NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Mental health issues dominated the headlines in 2023.
The CDC declared a mental health crisis for teenagers, and warned mental health was in decline for people of all ages.
It led NewsChannel 5 Investigates to examine the mental health system in Tennessee, which many experts say is broken.
Ben walks us through the last year of his investigations into mental health in the player above.
We found even those with money cannot find the care they need for themselves or their loved ones.
We found a lack of continuity of care - once people are released from a hospital they often relapse and get re-admitted to a new a hospital that is unaware of past treatment and medications.
We found many people who commit crimes are simply put back on the street because they are not competent to stand trial.
We found sheriffs who are frustrated by the lack of psychiatric beds at state-run mental health hospitals.
And we found some people wait in hospital emergency rooms for days because no bed is available at psychiatric hospitals.
The state has put more money into the mental health system.
The issue took center stage in the special legislative session called after the shootings at the Covenant school.
Lawmakers approved salary increases and bonuses for certain mental health professionals to combat worker shortages.
However, many on the front lines feel much more needs to be done.
Elizabeth Frensley will never forget consoling her son — after he learned he killed his father.
"I know he did not do it intentionally, " Frensley said.
"They were best friends, and he just couldn't believe it," Frensley continued.
Nearly two years ago John Hassey, 26, set fire to the Brentwood home where he lived with his father James Hassey.
Neighbors say John quickly got outside.
But John did not try to save his father, because he did not believe any of it was real.
"He thought he was playing a part in a movie," his mother, Elizabeth Frensley said.
"He was talking to cast members and they were talking to him and there were hallucinations. I mean he was in severe psychosis," Frensely said.
John was charged with murder, but a judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity, which his family supported.
He's now in a mental hospital getting treatment for a variety of mental health issues including bipolar disorder.
It is treatment his family tried to get him for years.
Attorney David Raybin represented John and saw how he'd been in and out of mental health facilities.
"It could have been stopped had the mental health system done what it should have done and intercepted this when the signs were there," Raybin said.
"His mother begged them 'please don't release him he's not ready to go,' 'well ma'am he doesn't meet the commitment standard any longer, take him home,'" Raybin said.
Davidson County Judge Melissa Blackburn says mental health cases have soared.
"It's definitely a crisis. There's no question about that," Judge Blackburn said.
She was not involved in the Hassey case, and was elected judge nine years ago.
Her office found that 23,441 people have been involuntarily committed in Davidson County since 2019.
That means they have been sent to a psychiatric hospital against their will.
She and other judges, who hold hearings about involuntary committals, started noticing they were seeing many of the same people over and over.
Judge Blackburn's office put together a spreadsheet showing the county's repeat involuntary hospitalizations.
The data showed over a recent four-year period numerous people were committed 20 times or more.
It also showed they often went to a different psychiatric hospital each time, and those hospitals were not communicating about the patient's history.
"No one's checking. No one is paying attention. No one is bothering to see where they have been or what they've been on or what the prior medication is, hence them going from hospital to hospital to hospital," Judge Blackburn said.
Take "Nataly," which is not her real name.
She was hospitalized 39 different times and went to five different psychiatric hospitals.
"If they would communicate they could cut down dramatically the number of times Nataly is being hospitalized," Judge Blackburn said.
People not getting the care they need can also lead to criminal charges getting dropped because people are found not competent to stand trail.
"And that was happening every single day with anyone deemed incompetent in Davidson County," Judge Blackburn said.
Blackburn's office found 182 people had been declared incompetent to stand trial in Davidson County in the year and a half from January 2020 to June 2021.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates said,"182 sounds like a lot."
Judge Blackburn said, "It is a lot, so we had to figure out what to do with 182."
Public information about the 182 is limited.
We know one-third were homeless.
Two-thirds were re-arrested within 3 months after they are released.
"We have now set up an incompetency docket that deals specifically with those individuals [who are declared not competent]," Judge Blackburn said.
Thanks to a $600,000 grant, people deemed incompetent are no longer immediately released, and some are able to get additional treatment.
But the grant is only a fraction of what was requested, and Blackburn said they need more funding.
Perhaps the most disturbing case of the past year involved the man who shot and killed Belmont student Jillian Ludwig.
She was out walking in a park, in the middle of the day, when she was killed by a stray bullet.
The bullet was shot by Shaquille Taylor, who was randomly shooting a gun from a car.
Just two years earlier Taylor had been charged with aggravated assault after shooting into a car with two children inside.
But doctors testified in court he was not competent to stand trial - because he was so intellectually disabled, he could not understand the charges against him.
The doctors also said he could not be treated.
So he was released with no follow-up care.
Legal analysts say the case is one lawmakers could look at to change the law surrounding who is found competent to stand trial and who can be held be involuntarily committed.
The need for more money is what we heard over and over again.
County sheriffs begged for more state psychiatric beds to treat the mentally ill.
"A lot of our mental health hospitals went away," said Franklin County Sheriff, Tim Fuller, who has been in law enforcement more than 40 years.
He points to state budget cuts that closed public psychiatric hospitals.
The number of state-run psychiatric beds has plummeted since 1996 when there were 1,114 staffed beds.
As of last year that had been cut nearly in half to just 577 beds.
The past year has shed light on a broken mental health system that many hope lawmakers will address in the new year.
