Losing Tim: How Our Health and Education Systems Failed My Son with Schizophrenia
Paul Gionfriddo
Language: English
Pages: 264
ISBN: 0231168284
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Paul Gionfriddo's son Tim is one of the "6 percent"―an American with serious mental illness. He is also one of the half million homeless people with serious mental illnesses in desperate need of help yet underserved or ignored by our health and social-service systems.
In this moving, detailed, clear-eyed exposé, Gionfriddo describes how Tim and others like him come to live on the street. Gionfriddo takes stock of the numerous injustices that kept his son from realizing his potential from the time Tim first began to show symptoms of schizophrenia to the inadequate educational supports he received growing up, his isolation from family and friends, and his frequent encounters with the juvenile justice system and, later, the adult criminal-justice system and its substandard mental health care. Tim entered adulthood with limited formal education, few work skills, and a chronic, debilitating disease that took him from the streets to jails to hospitals and then back to the streets. Losing Tim shows that people with mental illness become homeless as a result not of bad choices but of bad policy. As a former state policy maker, Gionfriddo concludes with recommendations for reforming America's ailing approach to mental health.
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for the placement to be implemented. During these five days Tim will be home schooled. Work will be provided by the school. That seemed pretty clear to me. But just four days later Tim was given an out-of-school suspension for a reason that did not involve drugs, weapons, severe assault, or any criminal behaviors. The events began when someone called in a bomb threat that resulted in the evacuation of his school. In all the confusion, Tim left the school and asked for a ride home from a student
D. He had finally spoken with the school psychiatrist. After their conversation, Dr. D had agreed that an inpatient stay was appropriate because the voices Tim reported to be hearing might be an indication of another, more serious mental illness. As Tim’s hospitalization began, I took stock. Tim had not yet received any traditional educational services at his new school. He was not happy, and his wilderness experience had been a failure. He was not taking his medications and was showing signs of
outpatient program at a northern Travis County facility. The order was a hollow one as Tim had no transportation to get there. Tim stopped by our house during the first week in August while I was visiting the other children in Connecticut to celebrate Ben’s thirteenth birthday. He brought Pam up to date on his living situation: He was settled in his apartment but was not attending his program in the northern part of the county, was not seeing his probation officer, and had no contact with
felony conviction on his record, but we learned that he was being approved for SSI. This approval hadn’t come easily. After learning about how long we would have to wait to schedule an appeal, I called a friend of mine who worked for Senator Chris Dodd to ask for help. Less than three weeks later, Senator Dodd’s office called to say they had been notified that Tim was being recommended for approval for his SSI by the Disability Determination Services of the Texas Rehabilitation Commission. We
should still go right to the emergency services program. She made a follow-up appointment for the end of the week to meet with Tim in his apartment and promised that she would follow up with ATCMHMR before then. When we arrived at the ATCMHMR emergency services center, I let the receptionist know that we had been sent directly from the probation office for an evaluation and medication. She asked us to take a seat. Despite the call from the probation officer, we waited nearly an hour before