(Jan. 6, 2014) “The system is broken, especially for homeless people with severe mental illness,” writes Sarah Dusseault about her brother’s struggle with schizophrenia in a powerful plea for better treatment and care (“Have you seen my brother standing in the shadows?,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 5).
John’s bouts of homelessness always start when he stops taking his medication, Dusseault says. “Today he is still attractive and wickedly smart at times, but his skin is weathered from years of homelessness and he is missing half of a finger on his right hand from one of his ‘stays’ in a county jail.”
Dusseault estimates that the government has spent over $1 million providing services for her brother in the last year alone. “For most of the chronically mentally ill we waste large sums of money on ineffective interventions,” she says.
Dusseault’s brother is not alone in his experience. About 200,000 people - one-third of the homeless population in the United States – are individuals with untreated psychiatric disease.
If we want to get serious about helping people like John, we need to recognize that many of the homeless need psychiatric treatment to escape the consequences of untreated mental illness.
Read our backgrounder on homelessness as a consequence of failing to treat severe mental illness.
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