Author: Dennis Allard

Chapter 5 in a series on mental illness.

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Six days ago my brother was released early from LA County jail where he had been incarcerated since violating my restraining order last fall.

He is now homeless again, has enough money to stay in cheap hotels for a while, but is refusing to see a doctor or get meds or help of any kind, has only the clothes on his back and a pair of sandals, no supervision or treatment, and no friends willing to house him any more.

He was released on his own, without meds, without any requirement that he receive treatment, and without any form of housing or structure for his life. He was manic and is very quickly degenerating each day.

The system basically is saying to my brother: “Screw you. And screw all of your relatives and friends. Your mental illness is going to resurface as your meds wear off, you will become an incoherent dazed obnoxious homeless person making life miserable for yourself and anyone you come in contact with.”

The U.S. system is a failure here as it is in so many other areas of health care. Libertarian fundamentalists must love this. After all, it is up to each person to fend for themselves.

[Note: Elsewhere see video interview with my brother on September 1, 2009.]

[Note: Elsewhere see excerpt’s of my brother’s writing about his own mental illness .]

I just got a call from one of his old friends in Santa Barbara. My brother is going up there on a train, unannounced, thinking his old friend will help him. He won’t, he can’t, and he should not have to. Friends and family of the mentally ill do not have the resources, skill, or time to treat a mentally ill person. And in most cases, they don’t have the money. My brother’s friend said he will meet my brother at the train station and ask him to get back on the train. My brother’s friend will tell Tony the same thing I have told him by phone and email the past several days, i.e., to see a psychiatrist, get back on meds, and find a structured living situation. We are willing to help you find that but we will not house you ourselves. That has not worked in the past and takes too much out of our lives. The U.S. system should provide that structure and care and obtain information and background from relatives. The system does not work that way. Worse, in the case where the mentally ill person is incarcerated, a travesty of common sense and human rights to begin with, the system compounds the problem by giving the mentally ill person rights to prevent his relatives from talking to his doctors.

So, society, here comes my brother again. Be on the look out.

In January I had made a comment in these pages that I was going to provide information to his doctors in jail since one of them had indicated they might be able to pursue a conservatorship for Tony. That never happened. I did not send them any new information and I have no knowledge that they pursued a conservatorship. They never contacted me about doing so. I have my own life to live, was burned out trying to help my brother, and all previous efforts had failed. The initial efforts toward that end were stymied last fall when Los Angeles Mental Health Court judge Melissa Widdifield threw the case out of court and put my brother back on the street. Conversations I had subsequently with social workers indicated that the process of obtaining a conservatorship was arduous, as well it should be, and would have to be renewed annually. Even though I was burned out on trying to help my brother, that is just making an excuse. I am now regretting I did not follow through on that effort, however futile it may have been. Looks like I may have another chance pretty soon, after my poor brother becomes incarcerated yet again.

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Update of ~March 24, 2010:

My brother is degenerating rapidly. His friend in Santa Barbara spent a couple hours with him but would not house him and told him he should go back to LA and get help from a doctor. The next night, my brother was homeless and could not find, or was not competent enough to find, a hotel. He told me that by phone this morning.

Since his release last week his state of mind has gone from having some insight into his situation to one of delirium, as evidenced by a string of phone calls and emails he made each day. At first, he was overtly apologetic about the

“outrageous and sometimes very offensive nature
of some of my past e-mails, as well as the sometimes
insane personal behavior”.

He BCC’d his friends:

“so as not to give any body’s e-mail address out to
persons they may not know or wish to share that
information with.”

He asked old friends to email him if they wished to renew contact.

But within a couple days he was sending very derogatory emails to some old friends, then, a few hours later, calling them or emailing them again with apologies.

He also called me this morning and was in tears asking if our Mom was still alive. She is 92 and lives in as assisted living home. My brother had made threatening remarks about the care givers there so that home is now off limits to him via a restraining order. I arranged to make a three-way call so he could speak with our mother.

The call was a monologue controlled by him. First, our mother has dementia. Second, my brother tends to have conversations more with himself than others. So on both counts, not a lot of communication was going on. I called him afterwards and tried to three-way call with a worker from the LA County Mental Health hotline. We got voice mail so we left an 800 number for him to call.

I called him later and gave him the number again. He seemed to accept it. At this point I doubt he will get help on his own. I predict he will become delusional and get into trouble with the law. What can I do? What can any of us do?

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Update of ~March 25, 2010:

This morning I succeeded at hooking my brother up with the LA County Mental Health Department Help Line. Tony had called me from a hotel near downtown Los Angeles. He sounded less manic but still manic. I convinced Tony to let me call the Help Line and hook him in to the call via 3-way calling. Elsie, the councilor who answered the call, has been working in this field for thirty years. She was very patient with Tony as he went into myriad details on a number of topics about his life and recent events. Elsie listened patiently, as did I, although at one point I suggested to Tony that Elsie needs to help other people so let’s get to the point. She gave Tony the address of a center at Maple and 5th, close to where he was, where he could see a doctor and get meds and possibly housing. Tony said he wanted an appointment because he did not have time to wait for hours for his meds. Elsie pointed out to him that the center is busy and that other people also need help and, if he does not get his meds, he is going to end up back on a 5150 hold, which is not something he wants. We must have been on the phone for at least a half hour with my brother. Bottom line was that Elsie gave him the address of a facility where he can see a doctor and get meds and Tony said he would go there to “make an appointment”.

After the call Elsie called me back and agreed that Tony seem paranoid and manic and that it would be a mistake for me to attempt to house my brother, something that has not worked in the past.

If past history is any indication, Tony will either not get meds or go off of them at some point. And he is unlikely to accept an offer of housing if it means any kind of supervision or structuring of his daily activities.

But at least we made one step towards hope.

Now it is wait and see.

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Update of ~March 26, 2010:

Tony called me this morning at 7:30AM while in line at the help center at Maple and 5th. I suggested he ask the Doctor for meds and a place to stay. I reminded him that the most effective medicine in the past had been risperidone. I was not sure Tony was processing what I was saying. He was moderately manic but we were able to converse. I then called the Mental Health Help Line who told me that what would happen is that Tony would go through an intake process.

Later Tony called me and said he had gone through the intake process. But he said he had to go back in four days for his meds. So I think he was not given any meds. I told him four days may be too long to wait. He had a new phone, replacing the old phone he had lost.

He said he was going to find an internet cafe to “play on the internet”. I am a professional software developer who makes a good living working on the internet. My brother’s illness has reduced him to a person treated as a criminal, often homeless, who is alone in the jungle and has to go to some internet cafe to find some joy. I find it heart wrenching that I myself cannot help him and that he is being forced to act as his own case manager.

Editorial Remark: I have nothing but disrespect for the Republicans who have thwarted good cost effective health care in this country in general and correct care for the mentally ill in particular. I have nothing but disrespect for the oligarchy in this country that allocates the benefits of our society to itself. Yes I am getting up on my soap box here because I hope that even one reader of these words who blames government for everything and thinks our system is fundamentally so good might wake up. The only hope for my bother is the limited help he is getting from the government. We should all be working to allocate more funds to those wonderful workers in our government funded programs that help the mentally ill.

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Update of ~March 27, 2010:

This morning my brother showed up at an old friend’s house unannounced. That friend was threatened by my brother a few years ago when my brother was fully delusional and had not been in contact with him since then. The friend did not answer the door and did not give any indication he was home. My brother fell asleep on the friend’s front porch. The friend called another friend who called me, since I tend to act as a clearing house on Tony’s activities for various of his old friends.

We then jointly called the LA County Mental Health Help Line. They wanted to dispatch a PET team (Psychiatric Evaluation Team) to assess the my brother’s state of mind and possibly take him in on a 5150. But the PET team was busy. By the time they could get there, my brother had left. His friend said my brother made an attempt before leaving to pry open a window but failed to do so.

Later in the day, my brother sent me an email to which I replied:

Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 17:34:39 -0700
Subject: Re: Health Care Problem.

