Suzanne McCartney: A sisters advocacy to reform system failures for SMI

Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide?
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Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the
world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantur.
Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide.
Joining us today is Suzanne McCartney. She's here to tell
the deeply personal and powerful story of her brother's journey
with serious mental illness. This journey unveils the hidden struggles,
the barriers that we're posed by systems like HIPPA that
can delay critical care, and the urgent need for compassion
and reform within our prison systems. By sharing her brother's story,
she wants to spark understanding and advocate for change that
hopefully will inspire others to embrace conversation that opens hearts
and minds to a more inclusive world. So before we
dive into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted
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On, Thank you for having me.
Oh it's my pleasure. So let's start off. If you
could tell us a little bit about your journey.
Well, we'll we'll talk about I guess in the beginning
when my brother was diagnosed when he was in high school,
lived with my mother. She was kind of his protector
for all these years he lived with her. After she passed,
he ended up moving down near me, and he was
always kind of a recluse and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Yes,
later on, after he ended up which now he's in
Bridgewater State Hospital. They also said he was autistic, which
I had never heard that before.
Yes, I have heard that schizophrenia and autism can overlap.
So where was he living at this point?
So he was living in his own apartment, and he
was trying to live on his own without my mother
and managing his own medications through a doctor who was
giving him a three month shot of in vega.
Did that seem to work for him?
He seemed to be doing well. I thought everything was
going pretty good over there. He didn't really want to
have too much to do with me, which was typical
in his life because he's quite a few years younger
than me. He ended up getting a job, which I
was surprised. He had a secret girlfriend, and he was
going to his psychiatrist's appointments though I believe that and
he had tried to kill himself years before, trying to
keep on track here. He ended up having this girlfriend,
and he was seemed to be kind of spiraling down,
and I was sending messages to his psychiatrist telling him
that I didn't think things were right, and then he
had a girlfriend and I didn't know about this and
wanted to let him know what was going on that
I didn't think things were going well, but he never
could answer me because of the hippolas. Would acknowledge that
he got my letter, but not respond about anything. And
so on March twenty sixth of twenty twenty, a friend
of mine told me that there was some police complex
where my brother was living, and I was leaving work.
It was late at night. I drove by the apartment,
didn't think anything of it, and then I think I
ended up trying to call his phone, calling the police,
and I found out at round midnight that night that
he had killed his girlfriend that was living with him
that I didn't know about.
So what happened from there?
Want to tell me too much information? I had found
out that he had killed her, went into a psychosis,
tried to put a sword through his stomach, which he succeeded.
The airlifted him to Boston, and then I found out
what happened that night At midnight. I called his psychiatrist
and left a message for him. I was surprised he
didn't call me back that night and asked me what happened,
and I explained to him what I knew, and so
we communicated a little bit through email. Later on, I
had found out I was having somebody go clean up
my brother's apartment. I said to them to please keep
me all the paperworker. I wanted any paperwork that was
in that home and everything else could be thrown out.
Did you find anything there that was of any consequence.
I had found some medication, because that medication was sent
to my brother and he was to bring it to
the psychiatrist, and he was supposed to give him that medication.
I had found the last one that he was supposed
to get three months earlier, and I had reached out
to the psychiatrist and said, did he get this medication?
I found prescription here that was not ever administered. So
the reason I want to do this interview is because
I want to spread the word that the laws have
to change and people have to be aware that if
someone is mentally ill and out living on their own
and they don't get their medication and nobody is following
them because of hippo laws in Massachusetts, that these things
happen a lot, a lot more than we know.
Yeah, I hear that a lot.
Unfortunately, this woman who was his girlfriend, I had no
awareness of this. Her family, did, her mother, her brother,
the church they used to belong to. Everybody on the
outside except for me, his closest family member didn't know
anything about what was going on.
What about the doctor, did you ever find any information
about that from him?
The doctor certainly knew about this girlfriend. Because I mentioned,
he didn't answer me one way or the other because
of the privacy laws. And the doctor after not too
long after we originally spoke, he said that I was
to talk to his attorney. He couldn't comment anymore, couldn't
talk to me anymore. That was it. Contact is attorney.
So that is the reason why he wanted to speak
out about this. Because my brother, who was a gentle
giant when he was on his medication, when not supervised
on medication, and he was either suicidal or could be.
