Take a look at this four-part series from Meg Kissinger.
Part 1: San Francisco — Rob Sweeney sucked on an unlit cigarette while his mother stood at the car rental counter, trying to negotiate a better deal.
His legs twitched. His eyes darted right and left. His head bobbed to a beat no one else could hear.
After two airplane flights, he was antsy.
“Want to get some vodka and watch movies in my hotel room?” he asked the stranger sitting next to him.
Rob, 25, has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a catch-all term for a brain disease that causes a combination of delusions, paranoia, depression and mania. He has spent the past six years churning through Milwaukee County’s troubled mental health system, cycling week-to-week from house to hospital to homeless shelter.
Now he and his mother, Debbie Sweeney, have come to California in a desperate search to find a safe place for him to live.
Rob does things that make his mother sick with worry.
He walks into traffic, spits on people’s cars, yells racist slurs out bus windows, writes suicide notes, puts cigarettes out on his forehead and cuts his arms to make himself feel better.
He imagines people are trying to kill him.
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