How would you feel about someone who allowed their child to live out doors just because they wanted to? Would you respect a parent who allowed their child to eat out of a dumpster, take harmful drugs or wander around in a drunken stupor? Would you feel comfortable knowing your neighbor’s violent teenager is allowed to cause property damage and make threats to hurt people?  Of course not!  You would know that the parents needed to buck up, set boundaries and consequences, and take charge in order to re-direct that minor, for his sake as well as for the safety of the community.

Some people call it “tough love,” but with any example, a good parent has to be willing to be unpopular or even be resented by their child in order to help them manage their emotions, make better decisions, and prevent them from going down a path that could spiral out of control in much more serious, irrevocable and tragic ways.

Now imagine, that instead of just an unruly child, we are referring to an adult with serious mental illness, who may have the cognitive function and maturity level of a minor. Couple that with a person who suffers from hallucinations and paranoid delusions, unaware that he or she even has a mental illness.  The “parent” in this case is our current legal system and government, with “extended family members” being our mental health care system. This dysfunctional “family” allows people to be as psychotic as they want to be. This is the same “parent” which often says “It’s not a crime to be homeless.”  Except when it actually does lead to crimes.

We would not respect that “parent” who allows their child to falter and get worse without intervention. We may even decide to call Child Protective Services because that “parent,” which is the mental health care industry and the government, is not doing its job, not taking responsibility and not protecting the child from self-harm.

I draw this analogy between a parent and a child, not to demean any mentally ill person.  But in the same way that some adult children are forced to take charge of their actual aging parent with dementia, there comes a time and place when it is not only appropriate, but the ultimate kindness and compassion to take care of any individual who is not capable of doing it for himself or herself.

The general population doesn’t realize, apparently, that laws in place to defend personal liberties have swung so far to the extreme, that we allow people to deteriorate before our eyes, as if that seriously disabled person made a conscious choice to be in such dire straits.

We also have to question our priorities, in a post-COVID world, especially. We saw people become indignant (and even violent) toward someone not wearing a mask and presumptively accuse a stranger of not having enough decency to protect the health of their fellow citizens.  And yet, we’ll stroll on by a mentally ill person fighting off invisible demons with an imaginary sword and consider that perfectly okay and allow it to continue.  So with all the virtue signaling going on, do we really care about our fellow human beings, when we neglect protecting and helping the most vulnerable and distraught members of our society?

We’ll slam on our brakes and get out of our cars to help an injured dog dodging traffic.  But if we see a psychologically traumatized human, splayed out on the sidewalk, many of us assume that person is to blame for their own condition, blame the parents, or that the person willfully chooses to be insane.

Of course, many people do know this is wrong and would love to create the conditions where they can really make a difference. When I see a seriously mentally ill person who appears homeless or uncared for, my only hesitation to call for help is that I know we don’t have an adequately staffed mental healthcare system to handle the overwhelming case load of these outright emergencies. Calling the police is not a great option, as we should not be criminalizing a brain disease in the first place and that person’s destiny may or may not be helped by calling in law enforcement.

Try to “re-imagine” where we take two weeks, or one month, to “flatten the curve” of serious mental illness. Open up the hospitals to prioritize the seriously mentally ill, the millions of cases in our country, of people suffering and dying because of their serious mental illness. Let’s get them hospitalized, treated, and then housed with a robust treatment plan and treatment team, dedicated care workers to make sure the patient doesn’t relapse. If we can manufacture ventilators at record speed and produce pop-up hospitals overnight, why can’t we do something substantial for our children, siblings, parents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, who need urgent mental health care?  We saw and experienced a global mobilization over COVID. Why not overhaul the whole system and eradicate, once and for all, the neglect of untreated chronic serious mental illness?

Kartar Diamond is a Mental Illness Advocate and author of Noah’s Schizophrenia: A Mother’s Search for Truth