"... It will benefit [Jacob] if he is not constantly reminded that he is not who he was..."

"We are aware of Jacob's Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and we do take this into account in his treatment." Or so said Kate Hill, a social worker at the Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene Oregon, where Jacob has been staying since [insert date].

Hill, went on in a puzzlingly detailed statement, as if to make certain she covered very specific areas of note. Or to document details that for some strange reason needed documentation. That "His condition is chronic and is unlikely to improve in terms of cognitive function. I believe that Catherine has been told this repeatedly, but she does not accept this answer. When he jumped off that building he did irreparable damage to his brain much of which cannot be reversed. Jacob seems to understand this, although he finds it discouraging. Some facts must be faced and it will benefit him if he is not constantly reminded that he is not who he was."

So goes the ongoing frustration and tribulation of Catherine, as she wages her one-woman battle against the mental health system in this country. Now in Oregon. A system that needs medical attention itself apparently! Could they be this crazy?

For the past 8 years Catherine has been trying to get the minimum proper TBI treatment for her son, never mind the cool state of the art stuff that no one in the mental health system seems to know anything about.

Oh, they are eager enough to take the extra money from the Federal and State budgets allotted to TBI treatment, by merely mentioning it in their applications. But doing any actual treating of TBI though is another story entirely. Fiction apparently.

The jeopardy that Catherine faces as she tries to convince the various treatemnt centers who take turns caring for Jacob until the funds run out, is that they turn their attention to her mental condition, whenever she loses her patience with them, and becomes loud, animated, and angry, as anyone being Nurse Ratched pressured into unfair helpless compliance would.

And to put it as simply and calmly as is possible under these highly complicated and infuriating conditions, here's the deal:

EVERYONE in the mental health profession knows, that especially with TBI, THE LAST treatment you would administer is the traditional series of psychotopic medications used to treat schizophrenia. Yet Jacob is routinely dosed into a stupor, and pickled with the worst meds for TBI.

Because Schizophrenia is a mental illness, and TBI is a MEDICAL CONDITION. Tretaing him for Schizophrenia in the traditional way, greatly reduces his ability to recover from his TBI.

But the treatment centers don't seem to know this, and when confronted with someone who does, for exampe a troublemaking mother of one of their patients, rather than admit ignorance, which would be entirely fogiveable given the relatively new field of TBI treatment, they choose the other sin, of vanity, and instead now try to cover up their lack of informed knowledge, by deflecting Catherine, and even goin so far as to suggest that she might be understandably suffering from her own form of mental condition.

One that surely they have many treatment plans and schemes in mind.

So the dilemma, pitfall, trap, call it what you will, is this. When confronted with Catherine's demand that her son be properly treated for TBI, the treatment centers and psychiatric units and the staff, eager to protect the fund generation that a patient like Jacob provides, follow a methodology of "Cognitive Abuse".

This is practiced subtly on Catherine with thinly veiled threats of possibly institutionalizing her, while they apply this en-masse and in force on Jacob while under their care. Isolation, social exclusion, control of almost every aspect of Jacob's day to day life, all part of the plan to create the very kind of patient they incorrectly claim that he is. The kind of patient they want, and apparently need.

The result is a well documented, carefully scripted con, a self fulfilling prophecy, and specifically designed tactic that ensures that Jacob remains in care, and especially does not get better, thereby requiring him to remain in care. Indefinitely.

The problem with this perfect crime, or the one fatal flaw in it, is that Catherine knows more about TBI than they do. She is onto their welfare scam. And her tirelessly continued pursuit and demands are growing louder and louder with each passing day. It is only a matter of time, not if, but when Catherine and Jacob will finally be free from this aggression which seems to stand well enough today, but will hopefully not stand much longer.