Thomas Birdsey’s severe mental illness begins to surface during a summer job and becomes unmistakable in March 1970. Recounted by his twin brother, Dominick Birdsey, the episode is not an isolated crisis but the opening of a prolonged, uneven course of diagnosis, medication, institutional care, and legal review. Its history moves between fragile stretches of independence and decisions made by clinicians and review boards about how much risk Thomas posed and whether he could leave the hospital.

Early Signs and the 1970 Crisis

In the summer of 1969, Thomas Birdsey and Dominick Birdsey were home from their freshman year of college and working as seasonal employees. They mowed and trimmed a small burial ground on the grounds of Three Rivers State Hospital, on the southern edge of town. The hospital property lay beside the Sachem River, with the town fairgrounds to the north and the sacred burial grounds of the Wequonnoc Nation to the south. The work placed the brothers in the landscape of a hospital that would become central to Thomas Birdsey’s life, although at the time his illness was only beginning to show itself.

Dominick Birdsey remembers the signs as subtle enough that he could not, or did not, recognize their importance. Nine months after that summer, in March 1970, Thomas Birdsey experienced a severe mental health crisis. The contrast between the routine of the brothers’ seasonal work and the abruptness of the later breakdown gives the onset its retrospective force: what had seemed easy to overlook could no longer be ignored.

More than twenty years later, Dominick Birdsey was again traveling with Thomas Birdsey back to the state hospital, this time in a police cruiser. In the intervening years, Dominick Birdsey had graduated from college, taught high school history, and started a painting business; their mother and Dominick Birdsey’s baby had died, and Dessa had left him. His life had continued to change, but his brother’s illness kept drawing him back into the hospital’s orbit.

Changing Diagnoses and Treatment

Dominick Birdsey describes the years of treatment as a succession of shifting diagnoses, medications, and state-appointed psychiatrists. The distinction between a diagnosis and an effective treatment remained unsettled for the family. In 1977 and 1978, Thomas Birdsey had what Dominick Birdsey recalls as comparatively good years. His doctors decided that he was not manic-depressive after all, stopped lithium, and prescribed Stelazine instead.

A later medication change brought a serious setback. After Dr. Bradbury retired, Dr. Schooner increased Thomas Birdsey’s Stelazine dosage from six milligrams a day to eighteen. When Dominick Birdsey visited, he found his brother markedly impaired and unable to function normally. Dr. Schooner said he had intended to check on Thomas Birdsey but had been busy covering for another doctor and attending to visiting in-laws. A nurse told Dominick Birdsey that staff had called Dr. Schooner and left messages throughout the weekend. The episode exposed the consequences of a treatment decision compounded by a failure to respond promptly to concerns about the patient.

A more stable period followed in the early 1980s. In 1983, Dr. Filyaw started Thomas Birdsey on Haldol, after which his condition improved enough for the hospital to transfer him to a group home. He also obtained a maintenance job at McDonald’s. The first paycheck mattered to him: before it was cashed, he asked Dominick Birdsey to photocopy it, then kept the copy framed in his bedroom. Beside it, he displayed a ten-dollar bill that was later stolen. The small exhibit of work and earnings marked a concrete return to ordinary independence, even though it did not end his need for care.

During this period, Thomas Birdsey also had a girlfriend, Nadine, who shared his religious enthusiasm but was not described as having an official mental illness. The relationship belongs to the account of an interval when his life extended beyond hospital routines and medication. It did not erase the recurring vulnerability that shaped the larger course of his illness.

Commitment and the Review System

When Thomas Birdsey was admitted to Hatch, the initial legal authority was a Physician’s Emergency Certificate initiated by a surgeon at Shanley Memorial Hospital. The certificate allowed fifteen days of observation so the hospital could assess whether he was dangerous to himself or others. The minimum period was court-ordered, and Dominick Birdsey was told that the commitment could not be ended immediately by a family member’s request. Medical observation and legal process therefore set the terms of the family’s first efforts to influence his care.

The review system itself had been reshaped by the public reaction to the Jimmy Lane murder. Jimmy Lane, who was on a supervised day-pass hike from Westwood, wandered away from the group and killed a child. The account emphasizes that he had no previous history of violent behavior. Public condemnation of the insanity defense turned the case into a political crisis: officials feared that the crime would reinforce the belief that mentally ill people were inherently violent, while anger also focused on the legal system that had found Jimmy Lane not guilty by reason of insanity. The governor fired the commissioner, the department was reorganized, and the Psychiatric Security Review Board was created.

That history forms the institutional backdrop to Thomas Birdsey’s confinement. At a later review, the board voted unanimously to retain him at Hatch for one year, finding that he had shown himself to be potentially dangerous to himself and others. His case was scheduled for another review in October 1991, when the board would decide whether to release him or continue his placement for a second twelve-month period. Lisa Sheffer requested a follow-up review after six months rather than waiting a year. Richard Hume pointed out that, without the insanity ruling, Thomas Birdsey might instead have been convicted of a felony in criminal court.

A Long Course, Not a Single Episode

The account’s repeated returns to Thomas Birdsey’s treatment resist presenting mental illness as one sudden event with a clean resolution. The March 1970 crisis makes the illness undeniable, but the ensuing history consists of changes in diagnosis, medication, staffing, living arrangements, and legal status. Improvement on Haldol opened the possibility of group-home life and work; it did not guarantee lasting freedom from institutional oversight.

The episode also reveals the burden placed on Dominick Birdsey as witness and advocate. He remembers particular years, medication dosages, the framed paycheck, and the calls a nurse said had gone unanswered. Those details distinguish administrative decisions from their effects on Thomas Birdsey’s daily life. At the same time, the board’s proceedings show how individual care was shaped by a system responding to public fear as well as to a patient’s assessed needs. Thomas Birdsey’s illness thus remains both a private family history and a recurring encounter with institutions that decide how treatment, safety, and liberty are to be balanced.