He never hurt anyone in his life, even though having delusions,
and my mother was a little bit nervous about him
when he had his delusions when he wasn't taking his medication,
and things can go out of control if the medication
is not delivered, and if somebody doesn't know about it,
they can't report it because of the laws. They could
not reach out to us somebody. And this should have
been preventable.
Yes, absolutely should have been preventable. So how many years
did this go on?
He was living in his own apartment and I believe
it was two thy eighteen. I think he was living
two thousand and seven, actually maybe twenty seventeen. He was
in his condo. My mother passed away in twenty eighteen,
but he was living in the condo before that because
she was in a nursing home. So a couple of years,
you know, the beginning was okay, but he was thinking that,
you know, because of his illness. He was thinking he
was fine, he could get a job, he could act
like any regular person. Joined the church and he was
working there all the time. He had a job. He
was buying nice clothing, and he was going out to
dinners and going to his girlfriend place on the vineyard
and going over there for holidays. None of this I
knew about because I was cooking for him, and I
always said he couldn't have a girlfriend there. He was
allowed to have a girlfriend there, but he never told
me the truth, and more so when he wasn't taking
his medication.
Yeah, that's a tough thing to go through. So how
old is he now?
He was born in seventy four, so what is he
fifty one? And he suffers from the anosognosea. I don't
think really know what happened. I mean, they told him
he's compun to stand trial, and he's been there for
several years. He actually thinks that he still has the
pondo and he's coming home, he's going to get a job,
and they're going to be letting him out this year.
And I don't know whether I don't think that they're
telling him that that's his belief. So he is now
living at Bridgewater State Hospital and probably will be for
the rest of his life.
Is he on medication now? Is he anywhere is near
what is considered more normal for him?
They finally got in the medication, I think under control,
although it never can be under control because even when
I go visit him, sit across the table from him,
he's talking to himself, laughing. Sometimes I'll ask him, who
are you talking to? You know? He says, I'm not
just talking to myself. He says he's clearly delusional still,
but he thinks that that he's okay. So there's no
medication that's going to ever stop that ever. From one
of my understanding is about having these delusions, you know,
I think that a lot of these things that we
see on the news, that people see happen all the time,
there's a reason behind these things happening, strange occurrences. I
don't know if you if I gave you his name,
if you want to look it.
Up, you can, that's totally up to you. Do you
really want to put his name out there on this podcast?
Well, it's I mean, it's it's out there. The police
report was on the news. It was everywhere, everywhere on
the news.
So when all this happened, what happened after that? Here
he was involved in a homicide. How did that affect him?
Did he change at all? Did he under medication get
to the understanding that this had happened.
I'm not sure because we are not supposed to talk
about it where he is now, because he is still
incompetent to stand trial, and he's gone for the courts
several times. He has a public defender who doesn't really
necessarily want to speak to me when I call him
to ask him what's going on. I mean, he's still
not mentally competent to stand trial. He's not going to
pass it again this year. It's a yearly process they
go through to determine competency. There's a laar and I
can't think I was trying to look at a progant
in the fall with you, and all the states have
it except for Massachusetts and Connecticut. I believe of an
outpatient treatment assisted outpatient treatment, I think it's called AOT.
Maybe that's right, And you know, some kind of programs
like this would have been something that could prevent some
of these things from happening. People don't really understand about
mental illness because they can't see it other than they
you know, they think that people under the trees, under
the bridges are people that are you know, a bums
in there drug addicts, and that's not the case. There
are people in our community, the people's brothers, sons, his
father's uncles, cousins, coworkers, you.
Know, yeah, absolutely, So when did this all start for him?
Was it during high school?
Yes, he was in high school. M he had tried
to kill himself a couple of times. Again, as everybody
else say, probably when they have the same story, is
that try to kill yourself, you end up at a
psychiatric hospital. They keep you there for maybe thirty days,
They give you a medication, try it out, you go home.
Maybe it doesn't work, Maybe the patient is throwing the
pills out the window, which has happened all the time
with my brother. Then next thing you know, he's dress
to hang himself, but the rope breaks. They send him
back to the hospital again. Then sometimes you know, he's
again not taking his medication. And that's why we ended
up going with this three month thing. Think that that
was going to be the cure sort of, but I
didn't necessarily want that to happen because I felt three
months was too long of a time to have that medication.
With all that happening, did he wind up graduating from
high school?
Uh? I think that he ended up with the GED.
So when he got out of school, did his life
change at all? Did it stay the same? What did
it look like from that point to when all this
started happening.
