***Trigger Warning***
I wish I could give a success story right now, my desire is to turn this story into a successful one as it can be according to the circumstances.
My son is paranoid schizophrenic, he showed signs of it in his teens but as his father did not believed in mental help his condition was untreated for the next 16 years, as result my son hid his symptoms and struggles from us.
My son was able to barely graduate from college by self medicating with marijuana and alcohol as I learned later. These substances made things much worse in the long run, he was experiencing an acute psychotic episode when his dad finally agreed on getting some professional help and allowing him to move back home, sadly it was too late, my husband decided to use tough love to bring him back to reality, in my son’s paranoid mind my husband became the villain that was going to destroy humanity and the voices in his mind ordered him to kill him to save us all.
My son now is in prison serving a life sentence, there he gets the medications to control his mental illness, I have to constantly advocate for him to make sure he takes them on the regular basis, there is not counseling provided for him. Because of COVID and the consequent quarantines the medications were stopped for a few weeks, the result of that was another psychotic episode were he attempted to commit suicide, refused to be medicated again, was acting up and ended in a psychiatric hospital for a few weeks until me was stabilized and compliant.
Many inmates are suffering the same or worse circumstances that my son in jail because their families and friends have abandoned them or have no one. I wonder if there is a way to help provide them with some type of counseling or therapy by mail, if there are any suggestions to make this a reality it would be very much appreciated.
They are human beings, victims themselves as mental illness makes them commit terrible acts, they need a second chance even if they have to spend the rest of their lives in captivity. My son was and is a very good man, he never committed a crime in his life before.
I wish I had known about NAMI before things got out of control in my family, I always believed that it is never too late and there is always a way to fix and mend things in life.
I hope this submission gets to be shared or at least the necessary information may be provided to me to be able to make a difference in my son’s life and the life of other inmates as well. Thank you.