Life, Interrupted

(June 09, 2004) -- "This notice is about an important change," the letter from the state begins. A few weeks later, she was dead.

On New Year's Day, Farrah Russell peered into a video camera.

"I made this sorry tape about how I wanted to commit suicide," she said, adjusting the lens to meet her eyes. "I'm recording over it now." At age 22, she'd endured schizophrenia for more than three years and had considered taking her life more than once, if only to quiet the voices in her head. But on this gray January day, she embraced the future.

Farrah had found an apartment she could afford on the $314 a month she received from the state. It was to be a new beginning, so she labeled the videotape "Farrah's Plans for a Better Life."

And then came a tersely worded letter from the state.

"This notice is about an important change," said the computer-generated form letter that arrived six days after Farrah moved out of her parents' home and into her own apartment. "The program which allows you to get a cash payment and medical card each month is ending. . . . The state no longer has the funding to provide this program. It will end on Jan. 31, 2003."

Farrah was terrified but put her hope in Measure 28, a temporary income tax increase she thought could save the program. But voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure on Jan. 28, and the money Farrah needed to pay her February rent never arrived.

On Feb. 5, the manager of Farrah's apartment building gave her a 72-hour notice of eviction.

Less than 24 hours later, Farrah swallowed a 30-day supply of her antipsychotic medications and died alone in her bedroom.

Oregon's Department of Human Services is investigating whether her suicide and three others are linked to the letters and the cuts in benefits.

People who suffer from mental illness are far more likely to attempt suicide than the general population. Many, like Farrah, live day to day fluctuating between black despair and fragile hope. Studies show that 60 percent to 90 percent of U.S. suicides occur in people with significant and diagnosable mental illnesses.

But a close look at Farrah's life, drawn from her handwritten personal budget, mental health records and the videotape she recorded during her last year, shows that the loss of state assistance played a significant role in her death.

The program that helped Farrah pay her rent was created in 1961 as part of Oregon's effort to move mentally ill people out of state hospitals. It was eliminated as part of a larger effort to balance last year's state budget that slashed $1 billion, much of it from spending for schools, state police and programs for the needy and disabled.

Jean Thorne, director of DHS, said she warned lawmakers that cutting programs such as the one that supported Farrah could have particularly serious, perhaps even lethal consequences. Even so, lawmakers cut $140 million from her agency's budget.

State officials are examining whether the cutoff in benefits played a role in the four suicides and an attempted suicide. Officials said that all five people acted after receiving a letter that notified them of an end to their financial or medical benefits. DHS mailed 11,279 such letters in early January, many to people with chronic mental illnesses.

Officials said they suspect even more mentally ill people took their own lives after losing services.

State law requires investigations only in the deaths of mental health clients enrolled in public services. But thousands of clients have been thrown off the rolls since January, and mental health officials say county caseworkers probably are unaware of all who have died.

Richard McKeon, clinical director of the American Association of Suicidology, based in Washington, D.C., said Oregon's cuts to social services, characterized by the National Conference of State Legislatures as the sharpest in the nation, "fly in the face of science."

He also criticized the letters that notified clients of those cuts as "cold and confusing."

Although no rational person would have committed suicide after receiving such a letter, McKeon said, someone such as Farrah would be at a much greater risk.

advertisement

"We can never know what would have happened in her life if this hadn't happened, whether she might have committed suicide at some other place or time," he said. "But this is an example of an already vulnerable person who worked incredibly hard to build a life for herself and had it all taken away."

Elizabeth Lopez, administrator of the DHS Office of Employment and Financial Benefits, acknowledged the letter "could be interpreted" as terse and insensitive, but she defended it.

"It had to meet a readability standard so individuals could understand what was happening," she said, adding that the letter had to be translated into 13 languages. "We wanted to be very clear."

Moved to Portland at 16

Farrah was born July 28, 1980, in Pensacola, Fla. Her mother was 19. Her father was gone, among hundreds of Iranians ordered out of the country by President Carter during the hostage crisis.

