A Brother's Death - Part 3

This article first appeared in The Middletown Insider.

This is the third in a series of four videos depicting the living conditions of someone who fell through the webbing of our social safety net.

It is far shorter than the previous two, and perhaps the most powerful and moving, of all.

We have a societal obligation to help those in need of mental health and other social services. In this case, those needs were not met; society failed.

Casey died on October 29th, 2016 at the age of 55. The official cause of death, determined in January 2017, was an accidental overdose of Tramadol.

Casey was physically and mentally disabled and had been for many years. He tried to get aid through Social Security; he sought aid through the Georgia Dept. of Social Services and was a recipient of food from a local food bank. It is unclear how much, if any, aid he received from taxpayer funded sources.

What is abundantly clear, is that Casey did not receive the healthcare, mental or physical, that he needed. Casey was one of those people who truly needed help, but did not get it. Casey is not alone; there inestimable thousands in similar straits.

The purpose of sharing these videos is to raise awareness of what sort of living conditions the mentally disabled, who don't get help, can and do fall into. When time allows, the videographer is going to do something (he's not yet sure just what) with the videos and what he has learned, to help bring substantive change to a failed bureaucratic system.

Copy rights reserved.