While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man's Descent Into Madness by Eli Sanders

Author:Eli Sanders [Sanders, Eli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Mental Health, True Crime, Murder, General
ISBN: 9780670015719
Google: rE5rrgEACAAJ
Amazon: 0670015717
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2016-02-02T06:00:00+00:00

27

What Isaiah still didn’t have was a relationship with someone who had time to hear his whole story, someone who could sit alongside the young man, talk with him, look with him into his experience, its beginnings, its possibilities. Instead, he continued to be seen in pieces. That is, whatever piece of him seemed most pressing to whatever particular authorities had to deal with him at a given moment. “They only see a section of the elephant,” Dr. Lymberis said. “So, to one person it looks like a snake. To another person, it looks like—I don’t know—a tiger or whatever, and it’s because the picture they have is very limited. But if you put the whole thing together, that is when the whole thing comes to life.” Isaiah also didn’t have a clear recognition that he needed help, which made things more complicated. Western State called his insight into his mental disorder “limited” and had cautioned in its final report to Judge Gain that Isaiah’s ability to be compliant with medications was unknown, because he’d never once taken them without being forced. But the prospect of his establishing a relationship with a community treatment provider did offer some hope. Maybe it would be an opportunity for a more comprehensive encounter.

“In the treatment of people with severe chronic mental illness,” Dr. Lymberis wrote later, “medication is necessary, often life-saving, but it does not result in meaningful adaptational change unless it is linked to effective and meaningful psychotherapy.” Theoretically, this possibility, or something like it, now awaited Isaiah.

—

Theoretically. In actuality, community treatment clinics like the one Isaiah established care with are chronically underfunded and overworked, with treatment providers paid significantly lower salaries than providers in the private sector, who generally see people with health insurance or the ability to pay out of pocket. The name of Isaiah’s publicly funded provider: Cascade Mental Health Care. There, initial intake paperwork noted Isaiah as depressed, socially isolated, and suffering from mood swings, irritability, anxiety, aggression, grief, and emotional trauma. He was given a prescription for Zyprexa and lithium, the same medications he’d been prescribed at Western State. When Isaiah showed up for his first session, on September 11, 2008, he was back to denying any mental disturbance whatsoever. He said he wasn’t depressed, anxious, or experiencing any sort of psychosis. He was noted to be angry and gave “testy, short, and curt answers.” He also expressed displeasure at having to be involved in community treatment at all. He had been free on his own recognizance for exactly three weeks.

Isaiah’s blood could have been tested to see whether he was taking his lithium as prescribed. It wasn’t. Instead, a blood draw was ordered for Isaiah’s next visit, set for early October. Isaiah didn’t show for that visit. Nor did he appear for his scheduled visits in November or December. By the beginning of 2009, nine months before Teresa and Jennifer’s wedding date, Isaiah had spent more than three months out of compliance with Judge Gain’s order that he attend all of his Cascade Mental Health Care appointments.

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