Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - When Systems Fail: Maria shares a Sister's Fight for Her Brother with Severe Mental Illness

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Maria shares her journey advocating for mental healthcare, from working in a medical facility helping patients navigate services to struggling with the complex systems while trying to help her brother with severe mental illness. Her powerful story reveals critical gaps in our mental health and legal systems that prevent timely intervention for those most in need. • Experience as a healthcare advocate navigating insurance barriers and provider shortages • Personal history with anxiety and OCD providing firsthand understanding of mental health challenges • Brother's delusional disorder progression from normal complaints to severe paranoia • Attempts to get help through police and crisis responders repeatedly blocked by bureaucratic barriers • Brother's eventual criminal behavior, jail time, and homelessness due to untreated mental illness • Finding support through MOMI (Mothers of the Mentally Ill) while continuing to search for solutions • Importance of maintaining hope and humanizing those with severe mental illness • Awareness as the first step toward creating positive change in mental health systems If you know someone who has a story to share, tell them to contact us at whynotmeworld. Spread the word about Why Not Me, our conversations, our inspiring guests that show you are not alone in this world. The content on Why Not Me: Embracing Autism amd Mental Health Worldwide, including discussions on mental health, autism, and related topics, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of the podcast, its hosts, or affiliates.Why Not Me is not a medical or mental health professional and does not endorse or verify the accuracy, efficacy, safety of any treatments, programs, or advice discussed.Listeners should consult qualified healthcare professionals, such as licensed therapists, psychologists, or physicians, before making decisions about mental health or autism- related care.Reliance on this podcast's contents is at the listener's own risk. Why Not Me is not liable for any outcomes, financial or otherwise, resulting from actions taken based on the information provided. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Why Not Me, embracing autism and mental health worldwide, hosted by Tony Meantor. Broadcasting from the heart of Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests share their raw, howful stories. Some will spark laughter, others will move you to tears. These real-life journeys inspire, connect, and remind you that you're never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower everyone

to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness, unwavering acceptance, and profound understanding of autism and mental health. Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me,

embracing autism and mental health worldwide. Today, we're joined by Maria, who shares her journey in the healthcare field and the challenges she faced advocating for her brother with serious mental illness. It's a pleasure to have her here, so would you kindly give us a little information on your background? Yeah, so first for me, I would say,

a previous job that I'd held. So just for background, I have a bachelor's and a master's degree in public health, health. And my job that I held in between the bachelor's and the master's degree, I was working in a medical facility, basically as someone that helps folks who would come in to see our doctors that needed to have some help getting through services and trying to find certain services they might need, which very frequently were mental health or substance use disorder related services. So, for example, someone might come in and see their doctor and, you know, talk to the doctor

about they're struggling with anxiety and depression, and the doctor might suggest for them that they may want to see a mental health professional. Is that something they would set up, or did you handle that? If that person didn't feel comfortable on their own to try to navigate the system and to locate those resources, they could be referred to someone like me who would help to figure out who they could possibly see what kind of resources are available to them. A lot of that having to do with who does your insured say you can go see, and again, what kind of services? do you need because there are different types of providers in the mental health world. And I think through that process, I was able to see both the good things and the negative

things in some of our systems. Can you expand on that some? Some of the positives, I think, of where, in particular, probably where I live in the United States is we do have decent health insurance comparatively to some locations. Our Medicaid and Medicare services do cover a lot for people, and we tend to have decent regular insurance. So that was something I was always having to poke through for people and just being an advocate on their behalf for helping them to connect to the services that they needed. I don't know if you have had any experience navigating through the perils of trying to get through your insurance

and figuring out what's covered and what's not and who you can see. Can you get appointments in any kind of decent time frame? All across the United States, I know there is a lot of difficulty with access to services, both in terms of not having enough providers, and there's often being long wait times, and then you add in insurance and those kinds of things. So it can be a difficult process for people to try to navigate. That was my kind of my first for way into being an advocate of any current for, you know, folks dealing with mental health and meeting resources. And I think, again, as I mentioned, I was able to see some of the positive things within our

