Stephanie Beilin: Mother's Journey Through Mental Illness and Incarceration

Welcome to Why Not Me The World? Podcast hosted by
Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some will make you cry. Real life
people who will inspire and show that you are not
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 of a Handcuff, the Silent Crisis special event. Joining
us today is Copany Bilin, a licensed independent clinical social
worker with over forty years of experience, including thirty two
years in a public high school where she coordinated services
for students with social, emotional, and neurological challenges, creating collaborative
teams to support teachers and staff, and meeting the needs
of this integrated vulnerable population. She's also here to share
valuable information about her son, who came to her with
racing thoughts and having difficulty processing information internally. This experience
led to her navigating the legal system, and now she
shares her insights on what happened and her efforts to
support her son. It's a pleasure to have her here.
Thanks for coming on.
Thank you so much.
The pleasure is online. If you would give us a
little background on yourself and how you became an advocate
for mental health.
Well, on a professional level, it's kind of interesting. I'm
a license independent clinical social worker with close to forty
five years experience. For thirty two years, I work in
a public high school, kind of coordinated services for those
individuals who had you know, social emotional challenges, including neurological challenges,
and kind of set up teams to support teachers and
support staff to take care of these vulnerable, you know,
population that is very much integrated into the public school.
It's kind of interesting.
That given my background, and then prior to that, I
was a medical social worker actually at Beverly Hospital, which
is an acute care medical surgical hospital. So that's my
professional background, and right now I'm still practicing. I provide
political services to individuals who are dealing with pression, anxiety,
life transitions, stress, and the family kind of all of
the above. Given all of that, sixteen years ago, almost
seven ten years ago, my son came to my husband
and I describing some symptoms of having racing thoughts and
some anxiety. He was having a lot of difficulty managing inwardly,
not outwardly, inwardly some of his experiences in life where
objectively no one really saw it. He was in the
top five percent of his class, highly regarded football player,
was a rotary international student, was super successful, but that
did not translate to what was going on with him internally,
and he was having a lot of hardship managing some
of the racing thoughts and some of the sort of
intrusity thinking that was going on inside of him.
So, with all this happening, what were your next steps
to let.
You know, my husband, he's a clinical psychologist, so we
felt like we were pretty well equipped and had access
to good quality services in the Boston area.
Took him right in to see a health professional.
Given the genetic predisposition on my husband's side of the
family with bipolar disorder, the psychiatrist felt it was indicated to,
you know, get him on a variety of medication to
manage some of the racing thoughts and some of the
issues of the anxiety and depression.
With all those challenges, what were the next steps you
used and how did it progress?
You know, and it did take some time to manage
the medication. I mean that is never easy.
We felt like he was doing great. He was highly functional.
Cat Friends was really very, very successful in many different areas.
Being from New England, he went to one of the
nesscat Goals, played football for four years, traveled the world
studying international studies, worked as a teacher, coach, mentor. Then
he decided to go to social work school and in
Ivy League school, did really really well. And even though
he was.
Doing really well with all of these areas, one thing
that I may have overlooked is how he felt about
having a diagnosis and how he felt about always having
to manage his medication and some of the side effects
around that medication.
So what he did he took himself off medication and
when he was twenty nine years old, kind of like
at the peak of career, not not the peak, but
certainly an entry point of what could have been a
very successful career path, took himself off medication, had his
first psychotic episode, which was frightening for him, frightening for
my husband and I.
He was not living in the area. We drove right down.
We managed crisis teams, doctors, police, intervention, all of the
above to get him hospitalized because we were that fearful
for his safety.
I can only imagine how stressful that situation was. So
what happened from that point moving forward.
So that was the beginning of being in and out
of hospitals, periods of being super compleat and having a
lot of success around that and you.
Know, living independently and managing his life.
But whenever he started playing with his medications, eventually coming
off the medications, it has wreaked tremendous habit. And the
sad part is is that you know a little bit
about the town we live in, there's very high standard
for how people should function and how they should behave,
kind of like that very staunch New England expectation, like
everyone has to function at one thousand percent a thousand
percent of the time. And he had to come back
home to get some support and regroup and all of that.
And he did well for a while, as I said,
moved out, had his own apartment, but eventually had to
come back in because off medication. There were just so
many encounters with various police departments that did not display
sensitive behavior and mindful behavior around someone with a neurobiological
medical condition. They really were and interested in hearing that.
