As a member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and an active mental health advocate, I hear from family members whose loved ones with serious illness are at large at high risk in the community.
One was a mother whose daughter jumped off a freeway overpass thinking this was a shortcut to where she was going. She was discharged from the hospital paralyzed in a wheelchair, but could not be ordered into mental health treatment, because she was able to articulate a plan to meet her need for food, clothing and shelter, the current definition of grave disability. She subsequently died.
Another individual was released back to the street with a brain bleed having suffered an aneurysm. Yet another was homeless with untreated MS. And, a fourth left her housing and stopped treating a drug-resistant staph infection because she wanted to save money.