Was Quoyah Carson Tehee failed by Sonoma County’s mental health care system?
Untreated, Quoyah Carson Tehee's schizophrenia was essentially a death sentence.
The night before he hanged himself at his home in Cloverdale on Dec. 10, 2015, Tehee was plagued by paranoid delusions. The 37-year-old stood in the rain with no shirt and shoes, wielding a pitchfork over his head, screaming and yelling. He threatened his neighbors and accused them of taking his cigarettes. He threw a rock through their car window and assaulted a cyclist after knocking him off his bike.
Public records and interviews with his family paint a portrait of Tehee's final hours.
Tehee was taken to Sonoma County Jail. His mother, Denise Bleuel, says everyone who knew him - his neighbors, the local grocery clerks and especially the Cloverdale police - was aware Tehee had mental illness. That night, however, he was released after spending five hours in the drunk tank.
When he got back to his home, he called his mother and stepfather at 3:15 a.m. and left a voice message that said, “You police stole my computer. Now, I kill myself.”
That morning, police found him hanging from the ceiling at the end of a packaging strap.
“He didn't have to die that night, you know,” said James Warnock, Tehee's stepfather. “He had a terminal disease; he had schizophrenia, and untreated, it's terminal - and he would die eventually from it, but he didn't have to die that night. He didn't have to die that night.”
His life and death illustrate the challenges of caring for people with severe mental illnesses in Sonoma County, as well as the toll it takes on the people who love them.
Bleuel and Warnock are angry. They're angry at the Sheriff's Office, contending that it released their son from jail without providing proper care. They're angry with the county, saying it does not provide enough psychiatric hospital beds.
They are angry at the mental health system, arguing that it repeatedly failed their son by setting such a high bar to obtain emergency psychiatric treatment for someone who does not want it. They say it's a standard that, by definition, withholds care until someone's life is in danger and too often leads to tragic endings, as it did with their son.
And they're angry with the medical industry, saying it views mental illness as undeserving of the same attention, empathy or degree of treatment as cancer, heart disease or other physical illnesses.
“His suicide was not planned. It was a reaction to his inner delusions and voices, and it was an impulsive act,” said Bleuel. “The police were the gatekeepers and had him in the palm of their hands. He was treated like he did not matter. Well, he mattered more than anything to his family and his neighbors.”
Cloverdale Police Chief Stephen Cramer, who is out on medical leave, expressed disapproval in an email Friday that only the family's version of the story is being printed but offered no additional comment. The Press Democrat reached out to the Cloverdale Police Department in October, in February and again this week.
Debbie Latham, chief deputy county counsel, said she could not discuss the details of Tehee's medical treatment in the jail, citing privacy laws. All inmates with mental illness are evaluated before they are released, she said.
“Loss of life by suicide is tragic,” Latham said in a statement. She added, “we can confirm that Mr. Tehee's release from County Jail was done in conformance with County policies.”
Bleuel hopes her son will be remembered not for the illness that killed him but for his brilliance, his passion for nature, his love of fishing and kayaking, his artistic qualities and his willingness to help others.
He had registered himself as an organ donor, so his eyes went to China, where they helped two people see, and his heart valves would also have been used were it not for an infection, Bleuel said.
There was a day - 10 months before he ended his life - that he helped two kayakers, a father and son, stranded in the Russian River after a bad storm in the winter of 2015.
But Bleuel says she feels compelled to tell her son's tragic story, if only to help others.
Tehee was a quiet boy growing up, rarely leaving his mother's side. He had trouble socializing with other kids. In kindergarten and first grade, Bleuel often visited his school during her lunch break, bringing a ball to encourage her son to play with other children.
He played sports, basketball through high school, as well as football and soccer, and he was artistic. But he never seemed to stay with things very long.
“There was always something wrong with somebody else,” she said, citing a common refrain of her son.
He had his first psychotic episode in 1990, when he was 11 and was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. Tehee, she said, was deeply troubled over his cousin's death six months earlier.
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