On 03/27/2010 04:42 PM, Tony wrote:
> Hey Bro,
>
> I’m doing my best to get back on “meds”,
> but they make you jump through hoops
> dun they. I have an appointment for 3/30
> at 1:30 with LACMH to talk to a Sighcriattrist,
> at Maple and 5th. Mobhy he can get me hooked
> up with the psychmeds I need to sleep.
> No sleep again last night. I’m walking the
> street for funny. It’s a matter of opinion.
>
> Love,
> Tony

Dear Tony:

I called LACMH Help Line (800-854-7771). They said that the 5th and Maple place you went to does not give meds out on the first visit.

You can get meds immediately from an ER that has a psych doctor on duty, such as County USC or Harbor UCLA.

Go to one of those and get meds there.

I am willing to drive you to one of those if you want.

I would recommend that you call Matt Wells at Harbor UCLA. His number is [number not shown here]. He wanted to help you last year.

I heard from [your friends] about your attempt to get into [one friend’s] place this morning. [That friend] just simply does not want to see you again since that time you woke him and threatened him.

You will need to find housing on your own and get meds and become stable for many months first, then try to work at having a normal relationship with [him] or other of your friends who simply do not want to see you when you are off your meds and a manic and raving as you have been in recent days. That includes me.

love,
Dennis

The good news is: my brother does seem to be aware he needs meds.

Some bad news, which caught me by surprise, is that the LA County Mental Health clinic where he did go on Friday did not provide him with any meds.

In LA County there are several agencies not all of which communicate with one another and even within one agency, different units do not share data or communicate.

So in those, what are for my brother, rare moments where he agrees to cooperate, it is all the more frustrating to find that the most crucial care was not provided in a timely manner.

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Update of ~March 29, 2010:

During the past two days my brother has tried to visit different old friends of his but was turned away, since they see he is manic. In some cases he shows up at late hours. In one case, he was crying when the friend asked him to leave. His friends want to help bit have learned from experience that when he is manic and delusional there is nothing they can do and they no longer can support him or humor him when he is like that. He must get help and he is going to have to do it on his own.

Good news. Much to my surprise, my brother just called me and asked me to go with him to an appointment he has with a social worker tomorrow afternoon. He told me that would be a good idea since I am the most familiar with his case. This is the most forthcoming and rational my brother has been with me in the 12 days since his release from jail. It is a hopeful sign, however slim, that he is going to accept treatment. I will go to the appointment and be able to provide information to the social worker. I hope my brother will actually show up and not get into trouble between now and then.

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Update of ~March 31, 2010:

News not so good today.

The short version: I give up.

The long version:

It didn’t work out how I had hoped. I did go with my brother to the LA County Downtown Mental Health Center. I picked him up in my car on Wilshire in front of the Wiltern Theater and drove on Wilshire to downtown. My brother was in less bad shape than I’ve seen him in the past. He was relatively clean and was wearing shoes. His pants were somewhat dirty but overall he looked like a fairly clean homeless person. He was fairly manic but not raving. He told me that he has reinstated his disability income so that means he will have enough to get by assuming he can stay stable. That was the one piece of good news today.

We got to the Downtown Mental Health Center on time but when it came time to do intake, my brother would not agree to sign the intake form. And he wanted meds but would have to still make an appointment to see a psychiatrist, which seemed to agitate him.

Also, I don’t think he wants anti-psychotic meds but, rather, something to help him sleep. He advised me that he had still been “cheeking” his Depakote but taking Seroquel. He seemed to believe that Seroquel is to help him sleep. In fact, Seroquel is for treating his disorder.

As he is wont to do he had to be controlling the situation. He didn’t want to speak to a woman councilor, so she said she would just do the intake but then transfer him to a male councilor. He asked her if she was drinking and said he smelled Bourbon. I was right there and detected no such odor. He said he was told he would be given meds today and didn’t like that he would have to get yet another appointment with a psychiatrist to get meds at a future meeting. When he wouldn’t sign the form there was nothing the councilor could do since it is necessary that the person receiving care sign papers to agree in writing that if they are harming someone or abusing a minor then they can be reported to the police. The councilor could not help Tony since Tony refused to sign the form, so the appointment ended with nothing accomplished.

I had gone there naively thinking he would talk with a councilor and get setup to see a doctor regularly and obtain other advice. I had some documentation of his history with me that I was planning to give to the social worker or doctor. What was I thinking? Really, nothing happened. I was wasting my time.

We left the center having achieved nothing. I made an video interview of Tony but then accidentally deleted it. I drove him to the L.A. Mission and made another video there which I will eventually edit and publish here.

He said he would ask his “driver” to take him to County ER to get meds, by which he meant Seroquel. He has hired some black guy he met in the neighborhood to drive him around. That means he is burning through his money fast and who knows what kind of guy the driver is. The driver’s name is “D”. I spoke with him by phone briefly a couple of times and he seems pretty together. Somehow my brother is establishing relationships with some new friends, so to speak.

The driver came by and picked Tony up nearby in front of the L.A. Mission. I didn’t get a good view of him and was not particularly in the mood to establish a relationship with him myself in any case. They drove off.

Later in the day I got a call from Tony. He was more on the raving maniac side, asking me for the rest of his money. Should I give the rest of the money I was holding for him back all at once? What do you think? I considered making it conditional on him having an address where I can send the money. Instead, I told him I would transfer it on Friday. But I suspect he will spend it all in short order. I am tired of giving my brother an excuse to resent me. I feel like shutting the door on my brother until such time as he actually does obtain the help he needs.

I think what I am going to do is send the remaining money to him at an address he gives me. In other words, get an address, you’ll get the rest of your money.

Otherwise, I am exhausted and fed up with trying to help my brother. I am behind on my work and have my own problems in life to deal with.

I give up. For now least.

He is back on the street and his destiny will be determined there.

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Update of March 31, 2010:

My brother was arrested today, early in the morning at 1:30 AM.

I don’t yet know the details. Here is the body of the email I sent to his various friends, who are also my friends.

I had not heard from Tony for nearly 24 hours.

I just checked the LA County Sheriffs Web site.

He was arrested this morning at 1:45 AM.

My heart bleeds for my brother.

This concludes this chapter of my brother’s saga. When I find the time and energy, I will write a more succinct summary of all that has transpired. I will visit my brother in jail and urge him to continue his writing about his life and ask that he share that with everyone so that more people can understand what people such as my brother endure. With awareness might come some efforts to improve how we as a society deal with this malady to help the afflicted and, in doing so, also support their loved ones.

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Update of ~April 3, 2010:

Not so fast.

Yesterday I found out that my brother had been released from jail again after only two days. He called me saying he had “only” violated his probation so they let him go. In his call, yesterday, he said he wanted the last half of his savings and was very agitated. I told him I would deposit his money the following day (today) into his bank and that he could go there to get it. I had decided I didn’t want money to be an excuse for him to harangue me going forward. And, after all, it is his money.

Flash forward to early this morning. At 6 AM this morning I got a call from Tony. He was at Norms restaurant on Lincoln about a mile from where I live. He said he did not have enough money to pay for his meal. That meant that he has already spent the first half of his savings I had transferred back to him 14 days ago. That amount of money should have enabled him to get by for three months given the resources available to him in this town. Now, 14 days later, it was gone and he wanted the other half of his savings immediately.

The short story of this morning:

I went to Norms and gave Tony enough of his money to get by on for several days, with an agreement in writing, that we both signed, that he will go back to the Downtown Mental Health Center, sign the intake agreement that he had refused to sign last Tuesday, and make an appointment to see a doctor. He also agreed (and signed the agreement) that he will stop using my address, get a PO Box or other address by Monday, and that I will send him the rest of his money to that address.

I don’t believe he will be able to carry through on this, but at least I now have it in writing and if he does not follow through I can remind him about our agreement and use that as leverage to not take his calls or give him any further help until and unless he keeps his side of the bargain.

