Flint’s Toxic Water Poisoned Mental Health, Too

Originally appeared in Word in BlackBy Joseph WIlliams: This story is part of “Flint’s Still Fighting,” Word In Black’s series about the decade-long water crisis, and the struggles and triumphs still transforming the majority-Black city.It’s been a decade since Joyce Ellis McNeal learned the water coming from the taps in her Flint, Michigan, home was, in her words, “poisoned.” The anger and trauma in her voice is still very much present.In April 2014, not long after news broke that her city’s water was tainted by lead and bacteria, McNeal, a K-12 special-needs educator, noticed her adult son, Joseph Pounds, Jr., didn’t look well. By 2015, Pounds came down with a crippling illness that caused him to gradually waste away before her eyes. Flesh began falling from him in grisly chunks.Shuttled from one Flint doctor and hospital to another, prescribed one medication after another, Pounds’ body continued to break down, consumed by something seemingly no one could diagnose, much less fight effectively. Puzzled clinicians and specialists asked Pounds’ mother: Had he been to Africa? What was his HIV-AIDS status? How did he get so sick?But mother and son had already identified a prime suspect after he was hospitalized; “He kept screaming,...