The mental health system fails again!

The article's from the Houston Chronicle

href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5648203.html">http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5648203.html

Boys thrown off Dallas bridge remain in foster care
Their mother, who's in jail on charges she injured her sons, was turned away from psychiatric care the night before the incident, family says
By JEFF CARLTON
Associated Press

DALLAS — A judge issued an order Tuesday keeping two boys whose mother is accused of throwing them off a highway overpass in foster care.

Outside the courtroom, new details emerged about their mother's mental decline, with family members saying she was bipolar, off her medication and had been turned away from a psychiatric center the night before the incident near downtown Dallas.

The 8-year-old boy, who was on life support, is in critical condition in the hospital, but is "improving daily," Marissa Gonzales, of Child Protective Services, said. He has a broken arm and other injuries, his aunt said. His 6-year-old brother is already in foster care.

Their mother, Khandi Busby, remains jailed on charges of injury to a child and attempted murder. Her bail was set at $2 million.

Witnesses said she threw her sons on March 12 from an overpass 22 feet onto Interstate 30 traffic lanes during morning rush-hour traffic, then jumped over herself.

John Turner, Busby's father, said he witnessed his daughter throw the boys over the railing before leaping after them. The whole incident took about four seconds, he said.
Busby tossed the older brother first, then the younger and "then she went over head first," Turner said. "I was speechless."

Turner said his daughter was diagnosed as bipolar last year and had recently stopped taking her medication. The night before the incident, he tried to get her committed to a psychiatric center but was turned away because she didn't have proper insurance coverage.

"Things happen, people get depressed and sometimes if you don't know how to bounce back and you don't have the support you need, you just lose it," said Busby's sister Khalilah. "She was out of her mind."

The judge's temporary custody order keeps the boys in foster care under the authority of CPS. A status hearing on their custody is scheduled for May 27

End of article.

The mental health system is a joke. The woman was suicidal. She had a diagnosed psychiatric disability. She asked for help. She didn't get it.

She did screw up by going off her medication, but could she afford to see a doctor? We searched for nearly a month before I found a good doctor who accepted uninsured patients.

Why, then, are we so surprised when things like this happen? As far as I'm concerned the system threw that family over the overpass.

I'm going to go pray right now for all the other families dealing with this. It could so easily have been any of us.