Mohammed Riyahi, a student pilot, learned of his daughter's birth by phone and asked Sharon, his girlfriend, to name the baby after his sister: Farrahnaz. Sharon shortened it to Farrah, inspired by the star of television's "Charlie's Angels," Farrah Fawcett-Majors.

In 1996, when her parents got jobs in Hillsboro's high-tech corridor, then-16-year-old Farrah moved to Portland with her mother; stepfather, Jeff Bemis; and two younger half sisters, Amber and Jade.

Farrah insisted the move would ruin her. But within six months, she had a job at The Gap and so many friends her parents had to buy her a pager to stop the phone from ringing.

She graduated in 1998 from Westview High School with good grades and an acceptance letter from the University of Oregon. Instead, she enrolled at Lane Community College in Eugene -- less expensive, she said, and less pressure -- with a plan to major in accounting.

Her parents thought everything was fine until Farrah called one day in April 1999, a few weeks into her second semester. Her voice trembled.

"Mom," she said. "May I come home?"

Sharon Bemis thought it might be boyfriend trouble and didn't pry. She helped Farrah lug boxes of clothes and books back into her bedroom. Farrah closed the door and rarely ventured out.

When she did, she was disheveled and confused. Her eyes rolled back in her head unintentionally; she sometimes cried for no apparent reason.

Months passed. Sharon lay awake in her bed, night after night. She could hear Farrah in her bedroom at all hours of the night, talking in urgent, one-sided conversations.

Maybe Farrah was stressed, Sharon tried to tell herself, or experimenting with drugs. But the mother feared something else. Her sister's son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in his late teens and committed suicide in 1997. Sharon had read that mental illness has a biological link.

On July 4, 1999, Sharon awoke just after 2 a.m. and found Farrah lying in bed next to her, laughing and shaking uncontrollably. Sharon asked Farrah what was wrong, but it was like trying to talk to someone under water. She dragged her daughter to the car and sped to the emergency room.

A nurse asked questions, but Farrah could only stare blankly at the wall. The voices in her head were so loud, a doctor would later explain, they drowned out real sound.

Farrah was held for a week in the psychiatric unit of Portland's Adventist Medical Center, where doctors gave her antipsychotic medications and a diagnosis that felt as final as death: schizophrenia.

She was 19.

Change intrudes

Before schizophrenia, Farrah had glimpsed a very different future, one in which she saw herself as many things. An actress. A model. An accountant. A wife. A mother.

By the time she turned 22, all she wanted was a life worth living. A job. An apartment. A friend.

The pills quieted the voices but did not silence them. And Farrah's condition never dramatically improved.

Family and friends say that with the medications she usually knew what was real and what wasn't, understood what she was told -- and except for the times when she whispered to the voices -- seemed normal.

Other times, she was convinced that she was possessed by her dead cousin or terrified that a serial killer was stalking her.

In the three years that followed her first hospitalization, the woman who since age 14 had never been without a job lost seven.

Two clothing store managers fired her for talking to herself, according to Farrah's medical records. Co-workers at a children's shoe store called an ambulance when Farrah's joints locked and froze, a side effect of her medications that dropped her to the floor as customers gaped and gasped.

She lasted almost seven months at a Portland pancake house. But her boss scheduled her from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., six days a week. Already groggy from her medication, "she'd come home exhausted and crying," her mother said. "It was too much for her."

After work one day, Farrah tried to kill herself with pills. She never went back.

In February 2001, Farrah became convinced that a serial killer was stalking her. So she loaded her car, drove to Tucson, Ariz., and moved into student housing on the promise she'd enroll in classes.

She got a job at Hooters, a restaurant chain that features voluptuous and scantily clad women as servers. But her medical records state she was fired in less than two weeks for talking to the voices.

"It's embarrassing what happened to me at Hooters," she later wrote in her journal. "I'll never forget it."

She returned to Portland and, for a short time, danced at a Beaverton strip club. There, it didn't matter if she talked to the voices, as long as she took off her clothes. She never told her parents but agonized over it in her journal.

"Please God," she wrote. "Don't punish me."

Farrah used the money to search for a cure. She met with a hypnotist she found in the Yellow Pages. She paid for several sessions with a woman who touted herself as an expert in Native American "soul retrievals." She called a "shaman" who'd posted an ad in a New Age magazine.

She even talked her mother into driving her to the Tacoma Dome to see Benny Hinn, the flamboyant televangelist whom boxing champ Evander Holyfield reportedly credits with healing his defective heart.

Sharon remembers that Farrah, terrified of crowds, made it to the stage, but organizers wouldn't let her near Hinn because she wouldn't say she was already cured. She fled in tears.

Farrah read the Bible cover to cover because she believed God would heal her if she did. Sharon remembers the long days Farrah spent curled up on her bed, flipping page after page.

But no matter how she tried to silence the voices, they forever clamored in the broken apparatus of her brain.

Friends she'd known in college drifted away. Some would tell her they were on their way to pick her up for a night out on the town, then wouldn't. Or they would abandon her if she did something weird. More than once she had to call her parents from some distant location for a ride home.

Childhood friends lasted longer. A few even took the time to read about schizophrenia. But Farrah was a challenge, accusing them of reading her mind or exhausting them with obsessive rants about an ex-boyfriend.

"Please God," Farrah wrote in her journal in the winter of 2000. "I think the pain has been enough. I think I have become a big enough freak. Please have mercy on me and return my conscience to me. In my condition now, people are turning away left and right."

She read her Bible again.

Then she ripped it to shreds.

Safety net

As Farrah struggled, so did Oregon's economy. The metro area's "Silicon Forest," where her parents worked, was hit hard.

In July 2001, Sharon was laid off from her job as a marketing manager at Intel, and Jeff, a training instructor at the company, heard rumors that his position was in jeopardy as well.

They had a mortgage. Two car payments. Two kids still in school. But what terrified them most was what would become of their adult daughter if they couldn't support her.

Shortly after losing her job, Sharon helped Farrah apply for Social Security disability benefits. Farrah's psychiatrist wrote a letter confirming that her illness kept her from working. Six months later, the claim was denied.

"While you may have limitations, the evidence shows you are able to understand, remember and carry out simple instruction, as well as take care of your daily needs and act in your own behalf," said a letter dated Feb. 19, 2002. "You are able to return to the type of work that you have done in the past as a maid."

Sharon was outraged. Farrah had worked for Merry Maids for one summer while in high school -- more than three years before her illness emerged.

Sharon helped Farrah fill out the paperwork for an appeal. This time, Sharon attached an article about schizophrenia. But on May 15, 2002, the claim again was denied.

That stress, coupled with the death of an aunt, sent Farrah into a tailspin. One night, she called 9-1-1 threatening to kill her mother and herself with a knife. Police took Farrah in handcuffs to the hospital. She was treated for more than a month, her longest hospitalization ever.

By then, Jeff's eventual layoff was certain. So Sharon sent an application to Oregon's General Assistance program, which provides disabled people who can't work with a small income while they wait for Social Security Disability or Supplemental Security income.

Farrah was instantly approved, and for the first time in months, Sharon felt at ease. If nothing else, Farrah now had a safety net.

Farrah was ecstatic. She had a chance to be independent.

For the next five months, the money helped pay for Farrah's treatment in a group home for the mentally ill.

In November, a month after her stepfather lost his job, Farrah moved home and began to look for an apartment she could afford. She found the Woodland Park Apartments in Hillsboro, a low-income complex, and a roommate.

The roommates would have to pay only a third of their income to stay there. Farrah would receive an additional discount for her disability. Her share was just $53 a month.

On a piece of lined notebook paper, Farrah had scribbled a budget for January through April.

