After I recovered from severe mental illness, I began to volunteer with Cincinnati’s homeless. I was curious, wanting to meet homeless people. During my own four years without an address, I was isolated. I never entered a shelter, visited a food bank, or asked for help. But there is great diversity in the homeless community. […]
About Bethany Yeiser
A Great Video about Housing First
This is a great video focusing on one of my favorite programs, Housing First: Nowhere To Go But Jail? OverCriminalized: Homelessness by BRAVE NEW FILMS: JUSTICE The video describes how each homeless person was costing Salt Lake City an average of $20,000 per year—mostly from jail time and emergency services. Personally, I became homeless because […]
Schizophrenia and Hospitalizations
I was hospitalized three times while suffering from mental illness. Each time, I had different needs and different levels of insight into my condition. It sometimes felt like I was being guided to different destinations along a journey to recovery. Denial: I am not sick, and I don’t fit in here. My first stay in […]
Jail and Mental Illness
Sometimes, I felt as though substance abuse and crime were a million miles away, or part of another world. Growing up, I was not aware of anyone I knew abusing drugs. I did not become mentally ill because I drank alcohol, or used prescription or illegal drugs. But despite the fact that I never made […]
Visiting Psychiatric Hospitals
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 […]
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 […]
Schizophrenia and My Wish List
When I was homeless, I regularly entered an abandoned building and slept there during the night. I considered the building’s unlocked side door to be miraculous provision from God because my thinking was confused due to mental illness. Sneaking into an open side door made more sense to me than asking for help from anyone. […]
The Dream of the Homeless
As of the time I am writing this, March 2016, I have been recovered from schizophrenia and healthy for over eight years. But every night, when I look out my bedroom window, I remember what it feels like to sleep outside on the ground in a dirty sleeping bag, homeless, and affected by untreated schizophrenia. […]
Schizophrenia, the Hospital and St. Patrick’s Day
When I was first locked inside a mental hospital, I felt the stigma of schizophrenia. Because of the stigma, I was convinced that my diagnosis had to be incorrect. Beginning the new process of involuntary commitment to the hospital made me feel like an insulted professional. But during all three of my hospitalizations, the physicians […]
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 5
- Next Page »
