My Red October – An Army Veteran’s Crucible to Recovery

My brother Jesse sat next to me on the couch in my living room. Two police officers stood inside my entryway, watching us. My mind raced. I believed my brother’s life was in danger. I believed I was the only person who knew it and only I could save him. If only I could stop the police officers from reading my mind — as I knew they were — and prevent them from spoiling my plan.

Not knowing what to do, my husband, parents and brother called the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Crisis Line. Since my parents lived out of state, Jesse was the closest to me and he saw it as his job to protect me, from myself. The help we received was cops in my living room.

This was my second major psychotic episode in three years. It was also the second time I’d been prescribed Prozac. The mania, paranoia, delusional thoughts and rage I’d been experiencing in the days and weeks leading up to this event became an untenable crisis.

Diana Rodriguez in Bagram, Afghanistan, 2012

The scene above played out in October 2022 at my family’s home just outside of Fort Liberty, North Carolina where I’d been stationed in the Army years earlier. But in a short three-year window preceding this event, a VA psychiatrist told my husband and friends that I was a schizophrenic (I’m not schizophrenic, nor have I been diagnosed with it); I was forcibly institutionalized twice and voluntarily admitted once; my children were taken from me by court order; my husband filed divorce paperwork; and I was forced to move in with my mother because I could no longer care for myself. None of this aligned with the life I lived for the 35 years preceding this period, nor does it align with my life today.

How the hell did this happen?

It all started in 2014, less than a year after my honorable discharge from the Army, and shortly after returning home from Afghanistan, where I’d served as an Apache helicopter mechanic. My children’s psychologist had approached me with concerns. The concerns weren’t for my children though. Instead, they were about me. She felt I might have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

I heeded her concerns and sought help myself. I began talk therapy and peer support programs, and started holistic treatments such as meditation. Through all of this, I felt the issues she raised were merited and I felt that I’d significantly improved over these four years. But by the end of 2018, life started to become overwhelming. My middle school-aged daughter had a suicide attempt, the result of relentless bullying. I was grappling with the pressures of balancing the needs of my teenagers, who were struggling in different ways, and my two preschoolers with developmental delays that no professional could explain — all while attempting to manage and overcome my own trauma from military service.

I was stretched thin without much support since my husband worked at the military base all day as a helicopter mechanic and contractor. My family and friends were spread throughout the country. The numerous calls per week to address each family member and my own challenges made it difficult to manage day-to-day life, though I tried desperately.

Overwhelmed, I sought help from my VA mental health team. After discussing all of the stressors in my life and the challenges I was experiencing, my psychiatric nurse practitioner decided to prescribe me Prozac. She mentioned that the medication could cause depressive symptoms and suicidal ideations. But when she talked about the side effects, she didn’t seem very worried and assured me that these side effects were “rare,” so we decided to try Prozac to see if it would help.

In the first few weeks, I didn’t notice any major issues with the medication, but there was little by way of medication management, so my family and I didn’t know what to be looking for. I understand that when starting these medications, you’re supposed to be closely monitored, but I don’t remember having any additional check-ins with my nurse practitioner.

After the first few weeks, I began experiencing rapidly escalating behavioral changes, but I didn’t connect the medications to any of this. In the first few days of 2019, I was really struggling, so I went back to the VA for two psychiatric holds for observation. Unfortunately, my situation only continued to decline.

Though I was apprehensive about the idea, my husband and I talked about voluntarily admitting myself into the VA for inpatient psychiatric care. In response to how quickly my mental health had devolved, my husband was concerned I might have a brain tumor. Prior to my intake, the VA providers told my husband and me that they too were concerned. They told us they would do a brain scan to rule out the possibility of a tumor and assured us I would be placed in a less restrictive unit. Unfortunately, the Prozac I’d been prescribed just a few months earlier was never even considered as a potential cause of my mania and psychosis.

