Laura Craciun: A Son's Mental Illness and a System That Failed Him

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast, hosted by
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alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World?
Humanity over Handcuffs the Silent Crisis special event. Joining us
today is Laura Krautchewen. She's a passionate mental health advocate,
collaborating with organizations like the National Shattering Silence Coalition. Today,
she's here to share her son's journey with serious mental illness,
offering valuable insights to support others that may be facing
similar challenges. We will also discuss assisted outpatient treatment laws
and the rising issue of cannabis induced psychosis among teens
and young adults. She has a wealth of information and
we're pleased to have her here to share her story
with us. Thanks for coming on.
I'm very honored.
Oh, it's my pleasure. Now I understand that you're part
of a charity that supports mental illness. Can you expand
on that?
I found National Shattering Silence Coalition after my son, who
has schizo effective disorder, attempted to kill his own father.
The police had reached out to me afterwards and said,
you really should get some support for your family going
and join a NOAMI chapter. The Noami chapter put me
in touch with National Shattering Silence and ever since then,
I felt like the most support I've ever had with
my son's illness, which he's been battling since seventeen years
old and now he's twenty three, So it was as
if I had a partnership. So National Shattering Position is
made up of gears, family members, medical legal law professionals,
concerned citizens that are all to do with serious mental illness,
specifically the ones that are the most challenging cases with
psychosis like schizophrenia, schizo effective, bipolar with psychotic features, and
drug induced psychosis.
Okay, so when your son first started having some of
the issues that he was facing, how did you handle it?
I mean, when people first encounter psychosis or anything along
that line, it's the big unknown. They don't know what
to do, they don't know what to expect. It's just
a very scary time for them. So with all this
going on, how did you handle it?
I had some experience in this because I myself suffer
with bipolar and since the age of seventeen, so I've
been medicated from age thirty when I was diagnosed after
my two sons were born, and have stayed on meditations
gratefully because I know how much they work. When my
sons were born, I was watching out to see if
they may show symptoms and signs. Despite my fear that
my younger son had bipolar, every neurologist and psychiatrists and
therapists and school professional kept saying no, it was just ADHD.
He suffered unfortunately even in the school systems with ADHD
being misdiagnosed as the disorder instead of bipolar, and so
by the time he reached senior year, he was already
acting so bizarrely that we've had the suspicions confirmed and
he had to be forced into a hospitalization during the
middle of his senior year in high school. So I
was dealing with how to handle his illness when it
came about in a stronger way at age twenty, with
less experience because his bipolar also included psychotic features and
I never had those. My family wasn't familiar with it either.
He had been smoking marijuana, and they say that marijuana
induces mania and psychosis to such a degree that it
could actually instigate a stronger form of the illness.
Yeah, I have heard that from a couple of different sources.
So he was twenty when this first started. So what
happened from there? He was starting to have some symptoms.
So what happened? And that led you to get more
information to try and get more diagnosis of what was
going on so you could get this under control.
Well, I got a phone call from a friend's parent,
a father, and he was concerned for my son. He said,
I think I think he's not well, just like my
own family member, and I can't find him. He's missing.
He used to be staying with us. And that's when
I made a call out to my friends and community
to help me find him. He had disappeared with no
word to his friends or anyone where he was, and
a search and rescue went on, and dogs and all
kinds of police investigation and interviews happened, and for three
months we were certain we'd lost him forever. When he
came back, I would normally think that you'd be relieved,
but I actually began the bigger nightmare when he came
back because he was so different looking and acting than
anything I'd been familiar with him before. So I think
the summer of July twenty twenty two, he was in
and out of psychosis, which is a strange behavior that
can drift in and out without any warning. So it's
very disconcerting and it was shocking. So we had a
difficult time getting a grasp on how to handle it,
and we tried our emergency services and behavioral health lines
and crisis lines. Nobody seemed to help us really get
him the treatment he needed. In fact, hospital turned us
away when we brought him to the er because they said, well,
you know, he can be crazy, but if he's not
a harm to himself or others, then we can't keep
him here.
Yes, I've heard that from many others, that if there's
not an immediate danger to him or others, that they
turn him away. So what was your next step? I mean,
he may not be harm to himself or others at
that point in time, but over a period of time,
it could be a day or an hour or a week.
It could develop. So what did you do to try
and get it more under control so that he could
move forward.
Well, we attempted sixteen times with police and ers. Then
at one point the police had to come to the house.
