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Gathering Place
Helene Hale |
Losing a son,
gaining a calling
to help mentally illFormer President Ronald Reagan and my son, William Jasper Kona Hale III, died on the same day. Both suffered from diseases of the brain that lasted for years and destroyed their quality of life. I hope Nancy Reagan will continue her crusade for stem cell research, which could hold promise of more effectively treating many diseases, including Reagan's Alzheimer's and my son's schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
For my part, I hope to continue to work with the state Legislature to improve our mental health system and find ways to help those suffering from mental illness. We have gone from one extreme to another. In the old days it was common to lock up people who suffered from mental illness -- and almost literally throw away the keys. Now we have gone in the other direction and thrown these victims out on the street in the name of protecting their civil liberties. What has been lost is the fact that many people who suffer from mental illness are not capable of making rational decisions. They need help and guidance, and in some cases forcible treatment.
For the last 20 years I watched my son get progressively worse because he was under the control of his "voices" that told him what he could and could not do. They would not let him get a thorough physical examination, and they forced him not to take medication that was prescribed from time to time.
They even told him what he could eat, and they led him to alcohol, which I believe was his only way to forget them. I did manage to get control of his Social Security Disability money, which he qualified for because he had worked before his sickness. However, I did lose control of his state Supplemental Security Income benefits, and I never had anything to do with his food stamps. Both of these benefits ran out before the end of each month, and I doled out the rest of his money, as he was unable to control his finances. At no time, however, did the state or the federal government require that he go to a doctor to get treatment.
At one point I went to the Social Security office with a pamphlet it publishes that said clients had to be recertified at specified times, I think it was seven years. I asked Social Security officials to enforce the law and force my son to see a doctor, but they said they could not or would not do it. I knew that he understood he needed money and that would have been one way for him to get help.
Another time he cut himself (accidentally or on purpose, I do not know). The owner of the house he lived in called me and I told him to call 911. William did not want to go to the hospital, so they called the police and he finally chose the hospital over jail.
The psychiatric unit nurses at Hilo Medical Center did a wonderful job of getting him medicated and he stayed there for almost a month. He improved so that we could play chess, Scrabble and even table tennis, which we had done when he was a child. He also got three good meals. His voices never disappeared but they became manageable. When the cut over his eye healed, however, he would not voluntarily stay or even go to a halfway house, and I was told that there was no way to keep him since he was "no longer a danger to himself," and he had never been a danger to others.
Another time, in frustration, I hired a lawyer to help me get guardianship over him, but I was told that even with that I could not force him to get treatment, even though I knew that he was a danger to himself.
As a member of both of the Health and Human Services Committees in the state Legislature, I know that I can get serious attention to this problem. It has been called to my attention that California has improved its system in the past few years as a result of a task force study and recommendations that recognize other solutions besides being a physical danger to himself or others.
In memory of my son, therefore, I have a new mission and that is to get real solutions recognized and passed into law to address those who need help but are in denial and do not receive it under the current system.
State Rep. Helene H. Hale, a Democrat, represents the 4th District (Pahoa, Kalapana).