Immediately after completing my intake, I was forcibly injected with a psychiatric drug, which turned me into all but a vegetable. It seemed the doctor’s answers to my problems were more and more potent psychiatric drugs, all to be started at the same time. I was not moved to the less restrictive unit until the day prior to my release from my two-week inpatient stay, and I felt I was treated like a prisoner throughout my time there. My treatment did not make me better. Instead, I was worse off and I now felt alone, as I no longer trusted anyone involved in taking me there.

Broken trust

It wasn’t just the doctors I’d lost trust in. I now felt I couldn’t trust my husband, my best friend of over 15 years and other family friends who had taken me to this place. I was a shell of my former self, unable to think, staring off into space; all while trying my best to care for my family. I felt like a zombie, merely watching the world around me, not participating in it.

My husband no longer trusted me with our children. He told our eldest kids not to listen to me and to watch over me because I was crazy. As a result, my teenage daughter ignored me, causing further behavioral issues with her, in addition to the crisis I was going through. There was a reason my husband would not listen when I insisted the new medications were causing problems. There was a reason he thought I was crazy, beyond my behavior. There was a reason he wouldn’t listen to me when I complained of the side effects of the drugs.

Without my knowledge, and without a diagnosis or a medical history that would support such a diagnosis, my VA psychiatrist told my husband and a family friend that I had schizophrenia. Aside from my biological family, this doctor’s actions took away the only people I had as a support system.

Several months of sadness, isolation and suffering went by. Unable to continue living this way, I asked my best friend if my children and I could move in with her temporarily. After she told me no, I made the difficult decision to leave my husband and sought refuge and support from my mother to focus on my recovery.

As soon as I arrived at my mother’s house in Texas, I took myself off all the psychiatric drugs I’d been prescribed, including the antipsychotic risperidone. I did not do this safely, as I stopped them cold turkey. But in the coming weeks and months, I began returning to a functional state and the mother my family could recognize. Though I was starting to do better in many other ways, my PTSD symptoms were worse than when I began treatment years earlier. The nightmare that was my inpatient hospitalization, combined with my newly developed distrust of those around me, exacerbated my previous traumas. Though I still struggled and my cognitive functioning was far from my norm, I could think again; I was no longer burning food while cooking and I could manage most things independently, although for once I did not have to because many family members were there and helping.

Taking my family away

Just as I was feeling as though I were myself again, my children were removed from me in emergency custody hearings that I hadn’t even been aware of. I was served with a court order at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport while dropping my eldest children off for a flight to have a summer visitation with my ex-husband.

My ex-husband, with the help of my friends and current husband, used the court order for emergency custody in North Carolina that my husband had been granted as proof my children were in danger, because “Diana had schizophrenia and was refusing to take her medication.”

Just as things began to settle down in the legal battle for my eldest children, the sheriff’s department showed up at my mother’s house and presented me with another court order granting my husband emergency custody of my youngest children. Though heartbroken, I quietly and politely packed their belongings. I hugged them and kissed them before they got into the car. Then I watched as the sheriffs drove away from the house, with my kids in the back seat of the cruiser.

A few weeks later, I was in court fighting the emergency custody order. During the hearing, my attorney presented my medical records to the judge and my husband’s lawyer. After the judge reviewed the documents, he reversed the previous ruling and ordered that my children be returned to me. This was the first time my husband learned there was never a schizophrenia diagnosis and the doctor had not told him the truth. He was crushed by this and was left in a state of shock.

The judge ordered that I remain in North Carolina with our children, which isolated me from my family in Texas, with the exception of my eldest brother Jesse who lived an hour away. If it were not for my youngest son’s teachers, who became close family friends, I would have had no one in the local area.

Diana and her husband John

The cause of the separation from my husband was his misguided trust in the psychiatrists and the VA. When it was proven in court that there had been no such diagnosis and much of what he had been told wasn’t true, we talked and in spite of everything we’d gone through, we were able to reconcile.