There were eight EMT professionals that were called in because
he kept pointing at everyone saying, you know, look at me,
because he believed he could control you
with his eyes. And he was saying things like iems
faster than a speeding bullet, and he was acting psychotics.
So they put him in a four point restraint and
took him to the hospital.
What happened next, The.
Physician took us in a room and said, if Nick
smokes marijuana one more time, he could have treatment resistant
bipolar with psychotic teachers. This was the first we'd ever
heard that, and that's when we were finally going to
get the help we needed. And they put him in
a forced hospitalization for a month in Wister and let
him go with just a bottle of pills, saying, you know,
take this medicine. When he came out, he was still psychotic.
He did not believe he was mentally ill. And he
wasn't better. In fact, he was quite angry. And that's
when it escalated a little bit further from just acting
crazy to holding a knight when it was being used
to chop some chicken on the blade end in order
to get his father's attention. And his father was very scared,
and then he would went up to his face said
three times, do you want to die? So that was
another hospitalization, and this time at a very reputable, probably
the best in the country, McLean Hospital. When they saw
that he was unwilling and unable to know that he
has a mental illness and that he needs medical treatment.
Despite his protests, they took him to court and had
us testify for two hours at a trial, and they
actually did determine that he needs six months of forced
hospitalization and forced medicine, but they only kept him for
two months and again let him go without any follow
up care. We need assisted out patient treatment in Massachusetts
and if MacLean had that option, we would have prevented
what happened ten months later, which was the biggest disaster
in his young life and in our family's history, where
he tried to kill his own father. So that all
could have been prevented.
So with all this happening, how was he surviving? How
is he getting by day to day with all these
thoughts going through his head? Because evidently he was still
in psychosis. How did he get from point A to
point B ten months later without some sort of intervention
to help him.
I think there was a gang in Boston that he
happened to be associated with journally, you know, through high
school friends, and they sort of took him in and
housed him and gave him a place to stay, and
they got him into some serious trouble I think because
Nick got more and more charges against him, He kept
getting in trouble with the law, but he had a
place to stay. He wasn't homeless anymore. Nick had to
be at homeless after he came home from being missing
three months because we were now afraid of him for
our own physical safety. So the homeless shelters did house
him for periods of time until they would kick him out.
He was kicked out twice from a homeless shelter, first
once because he was speaking crazy, like he was saying
he was the creator, he was the universe. The second
time was because he had a knife, so he was
literally at the will of whoever would take him in.
Okay, so you just brought up the fact that he
thought he was the creator. Can you explain in asygnosia
and what that is so that the listener can get
a better grasp for understanding this whole process that he's
going through.
Well, you can have psychosis and the symptom of anasygnosia
when you have these illnesses brought on, possibly from marijuana
or from a genetic illness in your family history. I'll
do it to a story. Nick and I went for
a walk on the beach when he came back from
being missing three months, and I'll never forget the moment
he turned to me. He's like, you know, I can
hear and see aliens. And I said, oh. I tried
to sound normal, and he said, yeah. All I have
to do is turn my head without my brain telling
me to, and I could see and hear the alien
in the passenger seat in the car I was living
in Cape Cod in the winter. It didn't have a window.
I was trying to act normal, and then you know,
he was saying things that I'd never heard him say
before with total conviction. When I tried to say to him,
you know, maybe you need some help. He was looking
at me like I was crazy, that there was something
wrong with me. So when you see it and you
hear it for the first time, you'll never forget it.
And most people go a lifetime never face to face
with something like this, especially with someone you know. So
it was very scary.
So when that happened, what was your next step? You
knew he needed help, So what was your next step
to help him? Even though he thought in his mind
he didn't need any help at all.
I resorted, you know, to everything from looping in the
rest of my family, and they were all very supportive
and trying so hard to write emails and urge people
to give him the help he needed. It was only
when he became so obvious that it was dangerous that
that was how he was getting medical treatment. It took
extreme measures that even the crisis lines the ninet eighty
eight nothing was working, because it's hard to believe unless
you're in front of it, and he can pull himself
together very coherently in front of professionals, and so it
was very difficult and we struggled with that.
So when he would get in front of professionals, he
would put himself in a situation so they would diagnose
him as being okay, but ultimately seems like they would
see through that eventually.
Well, he definitely did not like being in a hospital setting.
He definitely didn't think he needed medical treatment. So I
think he would do everything he can with his intelligence
to sound very you know, well spoken.
