Welcome to Rumble to Rumble Strip America Heilman. This is part two of the VPR series They Are Us.

Today's show is called Home and it explores the role that housing plays in the lives of people with serious mental illness and how

inadequate housing is one big reason why so many people with serious mental

illness keep winding up back in the hospital.

Welcome.

People having mental health crises are going to hospital emergency rooms in record numbers seeking care.

We're just the catch-all for people.

And we can't say no, and we don't say no.

We want people to come to us if they're having a psychiatric emergency 100%.

But our doors don't close. They don't close for psychiatric

patients and they don't close for medical patients and there's times where

we can't get out of our own way as far as being able to provide good care

for everybody.

That's an emergency room charge nurse in Burlington, Vermont,

and she's describing a problem that's playing out not just here,

but all over the country.

Emergency rooms are not equipped to treat people with mental illness. So ER nurses

are tasked with keeping them safe and keeping their other patients safe until a bed opens up in one of

the psychiatric hospitals around the state and those

beds are in short supply.

Frankly, I would call it a disgrace.

That's Ken Leibertoff.

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