Post by Logan on Jun 26, 2016 6:14:54 GMT -6
Psychiatric hospitals replaced by a failed patchwork of resources
By almost any measure, Massachusetts has lost the leadership role it once had in mental health care.
Nancy Chiero was making a cup of mint tea in the kitchen of her Uxbridge home that January morning.
It was a small, characteristically kind gesture toward her 35-year-old son, Lee, who had always worried her, and sometimes scared her, too. Also, unfathomably, it was a fatal one.
Lee’s life had been ruled by severe mental illness, the pattern of his repeated unravelings devastatingly familiar to his mother and family. A psychotic episode would send him to an emergency room. Once released, he would refuse to take his medications, the delusions would return, and the cycle would repeat. And repeat again.
Through it all, Nancy had remained devoted and unimaginably patient with him. There was no one else who would. He had been living in a basement bedroom of her home; he had nowhere else to go.
Read more: apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/the-desperate-and-the-dead/series/families/
By almost any measure, Massachusetts has lost the leadership role it once had in mental health care.
Nancy Chiero was making a cup of mint tea in the kitchen of her Uxbridge home that January morning.
It was a small, characteristically kind gesture toward her 35-year-old son, Lee, who had always worried her, and sometimes scared her, too. Also, unfathomably, it was a fatal one.
Lee’s life had been ruled by severe mental illness, the pattern of his repeated unravelings devastatingly familiar to his mother and family. A psychotic episode would send him to an emergency room. Once released, he would refuse to take his medications, the delusions would return, and the cycle would repeat. And repeat again.
Through it all, Nancy had remained devoted and unimaginably patient with him. There was no one else who would. He had been living in a basement bedroom of her home; he had nowhere else to go.
Read more: apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/the-desperate-and-the-dead/series/families/