Right, So in that case, what do you do. You
have all these things lining up that tell you there
is a problem, and it definitely can get worse. How
do you handle that? How do you get it across
to these people, therapists, the psychotherapists, the doctors, everyone that's
involved in diagnosing him. How do you get them to
step up and say, look, we need to help him.
You would hope that professionals would pick up on it
and would know enough to ask the family members. Wasn't
until he tried to kill his father that the witnesses
that watched Nick at the time of the attack described
how he was acting. That it was more believable because
it's not just family trying to say, hey, you need
to pay attention. It was the actual neighbors.
Okay, so what happened next? I've heard that people in
psychosis will do something and then ultimately it lands them
within the legal system. Once they get in that legal system,
sometimes they'll get the medications that they need to at
least tamper it down. So did that happen at all?
The police used pepper spray to stop him from attacking
his father outside on the lawn and then use a
four point restraint and probably injection of some palming agent
to get him into a hospital setting. The hospital spoke
very strongly to the courts because the police followed them,
and you know, he was technically under arrest at the
time he was in the hospital. But the police called
the courts and asked the judge to just make sure
that he is not punished but given treatment instead. So
they sent him to jail. They didn't believe that he
was mentally ill when he first arrived after the attack
from the hospital. He stayed one night there. They believed
him when he said he's never been hospitalized before, he
doesn't have a mental illness, he's fine. So the lawyer
and the judge decided to send him to jail. Unfortunately,
the ride over, the deputy in the van said he
was acting strangely, took off his clothes. He was definitely
not well, and they brought him back for competency restoration,
and he spent three months in the state hospital where
they wanted to keep him for six more months and
give him the medically necessary treatment. But in our state,
the psychiatric state hospital is run by the Department of Corrections,
and unfortunately they did not take the advice of the
clinical director of the state hospital, delaying the trial where
they would be even permission to medicate him. So he
spent three months with no medication, suffering in psychosis, untreated
in that state hospital, with all the medical staff wanting
desperately to medicate him. But the legal system, the Department
of Corrections, had the final say, and they said, nope,
we're going to keep the court case going and delaying.
And they even hired an independent consultant using extra money
to come in and re examine and reevaluate the forensic
evaluation report to say he has the right to refuse
medical treatment. And when it came down to it, the
judge deciding whether to keep him at that state hospital
denied the hospital's petition because he said, and I quote,
though Nick is delusional, he is competent.
Okay, so how can one be delusional and component at
the same time. Somehow, this just doesn't make sense to me.
Which is a reflection on the training the judges in
Massachusetts have, and if we had an assisted outpatient treatment law,
the judges would work side by side with the psychiatrists
and the people with the medical training. Mental illness is
the only area that depends on untrained medical professionals to
make medical decisions for them. You know, it's just it's
not right.
No, it's not. I've heard that the biggest institution for
mental health care is like the LA prison. Yeah, so
that's a problem when you hear things like that, that
is a huge issue. Unfortunately, the prisons are not adapted
to be a medical facility. So this story and journey
that you've told me seems to be one that is
very common all across the country. So that tells us
that we really need to find a way to marry
the legal system and the medical system together so that
we can get something that works to put these people
that have these issues in a place where they really
need to be, so that way they get the right
help that they actually need.
When I called the jail to tell them to watch
out for Nick specific signs that he's in psychosis. I
was transferred to the director of all the security guards
and he was so good. We talked for an hour
and he said, at one point, you know, I'm a
parent myself. I've been working at this jail for thirty
five years and I've never seen this many people with
antipsychotic medications prescribed in our jail. And he started gearing up.
He's like, I don't know how you're handling this as
a parent. The watch your loved one be so locked
and but yet be incarcerated.
So what happened from there? You get all these people
realizing that there is an issue, he has a problem,
yet nothing seems to be happening. So what was next
on the journey? Has he gotten any help at all?
Well that's where Anne came in. She had the idea
to write to the judge, his father, who was the victim,
write a letter and say, we're really concerned as parents
that there's no mental health or medical treatment for our
son available. So the judge made it possible for some
probation and so for that offense, he is not sitting
in jail right now. He is out, but he still
has an ongoing case that has a trial coming up.
So now that he's out, is he getting the help
that he needs? Has he settled down at all? And
how's he doing?
Unfortunately, he is not medicated still to this day, he
is forced to see a therapist, which is better than nothing.
We are all as a family still very hesitant to
visit with him physically, his unpredictability, and I am a
little afraid of him right now because he's still unaware
he's mentally ill, and he is not aware the danger
he poses.
