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Crystal Fox: One Mothers Journey Through Tragedy

• Tony Mantor

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Crystal Fox shares her heartbreaking journey as the mother of a son with schizophrenia and co-founder of Arizona Mad Moms, an organization supporting families of loved ones with degenerative brain illnesses causing psychosis. Through her dual perspective as both a parent and a psychiatric nurse with 30 years of experience, Crystal illuminates the critical gaps in our mental healthcare system.

• Anosognosia is a symptom of serious mental illness where individuals cannot recognize they are ill, truly believing their hallucinations and delusions are real
• Despite clear signs of severe psychosis, Crystal's son Joshua was repeatedly denied proper psychiatric treatment because he wasn't actively suicidal
• Current mental healthcare prioritizes treating suicidal ideation while allowing untreated psychosis, despite psychosis leading to higher rates of suicide and homicide
• America has regressed in mental healthcare, removing people from hospitals and placing them in jails or communities without adequate support
• Arizona Mad Moms successfully advocated for legislation requiring screening centers to document family information and created training programs on anosognosia

Tell everyone, 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.


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intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild
Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)

Speaker 1:

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. 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 Mantour. Welcome to why Not Me? The World Humanity Over Handcuffs the Silent Crisis special event. Joining us today is Crystal Fox. She's the co-founder of Arizona Mad Moms, which is a place for mothers, caregivers and family members of loved ones with degenerative brain illnesses causing psychosis. Join us as we explore her journeys, their advocacy and the unbreakable bonds that drive this community forward.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, for coming on. Yeah, thank you for asking.

Speaker 1:

Oh, it's my pleasure. Now I understand that you're one of the co-founders of the Arizona Mad Moms. Is that correct? That is correct. Can you expand on when you first started your organization?

Speaker 2:

It was a slow start, a slow progress. We had gotten together. My son was diagnosed with schizophrenia while he was in jail and there was a group of us that were following his trajectory through the criminal justice system. He had trouble with maintaining his sanity and he had to go back for Rule 11. And through that process there was a group of us that followed him. Shortly after he was sentenced he went to prison and within 30 hours committed suicide. So after that I was asked to speak at a hospital committee meeting for the Senate and I spoke at the and actually the House as well I think it had both sides on it. And after that meeting we were just flooded with people who were dealing with the same issues and that's what created the Arizona Mad Moms.

Speaker 1:

So probably around January of this last year, Was that the House and Senate of Arizona or the House and Senate of the US?

Speaker 2:

House and Senate of Arizona, or the House and Senate of the US House and Senate of Arizona.

Speaker 1:

Okay, All right. So I think for everyone to understand, there's a difference between psychosis and then you have. I believe it's called anosognosia. Is that correct?

Speaker 2:

Anosognosia.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay. Can you tell the difference between the two so everyone can get a better understanding of what we're talking about?

Speaker 2:

I can. So I'm also a psychiatric nurse. I've been a psychiatric nurse for 30 years. I worked at the Arizona State Hospital and retired from the Arizona State Hospital.

Speaker 2:

Anesthosia is a symptom of psychosis disorder and really mania. So anytime you have bipolar, with psychosis and severe mania, that's the high end where people just ramble and they think that they have special powers, stuff like that. They truly believe that. So anosognosia affects those people, including those with schizophrenia, and anosognosia is a symptom of the disease. What Arizona Mad Moms and many of us who have experience working with psychosis we believe if you have that symptom of anosognosia which many people call lack of insight. So when I used to document as a nurse, I would write whether people had no insight into their illness, that they thought that their hallucinations and their delusions were real and you could not convince them otherwise.

Speaker 2:

Some people had partial insight or a little, some anosognosia where you might be able to. They see that they need medicine, they might be sick, but they still believe their hallucinations and their psychosis and their mania. So you can have varying levels of anosognosia. But those that have severe anosognosia where they don't understand that they're sick. But those that have severe anosognosia where they don't understand that they're sick, that they think that their psychosis and their mania is real. They are the ones that Arizona Mad Moms most supports. They're the individuals that are severely mentally ill. We're also the individuals that often need treatment against their will or involuntary treatment because they don't understand that they're sick. My son was one of those individuals. He truly believed his delusion and his hallucinations were real and he could actually see them.

