Sigh, thank you so much for your posts, @Day-by-Day @hope and @DianeR - I am calming down. Yes, I know where she is, the jail hospital should be safe, it could be worse. I think that sounds like a good plan: go to the arraignment and try to get her released to the behavioral health hospital, hopefully with a court order for medication for a long enough term to possibly get some remission of psychosis. She will probably go to the same hospital she’s been to before, which would be good, as their last medication left her with a great result (if only she hadn’t refused to continue them once out of the hospital). If the judge could order medication, that would be best I think. Also, to try and reduce the felony charge. I’m betting she didn’t really cause harm to the officer, probably touched him or something? I can’t access the complaint filed by the police yet. Thank you for keeping me in your thoughts.
Do any of you have a loved one who isolates/ or have you gotten them out of isolation?
Glad to hear you are calmer. My experience - and my guess is she will have a public defender. Ours wasn’t readily available we had to wait for them to appear just before it was my sons groups time. Make “friends” with the security guard - ask him where the PDs are and which door they come through. My sons father had to help me with all this(he had experience). We had to ask which one of you is my sons rep. We got about 3 or 4 minutes to say— he has a mental health issue and explain a bit that he lives with me, yes he can be bonded to me. I’m not sure if the judge will be able deal with the charges tomorrow. They’ll probably give her a court date or better yet drop it like you said. Hopefully, they can get her in a regular behavioral health hospital versus staying in the jail hospital. Then the doctor at the hospital can court order meds. — this is only my experience— It sounds like last time you had a chance to talk to the judge. Hopefully you can do that tomorrow. I believe you will have the option to bail her out. Basically you want her out of the jail hospital and into a regular hospital. We got my son out - we didn’t even think to ask to take him to the hospital. Anyway, then he went back to isolating and 2 months later was when he barricaded me out. Etc etc…
One thing I did wrong was to ask this group that is a crisis team to evaluate him before bonding him out. (I had their number and called them in the morning for help and that is what they suggested). That could have resulted in them keeping him in jail until they could send him to the state hospital for eval. Which can take years. Fortunately they screwed this part up and I bonded him out without the eval. Of course this is only hearsay. I don’t know if that really would have happened. But it’s what his father and the PD thought.
What time do you go tomorrow?
Thank you so much for outlining how it went for you and the court. After I read this, I realized I needed more information and called the jail. Hers is a video appearance scheduled for 1:30 tomorrow, she will not leave the jail. I will be in the courtroom live and can probably ask to speak to the judge. They will read her charges, ask if she understands and assign a PD. Because it is a felony charge this time, he probably won’t release her. I could then post bail to get her out to come home. Then in three weeks or so will be a pre-trial hearing with a PD. The sheriff I spoke to tonight said that she didn’t know if my daughter was in the hospital psych ward or not, she thought my daughter was in the medical wing for observation. There is a possibility they will find her “medically unable” to see the judge tomorrow. I have to wait and see.
This may be the opportunity you are waiting for in regards to ssi/ssdi. A lot of family members are signed up by hospital social workers in order to pay for meds.
Has your daughter allowed you to visit her in the past?
My friend’s son was charged with a felony for throwing a t- shirt at an officer.
Such a stressful day, but in the end, I think it all went well. The judge released my daughter from the jail when I spoke at her arraignment and she was Baker Acted to my preferred behavioral health facility, with a judge’s order to be medicated. I am hopeful.
I called soon after she was transported, and found out she was not upset at being there. The intake person asked her to call me, and my daughter did call. She sounded good. Not sane, she’s obviously “babbling BS” as I call it, but was not angrily emotional, but almost happy.
It was a video court. The inmates were on closed circuit TV and I was in the courtroom with the judge, staff, and other audience members waiting for their loved ones to come up. She could see and hear me on her screen, and the judge could see and talk to her via the screen in her room. The first thing she said was, “You’re not my mother… my mother was kind…” and then went into her psychotic babble that is intelligible words but with no meaning we can understand about her mental powers. The judge told her to be quiet as he was considering letting her out of jail and otherwise she wouldn’t be pleased. It was a struggle for her to silence herself. Then he read her arresting officer report to himself (not aloud so I still don’t know what the police officers wrote up when they arrested her). Then he looked at me for what I had to say. It was over in about 3.5 minutes.
Yes, she is safe, will be medicated at least while awaiting her trial, and hopefully the public defender will get the felony charge dropped.
It’s amazing how fast it goes after waiting (at least for us) for months and hours. I am glad she is being taken care of and you can rest a bit. Hopefully, they will mandate the meds for a while. I think that you can get the records to read what she did. I think they are public but not totally sure about that. My son also thought I was an imposter. (That’s not my mom). It didn’t bother me as I knew he was just off his rocker : )
Thank you for your inquiries as to how she is doing and your comments @Catherine, @Holly67 and @Day-by-Day. @hope, it just was ordered that she be medicated while on supervised ROR (released on own recognizance). I assume she must be med compliant until she goes to trial. I plan to try to have trial delayed so she is on court ordered meds as long as possible. @DianeR I saw her tonight. She called me asking for some clothing to be dropped off, so I asked if I could visit. She looked and sounded great compared to where she’s been mentally for so long. She had a conversation with me for 10 minutes, even saying she wanted me to help find her a job again. She hugged me repeatedly and smiled the best smiles I’ve seen in months. Wow. I left on cloud 9.
I am so glad to hear that this is turning out to be a really positive thing!
If she is doing well now, there is so much for her to look forward to because there is plenty of ways she can gain more peace, more security, more independence and more happiness.
Maybe all she needed was a change of environment, some tough love (from the system) and some time for the meds to clear up some of the chaos.
Hopefully, that desire to chase her goals and find fulfillment will persist from now on.
So great to hear good news. I hope she continues to improve. Mine did. There is hope. He is back working full time, making friends, and for the first time in 9 years going to a Christmas party this Thursday. It took about 3 years once he got on clozapine but It really is a miracle