- Category: Crisis Response
Hello! Thank you for listening, reading, and hearing — please be open to changing the mental health system for the better, for the Times, for this country that needs to do better and can do better!
*Each story is shared by someone impacted by untreated SMI, lightly edited for clarity, never for meaning.
THE ASK
The author’s message for legislators:
“I would ask that caregivers not have to BEG and or PRAY for help for their loved one. We should not be told – “I’m sorry, it’s not drugs.” We should not be told to “bribe him to ask for help, it’s the only suggestion I have.” Oh and why legalize marijuana prior to fixing mental health system. Why harm before help? Why jail before help? Recovery is real we need to have more stories of hope balanced with the reality of horror that is prevalent in our world.”
share this story:
Read More Stories
Clozapine Should Have Been Tried Earlier
After 16 years of medications that worked for a few months and then failed, clozapine changed everything. A firsthand case for trying it sooner.
“I worry daily if he’s alive and eating.”
Discharged homeless one week after a long-acting injection, with no safety plan. Now he refuses medication, and his mother travels monthly to keep him safe.
The ‘Miracle of Ordinary’ Cost Us Seven Years of Systemic Failure.
After 7 years, 20+ hospitalizations, and repeated discharges as ‘not sick enough,’ a mother finds the treatment no doctor offered: Clozaril.
What does it take to change the law to get help BEFORE danger?
It’s been a little over a year since they buried their son. The system asks to wait until a person is dangerous enough. He got dangerous enough. The law hasn’t
One Pill Between Us and the Cliff
A mother gives her son his pill by hand every night, and sold her home to keep going. Then he turns violent, she calls the police on the person she
They Called It Her New Baseline
A legal guardian warned that her mother wasn’t stable enough to go home. The facility discharged her anyway — actively psychotic, alone in a taxi with no keys, no phone,