Send us a textDenise Paley shares the harrowing story of her son's sudden onset schizophrenia at age 18 and his subsequent five-year imprisonment without sentencing, revealing critical failures in how our justice system handles mental illness.• Son Ellis was an honor roll student with a bright future before experiencing first-episode psychosis• Police dismissed parents' concerns when Ellis disappeared, missing critical intervention opportunity• Ellis has been incarcerated for nearly five years, remaining unsentenced with his case continued 48 times• He spent 3.5 years without proper treatment for psychosis while in prison• When finally transferred to a facility that properly treated his condition, his symptoms completely remitted• Denise successfully advocated for mandatory crisis intervention training for Connecticut police officers• People with serious mental illness are 10 times more likely to end up in prison than in hospital• Contrary to popular belief, 50% of people with schizophrenia recover within 10 years with proper treatment• First episode psychosis requires immediate treatment - early intervention dramatically improves outcomes• Breaking stigma and sharing family mental health history can help others recognize symptoms earlierJoin us in spreading awareness about mental health in the justice system by sharing this episode and telling everyone everywhere about Why Not Me? The World.https://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: Who is Denise Paley and what is her story?
Hopefully, you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me? The World, Humanity Over Handcuffs, The Silent Crisis special event. Joining me today is Denise Paley. She will share her son's experiences with the legal system, which inspired her to advocate for legislative reform in her state. Thanks for coming on.
And can you tell us a little more information about your son?
Chapter 2: What were the initial signs of Ellis's mental health crisis?
Okay, so almost five years ago to the date. So it was January in 2020. My son had previously been an honor roll student in high school. He had already, you know, been accepted to college. He was living a very normal, seemingly high school senior life. Had a lot of friends, was on the varsity lacrosse team. He volunteered for unified sports. On the surface, everything was going very well for him.
He was in this international baccalaureate program that we have at our high school. He had to go to the library. I think we were still on break. We were still on the Christmas break. It was the talent event. And he had to go to the library to work on a project with some friends. They do a lot of collaboration. There were only 20 kids in the school that were in the program.
He left for the library, which was very typical to go work on this project before they went back to school. And he never came home. He's also very much a wolf follower. If our son didn't come home for dinner without telling us, as his parents, we consider that very unusual behavior. He didn't come home for dinner. He didn't call.
His dad and I started to call around to see if anybody knew where he was. His brother was looking for him. At the time, Snapchat was very popular, trying to figure out if anybody knew where he was. We drove by the library. We drove by some friends' homes. We called some people. No sign of him. We found out he never showed up for the library for the group.
Wow, that's pretty scary. What did you do?
So we went to the police. He was in high school, but he had just turned 18 a few months before. So we went to the police and said that they would look for him, that they would put out an alert to locate his license plate. Everything's hindsight, right? So now I have all of the recordings from the police interactions and all our phone calls. They completely dismissed.
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Chapter 3: How did the police respond to Ellis's disappearance?
Behind the scenes, they were saying things like, You know, these parents think just because their son's at home, something's wrong. He probably met a girl, you know, totally not interested in us at all. At some point in the middle of the night, I could see that he used my credit card at a gas station about an hour and a half from our home.
So we called the police and we said, all right, we could see that this happened. At first, they sort of dismissed it. They're like, well, if that was an hour and a half ago, he's not going to be there anymore. You can call the state troopers and see if they can go by the gas station and see. So we did. We called the state troopers. The state troopers go to the gas station.
Now it's like 1230 at night and he's asleep at a restaurant. He's sleeping in the parking lot. They never asked him to get out of the car. They... Talk to him. They basically say, your parents are looking for you. He's a little bit confused. You know, they ask him where he is. He says he's someplace. He was someplace green. Like he's not really answering very coherently.
The state trooper calls our police department. They call me. I say, we thought it was carjacked. So we weren't thinking of psychotic rape. And I'm like, if he's alive and he is an hour and a half away from home, there was something wrong. It's just not in his nature. He doesn't like to drive anywhere ever. He's never driven further in the New Haven from her house, which is about 25 minutes away.
After all this happened, what was next?
So I tell the police officer, if he is there sitting in a parking lot for since 10 o'clock at night, essentially from when he used the credit card, if he's there, I just don't believe he can possibly be lucid or in any condition to drive. Please hold him. My husband and our neighbor start driving to Darien where he was.
Police officer tells me he is not having a psychotic break that we can determine. He's fine. He said he was out with friends, which he never said because I did see the reporting and they... And by the time my husband and the neighbor got to the rest stop, he was gone. He never came home. He had like deleted all of his contacts in his phone. You know, his phone was gone straight to voicemail.
No one can get in touch with him. And the next day in the afternoon, We were going to the police over and over and over again, you know, trying to show them like what normal behavior for a child was. We're showing the police officer our text thread with him on New Year's Eve because he went to a party New Year's Eve overnight.
Like we texted him, you know, he texted us late at night to tell us he wasn't coming home. And we text him back and he texts us back within 15 minutes. And just what normal looks like because this is January 5th. So it's right after New Year's. And we're just trying to show like what normal is for him. You know, you found him in Darien an hour and a half away from home. He didn't go to school.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Ellis face in the justice system?
With all this that was happening, what was next? You have doctors, you have psychiatrists. How did you handle it?
