The Long Troubled Path
of Michael Diamond

A photo of Michael Diamond at age 4

(November 18, 2004 - San Francisco Bay area) -- It was, at the time she says, the very worst day of Patricia Perillo's life. Her son Michael Scott Diamond, then 15, had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

She could not have realized it at the time, she remembers, but there were to be many more worse days to come. The worst came last week when she learned that her son, now 35, had been arrested on suspicion of killing a roommate at a Cherryland independent living facility for people with psychiatric disabilities.

According to court records, Diamond allegedly strangled 50-year-old Dong Tran on Oct. 7 with two rubber bicycle tire inner tubes that he had tied together. Diamond, who is charged with murder, is being held without bail at Santa Rita county jail in Dublin.

Michael Diamond as a Little Leaguer in Utica, Mich., in 1977

"My son Michael would not do this and I'm being straight with you,'' Patricia Perillo, 56, said in a recent telephone interview from her home in Plymouth, Mich. "He did not commit this crime. His illness did." She and other family members said they wanted to express their condolences to Tran's relatives.

While Tran's death is a tragedy, Diamond's struggle over the past 20 years with debilitating mental illness itself tells the story of a man just seeking to be normal, of a mother wanting her son to be safe and of a family feeling powerless in their desire to help their loved one.

Perillo likes to remember those days before the illness took hold and transformed her son.

"Mike was a normal, happy little boy and teenager until this happened,'' she said. "You'd have to have seen him. He was a joy, he was loved by so many people, loved to save money, was a hard worker, good in school, great in sports."

Perillo, who split with Diamond's father, Dan, when the boy was 3, moved with her family to Arizona when Diamond was about 9 or 10.

It was when Diamond was about 15 that the precipitous decline began. The once gregarious, smart and athletic boy suddenly became uncommunicative and withdrawn.

Richard LeClair, 38, Diamond's older half-brother, who enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a teenager, remembers coming home on leave at about that time and being overcome with emotion at the sight of his brother.

"To be honest with you, when I saw him I cried," LeClair said. "The Mike I knew was gone."

Perillo initially thought her son was using drugs, and she brought him to see doctors, neurologists and psychologists. His weight began to drop, from about 130 pounds to 93. Finally, after about six months of searching for answers, a psychiatrist gave Perillo her son's diagnosis: bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Michael Diamond at 14 years old, about a year before he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia

The psychiatrist told Perillo that her son would never be "normal" again.

As devastating as the news was, Perillo said she was determined that she could somehow solve the problem.

"I said, 'I'm going to fix it - find Mike a job, we're going to make it better,'" she said. ``It just didn't work that way."

She was then only taking the first steps in a long, frustrating and heartbreaking journey that continues to this day.

One major frustration, Perillo said, is that she largely lost her ability to be involved in her son's medical care decisions once he turned 18.

Despite some "great years" for Diamond - whose illness includes hearing and seeing things that do not exist - there have been numerous hospitalizations over the last two decades, some scrapes with the law and drug use, family members said. Perillo keeps his voluminous medical records in a massive box.

All that time, Perillo said she dedicated herself to doing her best to make sure her son was safe.

Diamond moved to California in June 2002 to live with his father, with whom he had reconnected with several years prior.

Michael Diamond's mug shot

His father, Dan Diamond, 57, of San Leandro, treasures the memories made in recent years as he and his son, so long so distant, were together again. There was camping and boating, but one bond perhaps deeper than the rest: Dan Diamond learned about nine years ago that he, too, is bipolar.

"I would tell him, 'I have the same thing you do, I take my medicine every day and I have a family, I have a checking account, a job, a car," Dan Diamond said. But Michael Diamond would often stop taking medications once he started feeling better, only to plummet once again, his family said.

LeClair, Diamond's half-brother, believes that his brother could have been helped if the system cared more about people like him. A step in the right direction, LeClair said, would be empowering families to participate in medical decisions for their mentally ill family members.

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 "Something has got to change," he said, referring to laws, some passed decades ago, designed to protect the rights of the mentally ill. "Family members need to have more rights when they have a son or brother who is mentally handicapped."

"If the laws were different, maybe Mr. Tran would still be alive and my brother wouldn't be going to a mental institution or prison, probably for life."

Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia in brief

Schizophrenia is a devastating brain disorder - the most chronic and disabling of the severe mental illnesses. People with schizophrenia often suffer terrifying symptoms such as hearing internal voices not heard by others, or believing that other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts or plotting to harm them. These symptoms may leave them fearful and withdrawn.

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a serious medical illness that causes shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function. Different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through, the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe.

Source:  The Daily Review

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