Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ?
Ruth Johnston: Autism and Schizophrenia: A Mother's Fight for Change
24 Apr 2025
Send us a text Ruth Johnston shares her harrowing journey as the mother of an autistic son who developed schizophrenia, and how this experience drove her to advocate for Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania following a family tragedy. • Ruth's son was diagnosed with autism as a teenager, after she had already been homeschooling him for years • Around age 13, he began showing signs of developing schizophrenia, though it took a decade to recognize the condition • Current laws prevented intervention despite clear evidence of his deteriorating mental state • Expert testimony revealed 5-34% of autistic individuals may develop schizophrenia as adults • Anosognosia (inability to recognize one's own mental illness) prevents many from seeking help voluntarily • AOT programs allow civil courts to mandate treatment before dangerous situations occur • The "black robe effect" of a judge's order can help individuals comply with treatment • Modern medications like Abilify can dramatically improve quality of life without severe side effects • Patient advocacy groups often oppose AOT but don't represent those with severe schizophrenia • Ruth founded AOT4AlleghenyCounty.com to advocate for these needed programs To learn more about Ruth Johnston's advocacy efforts or to get involved, visit AOT4AlleghenyCounty.com or email [email protected]. 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)
Full Episode
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 Ruth Johnston.
She will share her personal experience with her autistic son who subsequently developed schizophrenia and discuss how this led to her establishing AOT for Allegheny County in Pennsylvania. I'm delighted to have her join us, bringing a wealth of knowledge on this topic. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Can you tell us about your autistic son?
My son is 38 now, so he's a little older. Nobody was identifying autistic unless they were can or autism back then. And so he wasn't identified till he was a teenager and never had services and things like that. I never had the experience of being the parent in the IEP meeting and working with it. I homeschooled him and we just dealt with the bumps. I love him dearly.
And it was on the one side, it was great delight. And on the other side, sheer terror and misery. because he was not easy. And when he was 13, we started to see the onset of, that's something I should talk about, what it looked like for him to start to get schizophrenia, because it took at least 10 years to know that's what it was. That's important.
I look at the parents who have autistic kids and I almost have a bad attitude because there's an overwhelming sense of we're going to take this school to court. We're going to make sure everything is perfect. You're going to do all of these things. And I'm thinking when they turn 18 and some of them get schizophrenia, you're not going to know what hit you because the legal system is not like that.
It's not at all like that. And basically what I'm advocating for in my county is is that now our state law permits us to set up an assisted outpatient treatment program. And what that does is it permits treatment to be civil court mandated based on evidence that's not just danger. Pennsylvania, for any other kind of mandated treatment, they have to meet a danger standard.
You tell someone with an autistic kid that they've just shepherded through school, they think everything's going better, Levi was starting college and he suddenly couldn't concentrate. He wasn't interested. And eventually he's in the legal system. And you're told, you're literally told, Mrs. Mother, there's nothing we can do. You have to wait for something to happen and hope it's not very bad.
And in our case, when something happened, it was that he killed my mother while she was eating breakfast. That's pretty bad. Meanwhile, you have reams of evidence that things are bad. None of it matters.
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