The Funniest People I Know Are Schizophrenic: What Special Needs Families Need to Know About 2025
From a Former Free Lunch Kid
How my schizophrenic uncles taught me what we're fighting for today and why the policy changes happening right now threaten everything we've built
A Letter to Special Needs Families
If you're reading this, you know the drill. The IEP meetings that stretch for hours. The insurance battles that drain your savings and your soul. The exhaustion of being the only voice in the room who truly understands your child's potential.
I know because I learned these truths growing up with two schizophrenic uncles in the 1980s: Uncle Waldo and Uncle Dave, who taught my family that disability doesn't eliminate personality, humor, or the capacity for joy. But I'm writing to you now because the policy changes happening in 2025 threaten to undo everything families like ours have fought to build.
Uncle Dave had the mind of a forever 10-year-old, which meant he asked questions that made strangers uncomfortable but make us love him even more. "What’s a bucket list?" "Are you going to be like Rocky Balboa at your kickboxing class?"
His rapid-fire questions regularly got him picked up by San Francisco police when he lived there, not because he was dangerous, but because curiosity from someone who looked different felt threatening to people who didn't understand that asking questions wasn't causing trouble.
Uncle Waldo could recite baseball statistics from memory while launching into theories about why the Giants needed to trade their shortstop. His encyclopedic knowledge mixed with observations about hospital staff that left our whole family cracking up in the visiting room plastic chairs.
What I remember most isn't the police calls or hospital visits. It's Uncle Dave's childlike wonder, which created observations that were both hilarious and unexpes Uncle Waldo's expertise, which brought joy to family ’ joy to family gatherings, even when his mental illness made other aspects of life challenging.
They were the funniest people I knew. And they taught me something crucial: the problem was never their differences. The problem was a society that couldn't make space for different minds.
What 1980s Policy Abandonment Teaches Us About 2025
Between 1980 and 1995, California closed 75% of its state mental health facilities while slashing community mental health funding by 60%. The result wasn't freedom; families like mine became primary caregivers and advocates by default, not by choice.
Uncle Dave's encounters with police weren't personal failures; they were predictable consequences of a system that criminalized mental illness instead of providing community support. Research shows that cities like San Francisco experienced a 400% increase in arrests of people with mental illness during this period. Yet Uncle Dave survived because my grandmother never stopped fighting for his rights or
to being seen as more than his diagnosis. That advocacy, the kind you do every day for your children, kept them human in systems designed to reduce them to symptoms and costs.
The 2025 Crisis: Same Pattern, New Policies
As I write this, Uncle Dave is still asking questions, seeing the world through his unique lens. But the current policy changes echo the institutional abandonment my uncles experienced years ago.
Mental Health Funding Cuts: The current administration has cut $11.4 billion in federal funding for mental health and addiction programs. Grants that were supposed to run through September 2025 were abruptly canceled. One Stanford researcher warned, "Services will be dropped in the middle. Bang, the clinic is closing."
Federal Leadership Eliminated: SAMHSA (the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration), which for 30 years provided leadership on mental health policy, has been eliminated. This represents what experts call "a dramatic reduction in the federal priority placed on mental health" precisely when suicide rates among young people continue rising.
Return to Institutional Models: New policies propose reopening mental institutions and creating "tent cities" for people experiencing homelessness and mental illness. This directly contradicts everything we learned about the importance of community-based care and family connections.
Special Education Under Attack: Federal oversight of services for students with disabilities is moving from the Department of Education to Health and Human Services. Disability advocates warn this "would promote a medical model of disability that could only lead to stigmatizing, segregating, and 'othering' children with disabilities."
Moving special education to a health agency reinforces the outdated belief that disabilities are medical problems to fix rather than differences to accommodate. It's the same thinking that would have seen Uncle Dave's questions as symptoms to medicate rather than insights to celebrate.
IDEA Protections Weakened: Current proposals would convert IDEA funding into "no-strings" block grants that eliminate federal oversight of special education services. This could allow schools to ignore legal requirements that ensure your child gets appropriate support.
Those IEP protections you rely on? The requirement for "free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment"? The due process rights that let you advocate when schools fall short? All could be weakened under the proposed changes.
Insurance Parity Threatened: Federal enforcement of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act has been paused. This law requires insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental health treatment and physical health care. If you've ever fought insurance to cover your child's occupational therapy or behavioral support, you know how crucial these protections are.
