Found Deceased MI - Dr. Teleka Patrick, 30, Kalamazoo, 5 Dec 2013 - #14

[La Louve]

So sorry to read the news about Teleka today.

Like so many others here, I think I held a small sliver of hope that her brilliance would have been stronger than her mental illness and that she might have survived. But the reality has always been that she would most likely be found near where her car was last seen. As always, the simplest solution is usually the correct one.

I'm glad I mentioned the other day that her DNA and dental records were still not in NAMUS and that fact was somehow indirectly conveyed to the family and addressed.

I'm thankful to Teleka for shining a light on mental illness through all of her social media postings. I hope her family will consider establishing a scholarship in the mental health care field in her memory.

Prayers for Teleka's family, friends, and colleagues.

:rose:

 

[vlpate]

Sonar search was done on January 23

http://z1071.com/index.php/news/reg...earch-of-lake-charles-for-teleka-patrick.html

You are correct, the caption under the picture was the 29th but that was the date of the story.

 

[LittlePieces]

please don't critique the dives for not finding her sooner. They were not even called to search for her until today, after the fisherman spotted what was believed to be a body.

These are good men who must be very fit & very brave to do the incredibly exhausting and often dangerous task of searching underwater for bodies. Even they have their physical limits esp. when ice cold water is involved. Today because the body location was pinpointed they could and did do a short and limited recovery effort, in which they were successful.

Divers were not brought on the scene until today, April 6. They were not on scene nor utilized at any time previously in this case. Prevailing conditions starting back on December 12 , the date of the first search for TP as a missing person, made that impossible.

 

[concernedmother]

It has been a long nasty winter with tons of snow, ice and below zero temps. I think they tried the best they could to find her .

 

[cluciano63]

I would prefer she had been found by the next day...and that we never knew about her social media. But then, on the other hand, it would have been even more difficult to make any sense of what must have happened, Imo.

 

[Indy Anna]

I think alot of good can come out of her tweets if used wisely. Without the tweets there would always be the question of why. I have learned alot about mental illness from her tweets. We read of a personal journey first hand to a dark place . We were all sitting here hoping that she would be found alive so she could get help. Unfortunately we sit her saddened by her death when it could possibly been avoided if she would have gotten help or someone close to her had intervened.Whether they admit it or not, there were people that knew. How could they not when she traveled thousand of miles away to go to a school that cant compare to what she could have gotten in and be close to a gospel singer that was going to be her husband in her mind. She had family on her twitter. Possibly even friends. How could anyone not notice something was very off months ago? JMO but I think her tweets could be a good teaching tool. I think it also brought awareness if you think someone is troubled dont overlook it and shove it under the rug. It doesnt matter how intelligent someone is, mental illness can strike anyone. I know they wanted to protect her image as a DR and Teleka herself feared help for that reason. I think she could have done research or something else with her degrees. Its very tragic and eye opening and I hope it helps someone of the many people that have read her tweets. Her life was more valuable that protecting her career when there were probably alternatives for her even if she couldn't work with patients.

While I agree with much of what you said, adults with MI cannot be forced to seek help or to take their medication. The hands of family members are tied. Today, people with MI often go without community resources to help them, not because their family and friends are in denial, but because legislation has changed in order to give people with MI "rights." Those changes in legislation are not all bad since they prevent "normal" people from being involuntarily committed to an institution, but they do not address the inability of many people with MI to recognize their need for help. As the videos and tweets of TP illustrate, people with MI often believe that they are being persecuted/treated unjustly. IMO, there need to be changes in legislation -- not to former practices, but in addressing the right of people with MI to receive the treatment needed to allow them to meld into society. TP also illustrated how productive someone with MI can be in society with the right treatment -- she was intelligent, compassionate and motivated. She could have been so much more productive if she had only had the necessary resources at her fingertips.

 

[LittlePieces]

the eloquent posts by others here lead me to wonder if the details of Teleka's case, in a condensed form and more formal format, could some day become a case study in the hospitals where the psychiatrists of tomorrow are studying.

We do need a "sea change" in how mental illness is viewed in our society. There has been some progress, yes. But clearly not enough if a young medical professional, one of the best and brightest intellectually, was too embarrassed/ashamed/frightened to seek help, or thought there was a way she could deal with it entirely and secretly on her own. Perhaps that is the final cruelty of mental illness, in that it prevents clear thinking and encourages a kind of hubris about a person's own mental state.

I was concerned that public sympathy for Teleka would drop off after the content of some of the most dramatic/intimate tweets was made public, because there are some ready to be so dismissive of people they judge "crazy" or "nuts". It was rewarding to read the posts in some of the MSM articles, and especially here, which held a high level of sympathy and understanding, some rooted in personal experience, others from simple common compassion.

