A Colorado family's struggle with young woman's mental illness faces frightening reality

The mother of Olivia Schack sits in her home and worries. "We are trying to protect her from herself. She's more of a danger to herself than anyone else. But it's just almost impossible," says Kendra Anderson. "I'm just at a loss."

Schack is now 24. She has been at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo for nearly a year as she is evaluated to see if she is competent to stand trial. Four times, experts have determined she is not. 

Now her family worries that she will be turned back out onto the streets where she is in danger. 

"She's a 24-year-old young girl who's been assaulted many times. I mean, she doesn't even tell us everything. I mean, she's been in and out of the hospital I don't know how many times," said her mother.

A judge in Jefferson County on Monday will hold a hearing in which the charges against Schack are likely to be dropped. She is accused of assaulting her father. 

Charges the family would not have pressed, except they were told by people in the county's mental health system that the best way to get her help would be to get her arrested and into the criminal justice system. 

For close to six months, she remained at the Jefferson County Jail, awaiting a bed in Pueblo where she has been since late in the spring of last year. All this time, she has not been convicted of any crime.

Her family talks to her frequently. 

"She's been on six to nine different medications throughout the last year," says her mother. "They make her sick." Schack has schizoaffective disorder and depression and is bipolar. "Some of them help a little bit. But she still has the voices," Kendra Anderson relates. "There's no healing process." 

Healing is not the role of the state's facility for people facing criminal prosecution. They are to get people well enough to understand the proceedings at trial. The voices she hears have gotten better at times, but they are not gone. 

She has said she feels safe there, and the staff is friendly, says her mother. But Schack has had three different social workers. 

"One social worker told me they won't let her go; they'll try to put her in a civil commitment group home from there. That was at the beginning. And then the new social worker came in and she's like, 'oh no, that's not our policy.'"

The judge could order Schack into a temporary mental health hold, but those hold, known as an M1, are only 72 hours. 

After that, the court would have the option of adding a three-month hold, then six-month holds for people in such situations, says the State's Department of Human Services Office of Civil and Forensic Mental Health. 

"We don't have any legal basis to hold anybody after charges are dropped," said department spokesperson Jordan Johnson. Johnson said people do not get discharged without being given options for services like community mental health options or to seek housing. But there is difficulty. 

"There is definitely a shortage of community mental health options," she added. 

They help them restore Medicaid benefits. But it is up to the client to seek them out; they cannot be forced. Her mother says she will not follow through and it's pointless.

"If she goes out on the streets, I mean, I don't even know how she survived the last time," she said. 

Kendra Anderson and her husband, as well as Schack's father and his wife, have talked about taking her in. But that has not worked in the past. They cannot lock her up in the basement, says her mother. 

"I have a home for her. She can live with me. She can live with her dad. But she doesn't want to… she'll take off. Nothing is dangerous to her." 

Schack has disappeared for months at a time.

Her mother says her daughter has told her she will not continue to take prescribed medications if she's released, asking, "do I have to be sober?" if she gets other housing. Schack self-medicates.

The family has inquired about having her committed in the past but has been told it is simply too hard. "There's nowhere for a lot of these people to go," said Kendra Anderson.

The Jefferson County D.A.'s Office that is handling the prosecution of Schack Wednesday night said it could not discuss the case due to privacy laws but did issue a statement about mental illness: 

"As prosecutors, our primary responsibility is to uphold the law while ensuring that justice is served ethically and within the bounds of our statutory obligations. While the recent legislative expansion of civil commitment language was a step forward, its impact remains to be seen in the 1st Judicial District. Sadly, Colorado is home to a considerable number of adults experiencing mental illness, with a system that is ill-equipped to support them. In fact, Colorado has some of the highest prevalence of mental illness and the lowest rates of access to care in the country. There are no easy solutions to address this crisis, but the bottom line is that mental health treatment should be accessible and separate from the justice system."