Why This Hawaiian Island Has To Outsource Psychiatric Care For the first time since 1990, the state agency that provides care to adults diagnosed with a serious mental illness has no staff on Lanai. The problem is a microcosm of a statewide mental health care crisis.
She did not want to give in to it. After a decades-long cycle of treatment and relapse that caused her to lose her home, parental rights over her two daughters and nearly her life, the 61-year-old Lanai City resident had achieved sobriety in 2009.
But the grief and fatigue of providing around-the-clock care to her ailing mother during the darkest days of the coronavirus pandemic cracked the foundation of her hard-fought recovery, leaving her anxious, irritable and barely able to sleep.