"It was the happiest I'd seen her in a very long time," Jeff said. "She felt like she was finally taking care of herself."

Faith in Measure 28

Farrah got the letter from the state a few days after she moved into her apartment.

She read it and started to cry, her mother remembers.

On Jan. 8, Sharon took Farrah to her monthly mental health appointment. The letters were the talk of the waiting room. One client said he'd soon be living on the street. Another just sat and cried. Others appeared too ill to understand the conversation.

Sharon told her daughter there was hope. Put your faith in Measure 28, she'd said.

Despite a paralyzing fear that the TV could read her mind, Farrah watched the local news, looking for stories about the temporary income tax increase she thought could save her home.

Farrah tried to register to vote -- twice. But both cards were returned. Because of her illness, Farrah hadn't been able to concentrate enough to fill them out properly.

The measure failed Jan. 28, and the money Farrah needed to pay her February rent never arrived. Making matters worse, the former high school classmate who had planned to move in with Farrah backed out.

Farrah was frantic. She walked to the unemployment office to ask for job referrals. She wanted to call her biological father, whom she'd met only once, to ask for money. But she didn't know where he lived.

On Feb. 3, Farrah called her mother to ask for a ride to look for jobs. Farrah tried to fill out applications at a furniture rental store and Target, but she was so upset her hands were shaking, and she could hardly write.

After the second stop, Farrah said her stomach hurt and started to cry.

"I can't do this," her mother remembers her saying. "I want to go home."

Before Farrah went into her apartment, Sharon wrote Farrah a check for $53 to cover her portion of the rent. She didn't know that Farrah needed $200 more to cover her roommate's share.

On Feb. 5, Farrah called her mental health caseworker and said she had lost her general assistance and was afraid of losing her medical benefits, too, records show.

The letter from the state said she would lose her "medical card," but in the next paragraph it stated that her medical benefits would continue under the Oregon Health Plan. Farrah apparently was confused by the conflicting statements and feared the worst.

The same day, Farrah took the rent check to the apartment office. But Lori Hays, the building manager, said she told Farrah she couldn't accept it until the roommate paid his portion from the previous month.

Hays said she gave Farrah a 72-hour notice of eviction and tried to tell her how to apply for emergency rental assistance. "But she was too confused," Hays said. "And I don't think she was able to follow through."

Less than 24 hours later, Farrah swallowed a month's supply of her medications.

She left no note.

Epilogue

A month after Farrah's death, a lawyer Sharon had hired to help her daughter secure Social Security benefits called with good news.

The psychologist assigned by the Social Security Administration to evaluate Farrah had determined that her illness impaired her ability to work. This time, the lawyer said, Farrah probably would be approved.

Sharon told him it was too late.

The state confirmed more than six weeks ago that it was investigating Farrah's death. But so far, neither Washington County investigators nor DHS officials have contacted her parents.

The Bemises wish Farrah had asked them for help, but they think they know why she didn't. For months, she'd watched them send out more than 300 unanswered job applications.

While straightening up Farrah's old bedroom for out-of-town funeral guests, Jeff found the videotape labeled "Farrah's Plans for a Better Life."

It wasn't a plan so much as a collection of moments Farrah recorded of herself during her last year of life.

It shows her psychotic and suicidal. In one section, she peers into the camera lens and promises to kill herself if God won't silence the voices in her head.

It shows her trying to record over the suicide message by talking about her new apartment and panning her old bedroom, past zebra-print pillows and movie hunk posters.

Most of the tape shows her dancing.

"I am, I feel," Farrah sings, twirling around her room as she mouths the lyrics to an Alisha's Attic song. "I sometimes think that you forget that . . . I am, I feel.

"This girl's a person, you know."

continued: Alone in her Room

Source: The Oregonian

back to top

top ~ next ~ articles table of contents ~ send page to a friend

We subscribe to the HONcode principles. Verify here.