A One-Hour Documentary About Schizophrenia
On May 30, 1997, in Victoria, British Columbia, Ruth Millar stood in the kitchen of her middle class home drying the dishes after a quiet family dinner. Her 24-year-old son, Aaron, silently walked in and plunged a ceremonial sword through her back, instantly piercing her heart. Aaron was arrested without incident a short while later as he sat on the pier one block from home, looking out to sea.
"A Mothers Son" is a story of the Millar family's desperate attempt to save their beloved son from a serious mental illness - schizophrenia; of their endeavour to access the mental health system; of the failure of the justice system, and, ultimately, of a father's unswerving devotion to his son.
During the two years leading up to Ruth's death, Aaron began to show early symptoms of schizophrenia. The Millar family searched for help and tried to cope. Three months prior to Ruth's murder, Aaron was arrested in Victoria for cutting satellite cables at CHEK TV and at the Time Colonist newspaper office.
He was dressed in camouflage gear, wore a gas mask and was wrapped in tin foil to stop the incessant alien messages that played in his head. While at the Wilkinson Road Jail, a court-ordered psychiatrist determined that Aaron was delusional and paranoid but that he was not having thoughts of violence. As there was no treatment facilities available to him, the court released Aaron to his mother's care.
Ramsay Millar, Ruth's husband of 28 years, believes that Ruth forfeited her life to a system that insists that violence, or the imminent threat of violence, is the essential prerequisite for medical treatment. The macabre irony of the Millar story is that Ruth got what she had desperately sought - proper medical treatment for her son - but the price was her life and the destruction of her family.
"A Mother's Son" is a story of the surviving family's ongoing attempt to reconcile their grief and anger at Ruth's loss, and their belief that the only way to bring meaning to Ruth's premature death is to actively advocate for the rights of the seriously mentally ill.
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