- Jerri Clark advocates for mental health treatment before tragedy, sharing her son's story.
- Calvin's bipolar disorder led to homelessness; intervention came too late, after his death.
- DA Sim Gill emphasizes criminal justice system shouldn't be a safety net for mental health issues.
SALT LAKE CITY — Jerri Clark says her son, Calvin, was a smart, articulate, loving and generous boy and not a criminal.
But in his teen years, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His psychotic episodes led to homelessness and multiple arrests.
"When he fell ill, I believed there would be medical care to help. I believed there would be social systems to help lift him back up into the incredibly promising life that he began his life in. Instead, I was told, 'It's not illegal to be psychotic,' 'He'll have to get much sicker,' 'You'll have to stop helping so that he hits rock bottom,' and 'If things get bad enough, he will eventually fall into the criminal system and then he'll get scooped up,'" Clark said.
It wasn't until 2019, when Calvin was 23 and after he stepped off the roof of a seven-story building and plummeted to his death, that Clark says her son qualified for intervention and treatment.
On Wednesday, Clark told her story at the Salt Lake County district attorney's second symposium on the criminal justice system and mental health. Her message is that families who have a loved one with a severe mental illness want "treatment before tragedy."
"Our society has failed to use the most evidence-based treatments to support individuals to get as sick as my son did. He wasn't able to access the very things that would have saved his life," she said. "Mental illness is not a lifestyle choice."
The symposium was held as part of Mental Health Awareness Month and to raise awareness of the challenges families like Clark's face.
District Attorney Sim Gill says he is once again hosting the event because the criminal justice system has become a "safety net" for dealing with people with severe mental illness, even though "the last place you want somebody with an acute mental illness is to be going through the criminal justice system. And that speaks to the reality of how our criminal justice system is broken.
"When there is a failure to respond, the one entity you can count on to respond is the 911 call and that is the introduction to the criminal justice system," he said.
As he did last year, Gill recalled the time he received "one of the most difficult calls in my life as a public prosecutor" from a woman who wanted to know what felonies her mentally ill son had to commit in order to get the treatment he needed.
Gill says approximately 1 out of every 4 police shootings his office reviews involves a person dealing with a mental illness. But there are very few people dealing with a mental illness who "wake up and think, 'What crimes do I want to commit today?'" he said.
That's why Gill said real support for families who have a loved one with a severe mental illness needs to start before they enter the criminal justice system.
"Our loved ones need greater access to case management, employment services, peer support and permanent supportive housing," said Sherri Wittwer, head of the Utah Coalition for Severe Mental Illness.
Wittwer says mental illness needs to be treated with humanity, and treatment delayed may result in devastating outcomes.
"We must connect building a system that treats severe mental illness with the urgency, compassion and collaboration it demands. Our loved ones are not problems to be managed. They are people to be supported, valued, and given every opportunity to recover," she said.
Dan Rascon, KSLDebra Widmer, director of the group Utah Shattering Silence Coalition, concurs. Her grassroots group includes family members who have or have had a loved one experiencing mental illness.
"We didn't start this coalition because we wanted to be advocates. We started it because we love someone and refuse to give up on the system that's designed to serve them," she said.
Clark says what her son needed was hospitalization followed by assisted outpatient treatment and managed medication.
"But instead of treating him as the human being that he was, society decided that it would be easier to treat him as a criminal. Mental illness is not a lifestyle choice," she said.
"We need laws that treat psychiatric deterioration as a risk of harm to self. When a person is so disconnected from reality that they don't know how to take care of themselves anymore, we need assistance in place to guide them toward compassionate treatment and keep them in treatment long enough to regain autonomy."
Clark says people who are bipolar should be treated the same as someone who has Alzheimer's or dementia.
Gill adds that support from family members is important in helping their loved ones.
"Research shows that when we have family members that are engaged and involved, we have better outcomes for not only our community but also the person we're trying to take care of," he said. "Each person represents a human being worthy of dignity and respect. And tied to them is also often a family member in crisis who loves them, cares about them (and) wants to support them."
