Listen to and follow ‘First Person’
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon Music

Kimberly is a mom whose 22-year-old son has been cycling in and out of psychosis since he was a teenager. Her story is familiar to families across the country, with a national debate raging about when — if ever — it’s appropriate to treat severely mentally ill people against their will.

Beginning in the 1950s, a movement to protect the rights of people who were institutionalized led to the closure of many state psychiatric hospitals, where conditions were often inhumane and stays could be indefinite. The goal was to treat people with new medications, and return them to be cared for in their communities. But that better system of care never quite emerged, leaving vulnerable people with very few places to go.

Instead, there are caregivers like Kimberly who are scrambling to piece together treatment from a fragmented health care system, struggling to find any kind of helpful voluntary treatment and growing increasingly frustrated. Having watched her son lose more of himself every time he’s hospitalized, Kimberly has become convinced that he needs one of the last options available to their family: conservatorship.

Note: To protect her son’s privacy and medical history, we are not using Kimberly’s last name in this episode. And we are not naming him at all.

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Additional reading:

• “A World Gone Mad: Schizophrenia and a Journey Through California’s Failed Mental Health System,” by Thomas Curwen in The Los Angeles Times

• “California Is Fighting to Make It Easier to Put People Under Conservatorships,” by Henry Grabar in Slate

• “‘We’ve Lost Our Compass.’ For California’s Most Visible Mentally Ill, is a Return to Forced Treatment a Solution — or a False Promise?” by Jocelyn Wiener in Cal Matters

Thoughts? Email us at firstperson@nytimes.com. Follow Lulu Garcia-Navarro on Twitter: @lourdesgnavarro

“First Person” was produced this week by Olivia Natt. It was edited by Anabel Bacon and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. The “First Person” team includes Stephanie Joyce, Wyatt Orme, Rhiannon Corby, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski, Shannon Busta, Allison Benedikt, Annie-Rose Strasser and Katie Kingsbury.