Speaker 1:

So when he saw them, was he around other people like yourself, or was he all alone by himself? If he was around you, how did you handle it, so that way it would not get out of control?

Speaker 2:

It was tricky. And my son Joshua. He had some psychotic breaks when he was younger. He had his first psychotic break when he was 18. He believed that people were chasing him and after him. He believed that he needed a gun in order to protect himself. He believed that I owed him the money from things that happened to him in his childhood, which I didn't know at that time what he thought those were. I later found out that he thought that his dad had raped him, had his friends come over and rape him and then put it on the internet and made money. This could not have been true, because his dad did not work the internet. I've asked my other kids and we have no recollection of John doing any such things.

Speaker 1:

So, in other words, this was something that he just believed, but it actually really wasn't true.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, his dad did not have any access to the internet. He did not really know how to work the internet. He also I've talked with all my other kids and none of us have any thoughts that John would have done such a thing. We believe that's what's called a delusion and it's a fixed delusion, and so that's where he thought we owed him money. So at that time I did in Arizona we have petitions and so I petitioned him for involuntary treatment and they let him out within a day and said that it was because he was on drugs.

Speaker 1:

Now it's my understanding and you can correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm just learning on this. With schizophrenia, part of how they diagnose it is to differentiate between their delusions and if they are on drugs or any other kind of medications.

Speaker 2:

That is true, that is true a kind of medications.

Speaker 1:

That is true. That is true. Do they do blood samples to eliminate the possibility?

Speaker 2:

of being on drugs. He was on drugs, which again complicates things for a lot of people who have schizophrenia, because when their symptoms get really bad they tend to go to drugs in order to mask those symptoms, in order to help themselves, trying to fade out what comes first. The psychosis or the drug use often comes with years of having to fade that out. Even myself up until when Josh was 17, so up until just a year before that believed that Josh's issues were related to substance abuse and not schizophrenia. So at 17, I was around him enough that I saw the mental illness coming first, but I did not know it was schizophrenia. I thought maybe it was like a bipolar disorder where they have highs and lows, or I thought maybe he had so much anxiety it was making him paranoid. So even me, with my experience, had a hard time sorting this out at first.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so you're experienced in this. Because you're a nurse, you understand these situations. How do people that don't know anything about this, like me, learn and understand about this? It's my understanding that this is a slow, gradual process that takes time, and while it's happening you don't see it until, boom, it happens and you're confronted with the situation.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and that's true for everybody. It takes up to three to five years to get a clear diagnosis of schizophrenia. They rule out everything else first, and that's something that Arizona Mad Moms and several other psychosis organizations really want to see changed. I don't know if you remember so I know this group that listens is well aware of autism, and I have two children with autism, and I believe that autism, when my daughter and son had it was diagnosed, my daughter was diagnosed at two and my son was diagnosed at eight. Back in the day, individuals did not get diagnosed with autism, often until they were in school school because pediatricians didn't know how to identify it. That's where we're at with schizophrenia. The high schools, the parents, society doesn't know how to identify those early signs of schizophrenia, and so one of the things we'd like to see improved upon, because I believe if we can diagnose autism at one and a half years old, we can start diagnosing schizophrenia a lot earlier and get treatment to these young kids, young adults, a lot earlier.

Speaker 1:

Ironically, I think the first known diagnosis of autism was around 1910. Back then they had no knowledge on it, didn't understand it, and they looked at it as a psychotic event and they fixed it by using electrotherapy. Yep, so it is really pretty amazing that we've learned and changed. Unfortunately, it's taken us so long to do this. If it took that long for autism from the 1910 to the 50s, 60s and here we are 2025. How do we get a better path for schizophrenia so that we can expedite the help they need?

