Thanks for your support and understanding. I'm painfully aware of how bad the system can be. One friend with schizophrenia was so badly mishandled by a whole range of people in the system that he was released without adequate support or follow up, had a command hallucination and poured turpentine on himself and lit himself on fire.

People are extraordinarily vulnerable and powerless in these situations. Many lack an ongoing therapeutic situation that might not only help them but also protect them during periods when "the system" overreaches and has great potential to do harm.

The client as is the case with all the people I work with do not have someone like that in their lives. Psychotic disorders are treated by medications and people pretty much give up on therapy. Basic maintenance is really all they get. It sucks.

If the client who was take away had had a therapist who could have stepped in and protected her or at least overseen the transfer of all these different agencies and entities that got involved conflictually about her, she at least would have had that reassurance.

I did text my therapist to see if he was willing to address the fact that I felt stirred up. He tried to explain that he was trying to give me his experience of how "systems" work. He just told me to continue to talk to him about this. It was at least a response and on a Friday evening I can't really ask for much more, but I don't really feel better. Plus I have to meet with my supervisor on Sunday and I have no idea about whether I should bring this up. It feel raw, like maybe it should still remain with my personal therapist for now.

It is so hard because none of my peers are having to deal with such things so I don't have them to turn to. I don't feel like the staff at the facility really have taken me in yet. They have a way of doing things and it isn't based in therapeutic ideas or interventions. They are understaffed and low paid with no one having a license or any extensive training. They do what they can, and try to be well-meaning, but even my supervisor says that interns like me often come in and start connecting the dots in ways that people haven't seen. And have more complex understandings and tools than the workers, but less power so it is a very tricky thing.

I wanted to work with this population and in some ways learn about how community mental health works, but it is painful. I wish that I were licensed and could just take some of these people as real clients having full therapy sessions to break the cycle of them just falling into the cracks over and over.