MIAMI (CBS4) – Across the nation, mental illness is page
one.
The man known as the Navy Yard shooter had reportedly
complained of hearing messages that he claimed led him to kill.
Just weeks later, a Connecticut mother was said to believe
the President was trying to communicate with her. She made her way to the
nation’s capital and after driving erratically toward the White House, she was
shot and killed by police.
It’s mayhem all too personal for some South Florida
families.
“He held onto me. He was asking me, ‘Why did I want to shoot
him, did I have a gun?’”
A South Florida mother shared her families personal
nightmare with CBS 4 news, desperate to get him help. She explained that her
son believed her iPhone was actually a gun.
“I somehow got out of his grasp and ran out the door and
called the cops,” she told CBS 4 news.
Her story is one of heartbreak and fear for this mother and
her family.
Alarms began when one of her sons realized that his brother
was taping up the windows in his room to block out messages he reportedly
thought were being transmitted to his brain. He also covered light fixtures and
smoke alarms thinking he was being watched. According to his brother, ”he believes
there are cameras in there. He thinks the dogs two eyes have camera as well.”
The family, whose name CBS4 is not revealing, explained they
were desperate to find proper help for their loved one, who, for the past two
months, has been bouncing in and out of mental health treatment facilities.
All the while, his family says, he was convinced the
government has planted radio frequency chips in his teeth. He wrote on one
note…ObamacaresRFID.
According to his mother, “He believes that he had four chips
in his teeth. That they are tracking him.”
“This is occurring more and more often. More familes are
affected with a loved one,” said Dr. Deborah Mash, Founder of the University of
Miami Brain Bank.
She has studied the human brain for two decades and said
that with advancements in today’s science, particularly with high tech MRI’s,
along with the studies of brains post mortem, mental illness and neurological
disorders can be visually detected in the brain.
“The temporal lobe here is where you get the abnormal
hallucination and you hear the voices,” she told CBS4 Chief Investigator
Michele Gillen. “When a person tells us their hearing voices or they think they
have a chip implanted in their brain, this is an abnormal state of activity in
the brain. This is something that tells us that they need help immediately.”
Harley Stock is a criminal profiler and forensic
psychologist. He knows all too well the often missed or ignored signs of mental
illness.
“The handwriting literally, in some cases, is on the wall,”
he tells Gillen as he examined police photos that have never before been seen
on TV.
Neighbors of a South Florida solider had no idea his walls
were hand painted with ominous messages and drawings. That police said shocked
even them.
“I’ve seen things you can not even imagine, and if I saw
that…I would get out of there right away and call the police,” Stock told
Gillen.
The apartment belonged to a troubled South Florida solider
whose family told CBS4 news had returned from war with PTSD and traumatic brain
injury.
Family members had reached out for help for him time and
time again alarmed over foreboding messages and his reported stockpiling of
weapons.
Stock has reviewed multiple cases of where men and women,in
divergent parts of the world, report they hear voices in their head.
“If somebody says to you ‘God has told me I need to kill,’
don’t dismiss it, don’t laugh at it, don’t say it will never happen. Take
action. Call a mental health person,” advised Stock
But despite the soldiers families efforts to get him help;
he ultimately was released from a mental health treatment facility. Within
hours of a judge setting him on his way- with a warning not to go near guns; he
went home, got a knife and killed himself.
“People are desperate everywhere and its sad,” said mental
health advocate, Judge Steve Leifman. “Studies indicate that longer we take to
treat someone…more likelier there may be permanent brain damage.”
And yet he says that mental health laws and resources for
help have not kept up with science;and what is now known about the brain and
mental illness. He said there is no safety net.
“It’s not working. It is failing, ” Leifman cautioned. “If
we continue this way, people are going to get hurt, people are going to get
killed. Why do we wait for something terrible to happen?”
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