All they wanted was the behavior to stop. That was
the entry point of police intervention, which did not go
well and it just led to one arrest after the other.
And you know, currently my.
Son is at a state hospital right now.
He's competent, he's on medication, he's doing great.
But at the same time, now we have to reconcile
some of these court issues. And this led part is
that in Massachusetts, where one of two states that does
not have an outpatient assisted treatment program.
I don't know whether you're familiar with that.
You probably are, yes, I'm aware of it. It's unfortunate
it wasn't available for you.
If we did have that in our state, he would
have gone down a path of treatment versus the criminal
route and the incarceration, which doesn't do anyone good who
has a clear cut, diagnosable medical condition. In fact, all
it really does is deny access for individuals who are
in that situation by not having the.
Appropriate treatment and the appropriate medication.
Law enforcement and legal professionals are focused on doing their jobs,
but sometimes lack the training to handle these situations effectively.
Police in particular are forced to make decisions, sometimes in seconds,
which can lead to misunderstandings or escalation. How was the
interaction with the police during this whole process with your son?
It did not go well.
I think that if the police were better trained in
the areas of mental health crises, if there had been
a clinician connected to the police department, which did not
happen at all in the case of my son, I
think the.
Outcome would have been very, very different.
I know that some police departments have greater knowledge of
the impact of mental illness.
Living in the sort of town that we do. There
was just zero tolerance.
For that, despite the fact that my husband and I
did our very very best to try to educate them.
Arresting someone who is in an acute medical crisis is
not the solution.
It only induces more illness.
It induces more paranoia, you know, psychotic thinking.
It's just a very unhealthy environment.
Navigating the legal system after a police encounter can be
really tough, especially when judges, district attorneys ada's aren't well
versed in mental illness. Then you can add that some
defense attorneys are not well versed either. This gap often
complicates things and makes it rougher on people such as
your son. Did you run into any situations like this
with him?
We did.
I think things could have been handled much, much differently.
When my son was in court, it was clear that
he was not mentally stable. It was clear cut, and
rather than connect with the medical community, the immediate response
within the court environment was to arrest him send him
off to jail. And I feel like the attorneys could
have advocated in a much different way. I know that
some have become more well versed in areas of mental
health because so much of criminal behavior, shall we say,
I'm just talking about things like disturbing the peace and
misdemeanors just can escalate to a point if someone is
in a medical crisis. So I personally feel very disappointed
in law enforcement in the legal system. You know, with
all due respect, I'm sure it's hard to expect judges,
if you will, to be up on mental illness. Although
I think it's something that people really need more training about,
more sensitivity about, you know, to say to.
Someone, I don't want you ever back in my court again.
I mean, that's like telling a diabetic the physician never
wants to see them in the er again. If they
go off their insulin. That's a really really important point.
It's not bad behavior, it's not a personality disorder. It's
a medical condition that certainly has behavioral offshoots, similar to
any neuroatypical condition.
I've been talking with people around the country recently, I
learned about forensic therapists. Up until then, I really didn't
know what they did. Are there any in your area
who can advocate for a defendant such as your son
or whoever it may be at the time, to explain
to the DA and the judicial system what's going on
in their mind and why they're in their current situation.
That's an excellent question.
Basically, the forensic psychologists or clinicians get involved when someone
comes to the court and is like overtly psychotic or
overtly you know, disoriented, perhaps doesn't know where they were
or what day it is, or who the current president is.
I mean, I think that those are the more obvious
situations for sure, and I think that core clinicians can
intervene and are able to kind of deal with the
obvious symptomatology. I think when someone goes in and out
of you know, kind of like a pre psychotic premantic state.
They can seem pretty articulate.
I mean, for someone who is intelligent, good looking, is
well educated, I think immediately there's bias in the criminal system,
and I've seen it play out time and time again.
It's as if someone with that kind of a background
should know better. They should know better not to stay
inappropriate things to strangers, or they should know better to
know how to manage their internal sort of like self regulation.
So I think there's the obvious cases for sure, and
I think the individuals and those situations tend to do
better from what I've observed in the court, that there
is biased against people who are well educated, you know, again,
should know better. You know, there's a lot of judgment
around that, and I think that that can also work
against those individuals.
In the seventies, autism and other mental health conditions were
poorly misunderstood, often leading to people being dismissed as weird
or quirky without a proper diagnosis. Now fast forward fifty
years later, we should expect.
