It’s always been me and Valerie against the world. It’s hard, but I refuse to give up on my daughter.

By Elena Ivanova

When Suzanne McKeel saw her daughter sitting outside the Garfield Community Service Center, she barely recognized her. Valerie’s clothes were dirty, her hair unwashed, her eyes unfocused. She had been discharged from a psychiatric facility and left to wander the streets for ten days without anyone telling Suzanne. The security guards had let her stay inside, out of kindness. 

“I held her and told her we were going home,” Suzanne recalls. 

A life interrupted 

It all began in 2008. Valerie was 32—working full-time at a hotel, dating, building a life. Then she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. At first, there was hope that with the right treatment, she could get her life back. 

In 2010, Valerie was placed in a mental health facility and did well for about a year. But by 2013, she stopped taking her medication. A few months later, she was arrested after an episode at a Walgreens. A judge ordered her to receive treatment and sent her to a state hospital for a year. 

When she returned home in 2015, it felt like a second chance. “For a while, I had my daughter back,” Suzanne says. But in late 2021, Valerie stopped her medication again—and the cycle began all over. 

The cycle of crisis 

By March 2022, the medicine was out of her system. The paranoia returned. Suzanne called every number she could find, trying to get her daughter help. Eventually, she reached NAMI Chicago—and met Laney, a Clinical Support Manager who became her lifeline. 

“Laney guided me step by step,” Suzanne recalls. “She called every week to check on me. Without her, I would’ve given up.” 

Valerie was placed back in a facility but discharged in April 2023 without her mother’s knowledge. That’s when Suzanne found her outside the Garfield Community Service Center and brought her back home. Valerie would improve for a while, then relapse. 

In early 2024, she became aggressive and erratic. Police took her to a hospital, but she refused treatment. Every time Valerie’s symptoms worsen, Suzanne has to go in person to the Daley Center and testify before a judge to request an order for an involuntary psychiatric evaluation at a hospital — the last resort when someone is in danger and everything else has failed. 

By October, she was admitted once again to the same hospital where she’d been diagnosed years earlier. The doctors there tried everything without success. 

Laney never stopped calling. “Mrs. McKeel, we’re not going to give up on you and Valerie,” she’d tell her. Suzanne calls her “an angel.” 

By early 2025, after multiple medication trials, Valerie was transferred to a skilled nursing center where she finally began improving. By spring, she came home again—quiet, kind, even helpful around the house. “She’s been sweet and calm,” Suzanne says. “I pray every day it stays that way.” 

“The system keeps letting us down.” 

Suzanne has seen every part of the mental health system—courts, hospitals, nursing homes, jails, and shelters. “It’s like a revolving door,” she says. “You fight to get help, and either the medicine doesn’t work or they discharge her too soon. No one follows up. The system keeps letting us down.” 

She believes things could have been different if Valerie had gotten support earlier—before crisis became the only doorway to care. Suzanne often thinks back to Election Day in 2008, when they were standing in line to vote. Valerie turned to her and whispered that the women behind them were talking about her. It was the first clear sign that something was wrong. 

“At first it was little things—paranoia, comments about people talking behind her back,” Suzanne says. “If we had gotten help then, before it became a crisis, things could have been different.” 

Without strong community-based programs and early intervention, people living with serious mental illness are often left with few options beyond hospitals or nursing homes. By the time Valerie began receiving consistent care, her illness had already taken hold. 

“We need more places where people can actually get well, not just survive,” Suzanne says. 

A mother’s love 

Valerie turned 48 this July. She’s been living with schizophrenia for 17 years—nearly half her life. She couldn’t have children, couldn’t get married. Everything was ripped from her at 32. Her future was taken away so quickly and unexpectedly. 

There are long stretches when Valerie doesn’t speak to her mother at all. Sometimes she refers to Suzanne only as “that lady,” and hasn’t called her ma in years.  

“She’s my only child. It’s always been me and Valerie against the world,” Suzanne says. “It’s hard, but I refuse to give up on my daughter. When she’s well, she’s the sweetest person you’ll ever meet. And I still believe one day, she’ll be okay.”