Losing Tim: How Our Health and Education Systems Failed My Son with Schizophrenia
Paul Gionfriddo's son Tim is one of the "6 percent"—an American with serious mental illness. He is also one of the half million homeless people with serious mental illnesses in desperate need of help yet underserved or ignored by our health and social-service systems.

In this moving, detailed, clear-eyed exposé, Gionfriddo describes how Tim and others like him come to live on the street. Gionfriddo takes stock of the numerous injustices that kept his son from realizing his potential from the time Tim first began to show symptoms of schizophrenia to the inadequate educational supports he received growing up, his isolation from family and friends, and his frequent encounters with the juvenile justice system and, later, the adult criminal-justice system and its substandard mental health care. Tim entered adulthood with limited formal education, few work skills, and a chronic, debilitating disease that took him from the streets to jails to hospitals and then back to the streets. Losing Tim shows that people with mental illness become homeless as a result not of bad choices but of bad policy. As a former state policy maker, Gionfriddo concludes with recommendations for reforming America's ailing approach to mental health.
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Losing Tim: How Our Health and Education Systems Failed My Son with Schizophrenia
Paul Gionfriddo's son Tim is one of the "6 percent"—an American with serious mental illness. He is also one of the half million homeless people with serious mental illnesses in desperate need of help yet underserved or ignored by our health and social-service systems.

In this moving, detailed, clear-eyed exposé, Gionfriddo describes how Tim and others like him come to live on the street. Gionfriddo takes stock of the numerous injustices that kept his son from realizing his potential from the time Tim first began to show symptoms of schizophrenia to the inadequate educational supports he received growing up, his isolation from family and friends, and his frequent encounters with the juvenile justice system and, later, the adult criminal-justice system and its substandard mental health care. Tim entered adulthood with limited formal education, few work skills, and a chronic, debilitating disease that took him from the streets to jails to hospitals and then back to the streets. Losing Tim shows that people with mental illness become homeless as a result not of bad choices but of bad policy. As a former state policy maker, Gionfriddo concludes with recommendations for reforming America's ailing approach to mental health.
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Losing Tim: How Our Health and Education Systems Failed My Son with Schizophrenia

Losing Tim: How Our Health and Education Systems Failed My Son with Schizophrenia

by Paul Gionfriddo
Losing Tim: How Our Health and Education Systems Failed My Son with Schizophrenia

Losing Tim: How Our Health and Education Systems Failed My Son with Schizophrenia

by Paul Gionfriddo

Hardcover

$24.95 
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Overview

Paul Gionfriddo's son Tim is one of the "6 percent"—an American with serious mental illness. He is also one of the half million homeless people with serious mental illnesses in desperate need of help yet underserved or ignored by our health and social-service systems.

In this moving, detailed, clear-eyed exposé, Gionfriddo describes how Tim and others like him come to live on the street. Gionfriddo takes stock of the numerous injustices that kept his son from realizing his potential from the time Tim first began to show symptoms of schizophrenia to the inadequate educational supports he received growing up, his isolation from family and friends, and his frequent encounters with the juvenile justice system and, later, the adult criminal-justice system and its substandard mental health care. Tim entered adulthood with limited formal education, few work skills, and a chronic, debilitating disease that took him from the streets to jails to hospitals and then back to the streets. Losing Tim shows that people with mental illness become homeless as a result not of bad choices but of bad policy. As a former state policy maker, Gionfriddo concludes with recommendations for reforming America's ailing approach to mental health.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231168281
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 10/07/2014
Pages: 264
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Paul Gionfriddo was born and raised in Middletown, Connecticut, and graduated from Wesleyan University. He was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1978 and mayor of Middletown in 1989. He has led nonprofits in three states and was on the adjunct faculty at Wesleyan University and Trinity College. In 2014, he was named president and CEO of Mental Health America. He lives in Lake Worth, Florida, with his wife, Pam.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Tim Brings a Gun to School
2. Tim Gets His Start
3. Our Introduction to Special Education
4. A New School, a New Crisis
5. Suspended Animation
6. Rocketing Through Middle School
7. High School Cooks Up Trouble
8. West to the Northwest
9. Hospitalization from the Northwest to Middletown
10. Tim Comes to Austin
11. AmeriCorps and the Chain of Neglect
12. Tim Begins Adult Life
13. Tim Hits the Revolving Door
14. Launching Tim
15. Tim Returns to Middletown
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
References
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