(August 1, 2016) Shannon Gilliam has spent years fighting to get her 26-year-old, mentally ill son, Brandan, stabilized before he hurt himself or someone else. But the mental health system in Maine has repeatedly failed Brandan and made it difficult for the Gilliam family to get him help until it was too late (“How the system failed a Maine family, landing a mentally ill son in jail,” Bangor Daily News, July 28).
Last April, after months taking his prescribed medication, Brandan Gilliam felt better and decided he didn’t really need his meds – a common occurrence amongst people with serious mental illness resulting from a condition known as anosognosia. He quickly began deteriorating.
Brandan was hospitalized twice early last month after suffering psychotic breaks. But both times ER physicians released him after only brief holds.
“They never should have released him,” Shannon said. “He was [involuntarily committed] and only stayed in the ER for three days.”
Shortly after his release from the hospital, Brandan stole his brother’s pickup truck and totaled it about a mile from their house, according to the family. Shannon called the hospital, begging that her son be re-admitted, but was denied.
Then, on July 13, Brandan was arrested and charged with domestic violence assault and criminal restraint after getting in a physical altercation with his girlfriend.
“They’re talking about locking him up for a while,” Shannon said. “The mental health system hasn’t helped us yet. And now he’s going to go to jail for being mentally ill.”
But getting help for Brandan is complicated by Maine’s inadequate mental health system.
Tom Kivler, director of Behavioral Health at Mid Coast Hospital, agrees that the state’s mental health system “absolutely” has to be fixed, including an overall lack of mental health hospital beds.
“We need to do better for people with behavioral health issues,” Kivler said. “There’s no other diagnosis where if you need inpatient treatment, you have to call around and, ‘Well, that patient doesn’t really fit, he’s not acute enough.’ With any other condition, you’re diagnosed in the ER, and if you have a heart condition, you go to Maine Medical Center and you get that surgery.”
During a jailhouse interview with Bangor Daily News last week, Brandan said he’d like to be moved to a psychiatric hospital. “They’d put me on the [medication] I need, and I could talk about what’s happening and how my meds are working…but there’s no beds anywhere," he said.
Maine’s mental health system is indeed in crisis. The state has just 10.8 public psychiatric beds available per 100,000 people – far below the 50-bed minimum standard necessary to provide adequate treatment for people suffering with severe mental illness.
This September, the Treatment Advocacy Center will expand its campaign – called #aBedInstead – to address the national psychiatric bed shortage. We will be launching a new campaign website dedicated to highlighting the severity of the U.S. bed crisis and offering common sense recommendations to begin laying the groundwork for a solution.
In the meantime, visit #aBedInstead to learn more, and share this blog with your followers on social media. Use the hashtag #aBedInstead.
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