Well, his situation was basically was he was living with
my mother, who advocated for him. He wasn't really working,
but he was driving. He was kind of living like
a reckless He didn't have many friends. She didn't think
he was able to do anything. She thought that anything
would stress him out. I don't know whether that whether
that was the case or not, but she was always
protecting him from the world.
How long did that go on? Did it happen because
he was forced to it because of your mother having
some difficulties?
Yes, he was forced into that because my mother ended
up in a nursing home. She couldn't take care of
him anymore, and so I had to figure out something
to do with him. I ended up finding a condo
he was able to get her estate. He was able
to keep the money from the sale of her house.
She ended up in a nursing home, so I found
him a condo. He seemed to be doing well. I
mean I would check on him in the beginning for
a while, but then he didn't want me to check
on him anymore. That's when I had questions about what
was going on. I was able to check on and
other people told me they had seen him at the
fair and he had a girlfriend. He had a girlfriend,
so he was trying to act let's say, normal, right,
doing things that you know that girls and guys do,
went to the beach, which he never did.
Sure. Now, did he have any run ins with the
legal system over that period of time.
No, well, I mean he did when he was in
and out of the hospital and it was a little
bit older. He wanted to He was a caretaker for
my mother who was sick, so it was a lot
of stress from that as well, and so sometimes they
would argue about things about money or him having to
take care of my mother and giving up his life
for her, and so they would have arguments. She would
call the police. She said that one time that she
heard him in his room saying he was going to
kill her. I don't know if that is necessarily true,
but they had a lot of arguments, and sometimes my
mother would call me, call the police, and then call
me in the middle of the night, and they would
take him because she said she was afraid of him,
even though he didn't do anything to her verbally, he
was abusive to her. So they would take him, bring
him to the hospital sometimes. One time they had taken
him to an hotel and then they called me, should
never taken him to a hotel, And then I would
try to wait for a bed, a room for him
to go in so that he could get admitted into
a hospital. But every time he went to hospital, he
would be there for a short time and then they
let him out, as the same story goes with everybody.
They let him out, he's back on the street, he's
doing whatever, And this would be a continuous cycle. And yes,
he went to the hospital many, many times. And one
time he went to the hospital. My mother had given
me a note when I was there one day, telling
me she was afraid of him. I had said to
the doctors when they were getting ready to release him,
I gave this note and showed it to them. I said,
she's afraid of him. Can't you keep him longer? And
they said no. It just kept continuing on and on.
This went on for years. When all this happened, he
was forty six years old. I think he's on fifty one,
so that's six years now he's been there. So from
the time he get out of high school until twenty twenty,
I guess that was his life, in and out of
the hospitals all the time. She didn't have a restraining
on her once on him, and I think he had
to come stay with me for a while, but then
she took him back.
Did she ever have to worry about it getting physical
at all?
No, not that I know of. No.
Okay, good, that's a good thing to hear. Now you
say he's in the hospital. What's his frame of mind?
Now?
Does he have lucid moments? Can you carry on good
conversations with him? Or is he still delusional in any way? Yeah?
Oh yeah, he I mean he can have a conversation
with He's very intelligent. We don't have a huge connection, Hannah,
because we're such a big age difference. And I used
to babysit him when I was a child. You know,
he loves painting, and he's very smart, and he's yeah,
he knows what's going on in reality is first what's
going on in the world, and he watches the news
and he's up to date on all that. He thinks
he's he shouldn't be where he is because he's smarter
than everybody else there. He thinks he's above everybody there.
Okay, So is he there pretty much by himself or
does he have any other people that may drop by
to see him from time to time.
Well, he basically has me. He has a daughter from
years ago, which I'm not sure it is his daughter
because my mother allowed him to sign papers without getting
a prenup. It's a long story. There's probably some other
midia illness in the film except for me. Of course.
I do have a brother in Oregon, but he doesn't
want anything to do with him, and I have a
sister who committed suicide years ago. So he basically has me,
that's it, and his daughter who doesn't always go there.
So I'm his rock and so I'm trying to advocate
for him and get his story out. And also, you know,
these terrible conditions where he lives at the Bridgeware State Hospital.
It's a disturbing place he lives.
He lives at I talked with a lady here a
couple of weeks ago. She never had a very good
relationship with her brother. When he wound up in jail,
it all changed. They became closer than they ever had
been because she was his rock. Did anything like that
happen to you?