system, but also the negative sides. What were some of the negative sides that you saw? Some of those negative sides, insurance being one of them, insurance can be incredibly limiting in terms of which providers you're allowed to go see what services they will cover and how much of those services they may cover monetarily wise. You know, money is obviously can be a big issue for people to access services. And then also I did mention long wait times. You know, a lot of times when somebody comes into the doctor seeking services, they're really not feeling well. You know, you're not doing well and you are like, I need to see. somebody. I need services and I kind of need them quickly, but there can often be a long wait just

to be able to get in to see somebody, even if you're able to locate someone on your insurance. If you're dealing with anything that's particularly acute, you know, like psychosis and things like that, that can be difficult to manage. As you're asking people who may be feeling suicidal or having other issues, you know, hey, you've got to stick it out and wait, you know, a couple of months before somebody can see you and possibly start helping you. So that was one of the bigger issues, wait times, insurance, and then just generally being able to try to navigate systems to get people seen for the care they need.

Yes, navigating insurance companies can be really tough. I would say one of the things that scared me a little bit about that is even when I was well into that job and I felt very well versed on the resources available how to navigate insurance, it was still difficult even for me to try to work through that system. And I just felt a tremendous amount of, I guess, sorrow is a good work for it for people trying to deal with that on their own in any way because if it's hard for me and I've got the expertise and, you know, I have a little little weight behind my shoulders because I've, you know, I work at a medical clinic and I'm struggling with these things. You know, I can only imagine how difficult it is for somebody who's just your average folk trying to figure that out. Well, unfortunately, it's the big unknown. When people first start having symptoms, they don't know what it is, they don't know what it's about, they need help.

And when they have to navigate through the medical system, then you add to that navigating through the insurance system, it makes it very, very difficult. And ultimately, they're only asking for a little help so they can get better. Yeah, very much so. You know, in my part, I was glad that I was able to help provide some of that support for folks because I know, from dealing with it, how much needed that is. It also felt often in a way that I was just kind of a band-aid, able to do some good work and help some things, but I can't really fix the problem from that vantage point.

Again, someone like me having a position like that doesn't fix the systemic issues that made that difficult in the first place. So what was the next step? What led you and what kept you motivated to keep working towards it? Yeah, so definitely, you know, my education, background being in public health. In public health, we talk about a lot of things that affect health. Mental health is part of that. But generally in the public health world, there's a term we use called the social determinants of health. Okay. Can you expand on that?

A part of that is, you know, someone's mental health makeup is all of these factors that we consider other than just, you know, your physical body and your genetics that go into your overall health makeup. Some of it is where were you born and where do you live? There are characteristics of places that can, you know, can affect your health. If you live closer to a freeway than other folks do, that can increase risks for certain health issues like lung issues, you know, asthma, rates of things like that. And these are all these things that kind of feel like they're in the background,

but they are very much a big makeup of what goes into our overall health. Again, mental health is a component of that. So education is one thing that definitely continued my interest on the mental health front. I also do personally have some mental health issues. I have anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. So, you know, on a personal level, I am familiar with dealing with my own mental health issues and understanding what it feels like. So how long have you been dealing with your own issues?

When did that start? So when I was a teenager is when I first started to have anxiety problems and panic attacks. And I can recall very vividly at the time that I was absolutely terrified because I think like you said earlier, I knew something was wrong and I didn't feel right. These things were happening to me, but I didn't know what they were. And I went through a period before I was actually able to get in and see someone and start to get some help where because I didn't know what was going on, I just thought I was going insane. Sure. So what was your thought process? What were your emotions like when you was going through that? That terrified me because I was like, well, what if I am going and saying,

what am I going to do about it? I had all these questions. How can I fix it? Can somebody get me some relief somehow. I think that's always stuck with me, you know, as I've moved forward in my life, that I can understand it from the individual's perspective of how scary that can feel and what it actually feels like to have, you know, a mental health disorder. Progressing on from that, beyond kind of my own personal experience and my educational and work background, I do have a brother who suffers from what we would call severe mental illness.

