Silent Voices: People with Mental Disorders on the Street

Show #89, Hour 2 | Guest: Robert L. Okin, MD | Show Summary: We avert our eyes when we meet them on the street: homeless mentally ill people with their hand-scrawled signs, shopping carts, and cardboard boxes. Because of our fear and revulsion, we fail to see any human connection with them. How do they end up on the street? How do they survive? What combination of biological vulnerabilities, childhood traumas, drugs, mental disorders, and financial devastation brought them down? And how do some manage, against all odds, to climb out of this desperate situation? Former commissioner of mental health Robert Okin spent two years on the street meeting and photographing homeless individuals with mental illness to find answers to these questions. He masterfully brings these people to life through stories and images that are intimate and gritty. Robert L. Okin, MD, was born in the Bronx, New York. He attended college and medical school at the University of Chicago, and after a psychiatric residency at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, he spent two years at the National Institute of Mental Health. He’s a founding member of the board of advisors of Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI). Dr. Okin was chief of service of the San Francisco General Hospital Department of Psychiatry; professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco; and vice chair of the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry.