![]() He just wanted to put that night behind him. They didn’t listen when he told them he was sober he got frustrated and called them Nazis. The cops had showed up and assumed he was drunk. He’d been feeling good, confident and fearless, the way he always did without his medications. He’d been arrested late on New Year’s Eve, after blasting his radio and dancing in the street. Mike felt the weight of the winter back upon him, when he had stopped taking his meds and ended up in the hospital. Renee and Mike had met years earlier she had a mental illness, too, and was endlessly supportive. Peggy, small and pale with blue eyes and honey-colored hair, sat nervously watching in the gallery behind him Mike’s girlfriend, Renee Johnson, sat beside her. It had loomed over them, casting a shadow on Mike and his 58-year-old mother. His dark hair was neatly combed back he wore a black suit coat that bunched up behind his shoulders. One week later, in a noisy, crowded courtroom, Mike stood up before a judge, ready to make a fresh start. She prayed that this time would be different. Yet she was the one who was with Mike every day. She was on the outside looking in when doctors, judges, and social workers made decisions. The job of managing the chaos fell to Peggy, but she had no formal, legal role, because her son was an adult. There would be visits from police, trips to the ER, and court appearances. He would disappear and his mother would fear the worst. When Mike stopped taking his pills, trouble typically followed. In a crisis, they may find themselves adrift - struggling to navigate a disjointed, often dysfunctional system, unable to get the help patients need - either because the help isn’t there, or because they can’t find their way to it. Still, stability can be elusive setbacks common the illness is brutally persistent. ![]() In many ways, this is better for patients. In Massachusetts, as in other states, mental health care has largely moved out of hospitals and into communities. These are the patients nobody knows what to do with, who flood emergency rooms and jails and courts. Or, sometimes, because they’re not convinced they’re sick. Because the medication just makes them feel bad. Because the pills have unpleasant side effects. Some find it easy to take the medications, but many others struggle, as Mike has. These individuals don’t need to stay in a hospital - with the right medicine, and other support, they can manage, even thrive. Thousands of young men and women live with these conditions thousands of caring, committed parents and relatives help to watch over them. Across the state, across the country, one in four families copes with a mental illness. There was nothing unique about their morning ritual. She piled them all in a Dixie cup and carried it to him in the living room, placing it beside him on the table. There were others too, to combat side effects. Every morning before she went to work, she took down the bottles and counted out the pills - one for depression and another one for anxiety a third to fend off psychosis and a fourth that was supposed to stabilize his moods. She lined up the bottles in the kitchen, in an old wooden spice rack she had painted white. Later on she would fill his prescriptions. Peggy fussed over him briefly, then went to work, at her bookkeeping job at a small manufacturing company. He settled in on the big blue couch in the living room. They arrived home at the house they rented on a quiet wooded street. He was in a magnanimous mood, saying his farewells, giving away his socks and other stray belongings on his way out the door. ![]() A nurse got up from the desk and went to get Mike. She pulled into the hospital parking lot and stepped out of the car. Mike would stay well, and she would have her son back. Yet she still believed that one day, the right treatment would free them. She had watched his friends grow up and get jobs and get married, while he remained trapped in place. ![]() She had lived with the complaints from neighbors and the calls from the police in the middle of the night she had coped with Mike giving all his money to strangers or throwing all their food away, believing it was poisoned. Peggy had lived for years with the constant worry. His mother never feared him, but some of the neighbors did, interpreting his loudness and profanity as threatening. He was replaced by someone else, whose thoughts she did not understand. And then she watched that man disappear, receding from her as though into the depths of a lake. Often, when bringing him home from a hospital stay, Peggy saw again the man she knew: funny and charming, intelligent and sweet. ![]()
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