Up here, they don't hospitalize you unless you are a threat to yourself or someone else. Of course, the last time I was hospitalized, there were no beds on the psych ward, so they stuck me on a standard hospital ward. They don't have available hospital beds in Ottawa Canada for psych...much less anything else. It's like that all over Canada, no hospital beds. A young girl was left held in jail because of lack of psych beds. She had been charged with a criminal offense, but she badly needed psychiatric care.

Years ago, you might have been hospitalized, but there has been a huge movement for patients' civil rights. This has been a good and bad thing. It prevents you from being thrown into the hospital for nothing, but then again, if someone needs help, they are prevented from getting it unless circumstances are extreme.

For example, a friend of mine bumped into me a while back and was telling me a bunch of bizzare things, like radiation from her television set was making her sick and that the landlords of her building were conducting lethal, secret experiments on the tenants. She has been to every government agency under the sun to do something about the radiation and she has gotten rid of her TV.

Father Lindsay suspects she's a paranoid schizophrenic and that she needed to see a doctor.

Unless she turns violent, her friends and family have no way of helping this woman in seeing she gets help with her delusions. I don't even know her family situation. Father Lindsay has advised me to end the friendship if my life or mental health is put at risk by this woman. That was the only advice that he could offer me.

I hope things in Louisiana aren't as bad.