So with how he was handled, mostly the issue with the Department of Corrections is that it is not designed to treat people with a serious mental illness. It is where people with serious mental illnesses wind up going. You're 10 times more likely to wind up in prison than you are in a hospital. So that's the statistic. He was left essentially in a state of psychosis for three and a half years.
They did not treat his psychosis. He had anosognosia, which I don't know if you know what anosognosia is.
Yes, I'm familiar with it. Can you explain it for our listeners?
Okay, so anosognosia is very common for people who are truly experiencing psychosis. You can see things that are not real and hallucinate, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're experiencing a disconnection from reality. So that was the case with our child. So he was truly experiencing psychosis where he had no idea that he was sick.
He appeared, not to us, but I could see how he could have appeared not sick to somebody, but he got progressively worse over the years. But at the time of his arrest, you can still have a conversation, but you're so in a different reality. You're just so living in a different reality. So he had a belief about a metaphysical being. that could destroy him and not destroy him by kill him.
I mean, destroy him by like create havoc in the universe. You know, like that was his mindset that was controlling a lot of different factors in our world. And that was his belief system at the time. He was left that way for years.
That's just hard to imagine. So what happened next?
He'd been sent for competency restoration. He'd been sent to a forensic hospital for a little while. You know, we had bonded him out, but instead of bringing him home. But all of his care at this point, once he was arrested, was in the hands of the Department of Corrections. So there was no opportunity to get him meaningful care.
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Chapter 5: How did Denise Paley become an advocate for mental health reform?
That was my very next question. And it is twofold. One is the police have such a burden put on them with situations that they don't know and understand or know how to handle yet. And that gives them a very stressful situation. The second part is how are you finding now that you're working on legislation to make it more inclusive for all the people involved?
How are you finding the reception from the police precincts with the people that are trying to help them and inform them to make a better situation for everyone?
It really depends on the culture of the community. So one that comes to mind that's been amazing, which had never really embraced crisis intervention team training before. So Madison, Connecticut is the town right next to where I live. So I live in Guilford, Madison is the town right next door. They kind of had a reputation for not embracing such programs.
But since we've been doing this, they've probably sent more than, I want to say, 12. I'm not ready. I didn't prepare it. But I want to say they've probably sent 12 police officers for crisis intervention team training. You feel like every class, they send more officers and they send their dispatchers. which I think is so smart because they're the person taking the call.
And if they have the wherewithal to say, you know what, maybe I should be calling 988. Maybe that's who needs to be involved. Maybe we need a crisis team. And then we do have some communities where they haven't really wanted to touch it. I'm not going to say them on the podcast, but it's a shame because mental illness does not discriminate. Neither does autism. It's in every community.
Neither does dementia. It's in every community. And you should have the training to meet people where they're at for every safety.
Yes, I agree 100%. It doesn't matter whether it's cancer, autism, mental illness, one thing in common, it does not discriminate. It affects everyone, young, old, and everyone in between. The only way that we can make this better is what this month is all about. Awareness, acceptance, and understanding. The more we get people to understand this, hopefully the better society will be.
Yeah, I agree. I think Ellis, my son's name is Ellis, and I think his experience has really shined a light on that too. What happened was very public at the time. We live in this little community and all of this is kind of unfolding. It's almost like an outer body experience. You never know how a community is going to respond. And the day it happened, somebody left dinner on our porch.
Every single day, well into COVID, people have meals, cards, a lot of wine. But just notes, letters, I think just as much, people realize it could be anybody. It could be anybody's job.
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Chapter 6: What legislative changes has Denise successfully advocated for?
Yes, that's a testament to where you live, 100%. Where do you see yourself, let's say five years from now? You're advocating, working on legislation. What's up next for you since you started on this legislative journey?
So, well, right now I'm working on another law. So I just sent a concept to Christine for a timelier treatment of mental illness for people who are either experiencing psychosis or who have attempted to die by suicide. Because again, if you attempt to die by suicide while you're incarcerated, you go to solitary confinement. So to get timelier treatment up front, it would save money for the state.
And it is just the main thing to do. It would also save a lot of lives. Too many lives are lost for people living in incarceration because their mental health needs are not met. It's like that. What is that Maya Angelou quote? Like, know better once you know better. do better, do better, or what you know better, do better, be better. I don't know. I think it's something like that.
But my point is, I had never known anybody who'd been incarcerated in my life. I've known people who've had serious brain illnesses before, but I've never had an impact like this. My family, it has changed. I have another son who's in college now. It has changed his life forever, my son's dad's life forever. Now that I know there is such an unmet need
And there's so few people who are doing anything about it. This is what I'm going to be doing.
Yeah, that's just so good that you're doing this. What would you like to leave our listeners with? Things that you think is important that they hear so they understand what you've been through, what you're going through, that just might help them if they ever have to go through this themselves.
So for somebody who is going through something like this, look for the light. Look for those glimmers. Look for where you feel the love and focus on that. Because it's so overwhelming and so daunting, you really have to notice where there's hope. For people who are not affected, we're all connected.
we're all human beings i encourage anyone who hears this podcast and who knows once you know say something speak out you don't have to become an advocate like you or i but write a letter make it known get it on the radar because people with mental illness and people with autism these are very vulnerable populations people who can need to speak out for them
Absolutely. So many people do not understand autism or serious mental illness. They think it's a death sentence. It's not.
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