FROM MY FILES FRIDAY: Regular readers might have noticed that I didn’t post an original blog on Monday this week. That is because I have been in the hospital with my mom who is 94 and is undergoing testing for severe pains in her back. I hope to get back on schedule next week. Thanks for your patience.
Meanwhile, here is a blog that first appeared on May 9, 2011, and unfortunately is still germane. The more that I have traveled, the more convinced that I have become that providing adequate housing in a community to persons with sereve mental illnesses is crucial to their recovery. Sadly, what they often get is substandard treatment in slum dwellings.
FROM SHODDY HOSPITALS TO SHODDY HOUSING
The main reason why I wrote CRAZY was to expose how thousands of persons with severe mental illnesses are being locked-up in jails and prisons because of inadequate community services and laws that require a person to be dangerous before they can be helped.
To me, the incarceration of persons whose only real crime is that they have become ill is a national scandal.
Of course, not everyone with a severe mental disorder in Miami, where I did my research, ended up in jail. When I did my investigation, there were 4,500 persons with severe mental disorders living in 650 boarding homes, called Assisted Living Facilities. At one time, most of these folks would have confined in state hospitals. Now they are in the community — which is wonderful.
Wonderful, that is, until you explore the conditions under which many of them are living today.