It was 10 or so at night, and I was checking my e-mail in my living room when the banging began, so hard it threatened to shiver my front door off its hinges.
“Let me in!” a frantic male voice yelled outside, “they’re trying to kill me!”
I pressed on the door on the other side. “Go away!” I screamed, “I’ll call the police!”
“Call the police,” he challenged, then spewed some profanities.
I was too scared to remember where I’d left the phone, so I pushed the sofa against the door, and screamed “Go away!” again, as loud as I could. When I called 911, a patrol car arrived in seconds — the man had frightened several of my neighbors, too.
The friendly police officer left, and a few minutes later was back, brushing grass off his uniform. He’d tackled the man to arrest him.
“Get a stronger door, and some pepper spray,” my boyfriend advised when I told him the story.
Later, I couldn’t help worrying about the fate of the deranged would-be intruder. No doubt he’d spend time in jail. As many as one- fourth of the inmates in jails and prisons suffer some form of mental illness, studies show. Yet very few get any sort of treatment there. In fact, the symptoms of their illness are often treated as misbehavior, and punished.
A few days later, on a Sunday, Acacia Park in Colorado Springs was crowded. On one bench sat a man, overgrown bush of hair shaking as he laughed and laughed, loudly and apparently at nothing. Under a tree sat another man, barely conscious, his eyes slit in orbs so bruised that they looked like dark goggles. He sang snatches of a tuneless song.
“Reagan emptied the mental hospitals,” a friend said. “The state hospital in Pueblo used to have 4,000 beds; now there are 150. Those people have gone feral. They obey no rules. And they’ve taken over the park and the Carnegie Library. Honestly, sometimes I wish the mentally ill could go back to the institutions.”
I cannot agree with his solution.
In my life there have been others:
• Wendy, whom I knew many years ago, was a fierce, sensitive poet. She is who I might be, were I struck with schizophrenia in my late teens. Once, when she deteriorated after a car accident, I took her to the hospital, and this stunningly intelligent woman sat in the back seat of my car, arguing with the devil.
• Co-worker David was easily the most charming man I’d ever met. But his bipolar disorder led to moods so night-black, he would call the people who cared for him the most and leave rambling messages filled with vitriolic curses.
• One student waited for me every morning, getting to school an hour before his peers. He was so anxious to perform well at school, but every few months, his hallucinations reduced him to quivering in the corner, able to do nothing but write, over and over in his little book, “I need to get myself together.”
All three are indisputably mentally ill. Still, they don’t belong in institutions. And yet, something must change.
Our current mental health system reminds me of my ancient patchwork quilt. It was once lovely, and made with artistry and skill, but now, when I try to wash it, its fragile fabric tears and its batting clogs up my plumbing. It doesn’t fulfill its purpose of keeping me warm anymore. If we expect to care for the people in our midst whose minds no longer function rationally, we need to create a new, much sturdier quilt.
Eva Syrovy (evasyrov@ msn. com) of Colorado Springs is a special education teacher. She blogs at .