 

[LittlePieces]

We will likely never know if anyone at Borgess Medical Center had observed things about Dr. Patrick's speech, behavior, emotional aspect, etc. which would have warranted further professional review and perhaps intervention and treatment.

It is possible that for nearly five months all of it flew under the hospital staff's radar. But how ironic that in a relatively small teaching group of psychiatrists, MDs, and interns (12-13 people iirc) even these professionals trained to be esp. sharp and analytical as to a person's mental status never caught on.

Conversely, as one or two posters noted, somebody there may have noticed and there were mechanisms of investigation already in the works, which served as tipping point in a precariously stressful inner vs. outer life.

Both premises are speculation only. I doubt we will ever know.

 

[La Louve]

Plus Teleka had been at Borgess but just a few months. They really didn't have much to compare her behavior against. She most likely had devolved when compared to a few years prior.

 

[LittlePieces]

thinking back, Teleka arrived for her orientation sometime in late July, the first (and seemingly only) time she stayed at the Radisson Hotel in Kalamazoo. So BMC would have seen her on the job August through November which is but 4 months.

It is true they would not have had a basis for comparison with the Teleka of a prior time. But as people of science with specialties in psychiatric medicine it is still very conceivable that they would have the skills to objectively evaluate TP against normative behaviors in different aspects. I hope I'm explaining that correctly.

 

[east2west]

She could of been chased to the lake, we don't know.

I remember when I joined WS someone saying, that their was a fence
and she could not of passed over it, so I said no more, figured she left by the highway.

I would like to point out, that I don't know the area, so I go by what I hear, and see.

Iirc it was LE who believed she did NOT go over the fence because no physical evidence had been found such as clothing ( a torn piece of clothing getting caught on the fence.) I'll have to dig for that info...maybe it was from the LE press conference back in late January?

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[sammi89]

I don't think I posted for Dr. Patrick before, but I grew up in MI and checked here periodically for updates. I'm sad to hear this outcome. I hope that maybe her struggles will somehow assist the field she was planning to enter in some way.

RIP Dr. Patrick.

 

[minusfour]

How sad, even though I guess it was what most of us expected. Like many others, I have learnt so much from sharing Teleka's story. May she be somewhere near green pastures now. RIP Teleka.

 

[east2west]

Iirc it was LE who believed she did NOT go over the fence because no physical evidence had been found such as clothing ( a torn piece of clothing getting caught on the fence.) I'll have to dig for that info...maybe it was from the LE press conference back in late January?

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Found the article re LE and the fence concern.

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2014/02/indiana_police_search_for_miss.html

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[east2west]

Found the article re LE and the fence concern.

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2014/02/indiana_police_search_for_miss.html

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Here's the quoted mention of the issue of crossing the fence from the news article.

Lake Charles and I-94 are divided by uneven terrain, a sturdy, metal-wire fence topped with barbed wire and a lake access road. Strong said police checked the fence for any evidence of Patrick, including clothing that may have gotten torn had she decided to walk from her car toward the lake, but found nothing.



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[SeriouslySearching]

Iirc it was LE who believed she did NOT go over the fence because no physical evidence had been found such as clothing ( a torn piece of clothing getting caught on the fence.) I'll have to dig for that info...maybe it was from the LE press conference back in late January?

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LE also believed she went to the road and vanished, too. They only follow "evidence". Did they not bother to follow the fence line to see the part in the photograph? Guess they missed that clue. Now they cannot refute the evidence she went over the fence, under the fence, or around the fence...and ended up in the lake that night.

However, it is plain to see the area of the fence which is bent down and would be easier to climb over. She would not necessarily have caught her clothing on it as there was a limb over it in that spot holding it down. Dr. Patrick was also a tall woman so you must figure that part in when it comes to scaling fences in a panic.

 

[CHERIE.T]

Yes, I remember early in the case when several folks said they thought she was in a lake or nearby water. I disagreed at the time because I was suspecting foul play. It seems that it was probably a dreadful accident while running from imaginary foes, as Taticat said a few posts above.

RIP, Teleka. May you now have peace...

Why do you think she had imaginary foes? tia

 

[CHERIE.T]

RIP Teleka. Prayers to all who loved you.

 

[touchlove]

RIP Teleka I pray your mind can be at peace now I am so very sad I prayed for you so much and wanted you to to be safe and return to your family alive. I pray that God will comfort you and your family.

I will be updating the Case Archive as info is released.

@AmandaReckonwith Thank you for all your hard work putting all of those cases together. I'm so glad that in this world there are ppl like you who care and devote themselves to spread awareness to help others without asking for anything in return. Thank you and God bless you.

 

[KRIME KING]

She left the car the same way she entered it...paranoid. If you think you can make a case for murder in these circumstances, I would have to totally disagree. Nothing about this says foul play was involved and instead points to a logical conclusion of her falling into the lake on her own, imo.

Or scared, we don't know if she was being followed, or not.