 My son was two years old when I began having concerns about his unusual behaviors. As a young mother, I reassured myself by thinking, “It’s okay, he is just being himself.” However, by the age of four, significant behavioral outbursts began to emerge. By five, when he started school, I was told he “had to be medicated for his own good,” rather than having his mental, emotional, or intellectual needs properly addressed. That marked the beginning of what felt like a never-ending cycle of appointments, negative behaviors, and school visits.
From the start, he was given the common diagnosis of ADHD and prescribed Adderall. Instead of improving, he spiraled further out of control. I attended IEP meeting after IEP meeting, pleading for meaningful support for my child. He was referred to therapists and psychiatrists for testing, and the list of diagnoses continued to grow while his medications were repeatedly changed. Eventually, he was diagnosed with severe dysphonetic dyslexia. Despite this, the IEP meetings only became more difficult, as the school continually failed to provide the services he truly needed. The focus always returned to his behavior — that he could not sit still or follow directions.
2 Comments
 Much of my life has felt like a rollercoaster—not the kind you ride over and over with friends because it's fun, but the old, rickety one-seater that rattles with every turn while you close your eyes and pray the ride will end soon. Mental illness was the driving force of this ride. And it could have ended very badly. ‘Could have’ is key here. I overcame fears. I had the support of others around me. And I made it through the days I hope I’ll never have to relive. Here is my story.
Like many, I experienced the typical trauma of being picked on at a young age. From other kids throwing remarks because I was the chubby kid, to the not so funny videos my brother’s friends made of me during their drunken skip day. The events contributed to my early-aged episodes of depression. Throw in the fact that I had open heart surgery at the age of five, and my childhood was already far from ideal. Some might call me a momma’s boy, but I won’t apologize for being pampered as the baby of the family. It definitely helped me get through the early years. Heart surgery was just the beginning of my hospital days. When I was in the second grade, I broke my wrist on the growth plate. Five years later, I had to have three inches removed from another part of my arm, in hopes of balancing out the stunted growth in my wrist. This two-week stay in the hospital was not exactly a vacation.  Life doesn’t always happen the way you expect. At 18, I had the world ahead of me. I told myself that by 21 I’d have a career, a degree, and a girlfriend. I thought about travel, kids, and a bright future. But life had other plans. About a month after my 21st birthday, I found myself locked inside a psychiatric hospital for 17 days on a 51/50 hold. I had no idea what a "psychotic break" actually meant, because in my eyes, I was fine. Everyone else had the problem. Not me. Part 1: Surf, School, Sleep & RepeatBefore my mind fractured, life was simple. Aside from classic teenage angst, my daily loop was surf, school, sleep, and repeat. I had friends I loved, a good life, and a general sense of whatever happens, I’ll figure it out. Up until then, I’d been able to navigate life's obstacles and bounce back quickly. It was easy to assume things would just stay that way. There was nothing a good night with friends, a solid surf session, and maybe a little bit of bud couldn’t fix.
My brain had other plans.  This is the third installment of the NSSC In Justice series—a collaborative chronicle exposing the structural failures of America's crisis containment loop. While Part 1 by Carmen Facciolo laid bare the agonizing choice families face when forced to wait for a loved one's catastrophe, and Part 2 by Kerry Martin exposed the terrifying reality of surviving a brain in active psychosis while being abandoned on a street corner, Executive Director Ann Corcoran steps forward in Part 3 to break down the hard, human arithmetic of a system designed to wait. In our first two installments, we argued that mental health reform and public safety reform are not two conversations — they are one. We made the case that America keeps building systems that demand catastrophe before they respond, and that compassion is not standing by while a person deteriorates toward homelessness, incarceration, or death.
That was the argument. This is the arithmetic. When you count the people moving through the system we have built — the jails, the emergency rooms, the encampments, the morgue — one undeniable pattern emerges. We are not running a treatment system that occasionally fails. We are running a containment system that works exactly as designed, and the design is lethal. What "Waiting" Actually Costs Start with the final number. The United States records roughly 49,000 deaths by suicide every year, and about half of those who die have a known mental health condition at the time of death. Major depressive disorder alone is implicated in 50 to 60 percent of suicides where a psychiatric driver is present. People living with bipolar disorder face a lifetime suicide risk ten to thirty times higher than the general population. These are not deaths from untreatable conditions. They follow the same script: escalating signs, a family asking for help, a system replying that the threshold for intervention has not been met. That threshold, too often, turns out to be death itself.  In this piece: NSSC Senior VP Kerry Martin shares a raw, unfiltered look at surviving Bipolar I psychosis, exposing how the catastrophic division between mental and physical health has normalized the state-sanctioned abandonment of our most vulnerable. Backed by hard forensic data and personal survival, this essay issues a powerful call to shatter the current Standard of Neglect and replace it with a true National Standard of Care that treats no-fault brain disease with the dignity of any other medical emergency.
As my colleague Carmen Facciolo recently laid bare in the opening installment of our In Justice series, America does not possess a psychiatric treatment system for those with severe mental illness (SMI). We possess a crisis containment system. We have designed a bureaucratic system that intentionally waits for a human to be in crisis before it will offer a shred of medical help. . But while policy experts, legislative committees, and institutional gatekeepers debate the philosophical nuances of civil liberties, my SMI brothers and sisters are paying for those theories with their lives. They are paying for them on freezing sidewalks, in overcrowded emergency rooms, and inside concrete jail cells. I have sat before legislative committees and said what most in the advocacy space are too terrified to whisper: "Please, take away my rights if I ever lose my mind again—because I don’t want to die; I want to live."  In Loving Memory of Melissa Cavallieri — As Told by Her Sister, Maria Vargas
Melissa Cavallieri was deeply loved by her family. But during her struggle with serious mental illness, the system meant to help her failed again and again. Over the course of several years, Melissa was repeatedly hospitalized, only to be discharged without meaningful follow-up care or continuity of treatment. For the final three years of her life, she cycled through a system that never established a clear diagnosis or addressed the root of her illness. Her anosognosia — the inability to recognize her illness — was overlooked, even when she refused critical post-operative medical care. As Melissa’s physical and mental health declined, she was placed in a residential facility in the Bronx that had no psychiatric support. Supervision was inadequate. In March 2024, despite her deteriorating condition, Melissa was allowed to sign herself out of the facility and walk away. Soon after, a suitcase containing her belongings was discovered abandoned on the street.  A recent interview on Newsmax with former Congressman, mental health advocate, and NSSC Policy Advisor Dr. Tim Murphy put into words what families, clinicians, law enforcement officers, and advocates have long known: America's mental health system too often arrives only after tragedy.
The pattern is familiar. A person shows escalating signs of psychiatric crisis. Family members plead for help. Systems respond that intervention thresholds have not been met. And the public conversation begins only after an arrest, a hospitalization, a violent encounter, or a death. We keep asking the wrong question. Not: How did we miss the warning signs? But: Why do we keep building systems that require catastrophe before they respond? A False Choice Between Liberty and Care |
Categories
All
Disclaimer:
©2021-2026 National Shattering Silence Coalition (NSSC) The NSSC reserves the right to publish blog content according to the coalition's mission and values. By submitting your stories to our site, you issue NSSC the right to edit the stories to the NSSC's standards for publication. The views and opinions expressed through our site do not necessarily reflect and are not necessarily endorsed by the NSSC. The NSSC does not present any blogs or content on this website as legal advice. You should not rely on any statements made on this site or externally-referenced sites for professional advice. |
RSS Feed