Send us a text Jack Wood shares his son Jonathan's journey through Florida's mental health system, revealing how management failure rather than lack of resources creates catastrophic outcomes for those with severe mental illnesses. • Jonathan's early life included kidney disorder requiring powerful medications including cancer drugs • At 18, Jonathan developed schizophrenia with fixed delusions about having $10 billion from his blood plasma • Community treatment teams refused hospitalization despite clear deterioration and self-harm • After assaulting his father during psychosis, Jonathan entered a cycle of jail and inadequate hospital care • Florida's mental health system operates in silos with facilities prioritizing administrative goals over patient outcomes • Current system puts 60% of mentally ill people in jails rather than treatment facilities • Jack proposes a pilot program where a governor-appointed team coordinates care across all agencies • The solution requires breaking down bureaucratic barriers between law enforcement, courts, and healthcare • Like "a football team without a coach," mental health services need central coordination to function effectively • Jack advocates approaching governors and state leadership as they oversee all aspects of mental healthcare If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to TonyMantor.com Contact so they can give us their information to potentially become a guest on our show. https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
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Welcome to Why Not Me? The World Podcast, hosted by Tony Mantor. Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry. real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world hopefully you gain more awareness acceptance and a better understanding for autism around the world
Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me? The World, Humanity Over Handcuffs, The Silent Crisis special event. Joining us today is Jack Wood. He's a passionate advocate dedicated to being a strong voice for individuals, families, and organizations affected by severe brain disorders, including schizophrenia, psychoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and more.
His mission is to drive meaningful change, aiming to end Florida's catastrophic and inhumane outcomes for those with severe mental illnesses. Jack focuses on improving conditions for groups of people rather than just individuals.
He will also tell us how his son's struggles reshaped his perspective, inspiring him to leverage those lessons to advocate for better laws and support systems for everyone with mental illness. Thanks for coming on.
Not a problem. Not a problem.
If you could give us a little background on your son and some of the struggles he had and how they evolved.
Jonathan was adopted. He, at age two and a half, contracted what's called nephrotic syndrome. It's a kidney disorder where one of the membranes stops processing protein. You urinate away your protein, and then if you catch a cold, you die. Ugly disorder. There's only three medications back when this took place, and this would have been in 1990, 91, cyclosporine, cytoxin, and prednisone.
They put him on 55 milligrams of prednisone, and it goes 14 days, and the kidney starts working again. Then we go three or four months and it stops working again. They go through that. When the prednisone doesn't work, then they put him back on Cytoxan, which was a kidney rejection. And the other one was a cancer drug. So he went through those all the way up till age eight.
Unbelievable amount of trauma was physical induced from the heavy dose of medication.
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