Speaker 2:

It's going to take focus. Society, the United States, has gone backward. If you think about Dorothy Dix back in the day, she went into jails and found people that were seriously mentally ill and said, no, they need a place to go. That would be a hospital that would be able to treat people rather than incarcerate them. So we pulled everybody out of the jails and we placed them in hospitals. Then, around the 1940s and 50s, there was a change and I believe that change happened because they thought it was the best thing. But it has not been the best thing. So that change was is that we took people out of hospitals and they were supposed to get community care in society. That did not happen and these individuals, instead of getting care in the community, were incarcerated. There's never been a focus on psychosis or schizophrenia, because we've just incarcerated people with this illness and we've closed all the hospital beds. This is a big word, but personally I believe it's like state-sanctioned torture, really for individuals with schizophrenia. Imagine our individuals with autism, which there has been, some that end up incarcerated.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was talking with a judge and about 50 years ago he was in his teens. He went into this institution. They were dealing with this young kid that they'd gone through all these different things and thought that he was ultimately schizophrenic. As it turned out, they were treating him for schizophrenia, giving him all these kinds of medicines and ultimately he was autistic. That was over 50 years ago. Here we are in 2025, and we're still trying to figure things out.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and I will tell you again. My youngest daughter is severely autistic. There is no question. She's got the epilepsy. She's cognitively impaired. She actually had a brain tumor. So she's got multiple disabilities. She functions pretty much as a three or four-year-old. There's no question that she has autism and that she's cognitively disabled, no question in society, no question if you spend any time with her. But my oldest son, austin, had what they used to call in the old days Asperger's syndrome. We again same with him and he was also twice exceptional. So he was also gifted and he was diagnosed with ADHD. So trying to sort out which issue he was having, we even questioned whether he had bipolar disorder as well. There's a lot of interlap and what they're starting to find in the genetics is genetically. There's a lot of interlap between all these diagnoses.

Speaker 1:

Yes, in the last year and a half I've spoken with several people. A lot of them are autistic, some are ADHD, some are bipolar, some are autistic and bipolar. It does seem to cross over and overlap quite a bit. That seems to be a very similar thing that happens around the world. The issue that I see and this is just one of many is the perception of it, not just the autism, but schizophrenia as well. They all seem to have that stigma attached. How do we change people's perceptions? How do we get them to understand? These are not people out there just trying to see how they can be bad. They don't have a well-thought-out plan on how to be bad. They just need help.

Speaker 2:

That's the million-dollar question and that's the question I ask a lot of people. So when I worked at the Arizona State Hospital for 30 years, one of the units that I worked at and this is my favorite one that I like to talk about was an open unit. It had open doors so our patients came and went as they pleased. They were getting ready for discharge. They were truly psychotic, schizophrenic or bipolar, but they were stable on their medication but still receiving a lot of supports. They were getting ready to go out into the community. So it was a slow transition.

Speaker 2:

Back in those days this is the 1990s, when Closapine first came out we went to the movie theaters, we went to what we call Park and Swap, a swap meet. We went on the bus, we went to restaurants, they had dances to go to, they had all these different activities. They had dances to go to, they had all these different activities. But we've removed all of those social situations. And so the thing with schizophrenia is just like the thing with developmental disabilities. They need support for an extended period of time with staff and there shouldn't be any stigma around that. The brain of somebody with schizophrenia that's been suffering with psychosis cognitively is impaired. They have to relearn stuff, just like a person with a stroke has to relearn things. The difference between autism and schizophrenia again is we don't provide physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. Those things aren't provided, and so the re-entry back into society is very difficult. And this is the questions we need to ask ourselves.

Speaker 2:

I talk with the police, and they don't want to really deal with mental illness. You talk with the jails they don't want to deal with mental illness. You talk with the store owners that are around the homeless population they don't want to deal with mental illness. You talk with the store owners that are around the homeless population they don't want to deal with mental illness. We took all these people out of a safe place in asylums or hospitals, had people like me who care deeply 30 years. I knew some of those patients longer than I knew my children. We took them out of those places for people who wanted to work with them and we placed them in a community that does not want them. So that is the question. The stigma is a hard one for me to understand, because the stigma mostly has to do with everybody and it has to do with systems and it has to do with government. They've created such a difficult pathway for parents and such a difficult pathway for these individuals to succeed.

