The World from My Mom’s Perspective

(Please consider making a donation at my mom’s GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/ym939shg)

There’s always something relating to our inadequate healthcare system I could write a blog post about. Given, however, that this month, June, is my mom’s 66^th birthday, I decided to give my mom more of a direct voice. My mom doesn’t know that I have a blog or do any MH advocacy work for her, so I just told her I’m interviewing her for personal reasons, to record some family history.

I would love nothing more than my mom to be psychiatrically stable, willingly engaged in a treatment plan and able to talk openly about her serious mental illness. Instead, what follows is a person’s life that has essentially been robbed from her, in large part, due to a lack of access to adequate mental health treatment. My mom has no insight into her psychiatric illness and doesn’t even believe her physical/medical problems are severe. She’s still a person filled with aspirations, fears, accomplishments and disappointments, all the same.

Me: Given your health problems, what do you miss being able to do the most?

Mom: Just getting up and going to run an errand. Even if it’s just going to buy stamps or things that we need. I miss that a lot.

Me: Your diabetes is more stable, but are you still uninterested in taking insulin, like your doctor suggested?  

Mom: I’m not interested. I had a terrible experience with it. I think the US is too sloppy with the FDA [Federal Drug Administration]. It was closed for years, not even doing their job. (My mom insists it was closed and that she used to have a newspaper clipping to prove it.)

Me: Do you actually believe you have diabetes?

Mom: I believe it’s brought on by evil spirits.

Me: How does that work exactly?

Mom: They come into your body as worms…and as minute organisms.

Me: So that’s how you got diabetes? 

Mom: Yes. I was a very healthy woman.

Me: A more recent issue is your kidney issue. How’s treatment going?

Mom: I’ve had a little bit of improvement. And I’m praying for a total healing, so I’m not really worried about it.  

Me: Remember that your kidney doctor said they were functioning at 16% the last time we saw him. Do you not believe they are going to get worse? 

Mom: No.

Me: Are you interested in prepping for dialysis and a kidney transplant?

Mom: No.

Me: What’s going to help your kidneys improve then?

Mom: Prayer and lots of faith. Like the Lord says, “Blessed are those who have not seen, but still believe.”  

Me: Do you even believe you have kidney issues?

Mom: There is some trouble, but it’s demon oriented.

Me: So, you came to live with me, initially, around 8 yrs ago in San Francisco. That didn’t workout. Around a year after you moved out, you became homeless. Where was God in that time?

Mom: He has been there, but the devils attacked our car. They wrecked into us terribly. (My mom and my uncle, her brother, were evicted from their apartment and essentially homeless, living in a car, for close to two years.)

Me: OK, but why no housing for almost two years?

Mom: Because they kept on breaking into our house whenever we would leave.

Me: [Interrupting] OK, but why would God let that happen to you?

Mom: It’s not that he allowed it. He was overwhelmed with so much work everywhere! He can’t be somewhere and anywhere at every second, like people think. 

Me: Do you think you might have mental health issues that need to be addressed?

Mom: Vicki (her counselor) is on my lying list. She was supposed to visit me at home last time and was a no show.  

Me: That wasn’t the question. What do you think about possibly having a mental illness?  Did Dr. T (real name withheld) in SF ever diagnosis you with anything?

Mom: I don’t care about Dr T. He started out being reasonable…at first. And then it got too heavy for him. He started being influenced by the other side.   

Me: Have you ever taken any psychiatric drugs?

Mom: I took what he recommended, but it made me feel drunk. (She took a small dosage of Abilify, too small to even have any real affect. The Dr. started her off at a small dosage, in order to build trust with her and reduce the side effects. Her current psychiatrist has also tried to get her to start taking a small dosage of medicine.)

Me: Anything else?

Mom: Zyprexa. I’ll take my half a pill.

Me: You need to take it every day, like the doctor said, but you don’t.

Mom: Because it was too much.

Me: OK.

Me: What do you have to say to someone that may think you have a mental illness?

Mom: What are the facts? Because I say there is “spiritual warfare” everywhere? You can go to a restaurant. You can go to a church.  There are people of the dead in there.  You can discern it. And sometimes they’re too nosey. And when they are too nosey, they are spying on you. 

Me: Who? The devil, the government, who? I lose track of everything that you blame.

Mom: The ones who are serving the enemy, whether it be a witch, a warlock, an anti-christ, a Satanist or a devil. 

Me: Is the FBI still following you?

Mom: <scoffs> They, umm…. They try to get in with the Sherriff’s office down the street or the police everywhere.

Me: So, the answer is “yes.” The FBI is still after you.

Mom: <Getting agitated.> No, I said the police! They get hoodwinked by the witchcraft and Satanists! 

Me: OK. So, what are some plans/goals of yours?

Mom: To get healthier, get better. I want to see and visit my family in Bakersfield more.  I want to meet religiously righteous people and make new friends.

Me: Name one thing you like about living with me.

Mom: That I get to see you more. (Aside from her brother, she was estranged from the family for years.)

Me: Name one thing you don’t like.

Mom: You don’t feed me enough.

Me: Oh brother.  (She means I don’t feed her what she wants to eat enough.)

This interview misses my mom’s more charismatic, funny and caring side. But it does make clear enough how much my mom is living in an altered/delusional state. Indeed, my mom’s mental illness has worsened, due to going untreated for so long. She hasn’t always heard voices, for example, and her delusions have increasingly become more elaborate and detached from reality.

Despite her steady deterioration, experience with homelessness and repeated hospitalizations, various MH and law enforcement authorities have regularly deemed her “self-directing enough” to not warrant involuntary psychiatric treatment. Her predicament is, also, too often ignored by MH advocacy groups that prefer to focus on people that have recovered and positive stories. The MH system is broken and has denied my mom a chance at recovery and our family of appropriate healing and sufficient peace. She’s deserving of love and dignity, though, which is why I’ll never stop fighting for her. Happy Birthday, mama! (I’m taking her to Monterey, CA next week as a birthday gift. She hasn’t been there in around 15 yrs.)