This three-part narrative series, about a young man battling chronic mental illness, offered a close look at the failures of the mental health care system in Massachusetts by chronicling his family’s frustrating efforts to get him meaningful treatment. Based on 18 months of reporting, from February 2013 until publication, the stories described in a vivid, gripping, deeply human way the burden that now falls on families, neighbors, police, courts and emergency rooms in managing care for patients who have been all but abandoned by the state.
