May 11, 2025

Sylvia Mignon: When Your Expertise Can't Save Your Child

30 minutes

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Sylvia Mignon, licensed clinical social worker and professor of criminal justice, shares her heartbreaking journey navigating the mental health system while trying to secure proper care for her son with schizoaffective disorder. Despite her professional expertise, she's experienced nine years of struggling against bureaucracies that prioritize themselves over the needs of individuals with severe mental illness.

• Mental health systems and criminal justice bureaucracies often work to serve those within the system rather than clients and their families

• Many psychiatric professionals avoid treating severe mental illness, preferring conditions that respond better to medication

• Hospitals criminalize mentally ill patients they find difficult rather than transferring them to appropriate facilities

• Legal professionals need better education about mental illness to make informed decisions

• Massachusetts is closing psychiatric beds when many more are needed

• Most people with severe mental illness (75%) eventually stop taking their medication

• Support groups through organizations like Schizophrenia and Psychosis Action Alliance provide crucial help for families

• Online resources and books by family members of those with mental illness offer education and perspective

• Advocacy efforts include potential class action lawsuits against state mental health departments that fail patients

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By Tony Mantor

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