And what I mean by severe mental illness is that unlike me where I have, anxiety and I have obsessive compulsive. You know, I'm still able to function in everyday life. It doesn't hinder me in that way. Can you clarify on the differences between his diagnosis and yours? My brother's mental illness, on the other hand, basically prevents him from living a normal life. What he has, it's now called, well, they used to call it paranoid disorder. Now it's called delusional disorder, I believe. The name is not the important part, obviously. But to give you a sense of what that's like, I think most people, at least to some extent, are a little bit familiar with schizophrenia. They've heard the term, they may kind of understand the rudimentary idea of what

that means. Usually with schizophrenia, you know, that someone may be having auditory or visual hallucinations and they're kind of, you know, mentally, they're not really in reality. They often have what are called very grandiose beliefs where they may think things like aliens are trying to abduct them or the U.S. government is trying to implant things in them and test them. And these things that, you know, we have people who don't have these disorders here and we go, well, that's not real. So delusional disorder can be somewhat similar to that except usually the delusions that the person has. They can seem much more realistic. They're not usually what you consider grandiose like the aliens and, you know, things like that type of nature. In my brother's

case, he has what's considered persecutory type, which means that he feels like he is being threatened, attacked, harmed. And for him specifically, what this has manifested as over time is that the mental state he's currently in, he believes that me, other members of our family, including our dad and our stepmother, people he used to work with at his jobs, friends. He believes things like we have phone taps on his phone and we had cameras in his apartment and we were poisoning his food and his water to make him sick and need to go to the doctor and people have in his mind he believes have spread rumors about him all over town so anytime he goes somewhere he thinks people know him and know about these rumors and that they're looking at him funny and things like this

So I've heard those with serious mental illness have what it's called anisagnosia. Is that kind of a diagnosis of what he's going through? Yeah, so he is in that category of somebody that with this disease, he is not aware that he is sick. He cannot tell that the things that he believes that are happening to him are not, that these are delusions of any kind. Just like someone who has auditory hallucination and schizophrenia can't typically tell that that's not real. To them in their mind, it is 100% real what they are experiencing, even though obviously in the outside world, it's not. But for all intents and purposes for them, I think one of the things that's difficult also about the way that manifests in his disease is that it does not matter what kind of evidence I could bring to show him that what he thinks is happening is not happening. I've said before when I've talked to people about it that I said, God himself could come down from heaven, meet him, and show him.

him that this is not real and he would not believe it. And that's not a choice on his part. He is incapable of making that determination based on the disease. Yeah, so as a lot of people do, when they are in that state, they ultimately come in contact with the legal system. Has he had any issues with the legal system so far? Yes. My brother, unfortunately, has been a victim of that, and I do use the term victim for a couple of reasons. So just to give a little bit of backstory, so another thing that can sometimes be a little different with his disease as opposed to,

I think what's more common in something like schizophrenia or bipolar, is this disease did not come on quickly. It wasn't just like one day he was fine, and then the next day he's talking about these delusions that don't make any sense. So how did this progress with him then? He went through what I would consider kind of a slow, low descent into madness. You know, in retrospect, I can kind of see where it started. I didn't see it initially going into it because at first, when we would talk about things that I now recognized as part

of his delusion, they just seemed like normal thing. For example, he was talking about a place that he worked at and he said that he had these terrible coworkers and they were always messing with him and that they would, you know, try to get him in trouble at war and things like that. So it just seemed like Oh, yeah, you know, maybe he's working in a kind of hostile work environment with some employees that aren't that great. That was completely a believable thing. Sure, that makes perfect sense. So how did it develop from that point? As time went on over the months and several years, it started to spiral and get bigger.

