Dr. Mark Salerno Is Living Proof That It's Possible to Overcome Mental Illness

No one can say for sure why one person gets severely depressed or snaps mentally and another is able to stay the course.

Jamie Peachey

Dr. Mark Salerno

Jamie Peachey

Michelle Bloss and Mark Salerno of Recovery Innovations of Arizona

Details

Shadow Dwellers: A Series

What's the one image you took away from the Tucson shootings? We thought so. That mugshot of Jared Loughner is haunting. And for the world, it has become the face of mental illness in Arizona. Here, we know that's not true. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the story of what it's like to be mentally ill in this place cannot be told in a single photograph.

Tens of thousands of seriously mentally ill people live in Arizona. Some of them look just like you.

Other stories in the series:

Phoenix's Most At-Risk Homeless Find Their Way, Thanks to a Team of "Navigators", by Paul Rubin

Meet Raven, a Homeless Man with More Community Than Many of Us Have, by Paul Rubin

Why Did the Arizona Department of Corrections Put a Mentally Ill Man in Cell with a Convicted Killer?, by Paul Rubin

Mental Illness Hasn't Stopped Chris Shelton from Becoming a World-Class Boxing Historian, by Paul Rubin

Jan Brewer's Response to Jared Loughner: Slash More Than 35 Million in Services from an Already Beleaguered Mental Health System, by Paul Rubin and Amy Silverman

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More About

• Mark Salerno
• Today Luke
• Joe Arpaio
• Lori Ashcroft
• Mental Health

Genetics, of course, matter.

But DNA is no guarantee that a person will become mentally ill, even if both parents have suffered from it.

Surely, stress also can play a major role in sending someone toward the deep end — family, job, financial issues, or whatever. Again, however, not everybody worried about paying the rent on time or how they'll find a job succumbs mentally to the pressure.

In some ways, mental illness — like cancer, diabetes, or myriad other medical conditions — is the luck of the draw.

Mark Salerno says his parents had no obvious mental problems and that he, too, had no "extreme issues" before his life-altering (and almost life-ending) psychotic break.

"I was a busy guy, going nonstop for a long time," he recalls. "People probably saw me as a little eccentric, but if you're well-to-do and you're successful, you're 'eccentric.' Poor and not doing well, you're 'crazy.' Same behavior."

Salerno masked his growing malaise, continuing to treat his young patients with care and consideration. But mania, paranoia, and other manifestations of mental illness began to emerge.

Inexplicably, he stole the car from a young woman who was working at his office, and in April 2002, a Scottsdale cop stopped Salerno for speeding. Turns out, he was driving the stolen car. A county grand jury indicted him that May on a charge of felony auto theft.

Salerno lost any remnants of self-control as his first court date approached that month.

After treating a newborn at a hospital, he hopped into a car — his own this time — and split town with nothing more than the clothes on his back.

Salerno left behind a note suggesting that he had been kidnapped, but it was a lie: Actually, he says, he was in a paranoid state, fleeing from forces of evil that he was sure were closing in on him.

"My predominant emotion at the start was terror," Salerno says. "At the end of that run, I became suicidal."

Three days later, with TV cameras capturing the moment, San Diego fire officials used the Jaws of Life to pry open the trunk of Salerno's car near Balboa Park.

Inside, they found the doctor, conscious but disoriented, his ankles bound with duct tape and his hands free. Salerno had taken a large dose of prescription pills, climbed into the trunk, and shut himself in.

A passerby had seen what was happening and contacted authorities, which likely saved the dehydrated and drugged-up Salerno's life.

"I don't remember much of what was going on, and what I do remember is probably pretty inaccurate," Salerno says.

This is where Sheriff Joe Arpaio jumped in, drawn to the nationally publicized case like a bee to a flower.

Though no new charges against Salerno were forthcoming, Arpaio quickly dispatched a helicopter to San Diego to collect the doctor.

In Phoenix, Salerno was taken to the Madison Street Jail, where, as a suicide risk, detention officers forced him into the dreaded restraint chair.

"That is one of the lasting traumas, that fucking chair," he says. "You can't move and can hardly breathe — it's like being encased in concrete. I remember people staring in at me. I never acted out physically or verbally with the police. But this is how they treated someone who was obviously in a really bad way mentally."

Later, after Arpaio announced his agency's intentions to the news media, sheriff's deputies delivered a bill totaling $7,909 to Salerno's home in Carefree for picking him up in San Diego. An additional bill of $1,677 to cover the cost of the helicopter ride came later.

Salerno says he never paid it, and with good reason. It's against the law to charge prisoners for their transportation.

He spent about a week in jail on the pending car theft charge before being released to await trial.

That September, the doctor pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of unlawful use of means of transport. It still was a felony but would be reduced to a misdemeanor if Salerno completed a three-year probationary period without incident.

"He is the best pediatrician that has ever treated our children," one mother wrote Judge Thomas O'Toole before sentencing. "We are looking forward to the day that he is better and resumes his practice. We will personally welcome him back."

O'Toole fined Salerno more than $10,000 in restitution to the insurance company that had compensated the car-theft victim. The doctor later paid that sum in full.

The Arizona Medical Board agreed to allow Salerno to resume his practice but limited the number of hours he could work weekly, and then only under the supervision of other doctors.

But Salerno remained paranoid and depressed after his sentencing. The medications he was taking and counselors he was speaking with apparently didn't help much.

Within weeks, Salerno again took off one morning after walking Luke near his home.

This time, he landed after two weeks in the Pennsylvania woods, about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh.