In order to fix the U.S.s mental healthcare system, Eli thinks we need to spend way more than the $500 million Obama recently proposed. We also need to hear more stories like the one Eli tells in his new book, While the City Slept.
In order to fix the U.S.'s mental-healthcare system, Eli thinks we need to spend way more than the $500 million Obama recently proposed. We also need to hear more stories like the one Eli tells in his new book, While the City Slept. Kelly O

We need to patch up the cracks in our mental-health system. That's a fact politicians on both sides of the aisle can agree on, as my colleague Eli Sanders suggests in this op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post on Friday. Even Donald "I-Have-A-Terrifying-Fascistic-Lion-Symbol-Now" Trump thinks we need to stop ignoring this problem and expand treatment programs.

But simply saying we need to fix "the system" is an empty declaration. It's a cliche, it's mechanical-sounding, and as such it obscures the necessary particularities that readers who haven't dealt with that system need to know in order to humanize this problem and therefore engage with the issue. Eli's brief but eye-opening story about the way Washington's mental-health system failed Isaiah Kalebu does that work.

Kalebu was the man who sexually assaulted and stabbed Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper back in 2009, an attack that resulted in Butz's death. Before that horrible night in South Park, Kalebu had several interactions with the mental-healthcare system. But, as Eli describes, because of poor technical communication, inadequate follow-up protocols, and the general lack of any preventative care systems, Kalebu slipped through the cracks and wound up outside the window of Butz's and Hopper's little red house.

Preventative care. Tech upgrades. These are specific gears in the system that need oil or that need to be replaced. These are maintenance issues. Maintenance issues are not the most exciting things to talk about, especially among an electorate obsessed with big, new, shiny projects that politicians can put their name to, but failure to address these issues with real force (i.e. money) has and will continue to have tragic effects.

Marcie Sillman, Eli, and Jennifer Hopper—The Bravest Woman in Seattle— talked about all of this stuff at Town Hall during the book launch for While the City Slept. If you missed that event, you can listen to the full conversation here. You can also hear Eli in conversation with my other illustrious colleague, arts editor Sean Nelson, on Blabbermouth.