His mother, Elisabeth Robinson, recalled her middle child\u2019s auditory hallucinations and spotting him in her yard with the weapon one morning. Eli clutched the crossbow, intent on defending her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The boy who built forts and enjoyed hero narratives in movies and imaginary games as a child grew to act like a soldier intent on protecting his family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI woke up and he was outside without a shirt on with the crossbow, ready to protect me for the rest of the day,\u201d Elisabeth said. She confiscated the weapon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Calls between Eli and his younger brother Duncan, an NBA forward now playing for the Detroit Pistons<\/a>, were frequent. Paranoia set in for Eli about Duncan\u2019s NBA career after he signed a five-year, $90 million extension with his former team \u2014 the Miami Heat \u2014 in August 2021, the same year Eli was diagnosed with schizophrenia. At the time, Duncan\u2019s new contract was the largest in NBA history for a player who came into the league undrafted out of college.\u00a0<\/p>\n Previous story: <\/strong>Eli Robinson’s terrifying mental illness and the fight to save him<\/a><\/p>\n Duncan and Eli had countless conversations after his diagnosis, many of which were two-minute check-ins. If Duncan, a 3-point marksman, played poorly one game, Eli sometimes questioned their family\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n \u201cHe thought people were out for me,\u201d Duncan said.<\/p>\n A police officer once stopped Elisabeth at 5 a.m. when she was out walking her dog. Eli had called the department asking officers to check on her, concerned about her welfare.<\/p>\n \u201cI come back and (Eli) goes, \u2018Mom, you can\u2019t leave the house anymore.\u2019 He really believed in this,\u201d Elisabeth said.<\/p>\n Schizophrenia, which can be diagnosed in anyone and presents a range of hallucinations, is a treatable mental health disorder with a range of antipsychotics available. But despite medication, Eli’s auditory hallucinations made him question reality, induced panic and eventually drove him to death, according to his family.<\/p>\n The voices not only flagged false danger against Eli’s family but made him anxious that he was at odds with friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of it was like, \u2018You\u2019re not safe. People are going to come and get you. They want you,\u2019 that kind of thing,\u201d Marta Day, Eli and Duncan\u2019s older sister, said of Eli\u2019s hallucinations. \u201cBeyond that, he was very paranoid that people were upset with him, people in his life beyond us, friends of his. He\u2019d do a lot of fact-checking. He\u2019d call people and be like, \u2018Are you mad at me? Did I do something? I\u2019m having this voice that says that you\u2019re mad at me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Eight different antipsychotic prescriptions, 16 psychiatric hospitalizations and 30 rounds of electric convulsive therapy were not enough to save Eli.<\/p>\n In April, Eli died by suicide by jumping off the Piscataqua River Bridge, one of three bridges connecting Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Kittery, Maine. Six months earlier, he\u2019d survived a suicide attempt from the same roughly 150-foot-tall span.<\/p>\n Bills for schizophrenia care and consultation tend to surge past other mental and physical health conditions.<\/p>\n In Eli Robinson\u2019s case, according to his family, two four-month stints at McLean Hospital <\/a>in Massachusetts alone cost approximately $180,000, bills the family paid out of pocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n “It\u2019s an amazing place. He really got a lot of care but he just wasn\u2019t treatable. It just wasn’t working,” Elisabeth said of McLean.<\/p>\n Others aren’t able to afford similar care, or even receive community mental health center guidance.<\/p>\n \u201cFinancial costs associated with schizophrenia are disproportionately high relative to other chronic mental and physical health conditions, reflecting both \u2018direct\u2019 costs of health care as well as \u2018indirect\u2019 costs of lost productivity, criminal justice involvement, social service needs, and other factors beyond health care,\u201d the National Institute of Mental Health<\/a> says.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Robinson family spent several years helping Eli receive treatment at top facilities. No solutions seemed to last.<\/p>\n The family met with provider after provider, crisscrossing state lines to speak with experts in the field. Some medications were prescribed to counter the effects of others, all while attempting to quiet the voices Eli heard.<\/p>\n Breakthroughs occurred, but the family’s fight was mostly an uphill battle. They often faced difficulty in Eli\u2019s patient records and medical history being transferred between clinics and providers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reminiscing on Eli\u2019s treatment, Duncan stated: \u201cI just couldn’t believe that there were this many inefficiencies within this space.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe four of us were constantly working to keep Eli afloat,\u201d Marta said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a quagmire. He was a Rubik\u2019s Cube of treatment, of trying to figure all that out,\u201d Elisabeth said.