ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 TAG: 9605140017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
The call came at 3 a.m. from a pay phone: Mom and Dad, I need help. The New River Valley couple had no idea that their son, a Virginia Tech graduate student, was deep in the throes of psychosis - hearing voices that told him to drive to West Virginia in the middle of the night.
The parents drove as quickly as they could. When they arrived, they found their son wandering along a highway, hallucinating.
"We are educated people, but we had never seen someone in this state before," recalls the anguished mother.
Her son had claimed on the phone that he'd run out of gas, but his tank was full. During the drive back he revealed that he thought his car, his parents' cars and the family's house was bugged.
His parents took him immediately to a hospital, where he was put on drugs and a three-week-long treatment regimen. But three days into his stay, a benefits clerk called to tell the mother to come pick up her son: The insurance company had denied further treatment.
His psychiatrist, she later learned, was worn down by the battle to keep another patient, who was homicidal, in the hospital. "He was so exhausted from fighting with the insurance company for this other young man that he didn't fight for our son," the woman recalls.
"I don't know how the doctors do it. You sit there with them and you just pray and pray that this person at the other end of the line is gonna let your son stay in the hospital. It's like the doctors are under this giant thumb of the insurance companies."
This mother - and many other parents of mentally ill children in the area -weren't surprised to read last week's footnote to the story on Shawsville's Scotty Wayne Overby, who was convicted last week of the August murder, rape and mutilation of his wife.
Overby, the story noted, suffered from depression and alcoholism and had been released from Lewis Gale Psychiatric Center in mid-July - because his insurance ran out. A doctor there even called Overby's wife to warn her that her husband had thoughts of killing her.
"People were thinking, 'That could have been our story,'" said Millie Willis, past president of Roanoke's Alliance for the Mentally Ill. "It's all a matter of money, whether these people get the treatment they need. It's just horrendous."
Willis and others in the alliance are lobbying for passage of the Domenici/Wellstone Amendment, part of the health insurance reform bill that passed the U.S. Senate last month. The amendment would force insurers to cover mental illnesses as extensively as they cover other illnesses.
While powerful business groups are calling it an unwelcome government mandate, mental-health experts claim it will save money - and lives - in the long run.
"When I saw the Overby story, it really broke my heart," the New River mother said. "If he had been able to stay in the hospital and have his treatment completed, it's possible that this young lady would still be alive and he wouldn't be looking at the death sentence or life imprisonment.
"Hundreds of people every day are virtually being kicked out of hospitals without the completion of their treatment."
In her son's case, she had to "raise hell" to get him back into the hospital, where he was eventually re-admitted - but just for two weeks. "Even then, we'd have to sit there with the doctor waiting for the telephone call to find out if, in fact, he'd be able to stay," she says. "Many times the person making the decision didn't even have a master's degree."
Since her son's release, the mother has had to give up her full-time job to manage his care at home. Diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, he still sometimes suffers from delusional spells, hallucinations and side effects from his medications. He's also had electric shock therapy at the hospital - as an outpatient.
"I can't tell you the effects this can have on a family," the mother says. "It really does try your moral fiber. And to be sitting there with the doctor, who is also powerless, it's just incredible."
Beth Macy's column runs in Tuesday and Thursday Extra. She can be reached at 981-3435 or by e-mail at bmacy@roanoke.infi.net or even the old-fashioned way at P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, Va. 24010.
LENGTH: Medium: 79 linesby CNB