A STEP IN FIGHTING ‘INVISIBLE DISEASE’ After son’s suicide, parents start mental health fund “He was so bright and he was unable to use his brain the way he wanted to.” Katherine Gilbert Nada Hassanein, Tallahassee Democrat | USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA 2/3/2020 When Justin Dousa-Valdez was 18 years old, he ran away from home to California. On rare phone calls to his parents from the other side of the country, he described the gnarled tree branch he slept on in a park beside the Golden Gate Bridge. ? It was the beginning of his several years adrift: Homeless, sleeping under bridges — and grappling with mental illness. ? Before, Dousa-Valdez ran track, made the highest marks in Latin and loved playing board games with his stepfather. He had a near-perfect grade point average in high school. ? “By all means, we thought he was going big places,” said his stepdad, Florida State University professor David Gilbert, 60. ? An onset of schizophrenia derailed that bright future. In November, at 36, Dousa-Valdez took his own life. ? In his memory, his stepdad and his mom, Katherine Gilbert, have started an endowment fund at Tallahassee Community College to help students with mental illness. There were days he couldn’t get out of bed or function. But amid his longfought battle with his illness, Dousa-Valdez earned his associate of arts degree at TCC last May with a GPA close to 4.0. “He was really proud of that,” Katherine said. “Attending TCC allowed him to have something to feel good about, to feel productive and to have some selfesteem. “I don’t think he felt capable of managing FSU,” she added. “And I wish that there had been maybe another program that he could have continued his degree or some sort of supportive way to do it.” That’s why they started the fund. “He was so bright,” Katherine said, “and he was unable to use his brain the way he wanted to.” The endowment will go toward emergency housing, utility bill relief, transportation to behavioral health appointments and to class, meal assistance and health care fees for those without insurance. They hope the fund will help students from falling “through the cracks.” Some “don’t have anybody because their parents are worn out and have given up. ... Those are the ones on the streets,” Katherine, 57, said. But even family members can feel helpless. Katherine and Dave did leading up to their son’s death. Days before he ended his life, Dousa-Valdez took himself to the hospital. Over the years, Dousa-Valdez had been hospitalized many times and had several suicide attempts, including two in 2018. But this hospital stay was the first time he wouldn’t let the doctors speak with his mother about his condition. Katherine knew what was going to happen. “He’s worse than we’ve ever seen him before. I told them they should not be releasing him,” she said, referring to several pleading voicemails to doctors. Along with the hospital workers, Katherine said she’d been warning his case managers that her son was going to hurt himself. “We told his psychiatric nurse practitioner, we told the hospital, we told his social worker, we told everybody that he needed long-term treatment, that his medication wasn’t working, that he was going to hurt himself. And that it was going to be soon,” she said. Two weeks later, he did. He was found in the parking lot of the Hotel Duval near downtown Tallahassee on Nov. 26, 2019. Officers responded to the scene around 1:30 a.m. They said the injuries were consistent with jumping or falling from the eighth story. Florida’s mental health care system is fraught with flaws underscored by lacking resources, say advocates for people with mental illness. Dave and Katherine wish for more long-term resources for severe cases, saying there’s a dire need for longerterm supervised housing and psychiatric inpatient capacity amid a shortage of psychiatrists. “Living with mental illness for us was like Justin dying and coming back to life over and over and over again,” said Dave, who raised Dousa-Valdez with Katherine. “You get a call and he’s somewhere and he’s absolutely incoherent, gone ... And then there’s a day when he’s got clarity and you think you’re on the other side.” That struggle is the reason Dave is in a fight to garner support for families touched by mental illness: He hopes to start a social media campaign with the hashtag #theaffected to help families connect by sharing stories, supporting one another and dispelling stigmas. “It’s such an invisible disease in so many ways,” Katherine said. “People don’t want to talk about it. There’s so much shame and stigma attached to it. “And our thing is — we really need to change that,” she added. “Being very open with my story, people really open up to me.” - - - Reach Nada Hassanein at nhassanein@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @nhassanein_.