The unabridged story of this morning:

After he called me, saying he had no money to pay for his Norm’s breakfast tab, I called 911 and dispatched S.M. Police to Norms. I thought about just leaving it at that but then decided it was better to be involved with the situation, since in any case they would probably not take Tony in since he was relatively high functioning this morning. I called one friend to see if he might want to go to Norms with me but my friend’s cell phone did not pick up or his phone was malfunctioning as cell phones are wont to do. I would have been imposing on my friend anyway, so it was just as well he didn’t pick up. I went to Norm’s myself and interacted with both the police and Tony. The police said he was not acting in a way that was threatening to himself or others so they would not 5150 him. But if he didn’t pay his bill they could arrest him for defrauding Norms. They interviewed him out on the sidewalk and were very professional. They let me talk with him for a few minutes. It was coming down to me having to decide to help him pay his bill or let him be arrested. It was as if the decision to have him arrested was for me to decide. After Tony started rambling on about going to rent a room from one of his friends and making other unrealistic statements, I told him I was sorry but I was not going to pay his bill. I walked away.

I then noticed that the cops talked with him briefly then let him go back into the restaurant. They themselves left the premises.

I went into Norms to talk with Tony. I figured this was going to be the last time I was going to see him for a long time and I did not feel right about just leaving. I saw Tony looking out the window to see if the police had left. I approached him and said I wanted to talk with him. Tony told me that he could not leave without paying his bill or he would be arrested.

I had still not decided what to do.

We took a table in the corner seat with a view of Lincoln and the morning light coming in through big windows. I didn’t know quite what to do. On the one hand I am weary of his money being an excuse for him to contact me. On the other hand, I still retain a faint hope that he will have some insight to his condition.

I wanted to call the LA County Mental Health Helpline but could not remember the 800 number and it was not in my cell phone. So I told Tony to wait there and went home to get the 800 number. I called the Helpline from home because I felt I needed some help deciding what to do. But, after a few minutes talking with the Helpline person, I concluded there was nothing they could do to help me or anything they could say that I didn’t already know. They were asking the usual questions about whether they should send out a PET team. But the PET team would not find that Tony was a threat to himself or others at this very moment since, in fact, his behavior was quasi-normal. I tried to ask what they thought I should do about the money I was holding for him but that was not a topic they could advise me about. I realized there was no point.

I went back to Norms. I called the Helpline 800 number again and handed the phone to Tony. He went on and on with the patient Helpline worker talking about myriad details of his history, asking her what her qualifications were, wondering if she knew what an MDO was, going over the various levels of certification that social workers have and asking what her’s were, explaining that he did not want to sign a form that gave social workers rights to 5150 him, etc., etc., ad nauseum. He was not going to be getting advice or accepting it from that phone call. This went on for a good fifteen minutes. I asked him to give me my phone back.

A tiny bit of progess then happened.

At this point I was not sure yet what I was going to do. I knew I was tired and do not want Tony bothering me anymore. Tony had suggested I only give him a part of what remains of his money that I had kept for him while he was last in jail. I said I’d give him that now if he agreed to go sign the intake form at the Downtown Mental Health Center, stop using my address, and get an address where I would send the rest of his money to him. He agreed to that in writing.

The money is not an enormous amount but it would cover housing and food for a couple of months or more. The problem will be that he is not stable enough to locate and maintain that housing on his own. So the hope will be that he actually does go to the Mental Health Center and obtain some form of housing with their assistance.

Overall, I have to say, it was good to be sitting there at Norms with my old little brother having some kind of conversation. Tony seems almost on the verge of being able to hold it together. Yet two nights ago he had been arrested. He didn’t want to tell me the details and was evasive. But it came out in bits that he was with his new “driver” “friend” somewhere in South Central. Evidently he was staying with that person at some house there along with that person’s girl friend and I don’t know who else and really don’t want to know. He indicated he had threatened them in some way and they had called the police on him. I did not push for details but what happened was something along those lines. For, you see, no matter who Tony comes in contact with, part of him becomes paranoid about those persons or persons they know or sometimes a complete stranger who is passing by. My brother then sometimes makes threatening remarks to those people and gets into trouble.

Since his release 14 days ago, he seems to cycle about every 24 to 48 hours, having a manic phase where he becomes belligerent and verbally threatening to strangers or even friends by email or phone or in person.

He has sometimes stated that he was taking Seroquel before his release 14 days ago. Other times he insists he has been off meds entirely for 18 months or some other period of time. I have no idea what the truth is. But he is manic, has no realistic grasp of his overall situation, and per phone calls he has had with friends, has probably been drinking (even though he says he hasn’t) and/or taking some other form of drug that causes his speech to slur in those phone calls. He’s a mess. He needs help. I find it impossible to provide that help, and the system is incompetent to require him to receive help.

I do not know if I was doing the right thing by giving Tony any of his money. I was doing it more for myself to be rid of that excuse for him to contact me. And I am glad he agreed, in writing, to get an address before I hand him the rest of the money.

Frankly, I predict he will not go to the center and sign the form and not get an address. But that’s the rules. If he follows them, I’ll send him the rest of his money. If he does not follow the rules, I will not take his phone calls.

I handed him my Flip video camera so he could make some video as we drove first to my bank and then to his bank branch in Venice. I later realized he wanted to go there since he gets massages from George at Venice Beach.

I left him at his bank and drove home.

Before I left I told him that I didn’t think he was going to make it but that I hoped he would and that I have done all I can do for him.

I’m done helping Tony for now. It seems to be an impossible task.

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Update of ~April 7, 2010:

The next night Tony called asking me to come and get him. I told him I was not willing to do that. He also called our other brother who told him the same thing. It does not work. I tried that when I let him stay at my apartment in 2002, at my house in 2007. He was also not able to maintain stable behavior when he had an apartment in Korea town in late 2007. Ditto when he got stable again and lived with roommates for a few months in mid 2008 until he went bonkers, accused one of them of poisoning his food, began vandalizing things, and they kicked him out.

I realize the boundary I am drawing is a tough one, but I cannot help my brother by housing him and, frankly, when is is off his meds and manic, I don’t even like the guy anymore and do not want to live with him. I am only willing to help to the extent the system will help him or he helps himself. The system has proven itself incapable of requiring him to receive treatment, so he is on his own.

I didn’t hear from him for about three days until he called and said he had made an appointment in nine days to see a doctor but needed more money. He still did not have an address and was still manic. The money I gave him should have lasted at least a week and it was gone in three days. He said he would send me an email but has not done so.

This morning he called asking for money. His bank account is overdrawn. That means that in three weeks he has gone through money that could have lasted a couple of months or more were he to get the kind of housing he can afford on his disablity income.

So far Tony has not done what he agreed to do. He says he went back to the center and filled out the form but I have no way to be sure he did that. The other part of the agreement was that he obtain an address. Yesterday I sent my brother two emails and BCC’d several of his friends who are taking the same position I have taken. Here is the body of those emails:

Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:47:17 -0700
Subject: Call from Tony to Dennis

Tony:

For the record, you called me today, April 7 at 1:56 PM.

I am BCCing all of your friends who have been concerned for
you or been affected by your recent activity, including L.
and T.

You said your are down to $300 and been staying at hotels, most
recently the Royal Pagaoda in Chinatown.

You called from a FAX machine, which seems to be a trick
you use now. When I call back I get a FAX tone.

I told you I would deposit money tomorrow.

That was stupid since it goes against the deal we signed.

So, no, I won’t do that. You have to get an address, per the
agreement you signed.

I’ll do a three way call with LA County Mental Health Helpline to
get advice on how to get you an address.

So call me back, any time, and we will do that three-way call.

The second email sent later in the day was:

Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:15:24 -0700
Subject: Rules for Tony

Dear Tony:

Since you are off your meds and behaving manically, I don’t
know how much of this will get through to you, but I’ll try.

First, I love my brother Tony when he is stable and takes his
meds. I do not love the person my brother Tony becomes, a
paranoid vulgar bully.

But even the bully Tony I am will to help, since there is
some of my real brother inside there somewhere.

But there are rules. I think any of your friends would
say the same thing to you. I am sure L. would, since
we have spoken and agree there has to be these rules.

One rule is that you accept living for however long
it takes in a place where there is some supervision and
that you can afford on your SSDI income.

If you do not do that, experience has shown that you will
fall apart again, increase your bullying and vandalism
and end up back in jail. The experiences in Eagle Rock,
at 5TH Street, in Korea town, and on Corning Street all
prove that.

Another rule is that you obtain an address before I
give you all of your money. You have spent or lost
$6000 in three weeks since being released.

We suspect that your driver “D” may be taking advantage
or you, or that you are gambling, or that you simply
lose your money and don’t remember where.