There were more and more people involved in this ring that he identified as people trying to harm him. I think when I really realized that something was really wrong was when he, started including our dad and step-mom and saying that they had done some of these things to him, which I knew absolutely was not true. At that point, I was like, okay, something else is going on here. You know, this isn't normal. Where is he getting this from? At that point, I, you know, through my career and my own personal stuff,

I wasn't unfamiliar with mental health, but I had not dealt personally with someone, you know, with a psychotic disorder. So this was, I'm trying to learn in real time what I think's going on with him and what is happening. And where this progresses to eventually, as I said, it's kind of a slow spiral over time, started to collect more people into this conspiracy of people that are hurting him. Eventually also included me. Wow. How did that happen? It didn't for a long time. I think because I was somebody he trusted more than others, but eventually that fell away too.

And what ended up happening at first was he got to a point where he was so upset about things. And again, in his mind, we were harming him trying to poison him. him trying to do all these things. And so he verbally laughed out at myself and our dad and stepmom and threatened basically to kill us. And at that point, I'm going, oh my God, like we need to try to do something here because I've tried talking to him. I've tried everything I could think of. You know, I've tried to get him, I had tried to get him connected to mental health treatment, but he didn't stick with it because he also thought the mental health professional was part of the group of people doing things. So what was your plans and how did you move forward? So my next step at that point was like,

what can I do? You know, I was looking into what are the laws in my state about, you know, can I have him involuntarily committed? Is there some way I could potentially do that? I will tell you that trying to find information on what to do with someone when they're in, you know, a loved one or someone is in this capacity is almost impossible. Even again, for someone like me with experience and knowledge of navigating systems. I kind of only piecemeal came across information as things were happening and moving forward, not in an ideal way.

I couldn't figure out that there was a way that I could get him involuntarily committed because it seemed like the bar for involuntary commitment was so high would be impossible to meet because at this point, he's an adult, he's responsible for himself. It's a little bit different when you have someone who's a minor and their parents can seek some help.

But an adult, you basically have to have someone declared incompetent and try to gain guardianship over them through a court of law. And that is not an easy process by any means. That's a tough situation. So what did you do? So what ended up happening was I at some point tried contacting the police because the one thing I wanted to do in this situation. I knew that my brother did have access to a gun. I didn't know if that gun was in working order because it wasn't a pistol. it was a type of rifle, older style, something he had just collected, but I wasn't sure it could be

workable. And so I thought, well, I wonder if there's something through the police where at least maybe we could get his gun taken away and he could at least temporarily lose access to go purchase a new one just so that if he did try to do something, it would be harder for him to create any real damage. I ended up speaking to the police a couple of times. I showed them, I literally had a text message from my brother where he was talking about wanting to use his AK-style rifle on me. And he sent me a picture of it to be threatening. What happened? I showed all this to the police.

So it wasn't just me saying this. I was like, I have visual evidence what he's saying and what's going on. They basically told me he wasn't specific enough. So they couldn't give me what's called an extreme risk protection order, which is where they could potentially go in and take the gun away and keep loses gun rights and things like that. Because basically the way they described it to me is he would basically have to say, I am going to show up at your house tomorrow at 4 a.m. and shoot you. Wow, that's unbelievable.

And I'm thinking in my mind, like, who is ever going to be that precise, making that kind of threat? I just don't see that ever happening. So it's like, how could you ever get a protection order or something like this if that's where the bar is set? A protection order, unfortunately, doesn't mean that he will follow it anyways. Yeah, that's correct. It wouldn't necessarily stop him. time, I was like, I need to do something and this is something I can try for. So being rebuffed on that and feeling like I didn't have a way forward, I was also simultaneously at this time, in my state of

Washington, we have something called designated crisis responders. Some other states have this, but I don't know if it's federal, all over the country, but basically our crisis responders are people that you can call if either you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis. They can talk to you about resources and try to help you through the process. They also have the ability to go check on someone who is having a mental health crisis and in some cases can potentially make a determination if that person needed to be taken into temporary custody for assessment for treatment. So while I was trying to work with them, that also ran into difficulties because unfortunately, according to what I had been told through them, they have not nearly high enough staffing levels

to deal with the volume of calls and things that come into them. I know these are people that are doing their best, their social workers and mental health professionals. And I do not fault them personally for not being able to manage what is, I'm sure, a huge and difficult workload. And they're also trying to manage, this is the first place that this touches onto the legal system a little bit. When I discussed with them what was going on with my brother and they were going to send

some people out to check on him and potentially try to, if they could maybe take him into custody, because one of the issues with my brother involved a weapon, a gun specifically. They had a requirement that if they go to meet with my brother, they'd have to go with a police officer. There is some coordination that has to happen between those crisis responders and the police can be able to go at the same time. And what the crisis responders told me is they said a lot of times the police aren't available. You know, you kind of just have to go when they are available, and that may not be when the person is reachable.

I know they went several times to try to check on my brother. but he wouldn't be home, even though I gave them the approximations of times that I knew he would probably be at home. Because they had to coordinate with the police, it was often at just times that didn't work. With all that has happened, what is his status at this point in time? Yeah, so skitching forward a little bit. I mean, right now, he is homeless and severely mentally ill, and not under any kind of treatment. So is he living on the street? Yes. And I can tell you exactly how he ended up in that situation because this is where it really touches on the legal system and what happened. So at some point, after talking with the police where I think like a third time,

one of them mentioned something we have here called Joel's Law, which allows someone like myself of a family member, someone who's severely mentally ill, to petition the court to have him temporarily involuntarily picked up. It's usually like, I think it's a three to five day hold where he would be assessed by a mental health professional, and then if after that they decided that he needed to be involuntarily committed, they would go back to the court and ask for that, do something further. So when I found out about that process, I was like, oh, okay, well, I just definitely going to do that. I filled all of the paperwork, got everything in, and when the judge agreed, and went ahead and signed off on the order for him to be picked up. So that, again, has to be

done by the crisis responders. That's their role in it, again, with the police because of the weapon and they still had the same problems where they kept not being able to connect with him. Kind of long story short on that, because this goes over several months where they weren't able to make contact and do anything. I did a call for my brother one day. He's in jail. I'm going, what the heck happened? Basically, in his paranoid state, thought that neighbors in his apartment complex were harming him and a bunch of other scary things that he was concerned about. And one evening while they were out, thankfully, he broke into their apartment and did about $7,000 worth of damage with a knife. And I say luckily they weren't home because I can only imagine if they had been there that somebody would have gotten hurt.

Thank God at least that didn't occur. But of course, my brother is now in jail at that point. Of course, the apartment over time, you know, they're not going to let him come back after this. He's no longer has a place to live and I'm dealing with that while trying to figure out what's going on with my brother. He's in jail. I'm talking to the crisis responders at the same time because I said, hey, you still have this order for involuntarily picking him up. What's going to happen because he's in jail now? So what was their response? What do they do to help? They actually started out saying that that was a good thing. I mean, it's not good that it got to the point where he committed a crime and had to go to jail. But they said at least we know where he is and we can go to him there.

So I'm thinking they're going to go check him out while he's in jail and do that. thing from there. But then they tell me that because one of the charges that he has is a felony, they cannot do anything with him until that's taken care of. Either he's charged with it and found guilty and sentenced or they drop that charge. As long as there's a felony charge, apparently, they can't step in and do anything. Wow, that's a lot of hoops to jump through. So what happened next? I was able to obtain records from his jail stay, you know, public records afterwards. And I was shocked when I found out that he was evaluated for competency. He saw a psychologist there at the jail, and that psychologist, in their notes, diagnosed him with this delusional disorder, which at this time I suspected this is what he had.

This was confirmation for me, this is what's going on. But I also read in their notes that that particular psychologist wasn't going to hold him for psychological care or anything like that, because he noted that the crisis responders already had an order and would be coming to get him. whatever the court stuff ended and they could touch that again. Wow, talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. What happened next? What ended up happening later on once I found out that my brother basically was released from jail. They ended up targeting him but letting him go on his own recognizance after time served. But he had no requirements for follow-up, no requirements for any kind of mental health care or anything like that.

