Oregon Man Murders His Sister

Joseph F. Rockwood killed his adoring sister, Theresa Rockwood, on November 10.  He stabbed her to death.  Theresa's beloved brother suffers from a severe, chronic case of schizophrenia, but 54-year-old Joseph does not know that he is sick.  He has a condition that is very common among psychiatric patients called "anosognosia," and that is why Theresa is dead and Joseph is charged with murder.

Joseph discontinued cooperating with his social worker at Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare a year ago and discontinued his medications.  Theresa watched brother's mental state spiral downward, while she and her husband made repeated attempts to get help for Joseph.  He was delusional and living in filth.  Despite their pleas to authorities, the system had no answers for this family in crisis.

Oregon News reports that Cascadia declined to comment on the case.  Chris Bouneff, director of marketing and development for DePaul Treatment Centers and president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Oregon spoke with Oregon News reporter, Don Colburn, and explained, "We have a system that's chronically underfunded." 

With Theresa's death, the system has come up with the perfect and very expensive answer for Joseph:  He has been charged with murder.  As a result, Oregon taxpayers will now pay untold amounts of money to criminalize Joseph for his mental illness, including attorneys' fees, court costs, incarceration fees, and for psychiatric tests to determine Joseph's ability to stand trial.  After that, the State of Oregon may pay over $100,000 per year for Joseph to join the 1.25 million other mental patients already incarcerated in America's prisons.  That number accounts for more than half of the nation's 2.3 million incarcerated persons, which costs taxpayers $185 BILLION per annum.  Under provisions for California's imprisoned mental patientsin a federal court order by USDC Judge Henderson, taxpayers will pay approximately $230,000 per year, per mental patient under arrest.  And that expenditure comes after taxpayers spend $8 BILLION to build and equip seven new prison hospital facilities that will undoubtedly offer excellent care for the mental patients - behind bars.

Do you think the taxpayers in Oregon and California might prefer to pay for Joseph's social worker to make a home visit in response to Theresa's anguished pleas for help, and to simply purchase a $40 bottle of pills?  But if Joseph refused to resume his medications for his social worker, do you think taxpayers would rather have authorities simply force Joseph to open his mouth and swollow the pills during a brief hospital stay until his health was stabilized?  Do you think Theresa's husband would have preferred that?  Once Joseph goes to prison and receives psychiatric treatment in preparation for trial as his sister's murderer, poor Joseph will come to realize what he has done.  How will Joseph feel then?  Do you believe he will wish someone had helped him regain control of his faculties with enforced psychiatric treatment before he could murder his sweet sister, who loved him so much?

In the matter of State of Oregon v. Joseph F. Rockwood, who loses?  Theresa lost her life; her husband lost his wife; Joseph lost his loving sister, who provided his support system, and probably any chance of finding peace in his lucid state having to deal with tragic reality that he killed Theresa; Oregon's taxpayers lose the difference between a $40 bottle of pills as opposed to paying to imprison Joseph for the remaining 20+years of his life expectancy.  Who wins?  In many cases where the mentally ill are criminalized, the only winners are private prison owners - those who profit off the nations' staggering incarceration rate, by far the highest of any nation on earth.

Below is a blog by Treatment Advocacy Center which explains Joseph's common health condition which blinded him to the fact that he needed psychiatric help.  Last Wednesday, while deprived of his medications, Joseph decided that killing his sister was a good idea at the time.

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From:  <eNews@TreatmentAdvocacyCenter.org>

RESTORING REASON TO TREATING MENTAL ILLNESS

Battling Obstacles: Anosognosia

Nov. 14, 2008

Families of people with severe mental illness are all too familiar with the struggle involved in caring for a person who very well may not even realize they are sick.  It is a medical condition known as anosognosia.

News this week brought this little known medical term home.  Blogs and news stories covered the struggle that Theresa Rockwood faced.  Her 54-year-old brother, Joseph F. Rockwood, suffers from schizophrenia.  He is now charged with her murder.

Theresa's fight to help her brother is not unlike the plight of others who care for someone with a severe mental illness, only to find that the state's laws act as a barrier to treatment.

Anosognosia is a major problem because it is the single largest reason why individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder do not take their medications.  It is caused by damage to specific parts of the brain, especially the right hemisphere.  It affects approximately 50 percent of individuals with schizophrenia and 40 percent of individuals with bipolar disorder.  When taking medications, awareness of illness improves in some patients.

Impaired awareness of illness is a strange thing.  It is difficult to understand how a person who is sick would not know it.  Impaired awareness of illness is very difficult for other people to comprehend.  To other people, a person's psychiatric symptoms seem so obvious that it's hard to believe the person is not aware he/she is ill.  Oliver Sacks, in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, noted this problem:

It is not only difficult, it is impossible for patients with certain right-hemisphere syndromes to know their own problems ...And it is singularly difficult, for even the most sensitive observer, to picture the inner state, the 'situation' of such patients, for this is almost unimaginably remote from anything he himself has ever known.  

"It's not uncommon for family members to struggle with trying to get care for their loved ones," says Chris Bouneff, director of marketing and development for DePaul Treatment Centers and president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Oregon.

"It doesn't work to say to them, 'Why don't you just get help?' Their frame of reference will never be that they need help," Bouneff told the Oregonian newspaper.

Send a Postcard to a Friend

You can help raise awareness the importance of improving timely and effective treatment for people with severe mental illnesses.  Take a few mintues to spread the word to some friends.

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Whatever reason this nation has to criminalize mental illness, it is not in order to save taxpayers money or save families suffering.  What is the real reason to withhold treatment from mental patients until there is a smoking gun or dripping knife?  Open-book quiz:  Who wins?

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