When mothers see their child for the first time, they realize that their hearts will forever be walking outside of their body for the rest of their lives.
For 1 Florida mother, not a single day went by that she didn’t worry about her children. However, that natural parental concern turned to crippling fear and anxiety when her son became trapped in a broken system that ensured he would never get the help he needed…
The Best Job In The World
After a Florida couple became parents to 2 boys, they loved their new roles as mom and dad and found that parenthood, while extremely challenging at times, was the most fulfilling thing they had ever done and showed them what it meant to love someone unconditionally.
An Unexpected Struggle
When their sons were old enough, the couple sent them to school and assumed they would both love learning and making new friends. Sadly, however, their youngest son didn’t have such a smooth transition into school and struggled to make friends…
Social Problem
After their little boy started elementary school, the couple noticed he was having a hard time making friends and learned that other kids in his class had started to bully him. As a result of the bullying, their sweet little boy started becoming disruptive in class.
An Outcast
By the time their son was in middle school, his social skills were still lacking. He still didn’t have any close relationships with any of his peers and the couple watched as their happy, playful son became bitter and sad…
Seeking Help
“I took him to a psychiatrist at the tender age of 12,” Barbara Theodosiou said about her son, Daniel Francis Montalbano. “There was no definitive diagnosis.” At first, doctors thought Daniel might have ADHD and asked Barbara if she wanted to try ADHD medication.
A History Of Addiction
“My kids were young. I didn’t really want to start them on medication. I was really scared,” said Barbara, who feared that starting prescription medication so young would lead to substance abuse issues in the future since her own brother was addicted to heroin…
Punishment Instead Of Support
As time passed, however, Barbara has been left wondering if she made the wrong choice to keep her son off medication as he became more of an outcast and his performance in school suffered. With no mental health professionals equipped to help Daniel, he was repeatedly put in detention and forced to sit in isolation if he had an outburst of if other kids complained about him.
The Abuse Begins
“Years later, he would begin to tell me that that really broke him,” Barbara said. When Daniel was just 15 years old, Barbara found out that Daniel had started abusing drugs to self-medicate. According to Barbara, Daniel had begun taking large amounts of cough medicine to get high, which is called robotripping…
A Mystery Diagnosis
By that point, it was impossible to get an accurate diagnosis for his mental health condition since he was never sober long enough to really figure out if he needed to be treated for ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, or potentially Asperger’s syndrome.
A Downward Spiral
“As he started to use drugs, what he would say to me when I would go to the hospital … ‘Mom, I only want to be normal.’,” Barbara explained. As Daniel’s mental health continued to decline and go untreated, his dependence on and abuse of substances like alcohol and cough medicine spiraled out of control…
A Felon
Over the years, Daniel had been arrested for petty crimes for misdemeanors like shoplifting and public intoxication, but he was charged with his first felony for assaulting a security guard in a psychiatric unit of which he was a patient. That felony charge and prison sentence cemented his future trapped in a broken system.
Arresting A Patient
“My son was in a psychiatric unit. He was psychotic. He could have easily been given a shot,” said Barbara, who doesn’t understand how a psychiatric patient can be arrested for a violent outburst. “The police came and arrested him. He was given a felony. He ended up in jail with violent, violent felons…”
A Vicious Cycle
After that first prison sentence, Daniel was released. Shortly after however, he would overdose and end up in the emergency room. Then Daniel would be admitted to the psychiatric unit where he would begin treatment. But before long, he would relapse, get arrested for a petty crime or for violating a condition of his parole, and end up back in jail where the cycle would begin again.
A Recipe For Disaster
While in jail, Daniel would end up in isolation for his own protection. However, isolation has been proven to cause anxiety, depression, anger, paranoia, and psychosis in prisoners without mental health issues. For those who do have them, like Daniel, isolation can severely exacerbate symptoms…
Making Things Worse
In addition to long stretches in isolation, Barbara claims that her son was denied access to therapy, medications, and physicians to help with either his substance abuse or mental illness. “And he came out worse. Every time he came out, he was angrier. He was more paranoid.”
A Parent’s Worst Nightmare
By April 2018, Barbara was constantly worried about where her son was and what he was doing. At the same time, she dreaded getting any call or text as she feared it would be bad news about her 23-year-old boy. That month, Daniel had gone missing after running away from a treatment center and Barbara could barely function knowing that she would eventually get a call with bad news about Daniel…
The Last Incident
According to Barbara, Daniel had been in treatment and had been sober for 77 days, the longest he’d ever gone since he started abusing drugs. However, when other patients antagonized him and stole his shoes, Daniel started yelling and ran away when he was told the police were coming. Daniel knew that by running away, he violated his parole and would be sent back to jail. That realization caused him to relapse.
A Life Sentence
About a week after running away, Barbara received the call she feared the most. A police sergeant told Barbara and her husband that their son had been found. He had drowned and his body was found in Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway. “There is no peace for me. Ever again. This is a life sentence,” Barbara said…
Sick Justice
“It shocks me. It crushes me. It steals my soul. There are no breaks, no holidays, there is no solace here. And I spend every second wishing I had one more moment, one more day with my son before drugs,” said Barbara. The prosecutors who handled Daniel’s case insist they did their job by bringing him to justice for his crimes, but Barbara knows that the broken system ruined any chance he had of recovering and is now fighting to make sure the mentally ill get the treatment they truly need.
A Mother’s Fight
“When Daniel died, I just promised myself, whoever would listen, I would tell his story and by telling his story, there are a million other moms just like me, even as we speak, they’re finding out their mentally ill children have co-occurring disorders,” Barbara explained. “All I can do now is tell his story to the world in the hopes that I am able to make the smallest change in a broken system that houses the mentally ill in violent jails.”
Grieving Mom Takes On Broken System That Ensured Son Would Never Survive is an article from: LifeDaily