Yes, he calls me off and I answered the phone
whenever I can talk to him, and I try to
remember that he has a mountain animals. It's even hard
for me, you know, as I can see that other
people wouldn't really know, but it's hard for me to
get in my brain what happened that day at eleven
o'clock in the morning. Considering you know that he is
like a gentle giant and wouldn't hurt a fly. We talked.
He's self centered and sometimes people with mental illness, I
think I have what I want to say about the term,
they're sort of manipulative. I guess self centered. You know,
the whole conversation when he calls is really what I
can do for him.
Okay, so now you say he's been deemed incompetent to
stand trial, yes, So what's the criteria for that. I mean,
you say that he can carry on a conversation. He's
very intelligent. He understands what's going on in the world.
What is stopping that from moving forward.
I don't know what exactly they ask, but they I
guess they must ask him about reality, but that they
know that he questions things about people talking to him.
He'll say that on the TV that the TV's talking
about him. On the guards where he's at, it talking
about him, and one of the girls that comes into
play music is trying to hit on them. These are
not true. So reality checks about things you know and
the medication you know, and there's a lot of things
that can affect the medication. It could be the heat.
They have an issue with heat over there, Psychotic medications
and are not really probably good to be mixing with
hip psychotic medical with heat and lack of water. He's
been dehydrated there, so that you know, I think there's
a lot of factors when you're mentally ill, or even
any illness that you know outside things affected.
Sure, that makes sense.
So I think you know the way you're treated, or
maybe people do talk about you and you hear them.
Maybe some of it is true, maybe it is not,
you know, I mean he has major delusions of many things.
You know, in the beginning, he was thinking he was
the Messiah.
Yeah, okay, I've heard that story many times. Yes, Now,
when he was on his medication and everything was pretty
much under control, well as much as it could be
at the time, what was his demeanor there? I mean
you said he was gentle. What were some of the
things that he did that surprised you?
Well, he would tell me about his friend. He I
never said she was his girlfriend, but he said it
was his friend and he wanted to go to the fair,
and could I give him someone to go the fair.
He would watch my dogs when when I first got
my dogs, he'd come over and babysit and dog. You
sit and come over and sometimes have dinner. If I
had fronts some friends over, they would come over over
and sit at the house, and he was sitting chat
with them about art work. He loved art work. And
I'd cook and he would be very appreciative. He come
over and get food.
And now, with all this happening, how did it affect you?
Mental illness affects so many people. Sometimes the forgotten ones
are the family. So how did it affect you and
the rest of the family with what was going on.
Well, it was a little bit difficult because my younger brother,
he was always felt like I guess that my brother
was being coddled. I guess from my mother at the
time years ago when my brother was young. My sister
and my brother always felt like he was coddled as
a child. I mean, my other brother always felt that
he was just faking, which is not true. But he
doesn't really want to have any any much to do
with my brother. He's in Oregon, so he doesn't even
usually answer the phone. So it's made the family very separated.
I guess, you know. My mother was always saying, poor Mark,
Poor Mark, Poor Mark. My other brother was saying, well
what about me, you know, And so they don't have
a good relationship. My brother Mark doesn't really understand why
they don't have a good relationship.
Yeah, that's sad to hear. It's always tough when something
like this affects the family. There's a lot of listeners
here that's going to understand what you're going through. They're
going to be able to relate one hundred percent with
everything that you said, now there are some that are
just learning. What would you like to tell those people
that are just learning how it affects the family and
what needs to be done.
I think the important thing is to try to seek
God as much help as you can. But I think
advocacy for people that are mentally ill is important to
get out into public so that others know what's happening
in our society. And I think training for the police,
and I think training for facilities, and especially ones that
end up in jail versus psychiatric hospitals. I think that
they need to be more talked about, and we need
to have a lot more mental health staff. There's a
lot more amongst us that we know or that we think,
and it's getting worse and worse every year. I never
ever thought that this would have been me and my family.
Yeah. I hear that so much from all the people
that come on in my podcast. That is one common
thread is they just never thought that it would happen
to their family.
We need more people to be involved in the mental
health system and more compassion and literacy about it. In schools,
people need to be taught about it.
Yeah, I agree, it's kind of like autism used to
be no one ever ever wanted to talk about it exactly.
And for me to hear that my brother had part
of his diagnosis was autism, I think I had called
one of the social workers and said autism. I've never
heard that before he had any autistic tendencies, although it
doesn't surprise me because the fact that he fixates on
things is an autistic kind of trait.
