I’m sure I will periodically post excerpts from my memoir, Noah’s Schizophrenia, but the incident I’m about to recount wasn’t included in the book. It just surfaced from the memory banks as I lay awake in bed this morning. It’s a worthy illustration of what kind of behavior falls under the category, “a hospital run by the patients.”  Unfortunately, I have many of these stories, alarming behavior by mental healthcare providers, which no one ever seems to be held accountable for.

Back in 2013 while waiting for a return flight to L.A. at the Seattle airport, I got a phone call from the Director of a Board and Care my son was living at in Pasadena, California. Dwayne (not his real name) told me the he had just given a 30-day eviction notice to my son. For what?  He then gave me some convoluted statement about how they “couldn’t treat my son in the manner in which they require of residents, if he was not medication-compliant.”  Now, my son had never refused to take his medication, so this all came as a surprise.  When I asked point blank if my son was not taking his medication, Dwayne then slow- dripped a little more information. He told me that the pharmacy they contract with would no longer be refilling my son’s prescriptions and therefore, (by no fault of my son’s) he would not satisfy the requirement to be medication-compliant!

Now, if this was really the case, why wait until the 11th hour to bring this to my attention? Why not work with another pharmacy?  I then asked the obvious question, “Why is the pharmacy refusing to refill his prescriptions?” Dwayne slow-dripped another detail.  It seems that there was a long-overdue co-pay for the medications not yet paid.  I told Dwayne I had no idea that the medications were not 100% covered by his insurance.  I asked for the phone number of the pharmacy and called them immediately. It was then that the pharmacy informed me they had been sending monthly invoices to the Board and Care directly. Aha!  Well, I paid the over-due bill with a credit card right on the phone and the pharmacy said they would resume refilling the prescription; I instructed them to bill me directly from now on.

I called Dwayne back and asked him why he never informed me that the pharmacy was sending invoices for the co-pay to the Board and Care. I asked him point blank if he had been receiving the bills. Silence.  Eventually, he said yes.  Well, where are those invoices?  Shoved in some desk drawer? Thrown away?  Why didn’t he forward the bills to me? Why didn’t he tell the pharmacy to bill me directly from the beginning? Why didn’t he call me and ask me to contact the pharmacy to switch the billing address or tell me that he has invoice statements for me to pick up?

I asked these questions numerous times while there was dead silence on the phone. I was speaking to a man who was at least my age or older, who had run Board and Cares for many years and he was not a newbie staff member.  Dwayne had no explanation for his negligence.

So, I pointed out that it was HE who created this problem. I demanded that he admit this drama was all his fault and that he should have assisted in arranging for the pharmacy to have a direct relationship with me, to keep the account in good standing. After more than twenty minutes on the phone, I finally got an apology out of Dwayne and he promised to drop the eviction notice on my son.

What was the cause of this behavior? Stupidity and incompetence? Conscious evil intent? An intentional plan to try to get my son removed from his Board and Care?  At the time, my son was not doing anything which would constitute criteria for eviction, so it really was shocking that this even occurred.

And to think, these are the providers entrusted to take care of our seriously disabled loved ones who are not able to come to their own defense, handle their own finances, or even know such incompetence is taking place, undermining their very stability in having a place to live.

About six months later, Dwayne informed me that my son was smoking at the facility in an area not designated for smoking.  So now he had his excuse to evict. And this was the beginning of a very bad downward trajectory which led to my son’s homelessness two years later.

Kartar Diamond is a mental illness advocate and author of Noah’s Schizophrenia: A Mother’s Search for Truth