The Churn

Adam Aurand spent nearly a decade of his life stuck in a loop: emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, jails, prison, and the streets in and around Seattle. During that time, he picked up diagnoses of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. He also used opioids and methamphetamine. Aurand’s life is an example of what happens to many people who experience psychosis in the US: a perpetual shuffle from one place to the next for visits lasting hours or days or weeks, none of them leading to longer-lasting support. This week on Reveal, reporters who made the podcast Lost Patients, by KUOW and the Seattle Times, try to answer a question: Why do America’s systems for treating serious mental illness break down in this way? The answer took them from the present-day streets of Seattle to decades into America’s past. You can find Lost Patients wherever you get your podcasts: NPR: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510377/lost-patients Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lost-patients/id1733735613 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1avleoc5U4DA7U37GFPzIH This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Take our listener survey Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices