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My twenty-seven year old son, Christopher, is diagnosed with schizophrenia
and has had reoccurring psychotic episodes since he was 18. Early in his
life, he had attention problems and then he became obsessive/compulsive in
adolescence. He was under the care of a psychiatrist in conjunction with
his pediatrician for behavior medications since the age of eight. Our other
son is thirty seven and diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. He was medicated
for learning difficulties from the age of five years, because he performed
poorly on standardized tests in his preschool. A neurologist who examined
him at that time, thought he would have to be "institutionalized",
but first he tried various medications and eventually my son was able to
progress educationally in a small private school environment. They have both
been on medications since the elementary years: some more helpful than others.
In our experience, these medications always require a period of time to show
us their effect; much like the result of changing our eating habits as opposed
to the result of taking an aspirin for a headache. We continue the medication
that helps and discontinue any that are less than
helpful. There is no doubt in my mind that without the margin of relief provided
by psychiatric medications, they could not have even received an education.
Our older son has an AA degree and the younger son graduated from high school,
both without any handicap consideration.
Although neither son has ever been convicted of any criminal act and has never had a drug incident, they experience harassment by the police stemming from a social intolerance to their conditions. Our country goes around the world trumpeting freedom, yet my sons have been arrested for just looking/behaving oddly. Can you imagine going to a public park in broad daylight only to find yourself detained by multiple police, subjected to intensive accusing interrogation on everything from drugs to fire arms, finger printed, and then threatened with arrest if you ever dare return to the park? We now know that the police can detain and arrest you if they think you have lied to them, if you don't carry a photo ID, for loitering, or if they think you look suspicious, etc. Where is freedom for people with serious mental illness? These laws exist to enable the police to ignore civil liberties subjectively when they choose which is contrary to our constitution and our stated position in the world. Who will defend these citizens?
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