My Son is in Jail and I’m Relieved

How parents of people with addiction or major mental illness try to cope

Two weeks ago I met my son for lunch. He showed up with a chipped front tooth. His lip was swollen and he was lisping slightly. “What happened to you?” I asked in alarm. He told me he’d been smoking pot, held in a big hit, and then fell on his face.

“Oh my god, you have to get your tooth fixed!” I told him. He said no, he didn’t want to, because it was helping the scrape on his spine.

That didn’t make sense, but I had to let it go. There’s no winning with him. If you oppose his point of view with vigor, he gets louder and louder and then storms off. He doesn’t listen to what you have to say. If you want to make him listen, you have to talk in a quiet voice, with the patience of a saint, and bring his attention back to your point over and over and over again, very gently. Usually, that doesn’t work either.

So on the day we had lunch, I decided to be satisfied that he’d shown up at all and was mostly coherent. We ordered food and he didn’t cause trouble or make a scene. He ate it eagerly (which makes a mother happy) and thanked me (another good marker), then helped me do some political work hanging door hangers supporting SF DA Chesa Boudin.

When my children were small, I thought this son was the smartest of my three smart children. One of the two others is now a scientist with a PhD, the other runs a small business. But Son’s mind is so scrambled right now that I had to show him how to hang a door hanger on a doorknob. He couldn’t figure that out himself. I don’t know if that’s the result of his major mental illness, or alcohol and drug use, or both. And I guess it doesn’t ultimately matter. He’s compromised.

We walked up one block together while I showed him how to do what I was doing. He ran up the stairs for me, when there were stairs, which was a relief for my creaky knees. He could see I was appreciative. Once we’d done one block, I figured we could separate: him on one side of the street and me on the other. It felt friendly and companionable to proceed down the block, on opposite sides of the street, separate but also together. That’s kind of how we do life.

He told me that day that he was doing well. He had a date with his sister lined up, another one with his brother in law, and was looking forward to both of those. He was hoping they would “update his reputation” with his younger brother, whom he’d been feuding with. The feud, though, was mostly his creation. He didn’t like his brother telling him he needed to take his meds — specifically, the monthly shot that keeps him the most stable. The shot he’s decided to forgo so he can take meds “as needed,” even though he’s alienated the psychiatrist and case manager who are supposed to be treating him, and now gets his meds from a mysterious clinic, which seems a much less reliable system.

After we finished our task, we ate together again and had pleasant conversation. Then he went home on one bus and I did the same on another. It was a good day.

Asking for a welfare check

The next day his landlord called and told me Son was in a yelling match with one of his neighbors. He wondered what to do. He said Son was out of control, and said he was sorry but he was going to have to evict him. Since Son doesn’t have a phone or Internet, I couldn’t reach out to communicate to him. We live in different cities. In the past, I have bought him phone after phone after phone. But recently, I joined a co-dependency group, which is teaching me to change my response to him. I no longer rush in to solve the problems he creates. I’m holding back in hopes that he will stop creating them, or learn to solve them himself. He also has a case manager and psychiatrist who are supposed to be helping him — whom he might be more inclined to work with if I wasn’t always waiting in the wings.

I told the landlord that in the past, when he was out of control, we’ve called the police and asked them to help us get him to the hospital. The landlord asked if I would do that, and I agreed.

The police department in the town he lives in is very helpful. They took him to the hospital three times last year — the year he decided to start taking meds as needed, rather than as prescribed. I called them two of those times. His brother called them the third. But it’s never easy. It’s never worry free. So I steeled myself and made the phone call.

I asked them to do a “welfare check” on my son. That’s very helpful language which I only recently learned. I told them he had a major mental illness and was currently manic. I emphasized that he didn’t have any weapons and was not violent. I told him he would go peacefully with them if they decided he needed to be hospitalized.

Police visited him at home and he managed to calm down enough to convince them he didn’t need to go to the hospital. They called back and told me they’d determined that he wasn’t “a danger to himself or others.” That’s the criteria for taking people to the hospital against their will, and it sounds reasonable. The only problem is, the authorities usually interpret that to mean you are not a danger to yourself unless you’re holding a gun to your head, which is obviously incorrect. You are also a danger to yourself (and possibly others) if you’re incoherent. If you’re having delusions or hallucinations — disconnected from reality. If you’re lying in filth with open wounds on the street. Any child can see the danger.

Screaming in the street

The next morning, the landlord texted me again. Son is screaming in the street. Do you think you should call the police? I texted back, OK.

