Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Stephanie Beilin: Mother's Journey Through Mental Illness and Incarceration
Sat, 17 May 2025
Send us a textA mother and clinical social worker shares her heartbreaking journey navigating the legal system after her high-achieving son developed serious mental illness, revealing how our justice system criminalizes rather than treats mental health conditions. • Licensed independent clinical social worker with 40+ years experience working with vulnerable populations• Her academically successful son began experiencing internal racing thoughts and anxiety despite outward success• Despite parents' professional backgrounds (mother a social worker, father a psychologist), they faced enormous challenges getting appropriate care• Son discontinued medication at 29, leading to psychotic episodes and repeated negative police encounters• Law enforcement and legal system demonstrated lack of training and empathy in handling mental health crises• Massachusetts lacks assisted outpatient treatment programs that could have prevented criminalization• 70-80% of incarcerated individuals suffer from serious mental illness• Anosognosia: neurological condition where individuals lose ability to self-reflect on their behaviors• Advocate working with National Shattering Silence Coalition to change legislation and improve mental health services• Need for systemic change in how police, courts, and society respond to mental health conditionsTell everyone everywhere about Why Not Me, the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this 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)
What is the focus of Stephanie Beilin's experience?
set up teams to support teachers and support staff to take care of these vulnerable, you know, population that is very much integrated into the public school. It's kind of interesting that given my background and then prior to that, I was a medical social worker actually at Beverly Hospital, which is an acute care medical surgical hospital. So that's my professional background.
And right now I'm still practicing. I provide clinical services to individuals who are dealing with depression, anxiety, life transition, stress in the family, kind of all of the above. Given all of that 16 years ago,
almost 17 years ago my son came to my husband and i describing some symptoms of having racing thoughts and some anxiety he was having a lot of difficulty managing inwardly not outwardly inwardly some of his experiences in life where objectively no one really saw it he was you know in the top five percent of his class highly regarded football player was a
Rotary International student was super successful, but that did not translate to what was going on with him internally. And he was having a lot of hardship managing some of the racing thoughts and some of the sort of intrusive thinking that was going on inside of him.
So with all this happening, what were your next steps?
To let you know, my husband, he's a clinical psychologist. So we felt like we were pretty well equipped and had access to good quality services in the Boston area. Took him right in to see a health professional.
Given the genetic predisposition on my husband's side of the family with bipolar disorder, the psychiatrist felt it was indicated to get him on a variety of medication to manage some of the racing thoughts and some of the issues of the anxiety and depression.
With all those challenges, what were the next steps you used and how did it progress?
You know, when it did take some time to manage the medication, I mean, that is never easy. We felt like he was doing great. He was highly functional, had friends, was really very, very successful in many different areas. Being from New England, he went to one of the NESCAC goals, played football for four years, traveled the world, studying international studies, worked as a teacher, coach, mentor.
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