What This Means for Your Family
These changes will affect your child's classroom, your family's access to services, and your ability to advocate for your child's needs. Reduced federal oversight in schools could mean less pressure to comply with special education laws. IEP meetings might become exercises instead of genuine planning sessions. Related services like speech therapy could be cut as "cost-saving measures."
Insurance companies might deny coverage for mental health services in healthcare, knowing federal enforcement has weakened. In communities, mental health crisis services could disappear as funding gets cut, leaving families with fewer options when children experience behavioral crises.
The Power of Family Advocacy
But here's what my uncles taught me: families have power that institutions don't. We see potential where systems see problems. We create inclusion where bureaucracies create barriers.
Uncle Dave's questions weren't problems to solve, they were contributions that made everyone think differently. When your child's unique perspective enriches your family, that's inclusion working. Your child deserves to be in general education classrooms with appropriate supports, not warehoused in separate programs.
Uncle Waldo's survival was possible because we maintained relationships even when institutions tried to reduce him to his diagnosis. The visiting room conversations, the phone calls, the family gatherings where his humor shone through all reminded us that mental illness doesn't eliminate the capacity for joy, insight, or connection.
Today's children with disabilities deserve communities that celebrate their full humanity, not institutions that reduce them to diagnoses and deficits.
What You Can Do Right Now
Document Everything: Keep detailed records of your child's services, progress, and needs. Save emails, meeting notes, and assessment reports. This paper trail protects your child's rights even if policies change.
Know Your Rights: Familiarize yourself with current IDEA protections while they still exist. Understand your child's right to free appropriate public education and due process. Join parent training programs if available.
Build Networks: Connect with other special needs parents. Share resources and strategies. When policies threaten our children, collective advocacy is more powerful than individual voices.
Engage Locally: Attend school board meetings. Build relationships with teachers and administrators who support inclusion. Local implementation often matters more than federal policy.
Contact Representatives: Call and email your representatives about protecting special education funding and mental health services. Share your child's story. Explain how proposed changes would affect real families.
Support Organizations: Donate to and volunteer with disability rights organizations and mental health advocacy groups. They're fighting these policy battles so you don't have to do it alone.
The Choice We Face
The policy changes happening in 2025 represent a choice: Do we return to institutional models that separate and segregate, or do we continue building communities that include and celebrate? Do we see disability as a medical problem to fix, or as human variation to accommodate?
My uncles survived institutional abandonment in the 1980s because they had families who refused to accept that disability eliminates humanity. They thrived because we created space for different minds in our family gatherings and our understanding of what makes life meaningful.
Your children deserve the same acceptance, the same celebration of their full selves, the same recognition that their differences contribute to rather than detract from the human experience.
Uncle Dave is still asking his questions. Uncle Waldo still knows more about baseball than anyone in our family. They're still the funniest people I know, and they're still teaching me about the importance of making space for different minds.
The fight for that space isn't over. But families like yours have been winning impossible battles for decades. We know how to love fiercely, advocate relentlessly, and create inclusion one relationship at a time.
Your child's future depends on the choices we make right now. Let's make sure they're choices worthy of Uncle Dave's curiosity, Uncle Waldo's expertise, and your child's unlimited potential.
What has your experience taught you about fighting for your child's rights? How are you preparing for the policy changes ahead? Share your story in the comments. We're stronger when we learn from each other.
Sources:
National Alliance on Mental Illness. "Mental Health By the Numbers." NAMI, 2023.
Treatment Advocacy Center. "Serious Mental Illness Prevalence in Jails and Prisons." Treatment Advocacy Center, 2024.
American Psychiatric Association. "Decriminalizing Mental Illness and Promoting Mental Health Equity." APA, 2024.
NPR. "Federal funding cuts affect mental health programs." NPR, March 27, 2025.
STAT News. "Federal changes to mental health programs." STAT, April 21, 2025.
American Journal of Managed Care. "Changes to Mental Health Parity." AJMC, May 14, 2025.
Brookings Institution. "2025 special education policy changes." Brookings, May 6, 2025.
Chalkbeat. "Federal oversight changes for students with disabilities." Chalkbeat, March 24, 2025.
Education Week. "2025 Policy Changes Affecting Special Education." Education Week, May 30, 2025.