PR for People Monthly MARCH 2016 | Page 6

“What the ev, couscous jay is jet lettuce squirk sausages the ev tip cat shave the sundae”

My son Daniel is on the phone. I’m waiting to hear something intelligible, wondering if he hasn’t taken his meds, had a few beers, or did some crack. He is living in a group home for mentally ill adults, and I’m grateful for having found a decent one that takes Medicaid and Medicare.

Daniel was bright, talented and popular. His test scores got him into Stuyvesant, the Manhattan public high school for the city’s smartest kids. Early in his freshman year of college, Daniel asked me if everyone heard voices in their heads.

From that point, there was a gradual descent into poor grades, lack of socialization and bizarre behavior. Deeply concerned, I took him to have a battery of tests, including one for a brain tumor. The results: the early stages of schizophrenia. One percent of the world’s population develops this devastating disease of the brain, which is largely believed to be hereditary. My mother’s brother was institutionalized with schizophrenia; there were no viable medications then, only tranquilizers.

Daniel managed to struggle through 3 ½ years of college by taking the long-term, injectable form of antipsychotic medications. He became too sick to graduate, so I brought him back to live in a small apartment in New York, where I could help him manage his life.

This disease is characterized by auditory and visual hallucinations, scrambled communication skills, blunted emotional affect and the inability to make reasoned judgments. Daniel was lonely and defenseless, so he

DANIEL

By Sally Haver