State Mental Hospitals

My son is in a state mental hospital in NC. He has not been able to go outside in 7 months as they no longer allow patients to go out with their families. They tell you it is for yours and the patients' protection, of course.

They are now giving him 8 different medications, one for high blood pressure, one for cholesterol, one for stomach problems, one for agitation, one for constipation, one for nerves, a few SSRIs, need I go on? He is only 28 years old, not an old man.

I thought the nightmare was over when he came home last year but the state mental hospital sent him home without enough medication so we were on our own. The mental health facility here in our town told the local hospital and the state mental hospital that he had not kept his follow-up appointments when he had. I showed them the bottle of Clozaril the psychiatrist had written a prescription for. Then some deliverance ministers got hold of him and did him no good at all, actually made him worse. They were never even asked to do this. My son almost died in the process from jail to the ICU back to the state mental hospital.

Now that his time is up there, they have manipulated his medications so that he acts like he has is on no medication whatsoever so he cannot leave. I can see what they are doing but powerless to do anything about it. I am very concerned about whether my son will make it out of this alive. Their motto, if we don''t cure em, will kill em?

I have seen many sad stories in there, so many lives destroyed. What does it take to get people to see that their help is not helping? That they truly do not know what they are doing.
According to the drug companies my son has a chemical imbalance, according to the mental hospital it is all my fault, that is why they send him to a group home so far away that it works a hardship for anyone in the family to see him. Then they will tell you it is an inherited thing. I really don't think they care enough to see what the real problem is.

From what I have seen most of the inmates I have met in the mental hospital are people I enjoy talking to, not wierdos that must be drugged and controlled like animals. But many of them are thrown in there, drugged and forgotten. Then they walk around in a drugged stupor having no real life, having every little thing done for them. They are stripped of theiir human dignity, having nothing to do during the day but twittle their thumbs. They are allowed to watch anything on DVD or video, even the movies that I would not watch at home wth murder, mahem, blood, gore and suffering. I mentioned once that these movies are not appropriate for the psycho ward. The attendant informed me that they are adults, they can watch what they want to watch.

They are just miserable excuses for someone to make a buck at their life's expense.

Got to get off here.

M.M.P.