There are literally so few child psych beds available. And there is also severe understaffing for obvious reasons. There is not enough protection for psych nurses. There are even fewer child psych beds than adult beds and those are woefully under available. It's a deeply broken system.

I reached out to the mother of a 26 year old male friend who was having hallucinations, posting suicidal tweets and making music with a lot of violent fantasies that were increasing in depravity. He was also working as a bartender and using cocaine - which are like gasoline and a match to his mental health disorders, of which I guess there's about 4 or 5.

She made a trip, made a few calls to outpatient, told him to keep up with it (I doubt he did) and said he was 26 - nothing she can do.

And the thing is, there's actually slightly more resources if he is an adult. If he were 16, she'd have even less recourse. So how do we prevent these 16 year old from becoming like this young man here or like my friend here?