LOCAL
A8 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2019
Living with mental illness in the family
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Stella Queen has felt the
helplessness of watching a
loved one slip into the grasp
of a mental illness many
times in her life.
“Schizophrenia is just
rampant in my family,” the
Echo woman said. “I’ve
asked God many times why
he spared me.”
She said her father had
schizophrenia, and her
brother and grandmother.
The illness got her daugh-
ter, who died by suicide 10
years ago. It also affected
her great-niece, Antonia
Cobarubias, who was killed
in an unsolved hit-and-run in
Hermiston on Aug. 31.
Sitting at her kitchen
table on a recent afternoon,
she jumped from story to
story as she reflected on her
journey in trying to edu-
cate herself on mental ill-
ness and advocate for family
members.
The first thing she remem-
bers is reading a textbook in
fifth grade in the 1950s that
— falsely — stated schizo-
phrenia was caused by the
way mothers potty trained
their children.
“I raised my hand and
asked how that could be and
my teacher sadly said, ‘Oh,
we were blamed for a lot
of things due to potty train-
ing,’” she said.
Years later, she tried to
ask providers treating her
brother what the chances
were that her unborn child
would inherit the same ill-
ness. One hung up on her,
she said, while another told
her she “wouldn’t be able to
understand” if he explained.
Her great-niece, Coba-
rubias, stayed with Queen
on and off after she started
hearing voices in her head
in her late teens. She said
Cobarubias struggled with
a drug addiction, but at one
point was able to get her own
place while staying clean for
more than three years.
“I was so proud of her,”
she said.
When
Cobarubias
slipped back into addic-
tion and got evicted, Queen
was worried about what
her “sweet-spirited” fam-
ily member would experi-
ence while living out in the
cold or heat, among peo-
ple who might take advan-
tage of her. She reached out
to law enforcement with her
concerns. They told her that
as an adult, it was Cobaru-
bias’s right to live where she
wanted to.
She got similar answers
in reaching out to mental
health providers and doc-
tors treating Cobarubias —
if a patient hasn’t signed a
waiver allowing someone
access to their information,
they said, the clinic can’t
release information about
whether they are making
it to appointments or what
medications they should be
taking.
Contributed Photo
Antonia Cobarubias and her brother Murray pose for a picture
in this photograph from the 1990s.
“We’re happy to connect
them with resources,” she
said.
A difficult situation
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Stella Queen poses for a portrait holding a picture of her great-niece Antonia Cobarubias, who
was killed in an unsolved hit-and-run in Hermiston in August.
Contributed Photo
Antonia Cobarubias interacts with her son Trevor in this
picture of a camping trip the two took in 2014.
“She went from being
really good to going down-
hill, the difficulty was get-
ting someone to listen to me,
because I’m not her guard-
ian,” Queen said.
The situation ended in
tragedy, with Cobarubias
fatally struck down by a
vehicle while she was push-
ing a shopping cart along
Highway 395 in the middle
of the night.
It wasn’t the first time
Queen dealt with trag-
edy. She got her daughter,
Dawn Marie Eagle, commit-
ted to an inpatient psychiat-
ric facility in 2009 after pro-
viding convincing evidence
she was a danger to herself.
But Queen said the facility
didn’t notify her when Eagle
was released from the facil-
ity and returned to her home
in Portland.
She also said she had no
idea until after her daughter
took her life not long after
that police had made mul-
tiple welfare checks to her
home, including an inci-
dent where her daughter was
dumping gallons of laundry
detergent on the floor to “get
rid of evil spirits.”
“I say God dumped on
her and the system failed
her,” Queen said.
Balancing rights and care
The balance between a
person with a mental illness
getting care they need and
maintaining their rights to
privacy and independence is
a difficult one.
The pendulum has swung
toward independence over
the last century, moving
away from family mem-
bers being able to lock away
pesky women indefinitely
for “hysteria,” and into
an era where some family
members feel it is too diffi-
cult to get a seriously men-
tally ill family member help
while they’re in crisis.
“All the confidentiality,
all the privacy, it enables the
mentally ill to (the point)
where there’s no help,”
Queen said. “It allows them
to get hurt.”
Kristen Owen, a clinical
director for Lifeways, which
provides mental health ser-
vices in Eastern Oregon, said
people with mental illnesses
deserve rights just like
someone with a cancer diag-
nosis should have the right
to say they don’t want other
people to know the details of
their chemotherapy.
If someone is a dan-
ger to themselves or others,
Lifeways can place a hold
on them for up to five days
while gathering evidence to
present to a judge, who may
order in-patient treatment.
“In essence we are limit-
ing their civil rights (during
a hold) but there are very
high standards to meet,”
Owens said.
Lifeways does strongly
encourage people to bring
family members and other
“natural supports” into their
treatment process when
appropriate, she said. During
the intake process for a new
client they discuss people in
the client’s life who might
be helpful, and organiza-
tions or other providers who
might benefit from getting
information on the client’s
treatment.
New clients can fill
out a form giving blanket
approval for sharing infor-
mation with certain people
or organizations, or they can
check specific boxes allow-
ing sharing, such as “Infor-
mation necessary to arrange
transportation.”
“It’s pretty customiz-
able,” Owens said.
She said that if some-
one doesn’t want their fam-
ily to know anything about
their treatment, Lifeways is
bound by law to respect that
wish. But that doesn’t mean
that family members can’t
call and share information,
even if they’re not getting
any in return.
It might seem like their
call went nowhere, she said,
but behind the scenes a ther-
apist might say, “Your mom
called yesterday and is really
worried about you. Would
you be willing to bring her
in here to talk about how she
might help?”
Liz Johnsen, executive
director of business excel-
lence for Lifeways, said they
also have a crisis number
(541-276-6207). A major-
ity of the calls through that
line are hospitals and law
enforcement, she said, but
“we want to be that same
resource for families.”
While Lifeways staff say
they’re more than happy to
answer general questions
on mental illness and share
resources for people who are
trying to help a loved one,
Queen said her experience
has been that it’s difficult to
get someone on the line.
Queen’s friend, Mary
Baggett of Hermiston, who
has an adult family mem-
ber with schizophrenia cur-
rently living with her, said
she also feels alone some-
times in navigating life with
a family member with men-
tal illness.
“I feel like there is no
place for me to go or call,”
she said.
She said in her case her
family member did sign a
release with Lifeways, but
just because she knows
when his appointments
are doesn’t mean she can
force him to go when he
decides he doesn’t feel like
it. The same goes for taking
medications.
She said family mem-
bers can also only do so
much to protect their loved
ones from people who take
advantage of them, finan-
cially or otherwise.
Most people with men-
tal illnesses aren’t prone
to violence — according
to the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Ser-
vices’ fact sheet on men-
tal health myths, the “vast
majority of people with
mental health problems are
no more likely to be violent
than anyone else. In fact,
people with severe mental
illnesses are over 10 times
more likely to be victims of
violent crime than the gen-
eral population.”
However,
sometimes
when someone with a serious
mental illness like schizo-
phrenia are in crisis they
end up doing or saying vio-
lent things, frightening their
loved ones. Baggett said in
that situation it’s especially
hard to know where to turn,
because family members
are worried that they will
make things worse for their
loved one in the future when
they’re doing better.
“You could call the
police, but that opens a
whole new can of worms,”
she said.
Baggett said she’s never
used Lifeways’ crisis line
before, but Owens said if
it’s not safe for someone to
transport their family mem-
ber to the hospital during a
crisis, Lifeways staff can
come to them.
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Cheryl
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Staff Sergeant
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Love Evelyn,
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