A Stressful Mental Health System is Disaster for the Mentally Ill

My son has been in the Santa Cruz Mental Health System for over 12 years and when I was told by a respected family, whose son just died, that the system has not changed in 30 years, I became very depressed and sad. How can I bring attention to the basic problems of treatment? Will people listen to what I have witnessed first hand? I hope this will tell the story.

Yesterday my son asked for my help, because he couldn’t get the pills repackaged by the pharmacy without instructions from the doctor. He said he did not get help from the staff, even though they said they would help him. Since I had gone to the medical doctor with my son a week earlier, I knew that the doctor had written directions about his medications to the staff at Darwin House.

The staff had been telling my son for a week that he needed to get the pills repackaged but never included the written directions from the doctor. This was causing my son stress and when I helped get the problem resolved, staff told my son that he needed to communicate better. Blaming him for their mistake. This is one of many times that the staff at Darwin House has created a stressful situation for my son. Just when his meds are reduced, the staff starts harassment. My son and I are working on getting his meds reduced and getting therapeutic help for anxiety and panic attacks.

Over the last decade I have witnessed major stressful events created by staff at Darwin House, Willowbrook, and the Community Services housing program. Staffs who create a stressful environment end up with the results of a client having psychotic episodes and ending up at Dominican or El Dorado.

Clients are at the mercy of a system with situations that are poorly handled. It seems that things are handled at the convenience of staff without consideration of what the client wants. The client is not informed of his/her rights and empowered to act on their own behalf. The following are a list of a few events I have witnessed:

1. Staff and case managers handle things at their convenience: moving clients from one living arrangement to another without asking the client “do you want to move” and giving the family no time to help move their belongings.

2. Case managers making a client responsible for other client’s crisis on a continuing basis, when living in the same residence, causing a great amount of stress and psychotic episodes. An example is my son, being made responsible for taking care of a woman who was having seizures. With the help of my son, I contacted the family and got her into El Dorado.

3. Some staff at Willowbrook, are not trained to handle emergencies. My son was convulsing, had a temperature of over 103 degrees and was dehydrated and staff never called me; I went up to Willowbrook and I took him to ER (for 6 hours) where he was given fluids intravenously for 6 hours. It was very obvious a decision needed to be made for he was incoherent. The hospital would have had to tie him up, if I had not been there. I took him home for several weeks because I did not expect the staff at Willowbrook to care for him while he was so sick, they had too many people to look after and I was able to do this. I asked to please have the staff call parents in cases of emergency. I understand that to this date this has not been done.

4. Parents are part of the Recovery Team, but are purposefully excluded. Yes I know, some clients do not want anyone involved, but his does not include my son and I. The one review of my son’s progress at Darwin House was terrible. He was told everything he did wrong instead of encouragement and definitely not geared toward recovery, nor done in a way that would empower the client.

I have a file several inches thick of problems that could have been avoided if procedures were written down and staff was instructed with written job descriptions. It is not the staff that is to blame, it is the management. If management continue to not train staff the results will continue to be a revolving door (Dominican, El Dorado etc.).

An untapped resource that the whole system ignores is the client, who knows more than anyone, their needs and wants, and loving caring parents who are concerned and want to help. Clients are falsely accused of not taking their meds, when in fact the meds have stopped working.

The client is at the mercy of the system and needs to be constantly reminded of their rights. The system has ignored, as well, for too long the greatest resource, which is free, THE PARENT! I take my son to the doctor and dentist and go in to meet and add information when necessary as a concerned parent. I see my son on an almost daily basis, because he cannot live with me. There are other parents who stay away because they are afraid to get involved and are not invited to get involved. Open your doors; there is a lot to do to improve the system at no cost.

If nothing has changed then nothing will until the County takes charge and reviews the procedures that need to be in place for the system to work for the benefit of the client, not for the convenience of the staff. I am not talking money, I am talking radical change!

Last Updated on 07/26/04 webmaster@namiscc.org

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