“The Cost of Not Caring,” a nine-part USA Today series, examined what the country pays for ignoring the needs of the 10 million Americans with serious mental illness and failing to repair the country’s crumbling mental health system. We found that the country spends far more by neglecting the mentally ill than it would by providing decent care and services, for example. The human cost of neglect is even greater, with nearly 600,000 Americans with mental illness end up incarcerated, homless or dead every year.
