Two Tragedies - Zero Accomplished
© John McManamy
The following article, with a few changes, first appeared in my Depression and Bipolar Weekly #11:
A man in the crowd was acting strangely. Then, according to an article in the New York Times, he wheeled about and shoved Edgar Rivera, father of three, onto the tracks as the No 6 train screeched into Manhattan's 51st Street Station. The victim's legs were severed.
Police arrested Julio Perez, 43, a homeless man with schizophrenia and a long history of violence. The event, which occurred on April 28, was eerily similar to another subway attack in January. In that case, Andrew Goldstein, a 29-year old with schizophrenia considered by those who knew him as gentle but weird, pushed Kendra Webdale, who dreamed of being a writer, to her death in a subway station.
Starting from 1995, Julio wandered the streets of New York City, shuttling back and forth between homeless shelters, mental institutions, the streets, and outpatient clinics. In February this year, he began experiencing paranoid delusions which escalated in March and resulted in his eviction from a shelter. Although a caseworker recommended that Julio be hospitalized, this did not happen.
Two weeks before the subway incident, Julio called a friend, panic-stricken because he needed medicine and his Medicaid card had been canceled. Two days before the attack, he again called his friend, saying he wanted to go into a hospital, but he failed to make a planned rendezvous. On the day of the attack, he actually presented himself in the emergency room of a VA hospital, and later that day appeared at a police station and a courthouse to file a complaint against his "enemies".
Then he made his final stop.
Andrew's story is not far different, notwithstanding more promising beginnings. He graduated from a New York high school for gifted students, despite early signs of schizophrenia. His illness intensified during college and he was admitted to a state-run hospital in Queens. Eventually he settled into a small basement room. According to fellow tenants, he would fail to take his medications, which left him disassociated and lethargic, with stiff muscles. Newer anti-psychotics do not have these severe side-effects, but they are more costly.
Andrew's records revealed a classic case of "slipping through the cracks" in the system, of a desperate person begging and being denied the care he needed and ultimately winding up on the streets untreated and without supervision.
A state report noted that Andrew, as well as his mother and social workers, repeatedly tried to get him supervised services, only to be turned away. Eighteen days after
