Last year, a professor invited me to join his students on a tour of a newly renovated state psychiatric hospital. It had been seven years since I was hospitalized myself (three times, several days each time, during the course of one year) but I remembered my hospitalizations very clearly, and was eager to join in […]
Archives for April 2016
Mental Health Courts
What is a mental health court? Mental health courts are special courts that serve people who have committed crimes they may never have committed if they had not been mentally ill. Some of these courts specialize in adjudicating cases for people who are homeless due to serious mental illness. (There are other special courts in […]
Jean Valjean
In the novel Les Miserables, the main character, Jean Valjean, serves nineteen years in prison for stealing bread. Reading the novel, it is hard to miss the subtle call for a society that offers help to those who are hungry and in need. Before I became homeless, I never saw American homeless people as desperate […]