Yeah, that's very true. I had a lady on the
last part of April on my podcast. Son was diagnosed
autistic I think at twelve or thirteen years old. Then
as time went by he became psychotic around seventeen or eighteen,
I think absolutely.
And when I read things I've see things in the
paper or things that happen here where I am on
the cape, I hear that these this term autism, and
then I look it up after the fact and you know,
sure enough, it's part of it. So we don't really
know a lot about mental illness. I think there's more
and more discoveries, and there's a lot of doctors who
are looking into it, maybe not in this country but
in other countries, and then are trying to find out
what we can do about this.
Yeah, it's a worldwide issue. I've got friends of mine
over in the UK. They'll send me different things that
pop up in the paper or on the news to
advise me on what's going on. Plus I have a
lot of people from the UK and around the world
that come on the podcast and tell their stories. So
this isn't just us. This is all over the world.
It is happening all over the world world and it's
a major problem. And to think that somebody like my brother,
who who you know, had this girlfriend, was thinking everything
was good, was going on vacation with his girlfriend and
was over there at Christmas and with the family celebrating.
It was heartbreaking when I heard this, and I had
to call that girl's mom and I had to say
to her, I don't even know who your daughter is.
I met her once in a store when I was
shopping and my brother was there, and I asked him
who that was and he said it was a friend.
He didn't introduce me to her or anything. I had
never met her once in my life. Mother was crying
and telling me, and I also spoke with her brother
and telling me that he had come over there for
Christmas and he had gone over to the Veney many times,
and he was so kind to her and it was
the best thing that ever happened to her, and they
really liked him, and I was like so torn to
have to talk to them, and then, you know, and
find out she they didn't even know that she was
living in the house with him, so there was some
mental illness I think a little bit on her side too.
That's how they found each other. But to speak to
the family about it was horrendous to even think that
here is this guy and girl that are in their
fifties or late forties whatever living together and this happens,
this tragic, tragedggic thing happens, you know, I mean, I
was heartbroken, distract.
I cannot imagine what you went through with that. That
took a tremendous amount of courage to be able to
tell a mother something that is that sad. Do you
stay in contact with them at all? Or is that
connection just completely destroyed? No?
I returned to anything I could, that was the daughters.
I spoke to the son and the brother. No, I
don't have any contact with them. I wrote them a
letter and apologized and for everything that happened and explained
that I didn't really know much about what was going
on there, and you know, I tried to explain as
best I could. You know, the newspaper's got a hold
of it. You know, I was afraid that people were
going to come to my house and you know, attack
me for that behavior and what happened. You know, I
said to the police, you're reporting things that you don't
even know about. You don't know what happened there, and
hearsay in the beginning, you know, they were it was terrible.
Yeah, they probably ought to get more of the professionals
to talk about it rather than just the police that
don't know.
Right. I think the you know, being able to give
the doctors some freedom to be able to to be
able to speak out and say
something like this, and I know that what happens is
probably everywhere is that nothing. And I've said to my
friends of mine who have a a nephew, the same
thing is going on in Florida, and she's really concerned
that something's going to happen, but she can't do anything
because if she she can't call and say, well he
might do this, or he could do this, or he's
unraveling and there's nothing you can do. And I said,
you know, want something. I said to my friend, there's
nothing you can do until he does something that that's it.
And when he does something, he's going to end up
in jail, and then he's going to go to court,
and then there's going to be the same old crap
that goes over and over and over again. You know,
I know, I understand you can't charge somebody for something
they didn't do, but there needs to be prevention before that.
Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more.
And people know when it's coming that I mean, the
doctors in this particular doctor that he had I think
it had had some I'm not a patient, did the
same thing, you know, and they see it coming and
can't do anything.
Yes, I agree on things do need to change. Well,
this has been a great conversation, great information. I really
appreciate you taking the time to join us today.
I appreciate you letting me speak about it. It's the
first time I've spoken without crying. Usually I'm in tears crying.
Unfortunately, I hear that quite often.
My mother didn't want to talk about it, and neither
do most families. They were not to talk about it,
and that's why nobody knows about it. It's considered one
of those things you hide in the clause that you
don't talk about. You know.
Yes, Unfortunately, I think you're correct.
There there's a lot more stories out there to be told.
A lot.
Well, again, it's been great having you on.
Well, you're doing a great thing by you know, putting
the word out.
Well, I appreciate it, and thanks again. Thanks for taking
time out of your busy schedule to listen to our
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