Over the next three years, I continued to improve as the combination of psychotropic medications gradually left my system, and my ability to fully function returned. I built a new support system. Since my trust in the VA for mental health care was gone, I decided to take the advice of some older veterans and sought out a local Vet Center to work on my latest trauma resulting from the medication and care received. At one point, I told my Vet Center counselor that I believed the psychotic episode and institutionalization may have stemmed from a reaction to something I was taking at the time, but I wasn’t sure. The root cause of the initial behavioral changes with psychosis remained unknown.

Back to the beginning… On the couch with my brother and the police

As I looked up at the officers, I just wished they would go away; I was still focused on saving my brother. They didn’t go away. Instead, the police and paramedics loaded me into an ambulance and drove me to the military base hospital nearby. My brother and father arranged for me to go there, as they refused to allow me to go back to inpatient care at the VA. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the cause, this time, I was admitted involuntarily to Womack Army Medical Center.

Upon arrival, I was placed under 24-hour supervision, watched by a team of Army medics, and taken under the care of an Army medical doctor. The doctor’s first action was discontinuing the Prozac I’d been prescribed. Within a day and a half, my behavior began to stabilize. The delusions subsided enough to the point where the doctor was able to identify the cause of my psychosis.

The doctor’s diagnosis was “medication-induced psychosis caused by Prozac.”

I was allowed to return home after just three days in the hospital this time. As a result of stopping the Prozac my sleep schedule was destroyed. I spent 24-hour periods of time awake, broken apart by brief crashes, before the cycle repeated itself. My husband took on all tasks in the household so I could focus on recovery, since he no longer worked outside the home. Within two weeks, I was able to resume my university courses. I have maintained a 4.0 grade point average since, in addition to being able to be a good mother to my kids. I was even able to resume my work volunteering to help other veterans.

Resolution

In 2023, I finally saw my middle son after four years apart. My older children had been angry with me for years because I had not corrected the bad information they’d been told about my psychotic events. I hadn’t corrected them as I didn’t feel it was an appropriate conversation to have until they were adults, and I didn’t want to cause them any further trauma.

After my son graduated from high school and no longer lived with his father and stepmother, I explained what had happened and tried to help him understand both sides. Thankfully, we were able to mend our relationship. All of my eldest children appreciate that I prioritized their well-being and didn’t involve them in adult issues just to defend myself.

Knowing all of this now, if I could go back and if I really understood the risks, I might not have taken the medication. Undoubtedly, that would surprise no one, but I’ve had to ask myself, what can I learn from this? What can others learn from my story? What are my real insights about how things failed? What would I like to see done in the future so others do not go through what my family and I have?

For me, there are two primary takeaways. First, the patient and the family must be told of all the side effects of the medications you might be prescribed. If mania and psychosis are possible side effects, everyone should be aware so they can watch for them, and so other doctors can properly diagnose you when you do have a bad reaction to a drug. Second, patients should be empowered and encouraged to create an Advance Directive or Psychiatric Advance Directive. If you become incapacitated and unable to make decisions for yourself, as happened to me, you need a person you trust who can make decisions on your behalf. During my first inpatient stay I did not have this in place, and I suffered immensely for it.

These two differences would not have changed my experiences with taking Prozac; it would, however, have drastically changed the outcome. When I had my first inpatient psychiatric admission, my father would have been able to request a medical doctor to oversee my care, and he could have refused the new psychiatric drugs and the injection. I tried to refuse them myself, but the doctors threatened to involuntarily extend my inpatient hospitalization, even though I had voluntarily admitted myself.

Last December, amidst a battle with bronchitis, when my condition had deteriorated to the point where a visit to the VA emergency room was unavoidable, I came to the stark realization that the trauma of my experience with the mental health system hadn’t only broken my trust with the medical system as a whole, but that of others close to me as well.

During the drive to the ER, my youngest asked, “Mom, what if they don’t let you leave?”

My journey through medication-induced mania and psychosis was a crucible of suffering and resilience. While the scars may linger, they serve as reminders of the strength found in adversity and the need for change. Through advocacy and awareness, I now strive to illuminate the shadows cast by inadequate mental health care, and hope to inspire others towards a path of healing and hope.

Family camping trip, 2023