View the San Francisco for Sunday, September 3, 2023
— can create the loud, often out of control, often frightening, troubled minds we see every day.
Someone would have had to have caught Sean Messer very early to prevent him from being one of these statistics. He was born on June 28, 1980, in a small town east of Tampa, Florida. His mother became addicted to drugs in high school, ran away from her Chicago home and headed south, according to Messer’s aunt, who asked that her name not be used. Messer’s father also used drugs, Messer’s aunt said. The four lived in a trailer along with their grandparents, who were fundamentalist Christians.
“Sexual abuse,” Messer said, “is so heavy when you’re a kid because it fragments your mind, like you compartmentalize the information. You don’t consciously remember it. Then, when you get older ... it hit me like, wait a minute! That shouldn’t happen.” Incapable of caring for Messer when he was still a child, his mother released him as a ward of the state to Mercy Home for Boys and Girls in Chicago, a Catholic organization that has offered shelter, food and a community for at-risk youth since 1887.
“The study demystifies the origin of so many preventable physical and mental illnesses,” said Dr. Edward Machtinger, director of the Center to Advance Trauma-Informed Health Care at UCSF, as well as director of the Women’s HIV Program. “The science shows that it’s not about character or morals, it’s about toxic stress.”
“We would meet in my car at a Ride and Park lot,” said Messer’s aunt, who recorded many of the conversations she had with her nephew, placing a tape recorder on the dashboard. “That’s when I first experienced his paranoia,” she wrote in a memoir of Messer. “One brisk morning we were just talking ... He was in mid-sentence when his demeanor switched instantly. He stared out the passenger side window at a maintenance man picking up litter near a trash can.
Doing a 5150 is sometimes the only choice, said Andrea Salinas, an intensive case management provider, who often deals with dual-diagnosed patients at Citywide Case Management. Part of UCSF, CCM treats adults with serious mental illness and co-occurring substance misuse in The City. Adverse childhood experiences affect San Franciscans from all walks of life, but recovery is inaccessible to most
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