<\/p>\n Eli was vocal about his schizophrenia, according to his family. Introducing himself to others, Eli would let them know he was more than three-and-a-half years sober and that he experienced auditory hallucinations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing about Eli is that he very much owned his sobriety and he very much owned his schizophrenia. He was very overt about that, and would probably tell too many people, quite honestly,\u201d Marta said. \u201cThat, and being Duncan Robinson’s big brother. He was very open about having voices. He wasn’t suicidal in the sense of, \u2018I don’t want to be alive. I can’t get out of bed. This isn’t worth doing.\u2019 He was experiencing command auditory hallucinations that were telling him to end his life. I think he got to the point where \u2026 he was just so tortured, and he didn’t see a way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Eli Robinson experienced heightened stress in his journey with the disorder.<\/p>\n Medications made him groggy. He became an insomniac, up at all hours of the night with potent hallucinations.<\/p>\n While being treated, Eli suffered cardiomyopathy after doctors upped his Clozapine, requiring hospitalization in Boston, his family remembers.<\/p>\n “He was very overmedicated,” Jeffrey Robinson, Eli’s father, said.<\/p>\n From afar, Duncan would feel his brother\u2019s emotions ramp up in response to his progressing hallucinations. He knew his parents and sister worked tirelessly to help find Eli the best treatment possible, only for Eli\u2019s patient history to get lost in the fray.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were just on this hamster wheel going over and over,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cHe would get transferred to somewhere else and we\u2019d have to start all over. And they said, \u2018Well, what if he takes this medication?\u2019 (We\u2019d say,) \u2018No, he can\u2019t take this medication. We\u2019ve already tried this here.'”<\/p>\n A National Institute of Mental Health report<\/a> states schizophrenia is estimated to affect between 0.33% and 0.75% of the global non-institutionalized population.\u00a0<\/p>\n Health challenges tend to impact schizophrenia patients, and struggles with the diagnosis lead to self-harm for some.<\/p>\n \u201cCo-occurring medical conditions, such as heart disease, liver disease, and diabetes, contribute to the higher premature mortality rate among individuals with schizophrenia,\u201d the NIMH report says. \u201cPossible reasons for this excess early mortality are increased rates of these medical conditions and under-detection and under-treatment of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Many patients already have co-occurring mental or behavioral health disorders. An estimated 4.9% of schizophrenia patients die by suicide, according to NIMH, and the estimated average potential life lost among patients in America is 28.5 years.<\/p>\n Male patients with schizophrenia are typically diagnosed with the thought disorder in their late teenage years or young adulthood, a younger age than most women diagnosed.<\/p>\n Mental health providers and advocates are intent on destigmatizing schizophrenia, highlighting the modernization of treatment and criticizing depictions of the disease in popular culture.<\/p>\n Christine Crawford, a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist at Boston Medical Center\u2019s Child & Adolescent Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic, serves as associate medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).<\/p>\n Some early onset symptoms of psychosis, including bouts of depression and a lack of motivation, tend to overlap with other mental health conditions. For a schizophrenia diagnosis, a patient must exhibit six straight months of symptoms, including auditory or visual hallucinations, delusions and paranoia, that have an impact on daily function, Crawford said.<\/p>\n Not everyone diagnosed experiences hallucinations calling for physical harm to themselves or others.<\/p>\n The portrayal of schizophrenia in mass media has come under fire, with some fictional stories showing violent or homicidal patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n A National Library of Medicine-published study from 2012<\/a> found 41 English-language films released between 1990 and 2010 had at least one major character with schizophrenia. Violent and harmful activity among the analyzed movie characters was common, with almost one-third of them engaging in homicidal behavior and about one-fourth of them dying by suicide.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important for people to know that people living with psychotic disorders are more likely to be the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators. That\u2019s just a fact and media doesn\u2019t support that,\u201d Crawford said. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to harm other people. They don\u2019t want to harm themselves. I have a whole bunch of patients who live with schizophrenia who are married, have children, go to work each and every day, (and) they graduated from college.\u201d<\/p>\n Early intervention, medication, therapy and support from family, friends and work colleagues are crucial to helping schizophrenia patients. Crawford recommends people worried about psychosis symptoms speak to a primary care provider for immediate input if access to community mental health care is a challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are conditions we know how to treat and people can live meaningful and full lives,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Antipsychotics are prescribed by doctors to patients with schizophrenia.