Why this family blames mental health system for teen's suicide

At their home outside Seattle, with horses grazing in their back pasture, Will and Deb Binion smile as they look through photographs of their son Jordan. Growing up, they say, he was intelligent, adventurous and outgoing.To get more original video, you can visit shine news official website.

Eight years ago, Jordan, known as Jordie, took his own life at the age of 17. His family believes that his suicide could have been prevented, and they have resolved to talk about it in hopes of helping others.

The Binions had taken Jordie to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. But he didn't want to stay, and the couple said they were told by hospital officials to pick him up or they would release him. The Binions learned only later that they could have forced him to stay, and they wonder if he would be alive today if he had stayed.
Jordie’s older brother, Tony Binion, says they were best friends growing up.

“I was the older brother, but sometimes I felt like the younger brother because he was the one that was like, "Let's go do this, let's jump off this, let's dive into this,' " said Tony Binion. “He was a fun kid.”

"Sometimes he started to withdraw from family and friends — he isolated himself a lot,” said his mother. "He just wasn't functioning like his usual self. His grades were slipping a little bit."

Tuesday on "NBC Nightly News," see how the Binions are changing the lives of tens of thousands of high school students though a creative new mental health curriculum.

Jordie went to a family physician, who prescribed him an antidepressant. But after a few months, his parents say, he seemed to be having other issues.

"We would catch him at times talking to himself, and then he would laugh out loud, sometimes inappropriately,” said Will Binion.

His worried parents took him to Seattle Children’s Hospital, which has a psychiatric unit for children and adolescents.

The next day, Jordie wanted to leave. Washington State law permits people 13 or older to decide whether they will stay in a psychiatric facility. The Binions said someone from the hospital called them and told them to either come get Jordie or the hospital would “release him to walk the streets of Seattle.” The Binions picked their son up.

What they didn't know was that the law allowed them to force Jordie to stay — an option that they say the hospital never gave them.

NBC News called all 50 states and learned that nearly 40 percent give minors — some as young as 12 — the power to consent to treatment. Designed in the 1970s to protect young people, the laws can have the opposite effect. Deb Binion says they were handed Jordie’s clothes “and basically that was it.”