Obviously that means you only have a couple weeks
left before you run out.

After that you will be homeless.

So when you call me, I will take your call only if you
agree to talk to the LACMH Help Line and get their advice
on how to find housing.

Otherwise, when you run out, you will be coming to me
asking for more. I cannot support you Tony. It is all
I can do to support mom at this time.

Also, just like for Steve, another rule is that you
maintain your housing for a period of 12 months in
order for me to accept you back into my life on any
kind of normal basis. You have proven unable to do that
in the past seven years.

I realize you want to live without taking meds. That
has not proven possible, outside of jail for any extended
period, in seven years. So if you don’t get back on meds,
you will be on your own. We all give up, Tony.

Hence, the final rule is that you get back on meds under
the supervision of a doctor. Seroquel or whatever works,
but you simply do not function well enough to stay out
of jail unless you take meds.

Also, I know you want to start a Web site and write.
That will only happen if you start thinking straight
and there will be time for that after you accept these
rules and get stable.

I doubt that you will accept these rules, since you
are off your meds. But I hope you will.

To repeat, the rules are these:

(1) you accept living for however long it takes in a place
where there is some supervision and that you can afford on
your SSDI income.

(2) you obtain an address before I give you all of your money.

(3) you maintain your housing for a period of 12 months in
order for me to accept you back into my life on any kind
of normal basis.

(4) you get back on meds under the supervision of a doctor

If you cannot see that these actions are necessary, you are lost
Tony. Ask your other friends if they agree. Let’s take a vote.

Dennis

Finally, this morning I had the following email exchanges with one of his oldest and best friends…

o o o

dear dennis,

i couldn’t have said it any more clearly and succinctly. tony has a big
fear that his friends will listen to what you have to say, and, will
somehow circle the wagons w/o him at the center. for example,
i would have never given him any money if i had talked to you first.

you are a big threat to his being able to manipulate any of us. i am
thankful for all that you have done for tony, i just wish you had
more to show for your efforts…don’t we all.
sincerely,

L.

o o o

thanks for your support L.

Tony called me collect this morning at 8:30 as I was
getting going but I refused the call, since I wanted
to check a couple of things first.

I have access to his bank info via telephone so I
called and found out his account is overdrawn. So
the $1000 I gave him Saturday is gone and when I told
me yesterday that he had $300 left, either he was
lying, was delusional, or got ripped off.

If he calls me again today I will do as I said
in the email. Otherwise I will tell him to go
to the mission or sleep in the street. He can
sleep at the Mission for free.

Once he gets help and follows the rules I will
supply money directly to his housing.

There is no way in hell I am going to put more
of that money into his bank account.

I’ll also offer to pay a cheap hotel directly and hand
him some food money to get by for a couple weeks while
he arranges other housing.

Dennis

o o o

dennis,

all of this sounds good. if and when he gets more stable,
you might start thinking about a dialogue with him about
a conservatorship. also, scaling back your expectations of
him might take some pressure off both of you. the fact
that he hasn’t been able to hold a job, and, may never
be able to work, might help him to see your point of view
more clearly. he needs to know EXACTLY how you are
willing to help, and on what terms. when he is stable,
housed, and, medicated effectively, you will be able to
figure out if he can be employable, and, perhaps his
awareness of his inability to work will give you more
leverage. if he becomes willing and able to work, having
him contribute in a small way to helping him support
your mom could be beneficial to him….etc

i really am thankful for all you have done.

sincerely, L.

o o o

thanks again L.

Tony just called my from a pay phone but when I started to
tell him the rules, he started to talk over me. I will only
talk with him if he will listen and I will stick to the rules
I outlined (and the offer to pay directly for a cheap hotel
and food money for a couple of weeks).

Thursday April 8, 12:06 PM:

Tony called me collect from a pay phone to say he wanted another thousand dollars cash if his money.

I began to remind him about our agreement and to inform him what the rules are. He would not listen and talked over me and said he would go to the police to levy charges against me. I hung up the phone.

Thursday April 8, 3:50 PM:

Tony called asking for his money. I told him I would pay for a place to stay after he found it. He hung up on me.

A few minutes later he came to my place. He was yelling at me, calling me a “cunt”. I called 911. I have a restraining order so Tony was in violation of that and could be arrested and taken into custody where yet another effort could be made to treat his condition. Tony had left immediately so even though the police arrived within a few minutes, he was gone by the time they were on the scene. The SMPD officiers looked around the house for him and took down my summary of recent events to add to their report. During the interview, one officer suggested, effectively, that I just give him the rest of his money as a way to no longer give him an excuse to contact me. I pointed out to the officer that such reasoning is based on an assumption that my brother is rational. I.e., that if you do this then such and such will follow because that is how rational people act. In my brother’s case, rationality is not present. Of course, the same can be said of my attempt to define “rules” for my brother to follow. There is an assumption that he will be rational enough to follow the rules. After today’s incident, I am more than ever tired of the situation and tired of trying to help. Giving him his money would surely remove that excuse for him to come to my place.

I am going to the bank now to extract all of his money in cash. If he shows up again, I am going to give it to him and tell him to go away and not come back.

Thursday April 8, 7 PM:

I went to the bank and extracted the entirety of my brother’s money, $1500 in cash and $3000 in the form of a cashiers check made out to him. He has spent or lost a total of $6500 in less than three weeks so there is no reason to believe that this additional money will last more than two weeks. But I have had it. If he shows up again I am going to give him all of that money and ask him to leave. I will call the police and tell them what happened and to be on the look out for my brother.

A few minutes ago, an old friend of his, S., called me. After Tony left my place he showed up at S.’s house asking for his old hard drive (a computer disk on which Tony has some of his old writing). Tony also told S he has no money so S. handed him $5, enough to cover bus fare back to Downtown Los Angeles, where Tony said he was headed. Tony told S. that he was going to burn my house down. I don’t think Tony will do that, but I’m not taking chances. I am letting friends know that Tony is a threat and to be careful until he is under wraps. S. said that he kept Tony on his porch and did not allow him inside. He said that Tony was talking to himself and raving on about this and that. Then Tony left. No one knows where he is.

[previous update] [final update]

Friday April 9, 2:30 AM:

At around midnight Tony showed up at his old girl friend’s house in Echo Park. She and her husband would not let him in and called the police. Tony went around to the back of their house and started to sleep on their rear balcony. Then he did some push ups. Then he went down to their basement and entered their basement office. The LAPD arrived but would not arrest him since he was determined to pose no threat to himself or others and was an old friend of the family, so to speak. They took him in their car and released him a few blocks away, with no money, in the middle of the night, telling him to not return or he would be arrested.

I witnessed this by phone and spoke with the officers, urging them to arrest him on any charge, such as trespassing, so that he could be taken in and evaluated and receive treatment. I even called SMPD and tried to get them to go out and arrest him based on the earlier incident at my place. None of this had any effect. My heart goes out to my brother.

His ex and I agreed to call each other in the morning and strategize as to how to handle this when he shows up again.

Friday April 9, 9 AM:

My brother showed up at my place at 6AM.

I think he had walked 12 miles barefoot from Echo Park or maybe the LAPD brought him here. Maybe I will tell the full story another time maybe I won’t because right now I am just sad.

He was dirty and was in tears so I let him take a bath and sleep on my floor while I called the police who then came and arrested him for having violated my restraining order. Somewhere in my brothers mind he wants help but he won’t ask for it. Maybe this was his way to ask for help. I don’t know and I didn’t know what else to do.

Part of me knows that he just wanted a place to sleep and a friend, something he has had so little of for years now. He just wanted to be my brother and deep inside I so much just want to be his brother like we were so long ago. But that ignores the problem. He refuses to take meds or to get treatment and accept help from professionals. He is manic, has a repeated pattern of showing no ability to survive on his own, deteriorates once he is left on his own has a pattern of degrading to the point that he harasses people and vandalizes objects. I am a problem solver and never give up, but this time did. I can’t solve this problem. It seems hopeless. It hurts.

[previous update]

Today, May 4, 2010, is my brother’s birthday. He is 53 years old. He is in jail because he is mentally ill.

A process for placing my brother under a conservatorship has begun. Dr. Eide, director of the LA County Jail Mental Health Clinical Program, and social worker Esmeralda Hernandez who is handling my brother’s case, are going to submit an application to the California State Public Guardian. I have provided them with documentation of Tony’s history, details of past cases, and a summary of all of the events in his life of the past few years.

I am not optimistic that the conservatorship will go through. Tony will fight it. I can’t blame him. But he is not able to make the right decisions for his own life, so I hope this conservatorship will succeed.

According to the LA County Sheriff’s Web site, there are two cases pending against my brother: the restraining order violation described above and a more serious felony vandalism case. I do not know any details about the vandalism case.

And I don’t know if the process of obtaining the conservatorship will be somehow in conflict with the criminal case against him.

Each morning, each day, once or twice, my brother crosses my mind and I feel a sense of loss and I grieve a little. Each day. In time, I will go for days without thinking about him, as he sits in jail, as the system turns him into a “criminal”.

This closes out this chapter of Tony’s history, as we wait for the courts to rule on the conservatorship and the criminal cases.

[top] [ch.1] [ch.2] [ch.3] [ch.4] [ch.5] [ch.6] [ch.7] [ch.8]

Chapter 4 in a series on mental illness.

[bottom] [ch.1] [ch.2] [ch.3] [ch.4] [ch.5] [ch.6] [ch.7] [ch.8]

It is starting all over again. It’s like a bad dream. It is defeating. I attended my brother’s court hearing today and want to comment on how I feel. How the system is broken.

[Note: Elsewhere see excerpt’s of Tony Allard’s writing about his own mental illness .]

The entire morning was for servicing the homeless. The judge, who I was told would not be his trial judge, seemed to be acting more as a clerk, issuing edicts to the litany of homeless defendants who were parading through the court this morning prior to my brother’s appearance. His decisions were delivered in a monotone script-like sequence of statements. He seldom looked up to see who he was issuing his edicts to.

The judge and clerks and attorneys all dressed in nice suits. The defendants were all disheveled in prison garb or tatters, hair unkempt, one being told that she could no longer sleep near the California Incline.

Then it was my brother’s turn.

The system is converting my brother, who suffers from mental illness, into a criminal. And, surely in my brother’s mind, pitting him against me and me against him.

This morning, he refused to enter the court room since I was there. So his public defender pleaded not guilty on his behalf to his having violated a restraining order I have filed against him.

His next court date is a pre-trial hearing on September 29, three weeks from now.

So, after having just been released from six months in jail after being sentenced to time served on a charge of assault and battery for what was really being delusional, grabbing a woman’s purse, throwing it on the ground and walking away, one week later he is back in jail and awaiting another trial.

He is back through the revolving door.

The system is broken. It presupposes that my brother is able to make his own decisions in his interest. He is not able to do that.

During his one week of “freedom” he was homeless. He showed up at midnight at an ex-girl friend and was asked to leave. He spent one night sleeping in the back of a pick up truck of an old friend who called the police on him. He went barefoot after throwing away the shoes I had given him, and evidently spent all of his money I had returned to him, most likely gambling it away.

During all his recent times in courts his mental illness was not considered and, in jail, barely, if at all, treated. He is kept isolation most of the time and given some meds, which he claims he does not take. It must be torture for him, that lonliness.

The system is broken. In most respects he is treated legally as a threat to society and a criminal or suspect and not as a person with a severe health problem requiring treatment.

It is pathetic. Here in America. Where we spend $1 Trillion per year more then necessary to enrich health insurance company executives and stock holders and operate a provably inefficient system.

Do you wonder why I or other friend’s of my brother do not offer him housing? It is because he is acting like a raving maniac. We have all been pushed to the brink. We have lives of our own to deal with. Life becomes intolerable when Tony is raging against everything and everyone. I am practically the only person left trying to get him some help and the system will not let me do that since it imputes rationality to Tony and expects him to ask for help. So, another homeless mentally ill person is the result.

The hearing today was for a violation of my restraining order issued last March after my brother had made threatening remarks about our mother’s care givers. I do not believe he will carry through on the threats but I cannot take a chance since his illness makes him irrational. And, by having the restraining order, I have one legal way to make the system take him into custody, in the hope that will lead to his getting treatment.

But that hope too seems futile.

I went to the hearing equipped with a letter for the judge and attorneys. The Public Defender, Kimberley Green accepted my letter. The DA did not seem very interested in it and successfully argued that my brother remain in custody by citing my brother’s growing record of arrests and convictions, not mentioning his mental illness. The public defender did tell the judge that mental illness was an issue. The judge isn’t the judge who will hear the case, so there was no point in giving the letter to him.

The letter was a summary of my bother’s history and a recommendation, really just an expression of hope, that he be treated again at Harbor UCLA hospital, where the staff is willing to pursue a conservatorship.

Three weeks from now I will attend his next hearing and give the letter to the trial judge, if that is permitted. Maybe it won’t be permitted. I may not have a legal right to help my brother.

And I am tired, so tired of this.

One ray of hope for my brother, not that he would view it that way, is based on a phone call I received from Jose Colon, who was his public defender in the purse grabbing case. Mr. Colon seemed to indicate to me that if my brother were conserved, the state appointed guardian would have the legal ability to choose to house my brother in a lock down facility were that necessary. At this point, after twenty three years of this, and with my brother increasingly unwilling to take his meds, that seems like the only hope there may be for him to survive.

[ story continued: excerpt’s of Tony Allard’s writing about his own mental illness .]

[top] [ch.1] [ch.2] [ch.3] [ch.4] [ch.5] [ch.6] [ch.7] [ch.8]

Chapter 3 in a series on mental illness.

[bottom] [ch.1] [ch.2] [ch.3] [ch.4] [ch.5] [ch.6] [ch.7] [ch.8]

The system is brutal. The courts and the laws support the view that mentally ill people should be free to suffer from their illness and not receive treatment. The entire trial of my brother was a piece of theater with the judge, lawyers, witnesses, and jury all playing their part in a farcical charade. The system failed.

The following video interview with my brother shows him in the state he was one day after being released from jail.

[Note: Elsewhere see excerpts of Tony Allard’s writing about his own mental illness .]

Tony was released Sunday. I saw him Monday. Here is the story…

During my bothers trial, the fact of his mental illness was not mentioned. There was no testimony about his history of mental illness and no information provided to the jury about his condition. Instead, the public defender, Jose Colon, chose to treat the case by defending against the charge of robbery, arguing that there was no intent to deprive the victim of property. The judge had issued instructions that my brother could be found guilty on lesser charges and Jose Colon admitted to the jury that those lesser charges could apply to the act committed.

In the end, the jury agreed.

My brother was found not guilty on the charge of felony robbery but found guilty on two lesser charges of misdemeanor assault and battery. The verdicts were rendered on Friday, August 28, 2009 at about 11 AM.

After the jury was excused, the defense agreed to immediate sentencing.

My brother was sentenced to six months time served.

The recommendation I had prepared for the judge was a moot point now. I never had a chance to provide that letter to the judge. It would have asked her to consider his mental illness in deciding on a sentence and asked that, some how, some way, my brother be put into a treatment program to receive care for his illness. Nothing in my letter, none of his history of mental illness, was so much as mentioned during the trial.

So Tony was a free man. He is back on the street. However, it took two days for the prison system to release him. He wasn’t actually released until yesterday, Sunday, about 48 hours after being found not guilty and sentenced to time served.

About an hour ago he showed up at my home, bare foot, dirty, and I believe somewhat manic. He asked if he could take a bath. He’s doing that now as I write. I just wanted to get my thoughts down as I decide how to proceed in my relationship with my brother.

He has some money that I have kept for him and will give back to him. But I am not going to provide housing for him. I can’t do that anymore, at least not this time, not now, until, somehow, he proves himself able to remain stable and not go off his meds and become the obnoxious nuisance he can be when off his meds.

I am willing to take him to a shelter or drive him to a hotel or room somewhere.

He needs some kind of supervised environment but he’s not going to get it from the system and I can’t provide it. I’ve tried before and it doesn’t work.

Tony’s getting out of the bath. I am making some coffee and am going to talk with him now.

…

After his bath he also washed his clothes, the only ones he has, using my washing machine and dryer. The conversation I had with him is not your normal kind of conversation. My brother tends to free associate during conversations and does what I believe is jump from thought to thought and remain at a shallow level of understanding of whatever topic is being discussed. He has a good memory for names, dates, and events mixed with his delusional interpretation of what goes on his life.

I asked why it had taken two days after he was found not guilty for the jail to release him from custody. He told me that the jail was understaffed since many sheriffs were called away to help evacuate neighborhoods near the La Canada brush fire raging near by. But inmates who are in the psych ward have to be given an exit interview before being released. So it took two days for the release process to occur.

While we waited for his clothes to dry in my dryer, he went out into my yard to smoke a cigarette. I took that time to talk a bit with him then went to the bank to get about half of his money I had held for him. Part of me did not want to give him money that he may as likely gamble away. But part of me wants nothing more to do with him and to just tell him “here, take your money, go away, I can’t see you any more.”.

I asked him if I could interview him on video and he consented. I recorded two video interviews with him. I have placed the shorter of the two interviews with my brother on YouTube. You could entitle the video “Everyone is a Mason”, since my brother labels many of the people he comes in contact with as Masons, some sect he believes controls the world and, in particular, has been involved in monitoring his thoughts. Or maybe its not the Masons, per se, that monitor his thoughts according to him. But he told me that some dental work he had done over twenty years ago resulted in implants in his mouth that are used to monitor his thoughts and transmit them. For example, he believes that one time when in jail, his thoughts were monitored and retransmitted over the public address system. He told me that today, his first full day in freedom after being found not guilty of robbery and guilty of assault for an act he did in snatching a woman’s purse when, in fact, the act was that of a mentally ill person who had been off his antipsychotic medicine and was delusional. He told me that the Armenian women whose purse he grabbed is a mason. I asked him how he could tell that was the case at the time he saw her at the bus stop before he grabbed her purse. He responded that it became evident from her testimony in court. I attended the entire trial and there was at no time anything in her testimony other than a simple description of a man accosting her and physically wresting her purse away from her and making her afraid. Tony told me that her testimony in court confirmed what he has intuited at the bus stop. I have this all on video and plan to replay it for Tony at some point in the future if and when he is more stable to see if it will in any way enable him to reflect on his own delusional behavior.

He talked of his girl friend of twenty five years ago, who lives in Paris, and how he spoke with her by phone and plans to visit her. He talked of his more recent girl friend who he was with for seven years during the 1990s and how she had “saved his life.” Tony, so lonely now, so unable to see his condition and want the help he needs to be able to survive.

In brief, my brother, who showed up this morning bare foot and dirty, has just spent six months in L.A. County Twin Towers Correctional Facility and been convicted of assault and battery for an act that was done while off his meds and delusional. Two full weeks of court time were spent involving a judge, public defender, deputy district attorney, court clerk, court secretary, forty pre-trial jurors of which fourteen were selected as jurors and two alternates, and various other court house staff, and the police, two of whom took a half day for testimony. None of this effort and expense has helped my brother or helped society in any way. It may conform to Scientology and arch conservative and other selfish stupid people’s views of how society should deal with mental illness, but it represents a total failure of reason and of our system.

Tony’s pattern is likely to continue. After interviewing him, I asked him to leave and not come back for some time, because I cannot help him and do not want me or people I know to become the next victims of his delusions. I even refused to answer questions he had about some of my friends when he tried to remember their names or where-abouts or activities. I think he is just trying to include them into his delusional framework so I protect them and myself by not giving him that information.

I provided him with his now cleaned clothing and also some shoes I had purchased for him during his court appearance (although the court sheriffs did not let him wear the shoes in court — he had to just use his jail sandals). At least now he has shoes and clean socks.

I completed the video interview. It went on for about 45 minutes. By the end I was convinced Tony is either not taking his medicine or it is not the right medicine. At times he states he is taking 20mg of Aripiprazole (generic for the product marketed as Abilify). Abilify is not abilitating my bother, no matter how clever the name or how much money the pharmaceutical company is making selling it under that name. Or maybe, as my bother claims in the interview, he was just “cheeking” his meds and not really taking them during his stay in the TTCF psychiatric ward.

We had talked about going to have lunch. But after the interview I was no longer in the mood to be with my brother. It was late in the afternoon by then and I have a day of work ahead of me yet to do. Intuitively Tony knew it was time to go.

Then Tony reached out to hug me before leaving. I was startled at first, not sure what motion he was making. Then I hugged him. I think he gets very few hugs in his life these days.

It is a sad fact that he is likely to remain or become more delusional, go off his meds if he is not already off them, and get into trouble with the law again. I know he does not want to go back to jail. But his mind is not well and, unless somehow he takes and continues to take antipsychotic medicine, he will surely slip up and act in some way that leads back to that horrible environment in spite of it all.

If the pattern repeats, as it surely will, Tony will commit some act of vandelism or harass someone and end up back in the jail system. In the mean time he is likely to gamble away his money and end up homeless.

I feel defeated. Like everything is back to square zero. No progress has been made. I am sad for my brother, who is lost in his self-created world, utterly unable to perceive reality and think rationally.

The court system and, at a larger level, the entire legal and medical apparatus of our society, seems utterly unable to provide the correct measures to help both my brother and society cope with the mental illness that afflicts him and, in very real sense, all of us. The situation is absurd.

UPDATE (three days later, September 2, 2009): Tony hauled in again for observation

Tony showed up at my place this morning. I had come back from breakfast to meet my Spanish tutor, who had just arrived. Tony was also sitting out on my deck. He was basically off his rocker. Any attempt at rational conversation with him was futile as his responses were a litany of vituperative vitriol against everyone he knows and doesn’t know. I told him that I could not help him and asked him to leave. There was nothing I could do for him. Or was there?

I have a restraining order for him on file from earlier in the year when he made verbal threats against our elderly mother’s care givers (she lives in an assisted living home in another town). I told Tony about the restraining order and that I could use that to have him arrested. I did not wish to do that but it could be a measure of last resort. He replied that I should call the police. I think he wanted me to call the police. It was his way of asking for help.

I called the Santa Monica police homeless unit. Tony went out to the front of the house and at first I thought he was leaving. Instead, he was pacing up and down on the sidewalk, talking to himself. I went out to talk with him and gave him some water, which he accepted. I asked him where he slept the previous night and he said he hadn’t slept. I asked him where his shoes were and he said they didn’t fit so he threw them away. He used very ugly language as he raved about some neighbors who are gay and used clang speech such as saying “Djew know that” to mean “Did you know that” combined with the word “Jew” expressing his antisemitic complex. That is just one example of a long string of incoherent speech he uttered, combined with some coherent replies such as when I said I would get him some more water, he replied “OK”.

It was as if he wanted to be taken to a hospital. He said more than one time, “I don’t want to do this any more” or something to that effect.

Three policemen arrived about twenty minutes later. They handcuffed him but were gentle in their questioning, asking him if he wanted to hurt himself. “No” he replied. And if he wanted to hurt anyone else. He replied, “No, not anymore than I hurt.”

I briefed the officers on his recent and past history. Each time officers are involved with Tony, it is a new cast of characters and they are starting from square zero. However, they suggested they take him to Harbor UCLA, which was good, since that is where he received care in January. The staff there is familiar with Tony and they had started a process of obtaining a conservatorship for Tony before the Mental Health Court threw him back out on the street. Maybe this time the court will be wiser. This is assuming they have the resources to hold him and agree to proceed with that process again. I have already left a message with the staff expressing my hope they will do so and that I will provide whatever information is needed to assist with that process.

UPDATE (September 3, 2009): My wake up call

I got a call early this morning from Paul, an old friend of Tony..

He found Tony sleeping in the back of his pick up truck this morning.
That’s right. Tony must not have been admitted by UCLA Harbor hospital yesterday, where he had been taken by the Santa Monica police.

Tony “presents” well. The ER must have determined he was not sufficiently crazy to be admitted to their psych ward.

Paul is concerned about his 90 year old parents and about his apartment building, thinking Tony will show up at one of those places. From talking with Paul it is clear to me that he likes Tony but has grown weary of Tony. Paul mentioned that when he saw Tony there earlier in the year he had considered getting his gun out of its box. And, he keeps a baseball bat next to his door. So, yes, he likes the sane Tony, but he is very very tired of Tony’s crazy behavior.

I advised Paul to call the Van Nuys police and ask them to call me so I can give them more background.

I called Harbor UCLA hospital and was transferred to someone who I think works in the ER. She was not permitted to give me any information about anyone. The gal I was talking to said it was a “patients rights” issue. I mentioned that really it was giving rights to the mental illness and not to the patient. She did not understand. You would think someone who works with the mentally ill would understand that point.

Anyway, I told her not to take this personally. And I asked if there was some way I could pre-brief the ER about my brother. He’ll be back. They’ll see him again. He’s been there several times in his life. Matt Wells, social worker in the psych ward, *wants* Tony to be admitted.

She told me I’d have to talk with someone there when Tony was already there.

Later I will try to call the ER again and speak with the attending physician. Good luck Dennis.

I then called Matt Wells, the social worker in the psych ward of Harbor UCLA. He is a very good guy. Matt told me that the ER is a different unit than the psych ward and that the ER will often not admit someone. The goal of the ER is to not admit people. They are swamped so to some extent that is understandable.

But Matt wants to see Tony back there so we can continue to pursue the conservatorship and get him treatment he needs. I know Matt by now and in January had talked at length with him during Tony’s stay there. Matt will help. We just need to get Tony into Harbor UCLA.

I asked Matt if he could have a word with the ER intake. He said it is not easy. It’s really a different world, but that he will talk to some techs he knows. They can informally put the word out.

Next time Tony goes to Harbor I am going to drive down there myself and provide information to the intake doctors.

UPDATE (September 4, 2009): Tony shows up and is arrested

I got an early start today at 7AM, trying to have a normal day of work.

At about 10 AM I hear Tony shouting my name. “Dennis, I want the rest of my money back, you fag thief”, or some such. I am not gay so am not sure why Tony is calling me a fag. I think he is calling people fags now instead of masons, or maybe both. Anyway, he was screaming loudly although staying toward the front of my deck and not approaching me.

I call 911. I am trying to talk to Tony and the 911 operator at the same time so the operator asks me to go back inside so he can hear me. I ask if someone is rolling and the answer is yes someone is already there. I look out and see that a SMPD motorcycle cop has arrived and taken Tony out to the front street. Within a few minutes an armada of Santa Monica police vehicles is out in front of my place. A large SUV and two patrol cars. I walk out to the street and talk with officier Rinski who had taken Tony to Harbor two days earlier. Tim Jackman, chief of police is on the scene. I know him from my volunteer work with a neighborhood association. Officer Rynski informs me that someone fitting Tony’s description had approached a doctor at St. John’s hospital earlier that morning and at arms length picked the doctor up by his shirt and lifted him off the ground. The doctor, who is about my size (six feet, 175 pounds) was not hurt but had felt helpless. Assuming it was my brother accosting the doctor, this is the first time I have known my brother to be physically violent. He’s getting worse. This is not good. It never was good.

I make a case to officer Rynski to take Tony to Harbor, but now, later, on second thought, why bother? First of all, Tony was arrested this morning for violating a restraining order I have on him. That is different than just being hauled in for a psychiatric evaluation. And Harbor UCLA proved itself inadequate to access the situation and does not even talk to its own psych ward about admission, so the decision by Rynski to take Tony into custody in Santa Monica makes sense.

Tony bumped things a notch up if he was violent this morning. I will continue to contact the SMPD liaison officers and do what I can to see that Tony does not cycle through another useless criminal trial in lieu of getting placed into some kind of treatment program.

UPDATE (September 5, 2009): Tony in S.M. Jail awaiting hearing on Wednesday

I called the SMPD this morning, who informed me that Tony is being held in the Santa Monica jail awaiting a hearing next Tuesday (but a police web site indicates Wednesday).

I think the hearing will be for violating my restraining order.

The court date and address on the web site is shown as:

Next Court Date: 09/09/2009
Next Court Time: 0830
Court Name: LAX LA MUNI COURT DIV 145
Court Address: 11701 S. LA CIENEGA BLVD.
Court City: LOS ANGELESUPT

So, now what?

Does the system just recycle my brother once again through the jail?

Is it my responsibility to advocate for my brother?

If not me, who? He won’t advocate for himself.

The system does everything in its power to prevent treating him and even makes it difficult for me, the surrogate advocate, to obtain information or to provide information.

[ story continued: https://oceanpark.com/blog/2009/09/defeated-by-the-revolving-door/ ]

[Note: Elsewhere see excerpt’s of Tony Allard’s writing about his own mental illness .]

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Chapter 2 in a series on mental illness.

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[Note: this article includes excerpts of Tony Allard’s writing about his own mental illness.]

Today, in court, Tony was deemed competent to stand trial. So, even though he was delusional when he took a woman’s purse, threw it to the ground and walked off without out taking anything or harming anyone, next Tuesday, August 23, 2009, he goes on trial on a charge of felony robbery. He faces a sentence of up to 17 years in prison, since he has one strike on his record for a prior conviction of stalking. In short, although what my brother and society needs, is for him to be treated for a mental illness, he may end up serving time in prison.

Tony, who was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic twenty three years ago, refused to agree that he was mentally ill for the first twenty of those years.  In recent years he was able to gain explicit “insight” (as it is called) into his condition.  Yet, when he goes off his medications, he seems to lapse into a state of delusion and resents me for using those words to describe his condition.  And I can’t say that I blame him.  Although he has a condition that makes him different than “normal” people, it also causes him to be more bluntly honest about the world and what he sees as wrong in the world than most normal people ever dare to be.  I have learned much from his blunt honesty in those periods.

When Tony is on his meds, he seems as normal as you and I. Many of his friends think he is one of the most brilliant people they know. They find his presence enjoyable. He is insightful, writes and speaks articulately and insightfully, and is fun to be around. He is a good video editor and has produced very creative works. He has worked in Hollywood as a machinist for our brother Eric, who does special effects. Yet Eric will no longer hire him in recent years since Tony becomes paranoid and does not fit in at the work place.

Because Tony goes off his meds, his condition prevents him from fitting into society or maintaining a steady job in spite of his ardent desire to be normal and have a job and be part of what normal people do.  It is a contradiction.  His condition is not “normal” and his behavior becomes obnoxious. He comes to believe he is well and goes off his medications. Yet his desire to be normal is prevented by his going off his medication.

He has never hurt anyone physically but he is six foot four, weighs 230 pounds, and goes into raging tirades so can be very intimidating. He has targeted many individuals, including some very well known personalities (including Blase Bonpane, Michael Miner, Susan Block, and Steven Spielberg’s mother) and numerous other people, including me, our 91 year old mother’s care givers, and some of his friends.  He has delusions about people that he expresses in writing or in phone calls to the point that people take out restraining order against him.  In one case, he made so many harassing phone calls to a certain personality’s office that they filed charges of stalking which resulted in a felony conviction.  Tony ended up spending nearly two years at Atascadero State Mental Hospital.  That hospital stay helped him.  Upon leaving the hospital he was very stable, very rational, and appeared to many as if he had been “cured”.  Were you to meet him you would think he was a totally normal highly intelligent person and quite likable.  His release was some three years ago.

Unfortunately, his “cure” was short lived.  Twice since his release he went off his meds and ended up being kicked out of his living place.  First time from a one bedroom apartment where he was living on his own in Korea town, then the next time from an apartment where his roommates ended up having to lock him out to retain their own sanity.  It was after this most recent eviction that he became homeless and committed the alleged crime for which he will go on trial next week.

I have been attending the pre-trial hearings.  In a way, I, his brother, have become his case manager.  I will report here on the trial when it happens next week.  In the meantime, I had wanted to provide a letter to the judge in the trial, Teri Schwartz. However, I learned from the public defender, Jose Colon, that the judge will not accept information from sources outside the context of the trail, i.e. not from either the public defender or the district attorney.  The purpose of my letter is to present the point of view that Tony had a mental illness and that the charge of robbery and a subsequent incarceration is not a good substitute for the medical treatment he requires.  Since it was not possible to provide the letter to the court at this time, I am choosing to publish it here in a public forum.  I will let it speak for itself.

