Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ?
Stephanie Beilin: Mother's Journey Through Mental Illness and Incarceration
17 May 2025
Send us a text A mother and clinical social worker shares her heartbreaking journey navigating the legal system after her high-achieving son developed serious mental illness, revealing how our justice system criminalizes rather than treats mental health conditions. • Licensed independent clinical social worker with 40+ years experience working with vulnerable populations • Her academically successful son began experiencing internal racing thoughts and anxiety despite outward success • Despite parents' professional backgrounds (mother a social worker, father a psychologist), they faced enormous challenges getting appropriate care • Son discontinued medication at 29, leading to psychotic episodes and repeated negative police encounters • Law enforcement and legal system demonstrated lack of training and empathy in handling mental health crises • Massachusetts lacks assisted outpatient treatment programs that could have prevented criminalization • 70-80% of incarcerated individuals suffer from serious mental illness • Anosognosia: neurological condition where individuals lose ability to self-reflect on their behaviors • Advocate working with National Shattering Silence Coalition to change legislation and improve mental health services • Need for systemic change in how police, courts, and society respond to mental health conditions Tell everyone everywhere about Why Not Me, the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world. 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 Stephanie Bylin, a licensed independent clinical social worker with over 40 years of experience, including 32 years in a public high school.
where she coordinated services for students with social, emotional and neurological challenges, creating collaborative teams to support teachers and staff in meeting the needs of this integrated, vulnerable population. She's also here to share valuable information about her son, who came to her with racing thoughts and having difficulty processing information internally.
This experience led to her navigating the legal system, and now she shares her insights on what happened and her efforts to support her son. It's a pleasure to have her here. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. The pleasure's all mine. If you would, give us a little background on yourself and how you became an advocate for mental health.
Well, on a professional level, it's kind of interesting. I'm a licensed independent clinical social worker with close to 45 years experience. For 32 years, I worked in a public high school, kind of coordinated services for those individuals who had social, emotional challenges, including neurological challenges and kind of psychological
set up teams to support teachers and support staff to take care of these vulnerable, you know, population that is very much integrated into the public school. It's kind of interesting that given my background and then prior to that, I was a medical social worker actually at Beverly Hospital, which is an acute care medical surgical hospital. So that's my professional background.
And right now I'm still practicing. I provide clinical services to individuals who are dealing with depression, anxiety, life transition, stress in the family, kind of all of the above. Given all of that 16 years ago,
almost 17 years ago my son came to my husband and i describing some symptoms of having racing thoughts and some anxiety he was having a lot of difficulty managing inwardly not outwardly inwardly some of his experiences in life where objectively no one really saw it he was you know in the top five percent of his class highly regarded football player was a
Rotary International student was super successful, but that did not translate to what was going on with him internally. And he was having a lot of hardship managing some of the racing thoughts and some of the sort of intrusive thinking that was going on inside of him.
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