Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness

With Diaz’s assistance, Earley arrives at Passageway and meets program director and founder Tom Mullen. Earley asks Mullen to share his backstory, which includes a tough childhood in the Bronx that led him to a Catholic religious order. He eventually joined the order and would devote his life to serving others, even when it meant angering the archdiocese. He started a methadone clinic in Miami but realized that what he really wanted to start was a halfway house for the mentally ill.

Despite several financial, media, and neighborhood setbacks, Passageway managed to stay open, able to convince government inspectors to overlook the facts that they had more than 16 beds in their facility (which is the limit to receive federal funding). Mullen only admits residents who pass a screening, making sure that they are voluntarily taking their medication and willing to live in the facility until staff decide they are ready to live on their own. 

At Mullen’s urging, Earley sits in on a social worker’s Passageway therapy session with a group of residents. Their session focuses on the differences between thought disorders and mood disorders. Mullen gets to know several of the residents, following them through their routine and structured day.