Re: Case GA07600501

Honorable Teri Schwartz
Pasadena Superior Court
Pasadena, CA

Dear Judge Schwartz:

I am the brother of George Anthony Allard, Tony to his friends, who has a mental illness yet is in your court on a charge of felony robbery for an act that any normal person would not describe as robbery. While delusional, he snatched an old ladies purse, threw it to the ground and walked away. For this act he is facing up to 17 years in prison.

Tony was first diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia in 1985. Since you are the presiding judge in his case on a felony charge of robbery, I write to bring to your attention facts and history that should bear upon the case and for which I am in the best position to provide relevant details, since I have been acting as his de facto case manager in recent years.

Whatever the letter of the law, the interest of justice is surely served by bringing facts and positions to light that would otherwise remain unknown. I have been witness to legal proceedings involving my brother for many years. So, although I am aware, as a lay person, that a system of prosecution and defense exists to convey information to the court, I feel compelled to provide information and a point of view often not adequately considered in trials where mental illness is, or should be, a predominant factor.

My brother Tony faces a second strike felony conviction of robbery. Yet at the time of the alleged crime he was delusional. Tony had gone off his meds four months prior to the alleged robbery, resulting in a number of 5150s and a 5250 stay at Harbor UCLA Psychiatric ward. I had been discussing Tony’s condition in detail with social worker Matt Wells and Dr. Walker of Harbor UCLA and exploring the idea of placing Tony under a state controlled conservatorship. The preliminary steps toward a conservatorship were starting to fall into place. Then, on February 13, 2009, Judge Melissa Widdifield of the Los Angeles Mental Health Court found “for” Tony and denied a request by the psychiatrists and social workers at Harbor UCLA to keep him for further observation. Tony was, ipso facto, released, i.e. put back out on the street. He was quite delusional at the time. He had told me a few days before that he was, indeed, an agent working for the FBI. Upon his release to “freedom”, he immediately proceeded to Hollywood Park race track where he gambled away whatever money he had and remained homeless. The alleged robbery in Glendale occurred nine days later, on February 22.

There are times when Tony is taking his meds and is highly functional. There are times where he is just recently back on them or a new medicine and is able to “present well”, which was the case before the Mental Health Court and very possibly before your court. And there are times where he is off his meds and is completely delusional. When in a functional state, he has written about his own condition and history.

The following excerpts from my brother Tony Allard’s writings are illuminating…

I thought that I was world famous, and that everybody in the hospital, doctors, nurses, and patients alike, were all talking about me all of the time. This was and is not unusual for me, at that time, and even to some extent to this day, for when I am or have been at work or at play on the outside, I have and have had similar delusions. Everybody, wherever I go, is or was preoccupied with me. Glorious me. Oh the delusion. It is hard for me to even think about those days anymore, when the delusions where as concrete as a freeway overpass, but now that I have been stabilized on meds for several years it is not the same. However, the delusions are never that far from my consciousness. Even to this day, whether I’m on the bus or in a restaurant, in a crowded theater or in traffic driving on the street, I often have delusions that people nearby are talking about me in a tangential way. I don’t think I’ll ever really get beyond it, it’s so deeply ingrained in my consciousness, but I can hope, and I can and must and do just ignore those thoughts. What else can I do, after all, because I cannot just stop my thinking processes. I have a constant inner dialogue, like everybody else, only mine is skewed with some elements of fantasy that make it scary sometimes to just be me. Because intermingled with those delusions that people are talking about me, I sometimes also think that they are saying that I will be killed by so and so, an old friend of mine or someone else, or that I will end up committing suicide. These thoughts are not my own and they are not somebody else’s. I don’t know where they are from, but I do know that the medication that I am on now, Risperdal, make such thoughts much less prevalent in my thinking. But they are always there. I guess it’s probably like someone who has been raped or has been through a war zone and has Post Traumatic Stress syndrome. I don’t know, but I don’t like it, and I only know that I have to live with it for now, and hope that some day these thoughts just fade away and stop coming back. But after more than 20 years, I doubt that they will ever go away completely. It is probably a lot like an insomniac who, despite his best efforts and the best medications, every night must face the same dilemma of going to sleep. Only in my case, it’s not sleep that won’t come, it’s just simple peace of mind.

o o o

I would have constant delusions while working or off of work about people “talking about me” and I would just have to ignore my ears. Sometimes, I just resorted to wearing foam ear plugs so that I couldn’t hear conversations near me second hand and suffer the fears that resulted from my psychotic misinterpretations of what people were saying. .I don’t know how common it is for bi-polar patients to have such delusions, but I had them. I was diagnosed at that point as Psychotic Disorder NOS (Not Otherwise Specified). That had come after years of a Paranoid Schizophrenic diagnosis, but I believe that my Psychiatrist, Thomas Carter, thought that I was too high functioning to be considered truly Schizophrenic. Whatever it was, it wasn’t fun. My social life was still somewhat active, and I would, as I’ve said, just ignore my aberrant thoughts and pretend that everything was fine. Many people, from that time of my life, have told me that I must be a very good liar, because it was never apparent to those friends and acquaintances that I was having constant delusions during that period. Of course you learn to lie when you are mentally ill, because if you don’t, you cannot function in a “normal” life.

o o o

At some point around New Years Day, 2004, I decided again to stop taking my meds. As I rationalized it, I was not drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana, or taking any other drugs, and besides, as is common among mentally ill people, I was feeling fine because I was on Risperdal and consequently deluded myself into believing that I was no longer mentally ill. (If I were to say the one biggest problems, for me at least, and I know for many other if not most of the mentally ill, is coming to terms with the fact that your illness is permanent and requires lifelong treatment with psychotropic medication.) Consequently, my mental condition started to deteriorate rapidly. I started to suspect people were “talking about me” again and had several persistent delusions relating to some old acquaintances and my belief that I was a Special Agent for the FBI. My brother Dennis, who had seen me deteriorate in a similar manner several times in the past, noticed my deterioration, but I lied to him and assured him that I was still taking my meds.

 

The above excerpts indicate not only an ability on the part of my brother to be rational and write coherently, in sharp contrast to much of his writings and poems in a large opus of documents I have compiled (and can make available to the court), they also constitute an admission by Tony that he lies to hide his illness or being off his meds.

Tony may be “competent to stand trial”. But beware. The mental illness he is afflicted with is, to use an analogy, like a computer virus that takes over a computer. Except in this case, it is a form of consciousness that takes over a host human being’s psychology and thought processes. The behavior of the host victim may seem on the surface to be normal and rational at some standard of competency. Yet, since the virus is not my brother, it follows the standard cannot apply. There is no jurisprudence of which I am aware that applies. If that is true, that leaves the court in a bit of a bind. It is like a body snatcher in the movie “Invasion of the body snatchers”. There is no sense that the pronouns “he” or “him” or even the name “Tony” refers to my brother at the those times that the body snatcher has control. Worse, the virus acts in a way to defend its existence, duping its host victim into experiencing things that are not happening (delusions) and causing the host to claim to be sane, duping his friends, relatives, his lawyers, and the entire judicial system including you yourself, your honor, with all due respect.

I’ve seen this happen before and it is happening again. It is the pitiable state of affairs whereby the police, judicial, and prison system in California are acting in lieu of medical treatment for a medical condition and engaging in a charade following a script of rules that do not or should not apply.

Recommendation:

What can be done to better the situation in a just manner? In my opinion, a just solution would involve imposing (not “offering”) a supervised treatment program and living situation on my brother, a kind of probation with parole, that provides him with the ability to seek employment while further imposing the condition that if he violates various conditions of his parole, such as going off his meds or committing unlawful acts, he would be subject to incarceration at a secure institution such as Atascadero State Hospital. I believe that my brother would be responsive to such a solution even if he is not capable of agreeing to such treatment voluntarily. The result would be just, practical, cost effective, and in some cases ultimately rehabilitating. I urge the court to consider this course of action if at all legally possible.

Dennis G. Allard
Santa Monica, CA
August 14, 2009

[ story continued: https://oceanpark.com/blog/2009/08/not-guilty-so-now-what/ ]

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