( CNN ) -- As a father of three , I felt Tricia Lammers ' pain as she spoke about her son Blaec . He is 22 years old and six feet tall , with a goatee . But like most mothers , she still sees her son as a little boy . When I visited her at her home in Bolivar , Missouri , she was delighted to show off her scrapbooks filled with pictures from his childhood . She told me Blaec loved anything where he could use his hands . He played football , baseball and basketball and did karate . In ninth grade , she told me with pride , he aced his classes one term , and made the dean 's list . Every day when his father came home from work , Blaec was there , ready . The pair used to ride dirt bikes together . When the family had to sell the bikes to save some money , it crushed Blaec . He told me he would have done anything to spend a little more time with his father . In fact , when Blaec bought two guns a couple of years later , his plan was to give one to his father for Christmas . It would be something else they could do together , he thought . But things did n't work out that way . Blaec spent that Christmas in prison instead . His parents told police Blaec had purchased two assault rifles at Walmart . They warned authorities he had been hospitalized several times while struggling with mental illness . Tricia Lammers believes that was her son 's only crime . He did n't shoot anyone or hurt anyone in any way . And yet he is serving two concurrent 15-year prison sentences , in lockdown for 23 hours a day . He was convicted of first-degree assault and armed criminal action . He will spend the prime of his life in prison . It 's time to talk about mental health . Tricia and her husband , Bill , laid their lives bare in an unforgettable interview that left me stunned . They let me talk to Blaec 's doctors to get a better understanding of Blaec 's mindset and diagnoses . They also gave me permission to visit Blaec in the Jefferson City Correctional Center in Jefferson City , Missouri , the maximum security prison he now calls home , so I could ask all my questions and draw my own conclusions . Blaec 's story is really about the bizarre convergence between our prison system and our mental health system . He was diagnosed with dyslexia as a kid and placed on the autism spectrum as a teenager . Around his junior year in high school , Blaec developed signs of a true personality disorder . He had trouble communicating with others , started to have trouble with his grades and developed a profound and painful loneliness . My breath stuck in my throat when he described a semester where he hid away in a school bathroom every day to eat his lunch alone because he was shy , did n't have any friends and did n't know how to make them . His parents took him to doctor after doctor , and within two years , he had nearly a dozen different psychiatric diagnoses and a handful of psychotropic medications to go along with them . Getting their son admitted and treated was the Lammers ' goal , and given that Bill worked as the director of radiology at a local hospital , they thought it was an attainable one . It proved nearly impossible . The number of psychiatric beds has been on a steady decline over the last few decades , according to Treatment Advocacy Center . Back in 1960 , there were 535,000 public psychiatric beds nationwide . When the Lammerses were trying to get their son help in 2010 , there were 43,318 -- less than 10 % compared with 50 years earlier . Sharing experiences with mental illness can help . The couple looked into private camps , but the nearly $ 100,000 price tag was not within their reach . `` The mental health system is not fractured -- it is totally broken , '' Bill Lammers told me . As we reported this story and talked to experts in psychiatry , criminal justice and law enforcement , the same questions came up again and again : Should people like Blaec Lammers be prisoners or patients ? And how do you reasonably distinguish between the two ? When Tricia pleaded with the judge in January , he told her 70 % of the people that stood in front of him suffered from mental illness . A review from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that startling statistic to be a national trend , particularly among younger inmates . In the United States , 70 % of local jail inmates 24 and under have been diagnosed with mental health problems . When police brought Blaec in for questioning about his gun purchase , the nation was in the aftermath of the 2012 Aurora , Colorado , movie theater shooting . Everyone was on high alert , anxious to prevent another awful tragedy . During interrogation , Blaec admitted to buying a ticket to the movie `` Twilight '' and he admitted to having homicidal thoughts a few years earlier at the age of 16 . That alone was enough to put him behind bars with a prosecution team convinced they had just prevented a massacre . It was a sharp contrast to what his family and his doctors described to me . Scientists link 60 genes to autism risk . His psychologist John Phillips describes Blaec as a model patient . He told me he never saw Blaec as a threat and said Blaec never got into a fight or tried to break the rules . He told me Blaec 's autism made it difficult for him to connect with others , and he saw a boy desperate for love and attention . His parents each told me they could n't imagine Blaec ever hurting or killing anyone with the guns he purchased . According to a recent study in the journal Annals of Epidemiology , patients with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators . And when they are violent , it is most often directed at themselves . Blaec 's psychiatrist Dr. H.J . Bains pointed out that unlike a patient with diabetes , Blaec will not get treatment for his illness in prison and will likely leave worse off than when he went in . Near the end of my interview with Tricia Lammers , I realized there was another reason for her pain . She had been the one to alert the authorities about Blaec buying the guns . She found a receipt in his pocket and became worried . She told me Blaec had asked her just days before if she felt he was a failure in life . She says it was n't a mass homicide that concerned her but a lonely suicide . We all worry about our kids , and we strive for their happiness , first and foremost . The Lammers family is no different , and in this case Bill and Tricia believe they failed their son . His father wonders out loud if he should have spent more time with his boy and less time traveling . He wonders if there were signs he should have seen . He second-guesses his decision not to mortgage his home to pay for a special camp so many summers ago . He wonders if he should have kept those dirt bikes . When I reminded him Blaec bought the guns as a present , with the hope he could one day spend more time with his father , Bill was at a loss for words . CNN 's Trisha Henry contributed to this report .
Ryan Lammers ' mother turned him in to police after he bought 2 assault rifles . His mom , Tricia , says mental illness is her son 's only concern . Currently Lammers is serving two concurrent life prison terms .