Isabel Arrocha has a son "diagnosed with borderline intelligence, polytoxicology and mixed personality disorder" and has been fighting for months to have him admitted to a specialized center. According to her account, her son, who is 39 years old, has already been hospitalized twice, but has been back home for five months. Since then, he has altered his routines, goes in and out at night and becomes "very violent." Such is the tension that Isabel has had to call the Police up to four times when he has become "aggressive" and has arrived home "screaming." "I'm afraid of him," admits this sexagenarian mother, who says that she doesn't "dare" to leave him keys to the house or leave him alone in the house, "because he's not well."
Isabel Arrocha explains that she has been asking for help from institutions for months without receiving "anything." She has addressed the Minister of Social Welfare on several occasions, but assures that she "no longer believes anything." "I am afraid that something might happen to my son at any moment. I am warning, anticipating: something could happen to him, because the night is bad, they could mug him, they could kill him," says this mother, who believes that her son's illness requires him to be in a center where he can be supervised and treated by medical personnel. According to her account, the doctor in charge of Mental Health does not consider that her son should remain hospitalized, but she receives disparate opinions from other doctors. Given this situation, her last option, she says, is the media: "All I have left is to resort to this." These are her words:
My name is Isabel Arrocha, many know me as Pabela from Titerroy and many others as the mother of Saturnino, whom I love madly and want him to live happily when I am no longer in this world.
I spend sleepless nights without knowing where he will be, who he will be with and how he will get home, if he gets home. I have put my bed near the entrance door, as if I were a guard in my own house, but not to guard my house but to guard my son. Because a mother who loves her son must take care of him until death, that is why I want the last steps I have left in life to be to help him.
I have been fighting for years for my son to be admitted to a specialized center since he is diagnosed with borderline intelligence, polytoxicology and mixed personality disorder, an illness that he has been carrying since he was little, when he was only 8 years old he would destroy the house, he would tell me that a voice was shouting at him that they were going to kill him, an ordeal that I have been dragging until today, and I say until today because I can't take it anymore, my strength is running out, my tears are running out and my voice to shout ¡Help!. There is no institution to which I have not knocked on the door and on many occasions, to the Deputy of the Common, to the Insular Director of Health, to the Health Counselor of the Cabildo and to its President, not only to those who are now but to those who were previously.
I no longer remember the number of complaints I have filed against my son, and every time I have to do it I feel like a bad mother, because denouncing your own son is very sad, but it is the only way to keep a record of what I am going through every day, but despite this no one has been able to help me.
I only ask that my son be admitted to a specialized long-term care center and that he be treated for his illness. I am a citizen who has a problem and to whom politicians today have not given a solution, that is why I want to ask from here that they listen, that I have a problem and that I need a solution before it is too late.