[befsquire]

heiress, i'm not sure which treatment or medication is objectionable, who in your family agrees or disagrees or anything else regarding what is going on with him. i would just like to tell you about 4 clients i had.

client one was not any better on his medications and they made him sick. so they tried a new combo that didn't work. they tried another combo, and that didn't work either. so with that combo, they made a little adjustment, and it worked. and he was a totally different person -- like night and day. he's never been arrested since, and he's so happy and feels like his life that mental illness stole has been given back to him.

client two loves his medications while he's on them. the problem is, once he gets out of jail and no one is there to make sure he takes them every day, he either forgets to pick up the prescription, or forgets to take the pills if he has them. he then ends up getting arrested for being crazy, and calls me from the jail to beg me to take his case (which i can't because case assignments don't work like that). i've been at the office a little over 2.5 years. he's been arrested at least 9 times during that time span, and shows no signs of being able to break out of that pattern.

client three denies he has a mental illness. while in jail, they give him meds and he takes them, but he believes it is for a regular health problem. he's absolutely the sweetest person you could ever meet while he's on the medications. i arranged for our office to help him get disability payments, but that can only be done once he's out of jail. he was off his meds for a week before he came to the office, and he was talking like he was going to kill people, he needed to get away from our office because we had a leak that was going to the FBI to tell about the bodies lying in the street and that every time he walks out of his house, there's a red dot that blinds him and he's going to have to get a gun and shoot in the direction of the dot. he is back in jail on a charge that is about 5 times more violent than the charge i had him for.

client four knows he is schizophrenic. he takes his meds for a while, but once he starts feeling better, he thinks he's cured and that he doesn't need to take medicine anymore because he feels fine. so he goes off his meds and then he ends up back in jail (usually for some form of theft). he has been arrested about 47 times over his lifetime, and he's not yet 40 (though he looks at least 50). because he has a lot of convictions (about 20), he's been sent to prison for 5 years for stealing a t-shirt worth $8.

obviously i wouldn't know about people who don't take meds and who do just fine and never get arrested, since all of the above examples are clients and therefore have been arrested. this is not even the tip of the iceberg with my clients with mental illness. one takes his meds, but a part of his illness causes him to lash out at people, and unfortunately, he keeps escalating the violence when he lashes out. i have 3 who are in the state hospital. i've never met them, because they were cases i took over from other attorneys. when it comes to my mentally ill clients, there are few success stories, and even fewer who could make a rational decision about taking or not taking medication and knowing whether that's the best choice. families are usually well-meaning, but sometimes are too emotionally involved to make the best decision regarding treatment.