An officer took my information and said they’d drive by and check on my son. But then another officer called me back. He’d been on the call the night before. He said it wasn’t really appropriate for me to be calling them with third-hand information about my son. A neighbor calls the landlord, who calls me, who calls the police. That’s not good enough. If someone on site who has witnessed the behavior has a complaint, they need to make the call. “We aren’t getting any complaints from that address,” he said. I understood and communicated that to the landlord.

The next day I got a phone call from my sister. Son was standing right there. He’d locked himself out of his apartment and lost the key. He got on the phone and asked me if I would call the landlord and ask him to let Son into the apartment. I said no. I didn’t want to get involved. I would give him the phone number so he could call himself. I also told him the landlord had said he was being evicted. I hoped that maybe that would settle him down, because telling someone’s mother that they are evicted is not an actual eviction. Maybe if he behaved himself, the landlord would change his mind. Then he asked if I had a ladder. I don’t. He hung up.

My sister was sad and upset. She fed Son, invited him in, offered to take him to a locksmith. He asked her to wash his clothes (he was wearing one set on top of another). She said she would and he could come back to get them the next day at 11am. He was sweet and compliant. But when he showed up the next day at 9pm, he was belligerent. He grabbed the clothes out of her hand (she’d got him a nice backpack to put them in) and said he was in a hurry. When she mentioned the locksmith again, he shouted “No! I’m evicted!”

Then we didn’t hear from him.

Then I started to worry. He’s been homeless before, but not in the past two years. He wasn’t prepared. He was out of his mind. Why didn’t he call me? He’d been in the habit of using the pay phone at the train station to call. What had happened to him? Where was he? Was he okay?

My sister mentioned that he’d been wearing a hospital bracelet. So he’d visited the hospital. Why didn’t he stay? Then the police called to say they’d found his library card and debit card in their lobby. In their lobby?!? Why was he visiting the police station? Was he hoping to get apprehended? The officer looked him up in the system and said he’d also visited the police station in the next town. He said I could file a missing person’s report. That way, if they came across him, they’d take a closer look. It wouldn’t reflect badly on his record, or mine. I said I would have to think about it.

Missing person

On the fifth day after Son picked up his laundry from my sister’s, I called the police back to file a missing person report. We were on the phone a long time. I gave many details of his history. Then the officer looked him up in the system. “We have him,” he said. “He’s been arrested. He’s in county jail.” I felt a huge wash of relief.

Being in jail meant he was alive. Being in jail meant he was warm and dry, out of the elements. Being in jail meant he was safe — other homeless people wouldn’t be robbing him or beating him up. Being in jail meant he had food and access to a toilet and a shower. Being in jail meant he had no (or little?) access to alcohol or drugs.

Being in jail meant he had another chance.

The only problem is, he doesn’t belong in jail. He belongs in a hospital.

I would get on my soapbox here, but the Treatment Advocacy Center does it better:

“Fifty years of failed mental health policy have placed law enforcement on the front lines of mental illness crisis response and turned jails and prisons into the new asylums.

“Deinstitutionalization, outdated treatment laws demanding a person become violent before intervention, discriminatory federal Medicaid funding practices and the prolonged failure by states to fund their mental health systems drive those in need of care into the criminal justice and corrections systems, rather than into the public health system where they belong.

“This “criminalization” of mental illness has wide ranging and devastating consequences.

“Today:

In 44 states, a jail or prison holds more mentally ill individuals than the largest remaining state psychiatric hospital.

Individuals with psychiatric diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are 10 times more likely to be in a jail or prison than a hospital bed.

“While many states attempt to divert people from jail if their crimes are the product of illness, diversion alone cannot address policies making the care of those with mental illness a law enforcement matter rather than a medical one.

“Criminalizing mental illness worsens the health of hundreds of thousands of people and complicates their recovery by creating additional barriers to housing and employment. It burdens law enforcement and correctional systems. In the process, it costs taxpayers countless dollars. Nobody benefits, everybody pays.

“Help the Treatment Advocacy Center stop the criminalization of serious mental illness. Learn how to be an advocate now.

Schizophrenia affects 1–2% of the population, worldwide. You might think that’s not very many people. But awhile back, I was sitting in a theater that held 100 people. It was quite small. And I realized that according to that statistic, one or two members of that very small audience could have a major mental illness. I mentioned that to the woman sitting beside me, who was visiting San Francisco from the Midwest.

Turned out, her son had schizophrenia, too.

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