It seems as though the question I am most frequently asked is whether the Family or Nicole Linton could’ve done differently. I’m afraid this is not a simple straight forward question, but I will answer it as honestly as I can.
The answer is that it will depend on her actual diagnosis. In the past, Nicole has been diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder, and that is being fully explored as well as a potential neurological disorder. The analysis from the doctor is not yet concluded, but what he has found so far is consistent with type 1 bipolar disorder with psychotic features, mania, psychosis and possibly front lobe epilepsy. Again, he’s not giving his opinion yet and he will need to run a number of tests to confirm whether there could be a neurological component.
Something happened during her first manic episode in May 2018 that initiated the doctor’s theory of a potential neurological condition. In the police report made on the night she was arrested while in a manic state, it states during the booking process, she went from being erratic, speaking nonsense, and being incoherent to all of a sudden going into a catatonic state where it seems as though the lights went off and she’s there but cannot hear or interact with anybody around her, followed by amnesia. And then again in May 2019, the witness who saw her during the manic episode stated that, afterwards, it was “like she didn’t know I was there talking to her.” A memory, that to this day, remains elusive to her.
Apparently, that kind of behavior is consistent with frontal lobe epilepsy seizure, which also relates to amnesia. This was something that immediately jumped out to the doctor and why we want to have Nicole tested for neurological conditions. By the way, these aren’t your seizures in the typical sense where there are convulsions with people biting their tongues. It’s similar in that you are not conscious from a legal or medical standpoint; and unless someone is with you, the person experiencing the seizure would never know it happened because of the amnesia that immediately follows. It’s like the lights go off, you sort of freeze, you are not interacting, not doing anything, and you have no memory of it when you come out of it.
And if, by happenstance, you are around people casually, they also may not notice it. To them, it may look as though you’re lost in thought, not paying attention, or spaced out. Someone looking at it from the outside, wouldn’t be like ‘oh my god’ somebody is having a seizure. It could easily be passed off as someone deep and/or lost in thought. I recently spoke to her roommate from Atlanta and they confirmed seeing her a few times where she would space out for brief period of times but didn’t think much about it at the time.
And from what I’ve read about it so far, these events can happen for about 30 seconds or longer with stress and sleep deprivation being some of the known triggers. I also learned that another symptoms associated with frontal lobe epilepsy is stiffness in the body; where you feel like you can’t move.
But what we do know is that both incidents (May 2018 and Aug 2022) where she blacked out follows the same timeline. First, it starts out with sleep deprivation and stress. Then it turns into a kind of erratic behavior and paranoia, which sometimes turn into full-on manic episode with psychotic features. This then graduates at the end to seizure followed by amnesia. So, if the August 4th accident follows the same timeline of what happened 2018, which does sounds like the case, it seems as though the stages of her manic episode culminated into a potential seizure event that occurred during the accident.
But to answer the question, if she really does have a neurological condition, it could’ve been appropriately diagnosed and treated. Maybe that would’ve led to Nicole being stabilized and treated appropriately. And if it is a neurological condition, then it’s never been diagnosed or treated, and as I understand it, the longer you go without appropriate treatment, the more damage that is being caused by the disease so it’s only ever going to get worse. We don’t know the diagnosis yet because it still needs to be tested. And if that’s truly the case, there was nothing Nicole or the family could’ve done.
Outside of that, I guess in hindsight, the family could’ve kept closer tabs on her to make sure she was doing ok. But the episodes were so infrequent and sometimes when you are too close to a situation, you don’t see it clearly. And not to mention, we are all scattered across the country and across Jamaica, while she lives in LA with no close family members nearby.
I mean, we could play the what if game, but I know that we as a family did everything we could. Nobody in our family has the medical ability to properly diagnose her and I believe the family did its best under the circumstances. But we are experiencing now what so many others in America and the world experience, which is just how difficult it is to have a family member with a mental illness and trying to diagnose, monitor and treat that individual. It can be a Herculean task.
So many families are struggling with that and that’s why this story is resonating, and people are starting to reach out to us…Saying “I know what this is like” and “I have been through this and I tried to get help and I couldn’t get it.” If you think about it, there are people who suffer from illnesses like bipolar disorder, who are under a doctor’s care and they still have these manic episodes because especially as it relates to medication, it can take a year to get the right medication at the right amount. And even if you get a medication that is working, sometimes it only works for some time and then you need another one.
Also, these episodes were very far apart in time when they cropped up and it’s not like they were ignored. It is not as easy as people think. It should be obvious but people that suffer from mental illness very understandably struggle to manage their own treatment. And Nicole is no different. It oftentimes is a struggle or a challenge for mentally ill people to manage their own illness. If a mentally ill person is not treating themselves, it doesn’t then make them guilty of acts they may commit while they are in the throes of their illness.
She was an ICU nurse and she didn’t have any kind of specialization in psychiatry, neurology or mental health. So, this idea that because she’s a nurse and should’ve known all these things is mind boggling. From my standpoint, she was having these episodes, trying to get help for them, but it was a real struggle and a challenge like it is for millions of Americans and families to manage and self-treat.
As for Nicole, I don’t think there was much she could’ve done since people with mental illness don’t possess the insight to know the nature and severity of their condition. She was so driven and high achieving that she likely fought through her difficulties and probably dismissed her issues as simply being overworked or stressed. People with that kind of drive and work ethic have a hard time recognizing when they need help. She actively tried to reduce the external stresses in her life.
Nicole was involuntarily committed twice for about 5 to 7 days and was released back out to the world to figure it all out on their own. After Nicole was released, what she really needed was the ability to take time off from work, focus on finding the best treatment plan for her, and to learn techniques on how to properly manage her stress. She also needed time to find the right therapist and psychiatrist to help her fine tune her medications.
But that was not what happened. After being released, she had to immediately go back to work so she could afford her rent and pay off the student loan debt. What I want people to understand is that in pretty much any profession that you can think of, there is someone struggling silently with a mental illness. Think surgeons, pilots, bus drivers, teachers, politicians, etc.