<\/p>\n Some first-generation prescriptions \u2014 including chlorpromazine, fluphenazine, haloperidol and loxapine \u2014 can cause short- and long-term movement issues and muscle stiffness in schizophrenia patients, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Clozapine, which Eli Robinson took, lurasidone and risperidone are second-generation medications that are less likely to cause problems with movement or block dopamine in patients.<\/p>\n Susan Stearns is the executive director of NAMI New Hampshire. She said she has a 53-year-old relative who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young man and now receives a monthly injection to treat the disorder, rather than daily medication.<\/p>\n \u201cIt used to be that you\u2019d wind up with a heavy dose of medication and antipsychotics. Now it\u2019s a very different approach. Medication is low and slow because you\u2019re trying to get folks to that right place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Stearns said providers\u2019 attitudes towards schizophrenia have changed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really scary sometimes for the person who is experiencing it. When you hear about the hallucinations, the voices they may hear, I don\u2019t hear stories of people whose voices are saying nice things to them,\u201d Stearns said. \u201cIt\u2019s a real challenge for folks when they are struggling to find the right treatment and the right care.\u201d<\/p>\n William Torrey is a professor and chair of the psychiatry department at Dartmouth College\u2019s Geisel School of Medicine. He has practiced psychiatry in New Hampshire for 40 years and was drawn to the field with a particular interest in outpatient care.<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you support people to have gratifying, meaningful lives worth living who have these challenging illnesses?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n \u201cReally good care involves coordinated, team-based care that addresses both the general medical psychiatric symptoms and the functional support of life all together as one team,\u201d Torrey said.<\/p>\n Treatment teams, groups that include psychiatrists, case managers and vocational specialists, assist patients with Medicaid and their educational, housing and work status, address substance abuse, help find therapists and assist families of those experiencing psychosis.\u00a0The coordinated specialty care model encourages a patient’s treatment team to help them pursue life goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important people don’t throw in the towel on life and give up, but to pursue their vocational and educational careers,\u201d Torrey said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe research and data shows that if patients not only receive medication treatment, but the therapy, educational support (and) the vocational support, they do better,\u201d Crawford added.<\/p>\n Seacoast Mental Health Center will receive over $110,000 from the Robinson family, money that’s been raised in the four months since Eli’s death. Working with center staff, the family has identified three main priorities for how to support the Portsmouth facility.<\/p>\n The money will be used in part to upgrade the center’s Sagamore Creek office after past attempts to find a new facility failed.<\/p>\n “We had been looking over the last few years at the possibility of finding a new location for our main office, as beautiful a location as this is,” Seacoast Mental Health Center president and chief executive Jay Couture said. “Real estate is expensive. There wasn’t anything out there.”<\/p>\n A portion of the Robinsons’ donation will also go toward suicide risk and violence assessment training for the center’s clinicians. The assessment tool was created by staff of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Trauma and Community Resilience Center. The tool was piloted by mental health experts across America, used by schools, hospital clinics, social service organizations and mobile crisis teams, and left cohort members feeling more confident in their ability to treat at risk people, according to the hospital.<\/p>\n Pending state approval, the donation may also be used to expand the Fairweather Lodge, Seacoast Mental Health Center’s eight-bed group home for housing insecure patients in Greenland. Couture noted the center is exploring state licensing to expand the facility, which is staffed full-time and currently houses four men and four women.<\/p>\n “This is very generous and certainly the level of kindness and generosity being shown just speaks to the connections of the Robinson family in the community and the goodwill people feel towards them,” Couture said.<\/p>\n The Robinsons said Eli felt properly cared for when in the care of the center’s clinicians.<\/p>\n “Seacoast Mental Health Center was a place Eli really felt seen and was where he could get effective treatment in this community,” Marta said.<\/p>\n But a larger task looms over the Robinsons’ mourning: Successfully getting safety barriers installed on the Piscataqua River Bridge to prevent future deaths of people suffering a mental health crisis.<\/p>\n Coming next:<\/strong> After years of crises on the Interstate 95 bridge, is change on the way?<\/p>\n If you need help<\/p>\n The\u00a0National Alliance on Mental Illness – New Hampshire<\/a>\u00a0offers the following resources to those in distress:<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/85624957007-line-divider.png\")
Schizophrenia patient costs can spike<\/p>\nTreatment took a toll on Eli and Robinson family<\/p>\nSchizophrenia is rare. Co-occurring mental, physical health struggles are not.<\/p>\nTreating schizophrenia<\/p>\nWhat medications are available for schizophrenia patients?<\/p>\nCoordinated specialty care model explained<\/p>\nRobinsons to support Seacoast Mental Health Center<\/p>\n\n