What to Do With a Mental Illness?

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The debate in America over how to best help homeless people with mental illness has been left largely unresolved for decades. Severe mental illness is the furthest thing from a cooki cutter condition, and no patient responds to medication in quite the same way. An estimated one in five americans suffers from some form of mental illness. Only about four per cent of community violence is attributable to psycho pathology.

The more he insisted that his name was Joshua, the more delusional he came to be seen.

Journalist Robert Kolker tells us the remarkable story of Joshua Spriestersbach, a homeless man who wound up serving more than two years in a Honolulu jail for crimes committed by someone else.

It was a case of mistaken identity that developed into “a slow-motion game of hot potato between the police, the courts, the jails and the hospitals,” Mr. Kolker writes. He delves into how homelessness and mental illness shaped Mr. Spriestersbach’s adult life, two factors that led him into a situation in which he had little control — a bureaucratic wormhole that commandeered and consumed two and a half years of his life.

This story was written by Robert Kolker and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.