There was once a boy who was born deaf. Somewhere during the
course of his hospital stays and medical treatment, he contracted meningitis.
He suffered brain damage.
Still, he graduated high school. Got a driver’s license. Got
married. Had two kids. Held down a series of menial jobs. But always with a massive
amount of support from parents, psychiatrists, and social workers.
Diagnosed bipolar with schizoid personality disorder, he
finally stopped trying to find jobs he couldn’t keep. Lived on disability
benefits. Eventually his Filipino wife got tired of dealing with him and filed
for divorce.
He can't live at home with his aging parents; he can periodically become agitated and verbally abusive. They fear actual physical
violence. He's lived in a serious of cheap apartments and group homes.
He wore out his welcome in each one. He forgets to bathe. He forgets to take his medication. He
smokes like a chimney. He gives away his possessions. He sells his food stamps
for cigarette money and then doesn’t have enough to eat. He adopts stray
kittens and stray women. The kittens crap all over his apartment. The women
take his debit card and leave.
Sometimes he goes so far off the rails that he gets
hospitalized. This happens when the cops are called. Then he stays until his
medications are balanced and the doctor agrees to release him.
He’s not very good at washing his clothes or cleaning. He
just got evicted again. Apparently the landlord didn’t appreciate maggots on
the floor. His mother found him yet another place to live. She’s tired
and sick from a chronic disease, but he’s her son so she does what she can. It’s a good thing that his parents are millionaires. If they
weren’t, he’d have probably ended up in jail or dead a long time ago. Most people like
him do.
Because there’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing for people
like him besides the street. There’s nothing to protect him from being robbed,
beat up, or hustled. There’s no place that will hire him. There’s no place that
wants people like him living there.
Here are a few awkward facts:
- 20-25% of the homeless population suffers from severe mental illness.
- 55% of the men in state prisons are mentally ill. 73% of women prisoners are.
- People with major mental illness live 14-32 fewer years than the non-mentally ill.
- About 35% of people discharged from mental hospitals were homeless six months later.
- Affordable housing – decent housing with rent that can be afforded by someone living on disability (or minimum wage), is disappearing in every community across the country. During a 5-year study (2007 – 2011) median family income decreased by over 8% while rental housing costs increased by over 15%.
- The number of psychiatric treatment beds in American public hospitals has shrunk to the same number per capita as in the 1850s, before the humane and scientific treatment of the mentally ill was even a thing.
- Our current (terrible, inhumane) state of mental health care began a spectacular decline during the Reagan era. Reagan was part of a conservative philosophy that discredited mental illness and regarded psychiatrists as a communist plot. During the 1980s, at least 40,000 beds in mental health facilities were eliminated and the mentally ill turned out. During the decade, somewhere between 125,000 and 300,000 mental patients just ‘disappeared’ out of treatment completely, likely ending up homeless or dead.