And the crisis responders had never gone in. And they told me the reason they didn't is because while he was, in jail, their order from the judge expired. If I asked them, can I renew this? Because the problem hasn't changed. This is still here. Can I, you know, reapply? And they basically told me, I can't reapply it unless he does something new.

There has to be a new, like, crisis threat, something that goes on where I can go to the judge again. Now, did that lead you to create an organization to help others that may be going through some of the same things that you are? I haven't created one. I am part of an organization on. It's called Mommy, M-O-M-I. It's mothers of the mentally ill, but it's not just for people who are mothers. You can also be a family member with someone suffering severe mental illness.

I found a lot of support there. The lady that runs that online group had a son who with severe mental illness so had experienced a lot of the same things. Her organization does do a lot of advocacy through legal channels. It's something I'm wanting to get more involved in because now that I've definitely been through this process, I see all these little souls in the system. Basically, this whole way through to me is just every single point at which intervention with my brother could have occurred and could have helped him, all the way from before

he even committed a crime. I mean, if we had gotten back there way before he committed a crime, he could have avoided prison in the first place. Yeah, that's real tough. So in closing, what would you like to tell the listeners that you think is very important that they hear about your journey. Yeah, a couple of things. I know these stories can often, in many ways,

make things sound hopeless. I don't want to encourage that that's how it is, because I don't think that's how it is. I think there are definitely difficulties and things that are not helping us along the way, but I would encourage, you know, for family members and loved ones, and even just people who are acquaintances or looking at a scenario with someone

who's dealing with severe mental illness, not to lose hope, do the things that you can do to the best, of your ability, especially I know from my case, you know, this is my brother. I love my brother. I'm never going to give up on him. Sorry if it makes me cry. That's okay. We totally understand. It's hard because I've been estranged from him for so long now. I don't really speak to him because he's in this mental state that's very upset with me. But I still continue, you know, if I find some new avenue that I can try to intervene, you know, I keep that hope that at some point, maybe we can get him where he needs to be. So I think that's important for people. I think all

remembering to humanize the people that are experiencing these things. You know, they are human beings. And in my brother's case, you know, yes, he committed a crime and that's scary. The thing I think about it is he's obviously done that not in his right mind. He was doing that out of fear because he thinks people are harming him. And I can only imagine what I would do if I thought somebody was doing those things to me. But that's another way, again, to humanize what somebody is doing. It's not to let him off the hook for what he's done, you know, that he committed that crime or anything of that nature.

but it's just a different understanding and humanization. I think also the third important thing I would say is that as people are becoming more aware of these issues, you know, through your podcast, for example, maybe they're learning about some of these things for the first time or learning new things. I think that awareness is step one on the road to making these things better. You become aware that there's a problem and things aren't working, you know, the way that they should and the way that we would want them to. And then beyond that, once you become aware, you can take some kind of action. to be anything huge. You know, not everybody is going to go be part of Congress and make new laws. Sometimes it's just a matter of maybe you make other people aware. Maybe you do want to send

letters or call your representatives and, you know, ask them about the legal side of things and how can we make this better. I think whatever small or large ways you can find to be involved, because ultimately we may not always realize it, but mental health touches every single one of us. Not a single human being that is not touched by mental health in some way. It's just the degree in which you experience it in your life. So true. Well, this has been a great conversation, great information. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.

Yeah, again, I really appreciate you taking the time to have me. I'm just glad to be able to share some of my story and my and my brothers and my family's experience. I really appreciate, again, that you're digging into this and sharing these things because I think they're so critical. We're talking about human beings and their lives and how can you. Can we keep people healthy and happy and help them when they're not? Absolutely.

Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone who has a story to share, tell them to contact us at why not me. One last thing, spread the word about why not me.

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