Angel White, a 26 year old African American with schizophrenia and Covid-19 was admitted to Washington Hospital Center late April (around the 25th). Upon admission she tested negative for Covid-19. Because the necessary precautions were NOT taken during her treatment, she tested positive before being discharged. In a failed attempt from our system of care, Unity Health Care assumed responsibility for quarantine and registered my daughter, who is a-symptomatic (shows no symptoms) with Covid-19 at The Arboretum Hotel on May 1 for 14 days, according to the CDC guidelines. When Angel’s Case Manager stood on my front porch the afternoon of May 11, 2020, she furiously stated “Unity Health Care released her! I thought she eloped because the 14 days are not up, but I saw the release papers myself. We were making progress and working on a plan to admit her into RAP drug treatment center to transition her from the hotel and now she’s gone. I was with her at 35 K Street for emergency meds and she said, ‘I need to take a walk.’ Miss Mathis, I feel like we [the system of care] failed your family again….This should not have happened and I need to make some calls to figure out why!”
She continued to say, “Angel wanted to go into treatment this time, she has no idea why they kicked her out of the hotel and neither do I.” All I could do was bury my head in my hands. This is another gross miscarriage of justice for my only daughter and the mental heath community at large in Washington, DC. When will there be a level of accountability that shows the nation’s Capitol genuinely cares about holistic treatment that fully integrates some of our most vulnerable citizens battling dual diagnosis into society? Treatment, or a lack thereof, has looked like this for Angel White for the past decade. There’s more to DC than American government, tourism, real estate, bike lanes, dog parks, new restaurants, beer gardens and integrating art into our political climate. We have an entire population of predominantly African American youth, adults, and seniors suffering from the silent killer called Mental Illness, who self-medicate and can’t make sound judgements for themselves, who need positive behavioral supports not restraints and seclusion, who need structured and stabilized housing to transition into society after incarceration or institutionalization. If we showed them their lives mattered by creating small housing communities for them to have a sense of ownership and an acceptance of their dual diagnosis we would slowly eradicate overdosing, severe psychosis, frequent hospitalizations, excessive pan handling, homelessness, theft, home invasions, loitering, and now, most importantly, rapid disease spreading.
I was currently arranging a search party to try and find my daughter. In the midst of doing so, I received a text from my cousin who always opens her door for Angel. I was told “Your daughter just left my house, I made her a sandwich.” I had to collect my thoughts and give her the news she’s positive for Covid-19. Now she’s in a panic trying to sanitize her home and arrange for testing. This is a disservice to everyone in our community. Where’s the accountability? How can I stop her from spreading the virus if I can’t even locate her? Who’s next? Anyone who possibly encounters my daughter because staff from United Medical Center arbitrarily made the intentional choice to release her without a treatment plan, without contacting her Case Manager or PreTrial Services Officer, the social worker at Washington Hospital Center, or anyone who has been authorized by release of information, directly working to maintain stability in my daughters life. I know the team on a first name basis and you may wonder “why”? It’s because I have worked to establish true collaboration with all parties involved, as I’ve done consistently for the past decade, in hopes of not allowing my daughter to slip through the cracks once again. Unfortunately, that seems more like wishful thinking than reality.
Fast forward to August: my daughter has been in the community for three months delusional and hallucinating. My neighborhood network has notified me of sightings, but every time my sons and I get to the location, she’s not there. One afternoon, she thought a man at the gas station had her son in the back seat, so she jumped in the car and drove off; catching another charge, but released back into the community within three days, without any structured treatment plan or medication management in place. DC even installed an ankle monitor on Angel. I immediately began to call her Probation Officer, who finally admitted after me calling repeatedly “They’re not monitoring them, I have no way of knowing where your daughter is, unless she had committed a violent crime; those are the ones they’re monitoring”
At 4am, at a gas station in NE DC, my daughter flagged down the police for help. After they ran her information, she was taken into custody. Unable to attend her hearing because she’s been declared mentally incompetent, she is currently being held at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in quarantine. In two weeks, we will learn the sex of her unborn child, as she’s 4 months pregnant; which happened after being prematurely released as opposed to being processed and transitioned to long term treatment. I know this was absolutely possible because her Case Manager and I had worked together and found her a placement at RAP treatment facility. My daughters last words to me before we lost contact were, “I could have left the quarantine at hotel anytime, I stayed because I wanted help; but as always, they threw me away like the trash”.