HIGH FALLS, N.Y. — The last time Emily Abramson saw Andy Neiman, he was in the waiting area of a hospital emergency department. She knew her brother was in trouble. But she figured he’d be safe.
The hours went by — eight, ten, twelve. “I couldn’t believe how long it was taking,” Emily told me later. By late afternoon, Andy was calling Emily to say he didn’t want to stay there anymore and couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let him go. At 9:06 p.m., some 16 hours after Emily had first brought Andy to the ER, she got a message from a hospital staff member saying they had found a room for him and would be admitting him sometime “in the evening.”José A. Alvarado Jr.
But whatever questions remain about the specifics of Andy’s care and disappearance, a few things are clear: Andy needed inpatient psychiatric care that day. He didn’t get it. And that was hardly an unusual occurrence.Every day, all over America, people in psychiatric distress sit inside emergency departments — not just for hours, but frequently for days and sometimes for weeks. It’s happening in. “This is not a one-off.
There are the high-profile stories of catastrophe, including deadly encounters with police, violent crimes and suicides. There are many more instances when people with untreated mental illness are simply unable to function or to participate fully in everyday life.It is a warm-ish day in early May. Emily is sitting on a lawn chair outside her weathered, light blue home, near a pair of large flowering shrubs and a few steps away from the orchard where Andy went running that night three years ago.
Andy’s struggles became more apparent at Wesleyan University, where, after three years of getting high grades and performing in several plays, he fell into depression. “I visited him and he was basically a disaster,” David said. Andy managed to graduate with his GPA intact and came back to St.
“He was taking lithium, Risperdal, Stelazine, Ativan — these drugs would strip him of personality; you could literally see it in his face,” David said. “There would be moments where he would literally just put the pill bottle down, because … he needed to have that feeling again of being a person. And of course it would go further than it should have. He would have a joyride and then he would crash down into bedrock.
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