Despite doing everything they could to get their son the help he desperately needed, Colorado Springs residents Mike and Phyllis Foraker couldn’t save William, who died by suicide nearly three years ago after enduring paranoid schizophrenia for two decades. As his caretakers, Mike and Phyllis w atched William change from a smart kid with a promising future into an adult whose delusions led him to believe that the CIA was following him for nefarious reasons, which ultimately led to his demise. “In his suicide note, he said he thought he was saving the world from Armageddon,” Phyllis said, holding back tears. In the heart-breaking time since William’s passing on Jan. 15, 2023, at age 44, his parents have created a grantmaking foundation in his name, co-authored a book on their family’s journey of what seemed like a descent into hell, and along with other advocates successfully persuaded state lawmakers to make beneficial changes to involuntary confinement, which took effect last year. The couple’s resolute desire is to turn their experience and insight into optimism for people suffering from serious mental illness and their families and caregivers. “We also wanted to educate the public about the broader mental health system and begin dialogue to lead people to reimagine the mental health system to be visionary, aspirational and transformative,” Mike said. Phyllis adds accountability and affordability to the list. “We’re a long way from meeting those goals,” Mike said. Because for the Forakers and many others the system remains broken. The United States had 500,000 acute and primarily state-run beds for people with mental illness in the 1950s and after the deinstitutionalization movement now has about 36,000 such state psychiatric beds, according to estimates from the Treatment Advocacy Center, Mike noted. “The thought was that many beds would be replaced from the large insane asylums to small, friendly, more thoughtful and caring community-based facilities. Very few of those facilities were built. There’s a phenomenal shortage of short-term and long-term beds.” While Colorado has a handful of state-operated psychiatric hospitals, today they are reserved for inmates awaiting determination on their mental competency to proceed with a criminal case. Consequently, jails and prisons have become de-facto mental institutions, which is not the proper solution, said Patrick Vance, a criminal defense lawyer and friend of the Forakers, who wrote an endorsement in their book. “Jails and prisons are the worst possible environment for the mentally ill,” he wrote. “Most receive little to no care or inadequate care, resulting in a cycle of incarceration. This dysfunction comes at a high cost to taxpayers.” And at a high price to the mentally imbalanced. “Most, but not all, of my clients never received the mental health treatment they needed. A lucky few did, and the changes in their behavior and lives seemed nothing sort of miraculous,” Vance wrote. Studies show 35% to 45% of incarcerated people on average have some type of mental illness. A shortage of providers and the stigma of mental illness persists amid the growing need for treatment, Phyllis said. “The ideal is they’d get treatment the same as for someone who has cancer.” But when a person hears imaginary voices that lie and encourage strange behavior, the same type of compassion, empathy and services aren’t doled out, she said. “They’re not bad people; their brains are not in good shape,” Phyllis said. The Forakers encountered limitations on medical and law enforcement intervention in their quest to quell the inner demons their son encountered every day. As the couple wrote in their book, “When we read a police report William had clearly exhibited to the investigative officer a need for psychiatric intervention.” Legal difficulties included the state’s 72-hour involuntary hold laws that they fought against and now are improved, with relatives able to petition a special judge to force a psychiatric evaluation of an adult in crisis. When William was deep in the throes of his mental anguish while talking to police but was not deemed a harm to himself or others, he could not be temporarily placed in a facility. Another problem that also would require a legislative fix is that parents of children age 18 or older cannot make decisions for their mentally ill adult children, including mandated treatment. And medical privacy laws mean parents may not be privy to what kind of medications or course of action their children might have agreed to. “William never thought there was anything wrong with him,” Phyllis said. Their son earned a degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in political science and history, and worked as a construction project manager and university research assistant. William Foraker’s T-ball baseball picture when he was 6 or 7 in California. Foraker committed suicide Jan. 15, 2023, at the age of 44 after battling paranoid schizophrenia. After his first major psychotic break, William refused to go to a hospital – or get his hair cut for some reason. As his delusions intensified, he drove 100,000 miles on a trek during which he thought he’d been abducted and injected with chemicals that altered his memory. As time went on, William broke into a trailer, seeking refuge from imaginary CIA agents who he told police were chasing him with dogs. William had doused himself with gasoline to mask his scent and detour the fictitious animals. Before the trailer incident, William had frantically removed electrical faceplates, air vent covers and wires from the entry door phone panel in his apartment, the book describes. He believed the CIA had infiltrated his apartment so they could spy on him all the time. Mike, who had worked in academia and Phyllis in corporate administration, are conveying the importance of early treatment in any way they can. Because serious mental illness such as schizophrenia cannot be cured but can be managed. An electronic bulletin board that scrolls in Times Square in New York City is running a trailer about their story throughout the month of December. The couple released their book in June, “Mental Health Crisis based on the Life of William Foraker.” They’ve given books to groups such as the Colorado Springs office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, along with local law enforcement agencies that provide crisis intervention training, and state and Congressional legislators. El Paso County Sheriff Joseph Roybal wrote them a letter after receiving the book, saying he will share it with the office’s mental health team to raise awareness. They’ve booked presentations, including speaking with the cadet crisis intervention team at the Air Force Academy. They also contacted President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, asking them to include mental health funding as a national priority. Trump sent a letter in response, acknowledging their request. “The problems are so big, the states can’t solve them on their own,” Mike said. The material also is being used as a case study for training graduate clinician interns studying psychiatry. In particular, a 270-page diatribe with cross references and footnotes that William left behind. The lengthy report, which details his delusions and other symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, reveals helpful insights to medical students, said Damian McCabe, director of behavioral health for military affairs and the southern region of UCHealth Memorial Hospital. “We expect this to be a significant learning event for our interns – one that will prepare them to better to serve individuals and their family members when patients come into contact with them as behavioral health clinicians in the future,” McCabe said. The graduate students will review William’s school achievement records and create a notional profile of such a person those materials might represent. They’ll do the same exercise with some of William’s disturbing writings of his delusions and paranoia. After their work is reviewed and critiqued, the students will be introduced to William as a real person and his experiences with mental illness. “Our hope is twofold,” McCabe said. “To expose them to William’s experience in a non-judgmental manner prior to seeing their first in-person patient and to understand the myriad challenges family members experience in seeking assistance and support when trying to help a love done living with chronic mental illness.” The Forakers ordered another 3,500 copies of the book, to be distributed throughout December. About 1,700 copies of the book have been sold, and they’ve set a goal of circulating 8,000 copies in the next few months to raise awareness and interest in affecting change. The book is available at major Barnes and Noble bookstore outlets and also on amazon.com and the family’s website, lifeofwilliamforaker.com. Another accomplishment was establishing the “William Arthur Foraker Legacy Fund for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention,” a directed, endowed fund under stewardship of the Pikes Peak Community Foundation. It’s intended to benefit adults over age 18 who have mental illness. CEO Margaret Dolan calls the community foundation “a perfect vehicle for those who seek to make a lasting impact.” The organization stewards funds that strengthen the arts, enhance the outdoors, fight human trafficking, advance animal welfare and address other matters that improve the community’s quality of life. “The Forakers are a perfect example of donors who seek to transform deep personal loss into hope for others,” she said. The Forakers’ fund is still building an endowment base, and Dolan said any size of donation may be made to it at https://www.ppcf.org/donate. “No gift is too small; every dollar counts,” she said. As it grows, grant seekers can apply, and an advisory council will review applications and make recommendations to the community fund’s board, Dolan said. “When you bury a child, it changes things. We still grieve every day,” Phyllis said. “The anguish and agony for parents are unimaginable.” ...read more read less