.
On Veteran’s Day two years ago, she got an ominous phone call. A stranger with all of Dad’s personal information warned her that some people were taking advantage of him and urged her to do something immediately. Then he abruptly hung up.
Hilda went to the police. They would not take a report. Hilda went to the Social Security office to have his account flagged (my dad is one of the lucky ones who gets a monthly pension and social security retirement check—although he probably gives the money away). They did nothing.
I filed a report, even after the sheriff discouraged me, asking me what good I thought would come of it, telling me that he sees it all time — a report filed for a family member who disappears with an untreated severe mental illness only to be found homeless then taken off the Missing Persons List. The cycle continues.
My brother and I have submitted DNA to the national database. We are being realistic.
As I wrap my children’s boxes of chocolate covered cherries, I think of Dad and feel powerless to bring him home.
Other families should be spared from this pain. We need to do better. The laws must change.
Amanda LaPera
Author of Losing Dad, Paranoid Schizophrenia: A Family's Search for Hope
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