Speaker 1:

I was told that one in seven people around the world either know someone or has someone that's autistic in their family. I've also been told that one in eight people around the world have some sort of mental disorder, and that varies, but they still need treatment. So when you have one in seven and you have one in eight around the world, that's a big number. That means they could be walking down the street, come in contact with someone and there's a huge chance they're either going to talk with someone that's autistic or someone that has some mental illness. I would think that with those kinds of numbers that's happening all around the world, that people would have more empathy for them and come out to try and help them, give them a chance to have a normal life, which isn't happening yet.

Speaker 2:

So there's a little confusion with those numbers. When they talk about one in five, one in eight, they're talking about all mental illnesses.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

So they're talking about somebody who goes to the doctor and has anxiety or depression or maybe some PTSD from childhood trauma. They're talking about individuals who might have postpartum psychosis. They're talking about anybody who has a mental health issue or emergency. They're not talking about those with schizophrenia and psychosis disorders. The numbers are somewhere between 1 in 100 to 3 in 100 that have this level of serious mental illness that has to do with psychosis and schizophrenia. Now, you are right, there are a lot of people who know somebody that has these disorders, maybe an extended family and stuff but it's not as much as you would think.

Speaker 2:

A big part of the problem is those that have those other mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, ptsd, these kind of things can actually advocate for themselves. Most of the funding has gone to them. Most of the funding has gone to them. Most of the funding has gone to caring for those with some sort of mental health condition. There's no money, or very little money, that's going to this one to three percent of the population, those with the most seriously mentally ill, those that were taken care of at the state hospital by people like me. Those people are incarcerated. Nobody sees them, nobody wants to see them, and that's where Arizona Mad Moms came in was because, out of all the various groups, even raising my kids with autism and, trust me, we were kicked out of some really nice restaurants because of my daughter we had. We've done our share of what you would call discrimination, but again, nothing compared to what my son went through with his schizophrenia. Nothing compares to what happened.

Speaker 1:

I spoke with a mother. She lived in a small town, had a young son and then all of a sudden, overnight, he suddenly had some issues kind of like we were talking about before. Of course, the police didn't believe her. They just thought it was a kid being a kid. Unfortunately, he did wind up in jail. The very good part about this is because she was living in a small town. The support she got from her friends, family and just the town was actually quite touching. Can you relate to that? When you were having issues with your son, did you have people around that were supporting you, helping you? Reaching out, as we've talked about, the stigma of psychosis versus autism is a completely different situation. So how did they treat you? Did you feel like you was a cast out or did you feel like the community was trying to help and support you?

Speaker 2:

Good question. I didn't get any help or support. I also don't think I reached out and I should have Again, again, having my background, I think I thought that doctors and these hospitals that I tried taking my son to and all these places would see what I saw. I didn't know that you had to literally write down a whole agenda. I didn't know that you had to be suicidal in order to get help. I didn't know that psychosis wasn't enough. I didn't know that they would transfer him enough. I didn't know that they would transfer him and not call me when he got out. I didn't understand how serious HIPAA laws were against parents and I did not experience the support and I think most of the Arizona madmoms have never felt supported.

Speaker 2:

So my son, during his psychotic break which lasted until his death, murdered his father and again the first time he attempted to assault his dad again. If this was my daughter, tia, she would have gone to a hospital or she would not have been removed. But with Joshua, even though his dad was going to file a petition again to have him placed inpatient, this time he wasn't on drugs and even the last time he was still psychotic. That's why I knew it wasn't drugs the first time he went to the screening center. This time, during that petition process, my ex-husband called the police to just take him to keep him safe because he was trying to kill himself and others, and they took him to jail instead, and that's what started the whole incarceration process that led to again, the murder and then the death and I even took him being a nurse. I knew what to say.

Speaker 2:

And then the death. And I even took him being a nurse. I knew what to say. I took him to seven different screening centers and seven different hospitals to try to get him help. He was turned away by everyone. During that time I had let them know that he had pulled a knife, that he was delusional, that he was threatening, that he wasn't making sense. Basically, I was afraid of him because he wasn't suicidal. They didn't admit him.

Speaker 1:

That's the reason they didn't help, because he wasn't suicidal.

Speaker 2:

That's right, you're allowed. So for some reason, society has decided you're allowed to be psychotic and it's okay to be psychotic, but it's not okay to be suicidal, and I would like to change that, because it is not okay to be psychotic. More people commit suicide and homicide during psychosis than any other time.

Speaker 1:

Is the law going to have to be changed so that the parents or the family can intervene and get that help? Is that what it's actually going to take?

Speaker 2:

It is Arizona. One of the things that we did do is we created it's not named this anymore, but it was for Joshua's dad, john, and we created a bill in Arizona that requires screening centers to collateral information in writing from the caretaker or the parents and it's required to go into the medical chart. So we are hoping that will help to not just provide the intake departments in these hospitals and these centers more collateral information to be able to admit, but also to provide more safety to the family members, so what happened to John doesn't happen to anybody else. And we also created in Arizona when you mentioned Anna Signosia, we also created a bill training individuals on Anna Signosia.

Speaker 1:

Is that like a class people could take, and is it online?

Speaker 2:

It is. It's a class for behavioral health, peer supports and staff who work in the centers that work in our. We have SMI clinics that work in our clinics to get that training so that they understand. A lot of people think that anosognosia is just somebody being a jerk or somebody not being defiant or somebody choosing to choosing this process, this thought process disorder. And it's not. If I told Josh that he didn't have syphilis or hepatitis which I did do because he didn't have it he showed me the spots on his body that were not there and said that he knew that he had that disease and he knew I was trying to kill him because I wasn't getting him help for that disease. You couldn't tell him, even with a lab test, that he did not have that disease. That's not denial, that's a medical emergency.

Speaker 1:

So is that something that you're trying to get changed, where something like that would be the criteria to actually get him outside help?

Speaker 2:

I would like to and many of us mad moms would like to escalate psychosis to the level that we've escalated suicide. If somebody says they're suicidal, they're straight into a hospital, paid attention to. It's important. Even if they've said they're suicidal 300 times and had been admitted to a hospital 27 times, they're still admitted for suicidal thoughts. But if somebody comes in and says that they're out of their medicine, people are following them. They think that the aliens have come down and taken over their body. That's not a reason to admit somebody. That's not a reason to treat somebody and we want to elevate that to the same level of emergency that suicide is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a good point. Now what would you like to tell the listeners that you think is very important, that they need to hear about what it is that you're trying to do?

Speaker 2:

neighbors, even if they're deranged and insane.

Speaker 2:

Are we going to care for those individuals in society or should we place them in asylums or institutions where people who want to care for them are going to care for them?

Speaker 2:

The idea of placing somebody in the jail system for having schizophrenia even when they do these horrendous things which I know, they're horrendous things and I understand that but not treating them why they're in jail and prison is torture. My son believed that he was being raped, that everybody was against him. He jumped off a balcony, breaking his back and both of his heels because he thought he was resurrecting a female from hell. He tried to kill himself multiple times. He felt that the devil had come into his body. He could tell because it was changing the way he looked. Leaving people in jail to be laughed at by guards and to be treated like that is inhumane. It's absolutely inhumane and whether you're going to incarcerate people, whether you're going to put them in a hospital or whether we're going to try to treat them in the community, somehow, we have to have love and humanity for these individuals that, once they're treated, would never do those things that they did.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's great. There's definitely a lot of tragedy that happens because of this and we definitely need to get a better handle on this so that it can get under control or, at the very least, give people an option to do the things that they need to do so they can have a better life.

Speaker 2:

Yep. So yesterday, josh was so inflicted with his illness that he did not know how to use the telephone. Between September 27th, where somebody taught him how to use the phone, and yesterday, a year ago, yesterday, we talked every single day for 30 to 40 minutes, depending on what the devil would let him do, what his voices would let him do. We talked about love and kindness, forgiveness. We talked about his schizophrenia. I tried to give him hope. We talked about his delusions. That's how come I know so much about him. So on December 19th, one year ago, he was transferred to prison and 2020, they didn't do cell checks, they didn't put him in a suicide watch room and he committed suicide.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a very rough situation to deal with. Well, this has been great conversation, great information. I really appreciate you taking the time to tell us your story.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate you. I really do. I appreciate what you're doing.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymantorcom contact then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask tell everyone, 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.