Can We Learn from Serious Mental Illness Destroying Families?

On Sunday, a mentally ill man ran down a family with his truck as they innocently rolled down a bike lane. There was no previous connection between the man and the family. The man with the mental illness spontaneously ran them down; the father suffered with fatal wounds while his two sons watched. The father was Pedro Aguerreberry of Tampa Florida and the man with mental illness was Mikese Morse. This is one in an unending series of tragedies that result from untreated/improperly treated serious mental illness.

Serious Mental Illness Destroying Families Is a Tragedy

The death of a father and the injuring of two children under the age of nine is a tragedy. It is an enormous tragedy that will shake that family to the core forever. I can’t imagine what the Aguerreberrys are feeling right now.

But what makes this tragedy worse is that Morse was known to be mentally ill. Morse, in fact, walked into a police station less than two weeks before the incident rambling mostly incoherently and saying that he should not be allowed to leave the police station as he may hurt someone. The police did the right thing and Morse was taken into protective custody under Florida’s Baker Act. Unfortunately, Morse was released one week later.

This means that only five days after he was released from the hospital, he killed Pedro Aguerreberry.

Clearly, he shouldn’t have been released.

Releasing the Seriously Mentally Ill from Hospital

But, you might say, how could anyone possibly have known what would happen? Well, one might not have been able to pin down the future events but one sure should have recognized the imminent danger. I know this because the parents of Morse, who had been trying to get him help for years, begged the hospital not to let him out because he was not stabilized. And yet no one listened to the parents. In fact, in this case, it seems that not only did no one listen to the parents but people didn’t even listen to the mentally ill person himself. He said he was dangerous. That is no small thing.

Now, I don’t know what kind of shape Morse was in when he was released from the hospital. I suspect the parents were probably right. I suspect he probably wasn’t stabilized. Not only do I believe that because the parents say so but I say that because one week is not enough to stabilize a serious mental illness and then just dump the person back out into society. I was in a mental hospital. I saw cases that I imagine were just like Morse’s. But these people were kept safe, and the people around them were kept safe, thanks to the fact that they were kept in the hospital. Morse, on the other hand, was talking about killing people and the devil’s power over him on his Instagram page when he got out of the hospital.

I don’t know the excuse given to release Morse from the hospital but I would bet you it was about money. The insurance company wouldn’t allow a longer stay or the hospital couldn’t find anyone to foot the bill. It wasn’t Morse’s mental health that mattered, it was the hospital’s ability to make money that was.

Caring About Those with Serious Mental Illness and Their Families

It seems society doesn’t care much about the lives of those with serious mental illness. The thought is, who cares if people with mental illness crash and burn or end up homeless or in jail, they weren’t contributing to society anyway, right? Who cares if the crazy die of suicide, that’s their problem, right?

I wonder how much people thought Pedro Aguerreberry’s life and the welfare of his children were worth.

Because the thing about not caring about people with serious mental illness is that it doesn’t just affect people with mental illness, it affects everyone. I would argue, of course, that every life, including the lives of people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other illnesses are precious, but even if you were inclined to disagree, at least recognize your own self-preservation instinct and realize that by helping these people, you actually prevent tragedies from happening to everyone. Morse’s mental illness wasn’t just a problem for him, it was a problem for the very innocent family that just happened to cross his path. And it didn’t have to be that way. Pedro Aguerreberry didn’t have to die. His children didn’t have to be traumatized. Mikese Morse didn’t have to be charged with first-degree murder These lives didn’t have to have been destroyed. This was an avoidable tragedy.

While Morse will get blamed for this killing, and yes, he was the one who did it, it was the system that truly failed the Aguerreberrys, not to mention Morse and his family. And these are just two families that the broken mental health care system has destroyed.

Learning from Serious Mental Illness Destroying Families

So what’s the answer?

There are a lot of pieces to any answer.

The philosophical answer is that we need to learn that we are all connected and that the destruction of one person truly does affect a village. We need to understand that one person’s unraveling is something that will take others down with him.

We need to understand that people with mental illness have value and worth and are the same as everyone else. It is not acceptable to treat mental illness as if it is the individual’s fault. It is not acceptable to medically and societally treat mental illness so poorly. If we were sick with cancer we would demand the best treatment possible and we wouldn’t allow chemo to be terminated early as it could lead to our death. This much care must be put into mental illness treatment too.

We need to actually want to take the steps that are necessary to help people with serious mental illness and all those they touch. We need the societal will. We need the political will. We need to be willing to stand up and show the strength it takes to make change. We need to understand that while change may be costly, the destruction of families is infinitely more so.

And yes, this means that we must accept that things like assisted outpatient treatment need to become the law and that this law needs to actually be used everywhere. We must accept that society needs to bear some of the cost of treating these people when they can’t afford it themselves. We must listen when families, doctors and even patients themselves say they need help. And that help must actually be available to those with serious mental illness who need it.

So please, don’t hand-wring and bemoan yet another tragedy. Let this be the tragedy we learn from. Let this be the tragedy that makes society take action. Let this be the tragedy that makes you take action.

To learn how to take action, see: Treatment Advocacy Center.

For more about serious mental illness in the United States, see: Mental Illness Policy Org.

For more on this event, see: ’This universe can end,’ said driver in video, now charged with mowing down bike family.