#ManInTree: Here's his story. He has a name, a family, an illness.

[nolabear]

I was fascinated by this man, and how things went with him here in Seattle, and how it goes everywhere in this country, in spite of many of us who truly want and are willing to help. I don't diagnose in absentia but it wasn't hard to guess what was going on with him, and my suspicions were right. His manifestation is a common one, and the only thing that separates him from what homeless ill do every day is the attention he got for it.

This is the state of mental illness in America today. The conversation we need to have is a hard one, because it does have the potential to step on the rights of adult human beings who are suffering from an illness. But part of that illness is very, very often the inability to seek and maintain treatment. I don't have answers. But ignoring it leads to people like Cody. Cody. That's his name.

http://kuow.org/post/manintree-mom-heartbroken-years-trying-help-son

[valerief]

1. The poor guy. His first mistake was being born in America where the govt doesn't give two shits

about people with mental illness.

[Warpy]

2. The problem is that we have too narrow a legal definition of "threat to oneself or others."

They pretty much need to be standing there with a weapon and even then they're taken to jail, not to treatment. No matter how completely deranged a person's thinking is, he's considered able to make his own decision about medication.

Clearly this is more insane than the extremely mentally ill are.

There has to be a happy medium between forcibly medicating any oddball with opinions that annoy power and refusing to medicate someone who is clearly incapable of managing his own life without it.

My own family has been screaming for help for decades for some of the worst bipolars. None has ever been forthcoming.

[Kalidurga]

3. That is tragic

He needs help before his violence goes further. I bet deep down he would hate that he scares and hurts people and it will be awful if he seriously hurts someone and it will be awful for him on any level he understands what he did.