So began the letter to the prosecutor in Fairfax County, Va., from Norma Slattery, desperate mother of a schizophrenic son. She wrote it two summers ago in the darkness of her bedroom after Aric, then 25, became aggressive and threatening.

In retrospect, what's unnerving about that night is that it wasn't the low point in her struggle to get care for her son. "It was one low point," she says. "There have been many low points."

That is the short version of Slattery's past six years. The rest of the story is considerably more complex and painfully common. Slattery has traveled a path known to thousands of families with a mentally ill loved one. They know the futility of persuading someone who doesn't think he's ill to take antipsychotic drugs. They have endured commitment hearings in which the word "dangerous" is defined with such precision that it sometimes misses obvious risks. They recall the moment they realized they could become tomorrow's headline.

Slattery found herself scribbling her terror to a prosecutor. Randall Hagar of Sacramento began keeping a diary on his son's actions to present to a court; he detailed 17 acts of aggression. Mindy Greiling, a state legislator from Roseville, Minn., simply prayed for violence -- enough so her son would be ordered into treatment, but without causing harm. "It is the most perverse feeling," Greiling says. "It's not anything any mother would ever dream they would be praying for."

Schizophrenia strikes in young adulthood, usually from ages 15 to 27. Vulnerability is inherited. One in five recover, says the National Institute of Mental Health, and studies show that up to two-thirds of sufferers improve with treatment. One in 10 commit suicide. Early symptoms of social withdrawal or unusual behavior often are not diagnosed until after an episode of extreme behavior.

Families caught unaware

Schizophrenia enveloped Hagar's son just before his 16th birthday. It struck Grieling's son at 21. Aric Slattery was 20, a year into a promising career as a dancer with the Cleveland Ballet. Norma didn't see it coming. She first heard about mental illness when the ballet director called to tell her Aric's "psychotic break" had led to his arrest and then his hospitalization.

"I was at a complete loss," she says. Aric soon was hospitalized back home in Reston, Va. Norma soon attended his first commitment hearing.

Aric was not committed; the court didn't consider him dangerous. He went home with Norma. She found a psychiatrist. Aric went sporadically, then stopped. He spat out his pills. He declared he wasn't mentally ill.

The shuttering of state-run mental institutions has thrust many families into the role that those hospitals performed a generation ago. Today, two-thirds of mental patients live at home.

"You become the financial person," Norma says. "You have to talk with the police. You have to talk to psychiatrists, talk to the social workers. You have to deal with the lawyers. I basically have been living my son's life for him for the past five years."

An untenable choice

But the biggest shock comes when families discover they cannot force resistant relatives into treatment. Their choices: Turn the relative out, with homelessness and substance abuse the likely results, or continue the struggle.

In Sacramento this past year, Hagar's son was arrested twice, was homeless, moved in with Hagar, left for a group home, set fire to his room and was hospitalized. "You can never put the illness on a shelf," Hagar says. "You learn . . . after you've been through a few cycles, that the cycles may be lifelong."

In Minnesota, Greiling's prayer was answered: Her son erupted in rage and was hospitalized involuntarily before he hurt anyone. Greiling's bill to change the standard for involuntary commitment stalled. She reintroduced the bill last month.

In Virginia, Norma Slattery, divorced since her two children were young, struggled on. Aric could not hold a job. His short attention span made conversation difficult. He preferred to be entertained by the voices in his head.

She never sent her letter to the prosecutor. But the next month, Aric threatened to cut off her hands. Then she overheard him arguing with his voices that he didn't want to kill his mom. He threatened his sister, Moira.

"If you think you're in danger, you should leave. But if it's a person you love, there's nothing you can do," Moira, 24, says. "You just have to sleep lightly."

At one hearing, held after Aric began setting fires under the deck outside, the legal questions focused on Aric's understanding that he should put the fires out. But Aric had developed a ritual of throwing out the tap water, which slowed efforts to douse the flames.

Finally, Norma did what others have done: She tricked her son into signing over his guardianship to her. When Aric had to sign legal papers unrelated to commitment, Norma slipped in a document that assigned his guardianship to her. She checked him into a northern Virginia hospital last March; he's still there.

Recently, a new mix of drugs has diminished Aric's voices and given the Slattery family new hope.

But no one will ever convince Norma that Aric was better off left untreated for five years.

"If we could have taken care of my son five years ago," she says, "he would be in much better shape."

GRAPHIC: Out on a one-day pass: Aric Slattery, hospitalized for schizophrenia, gives his mother a kiss as they walk through the National Zoo in Washington. At left, a letter she wrote, but never sent, to the county prosecutor, pleading for help.