Judges, das adas.
Defense attorneys to recognize and not have that they should
know better attitude, because they should know better that a
person's actions can be shaped by their mental capacity and
may not be able to manage the situation that they
find themselves in.
I could not agree with you more and I am
baffled why in the state that I live in that
has access to so.
Many world renowned healthcare organizations, how that doesn't translate to
other institutions like police departments, in the court and prisons themselves.
Because as we know, I think the latest statistics seventy
to eighty percent of individuals who are incarcerated suffer from
serious mental illness. So I think is a huge gap
in the system, and that's what many of us are
advocating for. We're advocating for change in legislature. Number one,
we're working tirelessly to get Massachusetts passed as a state
that will support assisted outpatient treatment.
And we're also working tirelessly.
To try to get a state hospital out of the
hands of the Department of Correction and into the Department
of Mental Health, which it absolutely needs to be.
Now, you're working with several organizations to bring more awareness
and get legislative change. Is that correct?
Yes, the National Shattering Silent Coalition, and I'm also connected
to other advocacy groups that are working closely and collaborating
with medical students and a whole coalition to try to
support these two change of policies.
I've been broadcasting my podcast for almost two years now.
I had one episode about a year ago that covered
training for police officers that would come in contact with
those that would be autistic. Even then, I really didn't
think there was a huge problem. Now I'm doing the
Humanity over Handcuffs the Silent Crisis special event, and I'm
finding there is a huge issue as I have had
people sharing stories of their loved ones, sons, daughters' spouses
being incarcerated due to a lack of knowledge or misunderstandings.
After hearing these stories, I believe this initiative needs to
be scaled up significantly, not just training judges, police, das
Ada's defense attorneys, but the public as well. If I
wasn't aware of this problem, considering I'm talking with people
in the autistic and mental health communities, the general public
is likely even less informed. We need to do everything
we can to share these stories to foster greater empathy
and move beyond the black and white thinking.
I could not agree with you more.
I mean, you talked about sort of like how people
are responding as how they responded in the sixties and seventies,
and I can certainly relate to that mindset. Be sure,
I feel honored to be able to reflect on that.
Quite truthfully, we need to do better, We absolutely need
to do better. Perhaps people that live in more urban environments,
the police have a higher tolerance for some of the
behaviors from what I have observed in these smaller communities,
there's a lot of intolerance.
You know what's happening to this generation who are.
Being hit pretty hard with these neurological conditions. And just
by the way Tony said, you'll know that from what
the research has shown with each generation where there's a
pre existing genetic situation like bipolar or schisuoeffective, it gets
worse through the generations.
It doesn't improve because the societal.
Norms have much greater expectations and there's so much more
stress and anxiety of just being able to live one's
life in such a fast paced culture.
So this is something that is not going away. I
mean more.
Children are being diagnosed at younger ages. Having worked in
the school system for thirty two years and you know,
having a lot of close connections with community based treatment
centers and hospitals. We can do much better, and I
think even the Department of Mental Health needs to step
up and really call serious mental illness what it is.
It's not like situational anxiety. It's not something that you
can breathe through. It's a neurological condition that needs sort
of a medical model, interdisciplinary approach. Yeah.
I think that people that are in the general population,
if they don't have anyone this autistic or anyone that
has any mental health issues such as serious mental illness,
they just don't understand it. I was one of those
before I started this podcast. I knew nothing about any
of this. How I've learned is learning on the job,
so to speak. I've learned by listening and hearing the stories.
So if I didn't know that this was a problem,
the general public definitely does not understand what's going on.
They think that autism can be cured, serious mental illness
can be cured, take a pill, and everything's okay, And
sometimes that's just not the case. So how do we
make this better? How do we get people to understand
so we can have more empathy of those that are
going through this.
There needs to be a lot more education around mental
illness and autism, or you bring up a really good
point about treatment issues one of the key components. There's
a group of medical students in a psychiatrist who are
trying to get this particular cluster of symptoms into the
new like diagnostic statistical manual, the one that's I think
in the fifth revision or something. It's a term called anasignosia,
and anasygnosia is a neurological condition where one actually loses
the ability to kind of like self reflect on one's
individual behaviors. So, you know, police may come over to
someone and say, you know what, like who do you
think you are doing? This? That and the other thing,
And the individual may have no genuine understanding of how
a problematic behavior is perceived by others because that individual
can't link in to themselves and see themselves as an
inner resource.
It's like, hey, what are you doing? You know you
got to rail yourself in. You've been a change his behavior.
That is a neurological condition that people really don't understand.
I'm a social worker room, you know, clinical social worker.
I've had a wonderful career for so many years. This
is something that I've had to become familiar with myself.
I think that even clinical training.
Has to focus more on those individuals with serious mental
illness and autism, you know, and not more like the
classic anxiety and depression and situational stress sort of thing.
We need to be better trained and educate others around this.
The slogan for my podcast is awareness, acceptance, and understanding.
I love that.
Yeah. I tell people, you can be aware of something,
you can accept it because you're aware of it, but
until you understand it, you absolutely know nothing about it
or what that person is going through. I think a
big part of why many diagnosises are coming out now
is because the Medical Association is learning more because they're
getting more clinical, they're doing that deep dive. Years ago,
they didn't have that knowledge and they just put somebody
as quirky or just strange. I know, there are a
lot of theories out there for many different things. I
just think that we're becoming more defined and we're getting
a better greater understanding of people and the issues that
they may be going through.
I poleheartedly agree with you for sure.
I think that you know, I mean, children are being
diagnosed at record breaking numbers with autism I mean, you know,
when I was growing up in.
Those fifties, sixties and seventies.
I maybe knew one person that struggled with communication skills. Now,
you know, having you know, autism and someone being nonverbal
is not unusual at all, and families having to learn
sign language to communicate with their loved one.
And also I do want to say medication is not easy.
As much as psychiatry is a.
Science and neurobiology is science, finding the right balance of
medication it has, you know, for what I have observed
in my own family has been less than ideal. There's
side effects, there's weight gains sort of like mental fogginess.
There's a whole host of symptoms connected with psychotropic medication.
I think that from what I've.
Observed, you know, once someone accepts their condition, which you know,
in my son's case has taken close to nine years,
and nine years of a lot of up and down,
you know, during a very pivotal time of his life,
he seems to really get that now and look back
and say what was I thinking?
Like, what was I thinking?
What motivated me to get into these confrontations. He never
had a discipline report in high school, never had an incident,
incident free, and all of a sudden he had to integrate,
like you know, who was this person?
And that's a pretty scary thing.
I mean that that's hard to understand within oneself. It
just doesn't happen while you get on medication because the
risk of getting off medication is so high. It's almost
as if, in a sad way, sometimes individuals have to
go through all this pain and difficulty to accept their
health condition.
I read autism was first discovered in nineteen ten. At
that point in time, they didn't know what it was,
so they call it a mental issue. Then they treated
it with electrotherapy and put people through just tremendous pain,
and here we are one hundred plus years later, they've
separated everything when I truly believe that it needs to
be more inclusive so that way you can help everyone.
That's an excellent point. Thank you for making it.
Yeah, that's just my opinion as an outsider, just looking
at things differently. So what would you like to tell
the listeners that you think is important they hear, important
they understand of what you're trying to do and accomplish
with your advocacy.
I think it's important you know, to talk about educating.
People in the community.
I think that you know, these illnesses are not going away,
they are getting more enhanced through the generations. Given the
environmental and sort of societal norm pressure connected with it.
I think it's really important that our leaders get involved, our.
Leaders in each individual.
State to recognize that their own residents are struggling, and
you know, there needs to be programmatic changes and there
needs to be policy changes within these states to give
people the treatment that they are entitled to in a humane,
knowledgeable way, where dialogue is encouraged between patient and care
providers so that individuals can share, you know, what their
needs are too, without it being sort of like a
hands down approach to healthcare.
I definitely agree. Well, this has been great, great conversation,
great information. I really appreciate you taking the time to
come on. Thank you.
It's a hard thing to do, you know.
I have to say I never thought that I would
be in this situation. And actually I discussed it with
my son because he is very intelligent. You know, his
competency is restored, he's medication compliant, and I told him
about this and he thinks it's great.
He thinks that more people has to know.
He feels like maybe at some point he will have
a voice to be able to express.
You know, which is even more important. But he did
want to make sure.
That others are you know, that there is a public
awareness about the role of law enforcement in the individual's communities,
because that can be like a driving situation to what
pat someone gets treatment versus punishment.
Yes, I think he is one hundred percent correct. Well again,
thanks for coming on.
Well, thank you. I hope that this has been helpful.
It's been great. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time
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