So what's the answer. He definitely needs some help, he
definitely needs his medication so they can get back to
a more livable way of life. So what's the answer.
How do we get there? How do you get there
so he can live a better life.
Unfortunately, it's a waiting game and hoping. You know. I
begged our department and Mental health to get him services,
and they sent over a representative to the jail quite
asking Nick, will you please come and get services from us?
And Nick politely refused because he says he has no
mental illness and our state policies are so backwards. They say,
the only way you can get our Department and Mental
health services is if you volunteer for them. But if
you have anasagnosia or lack of insight, which like seven
different medical facilities diagnosed him with, he can't know he
has an illness, Well, it's like they're discriminating against him.
Yeah, that's a very tough situation. Now, I've heard that
they've got alternative medicines now, like a shot that can
last up to thirty days or more, oh.
Six months even or a year. They have all kinds
of long acting injectable antipsychotic medications and street psychiatrists who
administer them and they can be ordered. But in the
state of Massachusetts, I think there are more strict guides
and it's just been difficult because of how well and
convincing he is when he's able to speak to professionals.
Yeah, I've talked with several different people and they tell
me that when they've gone through psychosis and different things
of that nature, that they've lost a period of time.
You can lose memory of what happened. In fact, that's
what happened. When we asked him about certain instances. He
doesn't recall saying or doing the things he said and did.
That's what happens with psychosis.
Yes, I talked with one gentleman. He said that he
couldn't remember what was real and what wasn't. The Only
way that he could actually figure out what might have
been real is he looked at it and if it
seemed logical, then he would go with it. The rest
he would just cast aside.
Yeah, because it's not taught enough. We have a person
in our organization living with schizophrenia, Darryl Hermann, who speaks
very plainly and clearly about what psychosis is and the delusions,
the hallucinations. These are things that come with psychosis that
they're not educating the patients enough about. And if they
did no more, maybe they'd have a better handle on it.
Yeah, for sure. You bring up Darryl. He's been on
the podcast Great. Yes, he had a lot of great
information and I hope that people get a lot from
what he had to say.
Yeah, he speaks very clearly and in tell diligently. He's
done so much research, He's had so many years of
talking and volunteering in mental hospitals. His knowledge is very valuable.
I'm glad he's on your show.
Yeah, he's been on and he like you said had
just superb information. So in closing, what would you like
to tell the listeners about what you're going through? But
not only that information that others might be going through
that they just need to know.
Well, you shouldn't punish someone for no fault brain illness
that they were given. Unfortunately, after their legal age, my son,
when he was brought over to the seventy two court
hearings in the span of a very short amount of
time after his psychotic break, Geet was shuffled in and
out of the van with no windows for a two
hour commute to the courthouse from where he was incarcerated
in shackles from his hands to his feet, shuffling into
the courtroom, standing in front of a judge, not being
able to even speak because the judge didn't call upon him,
and be just still. It's going to be delayed again.
So five different courthouses, seventy two court appearances, and all
this money could have gone towards his treatment instead of
our taxpayer dollars going to the courts. This has to stop.
So how long has this been happening? How old is
he now? Twenty three and it started three years ago.
Twenty April of twenty twenty two. Young.
Yeah, so about three years ago. That's a lot of grief,
a lot of time, a lot of money that could
have been put into other areas for sure. Yeah, hopefully
this will help get the word out there, because the
biggest thing that I see is the misunderstanding of it all.
People that don't understand psychosis. When they hear about it,
they think that it's just someone being bad, when in reality,
it's someone that's doing some things that appear to be bad,
but they don't think that it's bad. That's why they need.
Help exactly, and they think they're even trying to fight
for their lives, you know, save someone depending on the delusion.
Yeah, So hopefully we can get more education to the judges,
the lawyers, the das, the people that need to know.
So that way, the money that's being spent when these
people go in front of them is being spent on
different alternatives which actually would help the person that needs
it the most.
The medical students as well as the medical professional some
of them aren't as experienced with people within as agnosia
because frankly, they're not getting in front of them often enough. Right,
You saw how hard it was for me to get
my son in front of a professional.
Yeah right, Well, this has been great information. I really
appreciate you taking the time to come on.
Of course, thank you for having me. Thank you for
giving a chance to the voices of the people who
are incarcerated. Their families watched with helplessness and tiredness because
their hearts are broken every day. Thank you giving a
voice to them is a real gift.
Well, thanks for your kind words. I appreciate you coming on.
Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your
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