The idea for the project stemmed from the observation that many of these homeless patients who were admitted to a psychiatric ward, often involuntarily, were placed on appropriate medications, but once released from the hospital, there was a lack of continuity in terms of treatment and mental health support, and these patients would fail to take their pills and end up falling back into the dark depths of their mental illness.
You can learn more about the initiative, including learning about those for whom the project has made a difference, as well as the ongoing difficulties and challenges of the project by checking out the article below:
"Every morning, the two Miami homeless-outreach workers tour downtown in a white Ford Econoline along with a psychiatric nurse practitioner from Camillus Health. They go out in search of a small group of men and women who are among the most isolated and desperate of Miami’s homeless population, in order to earn their trust, diagnose their condition and then hand them their medication and watch them take it.
The program is entirely voluntary. But without the drugs — which take weeks of daily use before quelling symptoms of mental illness — they will likely continue to bounce between the streets, psychiatric wards, hospital beds and jail cells. By tracking them down every day to give them their pills, Trueba’s crew has shown they can draw some of Miami’s most vulnerable from out of the shadows and back into the light."