"I knew he'd be back to do me harm. This went on all night, I kept looking at the clock petrified ‘til about 7." An Omaha woman knew her attacker very well. It was her son.

She knew something was going wrong when her son started reciting Bible verses at age 19 and claiming he was God. One night, he jumped from a billboard.

Then his mother's doorbell rang. When she answered it her son was there, but his mind was gone.

At 26 years old, John is living an existence no one understands, not even his mother. "It's hard to think somebody you love would put hurt to you." It's the world of psychosis. Channel 6 News is protecting her identity because she's invited us into a world that, for her, is still very volatile.

Just over a week ago, she opened her front door and found her son in a full-blown manic episode. "I was fearful of him. I knew that it wasn't the son that I knew. It was the disease had taken over."

John came inside and turned off all the lights. For nearly two hours, the mother and son sat in the dark in silence. Inside John's head, police were watching and listening.

"It's awful sitting in the dark wondering whether your son's going to harm you.” At some point, John forced her to lie to down. "He said just go to sleep and dream of heaven and I thought, oh my God, he's going to do me in before he goes. So I asked him, are you thinking of hurting me? And he said, no, I am going to take care of you tonight and I thought oh my God.”

As the night wore on, mom drifted in and out of sleep. Every time she woke up, he was there staring at her in the dark. When he finally left, John told her not to leave the bed. "I said, I'll have to go to the bathroom, (and he said) you pee where you are."

Eight hours and mom finally left thinking dying would be better. That night John tried to take his own life. He took his mother's car and drove it into a ditch where police found him unconscious. He was wanted on some outstanding traffic violations.

He is now in custody, waiting on the outcome of an emergency petition to require the state to keep him in custody until he's on his medication.

What can be done to prevent this from happening? The family says when he is medicated he is fine. The problem is the drugs make those who take them feel badly, so they often get off them thinking they don't need them. That's when incidents happen.